Deborah Ruggiero – RI Future

June 30, 2016July 1, 2016

Deborah Ruggiero seeking re-election in House District 74

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Rep. Deborah Ruggiero announced today she plans to seek re-election to the House of Representatives.

“I’m honored to serve on behalf of my friends and neighbors in Jamestown and Middletown as their strong and articulate voice at the State House. My work on the 4 E’s — environment, economy, education and the elderly — has resonated in all of my legislative priorities including the Renewable Energy Program, the Rhode Island Safe School Act, and working for additional funding for our seniors,” says Representative Ruggiero, “I take my job as advocate very seriously and make sure that the needs of Jamestown and Middletown are addressed by the state. It’s about listening and being responsive. I would be honored to continue the work I’ve started, with the support of the voters of Jamestown and Middletown.”

Representative Ruggiero, a Democrat, was first elected in 2008 as the representative from District 74 in Jamestown and Middletown. A Deputy Majority Leader, this year she became the chairwoman of the House Small Business Committee. She serves as a member of the House Finance Committee and is the chairwoman of its Subcommittee on Environment and Transportation. She is also the co-chairwoman of the Special Legislative Commission on Defense Economy Planning.

Representative Ruggiero has championed legislation assisting the agricultural and seafood communities, improving home care patient rights, expanding renewable energy opportunities and supporting economic development at Rhode Island’s ports. She co-chaired the Joint Port Facilities Study Commission, which developed several recommendations to help the state’s economy.

As chairperson of the Small Business Renewable Energy Commission, she helped enact several comprehensive renewable energy laws to help reduce dependency on fossil fuels. She has sponsored numerous renewable energy laws, including several encouraging distributed generation. This week the governor signed into law legislation she sponsored to create third-party financing and virtual net metering for affordable housing, creating jobs in the clean energy sector and increasing renewable energy.

In 2014, she co-chaired the task force that studied the nexus of mental health laws and gun rights following the 2012 Newtown, Conn., school shooting and sponsored the resulting law requiring Rhode Island to submit more data to the national database used to screen gun purchases. Representative Ruggiero was the sponsor of the Safe Schools Act, Rhode Island’s anti-bullying law. She also sponsored legislation to remove regulations on small businesses.

In 2012, the Rhode Island State Nurses Association named her “Legislator of the Year” for her approach to health care issues. In 2011, the YWCA Northern Rhode Island recognized her as “a rising political star.”

Aside from her legislative duties, she is president of DR Communications Group, an advertising and marketing company. The native Rhode Islander is the creator and host of the award-winning radio show, “Amazing Women,” that highlights Rhode Island women that make a difference. She is also a member of Save the Bay and Jamestown Rotary. A resident of Jamestown, she holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston College. She’s an avid golfer and loves to cook.

“I plan to keep working hard to serve the needs of Jamestown and Middletown, to help create thoughtful policy that brings jobs, prosperity and sustainability to our whole state, and to deserve the trust of the people of District 74. I look forward to speaking with many citizens during this election season, and as always, I welcome all residents to contact me if they would like to talk about any topic. I love campaigning. It’s an enjoyable way to speak with constituents and engage in good conversations on important issues. It’s how I learn what people want me to work and vote on, and that input is pivotal to my work,” said Representative Ruggiero.

[From a press release]

June 15, 2016June 15, 2016

Moms Demand Action walks out on Mattiello during prayer for Orlando

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Speaker Nicholas Mattiello opened yesterday’s House session by asking Rep Deborah Ruggiero to lead the chamber in a moment of silence and a prayer for the victims of the Pulse massacre in Orlando. In the galley, over a half dozen people representing Moms Demand Action stood up and left, tired of the meaningless platitudes and prayers offered by a General Assembly that does nothing to curb the easy access to the weapons used by mass murderers in this country.

Moms has advocated for a bill to take guns away from domestic abusers for three years. Every year the bill dies in committee.

Jennifer Smith Boylan, RI Chapter Leader at Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America told me after the walk-out, “As advocates for commonsense gun laws, Moms are weary of moments of silence and thoughts and prayers from our elected officials. We walked out to send a message that moments of silence do not disarm dangerous people who should not have easy access to firearms. We look to law makers to do their jobs and make laws to keep Rhode Islanders safe.”

With their heads bowed in a public display of of false piety, most of the legislators probably missed the walk out. Fortunately, I got it on video:

Moments earlier members of Moms Demand Action were on the floor of the House, where they presented the Speaker with 49 flowers, one for each victim killed in Orlando, and nearly 700 domestic violence post cards.. Mattiello was happy to take the flowers and find a place to display them, but offered no promises of legislative action that might stop killers from accessing weapons. Instead, he handed the problem of displaying the flowers and doing something with the post cards off to his staff and moved on. Conversation was all but impossible due to the ringing of the session bell.

Mattiello’s office has declined to answer my request for a comment on the status of pending gun legislation. But the Speaker told channel 12 “A terrorist militant is always going to find a way to access a weapon. Gun issue discussions are always valuable. However, not in this case.”

The Speaker has an A rating from the National Rifle Association. Former House Speaker William Murphy, is a highly paid NRA lobbyist and a close friend of Mattiello. The Speaker is more than happy to offer useless prayers, as he did when he issued his very first tweet from his new Twitter account on Sunday, but actually doing his job and passing common sense legislation to curb access to weapons that kill dozens in seconds is somehow beyond him.

With the General Assembly expected to wrap up all its business this week, it may already be too late to do anything about guns this legislative session. But that doesn’t mean that our legislators are off the hook.

This is an election year.

March 11, 2015

Rep. Morgan targets HealthSourceRI with weak sauce

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The Rhode Island House Finance Committee met to discuss Representative Patricia Morgan’s bill to eliminate HealthSourceRI, and turn the operations of our health care exchange over to the federal government. All the sponsors of House Bill 5329 are Republicans, including Morgan, Dan Reilly, Antonio Giarusso, Justin Price, and Michael Chippendale.

Normally a bill like this wouldn’t attract much attention. It would be dismissed as a cynical statement against a successful social welfare program by right-wing ideologues. But Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, a nominal Democrat, has several times suggested that HealthSourceRI is too expensive and that turning the exchange over to the federal government, something that no state has ever done, might be an option.

As Rep. Morgan explained her bill and her reasoning for it, she alluded to the Speaker’s interest, suggesting that the elimination of HealthSource RI might free up money for Mattiello’s pet project of eliminating the state’s social security income tax. Morgan also mentioned that her bill might find the money required to pay for all day kindergarten, a pet project of Senate President Paiva-Weed, perhaps foreshadowing the compromise that will will see both pet projects come to fruition.

As I mentioned, no state with a functioning, successful state-run health care exchange has shut theirs down. So Rhode Island, in choosing such a path, would be charting unknown and uncertain waters. When Rep Deborah Ruggiero asked Morgan, “What is the cost to the state to return [the health exchange] back to the government?” Rep Morgan seemed uncertain, then replied, “Nothing.”

Ruggiero countered that in her discussion with HealthSourceRI director Anya Rader Wallack, the cost to the state to turn over the exchange is actually “somewhere around $10 million.” In addition, said Ruggiero, “we lose control, obviously, because we no longer have the healthcare exchange in our own state,” a point to which Morgan later replied, “Control is overrated.”

Morgan was also unsure of just how many Rhode Islanders benefit from the exchange, claiming that, “on the website it says that 25,000 are actually paying for their insurance through HealthSourceRI,” but when I looked, the number is actually over 30,000.

Right now, the United States Supreme Court is in the middle of deciding King v. Burwell. If the court decides for King, federal subsidies to those states that don’t have their own health insurance exchanges will vanish. According to US News and World Reports, “The likely scenario is a partial or total market “death spiral” like those, respectively, in New York and Kentucky in the 1990s.” Jumping to the federal exchange now seems pretty stupid in light of the uncertainty regarding the Supreme Court decision, but Morgan isn’t concerned.

“In addressing that, I can tell you that the Obama administration is very confident that they will prevail,” said Morgan, “They have four justices already, they only need one more, to win.” That’s pretty weak sauce, since the other side could say exactly the same thing.

Morgan then went the full Scalia when she said, “On the other hand, if King prevails, and the subsidies are only available to the states, I know from reading, and hearing, that the Republicans in Congress are already working on a fix so that people can continue to get health insurance.”

I have to say, when Morgan made this comment, I looked around the room, wondering if anyone else thought her statement was as darkly comic as I thought it was. No one seemed to.

Compare Morgan’s statement with this exchange in the Supreme Court when oral arguments were heard in :

Justice Scalia: What about – – what about Congress? You really think Congress is just going to sit there while – – while all of these disastrous consequences ensue. I mean, how often have we come out with a decision such as the – – you know, the bankruptcy court decision? Congress adjusts, enacts a statute that – – that takes care of the problem. It happens all the time. Why is that not going to happen here?

General Verrilli: Well, this Congress, Your Honor, I – – I – –

(Laughter.)

At least people had the decency to laugh out loud at Scalia’s naiveté. Morgan was actually taken seriously.

Meanwhile, House Finance Chair, Raymond Gallison, promises that there will be full hearings along with full fact finding inquiries conducted before any decision is made on the future of HealthSourceRI.