Elisha Aldrich – Page 2

June 3, 2015June 4, 2015

A higher minimum wage means better economy for all

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The minimum wage in Rhode Island has risen every year since January 2013 and 2016 will be no different, moving up from $9 to $9.60 per hour. The measure passed on the floor of the state Senate in a 34-3 vote, and will soon be enacted into law. But as each year passes, the income gap in Rhode Island only grows larger, even with the minimum wage increases.

Voting against the increase were Republicans Nick Kettle, of Coventry, Mark Gee, of East Greenwich, and Elaine Morgan, of Ashaway.

A study from 2012 conducted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) showed that from the 1970’s to the mid-2000s, the income gap has grown 70 percent. The poorest 20 percent of Rhode Islanders have only received a 11.8 percent raise in their household incomes, while the richest 20 percent have seen their income grow 99 percent.

In Connecticut and Massachusetts, the percentages are even more disconcerting. The poorest 20 percent of MA residents have seen no change in their income since the 1970s, but the richest 20 percent have had a 151.9 percent increase. Connecticut’s poorest residents have even seen a drop in their income by 4 percent since the 1970s, and a 9.8 percent drop in the past decade, more than both Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

How did this even happen? Kate Brewster, the executive director of the Economic Progress Institute, believes that trends have lead to the widening income gap.

“Our economy has shifted so dramatically,” she said. Brewster stated that over the years, Rhode Island has seen a move from the manufacturing to the service industry, as well as a decline in unionization among employees. These factors have lead to a decline in the minimum wage’s value.

Senator Erin Lynch (D-District 31), the sponsor of the legislation, said the move to $9.60 is a step in the right direction, even though she originally wanted $10.10.

“I would have loved for it to be $10.10,” she said. “I think any step forward is a good step forward.”

Lynch also added that even though raising the minimum wage is definitely a part of eliminating income inequality, it’s not the only piece of the puzzle.

“We want to continue moving in the direction we’re moving. There’s no one magic bullet. We’re working on all kinds of different things.”

Other pieces of the economic puzzle include workforce development, access to capital, and education. Lynch believes that those together can help to level out incomes in the state, especially because they will be able to help those who are providing for their families. Outside of the state house, Lynch works as a divorce lawyer, and sees the hardships that low wages can take on the family unit.

“I see a lot of parents. I see a lot of people getting second and third jobs. People are doing what they need to do to support their families,” she said.

Currently, Rhode Island has one of the highest minimum wages in the country, but will soon fall behind states like Massachusetts, California, and Washington, DC, as they move their wages upwards of $10 an hour going into 2016.

“An adult needs close to $12 to meet their basic needs,” Brewster said. “$10.10 would have been great, but $9.60 is better than $9.”

Lynch stated that she will continue working to move the state economy forward. Hopefully that means a brighter, more equal future for everyone in Rhode Island.

“This is home,” Lynch said. “We want to make it the best place it can be.”

June 3, 2015June 4, 2015

Senate Judiciary considers legislation to legalize cannabis

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A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday showed overwhelming support for legislation that would legalize marijuana in Rhode Island after its economic successes in both Colorado and Washington.

Jordan Wellington, a lawyer with Vicente Sederberg LLC in Colorado, came to speak in support of the legislation, S 510. Wellington has worked closely with Colorado’s state government to implement the retail and regulation of marijuana, and now works in their Department of Revenue’s Marijuana Enforcement Division as the single policy analyst.

“Instead of should or shouldn’t we, we discussed how to move forward with this responsibly,” he said.

Wellington said Colorado gained more than 20,000 jobs and saw $900 million in sales that brought in $125 million in tax revenue. The cost of enforcement, he said, was less than $10 million.

Money from the extra revenue was invested in educational programs about cannabis to teach youth about its effects and consequences.

“We have found that some of the messaging to youth has been very effective,” Wellington said. “A very cautious message has been given to Colorado’s youth.”

According to Wellington, Colorado has not been without its challenges by taking this step forward. Regulation and education has been key in making the policy work. “One of the biggest things we did was we put a lot of different restrictions on potency in edibles,” he said.

The question of youth cannabis use was touched upon several times throughout the hearing. Andrew Horwitz, an assistant dean at Roger Williams Law School, who also testified in support of 510, said the prohibition approach aken towards marijuana is completely ineffective, and disingenuous to children.

“We are fundamentally dishonest in the way we talk to our children about marijuana,” Horwitz said. “We talk to them like it’s crack, like its heroin. They know now to believe us, that marijuana does what we claim.”

Horwitz also stated that reforming juvenile use starts from the top, with how the state looks at marijuana as a whole. “We are doing terrible damage by the use of our criminal justice system to deal with a public health issue,” he said.

One of these damages includes a racial disparity in the number of African Americans who are arrested for marijuana related crimes, due to police saturation in communities of color, as well as racial profiling.

“We’re doing a number of things wrong,” he said. “We’re arresting people for distributing marijuana. If you legalize the distribution of marijuana, you eliminate the whole line item of law enforcement.”

Jared Moffat, director of Regulate Rhode Island, also came in support of 510, with an entire binder of studies regarding the legalization in Colorado. The most accurate study of youth use, called Healthy Kids Colorado, looked at 40,000 middle and high school children, and is re-done every two years.

“The best available data on youth marijuana in Colorado shows that the use has remained flat,” he said, especially when in comparison to alcohol and tobacco, which has continually fallen in recent years. Moffat, like Horwitz and Wellington, pointed to education as the key to reducing youth cannabis use. Looking at the context of use is important as well.

“If we are acknowledging that marijuana is available in our schools, we need to acknowledge that is readily available from drug dealers,” Moffat said.

Moffat said many of the studies that opponents brought up against the legalization of marijuana have cherry picked their data in order to make it look like youth use has risen. One such study compared the city of Denver to the United States as a whole.

“If you take any metropolitan area, you’re going to find higher use,” he said.

Youth use was definitely the biggest worry of both legislators and the few opponents who did come out to speak against the bill, such as Debbie Paragini, who came as a Rhode Island parent.

“I feel really upset living in a state that is thinking about legalizing yet another recreational drug. For an economic basis? I don’t understand that,” she said. “As a parent, I think this is a really bad idea.”

May 28, 2015May 28, 2015

Committee considers driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants

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“We are not just nomads looking for benefits.”

That’s what Jose Chacon, an undocumented immigrant living in Rhode Island, said to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, in support of H6174, which proposes giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

“It’s just a human thing to do,” he said.

In its current state, the bill allows undocumented immigrants a valid Rhode Island driver’s license if they can provide documents that reliably establish their name, date of birth, place of birth, and Rhode Island residency, among other pieces of information. Those who are under 18 are still required to undergo driving education.

Representative Anastasia Williams (D-District 9), the primary sponsor of the bill, in her testimony, said the bill has been a long time coming.

“I do believe we are going to come to a crossroad where we address the issues before us,” she said. One of those issues, according to Williams, is safety. If illegal immigrants are granted driver’s licenses, then they will have further access to auto registration and insurance, should they get into a car accident.

“It’s about responsibility, accountability, and a duty,” Williams said, citing that it is state legislature’s duty to ensure that everyone is as safe as possible on the road. “It is time for us to do our due diligence to make sure that these individuals on the road have the proper documentation,” she said.

When asked who would pay for these licenses, Williams responded that the process would operate much like the processes for giving a license to a US citizen.

“Time and resources is something that this General Assembly puts forth for many other things,” she said. “We are not giving out free licenses. These individuals will have to pay for them just like you and I.”

Even with supporters like Chacon, many of which attended the hearing, H6174 still has its fair share of opposition. Terry Gorman, the president of Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement, came to testify against the legislation. Gorman found many parts of the bill to be unclear, and even called H6174 an “illegal aliens benefit act.”

“Passing this bill would in effect hold all of you in violation of 8 USC 1324, which prohibits aiding and abetting illegal aliens,” he said. “People said they’re doing it anyway, they’re going to continue doing it. There are child molesters, wife beaters, and bank robbers, doing crimes. Should we just ‘Oh they’re doing it anyway, they’re going to continue doing it?’”

Gorman’s main objection to the bill was that many of the documents that undocumented immigrants would be asked to provide are not valid forms of government identification.

“That needs some sort of clarification as to who is going to verify that information, and what the cost will be to verify it,” he said.

Steven Brown from the RI chapter of the ACLU testifying in support of H6174

Currently, H6174 is subject to amendment, but one that has caused some controversy is whether or not undocumented immigrants applying for a driver’s license would be required to submit to a national criminal background check. A major concern is whether or not such information would make its way to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“If you do have a national criminal record check, innocent people will be fearful, and understandably so,” said Steven Brown of the Rhode Island ACLU. Brown mentioned that the state Senate version of this bill has an explicit confidentiality provision that prevents the sharing of illegal immigrant’s information without issuing a subpoena.

“I don’t believe that particular provision is in this bill, and we would encourage that it be added,” he said. “We would encourage the committee, in considering this bill, to reject that option, because of its consequences.”

April 14, 2015April 14, 2015

Study shows carbon tax would bring 2,000-4,000 jobs to RI

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A new study says a carbon tax in the state would create between 2,000 and 4,000 jobs, as well as create up to $900 million in state revenue by 2040. Scott Nystrom, a senior economic associate and project manager for Regional Economic Models, Inc. presented the study’s findings at Brown University.

Sponsored by the Energize Rhode Island Coalition, REMI’s study examined the possible benefits and consequences of instituting such a tax in the state.

Introduced this year, the Carbon Pricing Act has been tabled for the session but will be resubmitted next year. The bill, if passed, would be the first of its kind in the United States, setting an environmental standard for the rest of the country. More information can be found here.

Energize Rhode Island is currently promoting the Clean Energy Investment and Carbon Pricing Act, which would impose a carbon price (or tax) on all fossil fuels at the first point of sale within the state. The price would be $15 per ton of carbon dioxide for the first year the act is in effect, and raise at a rate of $5 per year.

The Carbon Pricing Act has two main goals – to provide a disincentive for using fossil fuel revenue to compensate for the cost of moving toward green energy. The price would be returned to Rhode Island’s economy in four different ways: a dividend check to households, a dividend to employers based on their share of state employment, a fund for energy efficiency costs, and administrative overhead.

According to REMI’s analysis, Rhode Island would receive positive benefits from implementing a carbon price.

“You actually have more jobs in Rhode Island that you would have otherwise with this policy,” Nystrom said during his presentation. Although the impact is relatively small, only around 1 percent of the jobs in the state, that’s still 2,000 to 4,000 jobs that were not there before. The Coalition says 1,000 of these jobs would be created within the first two years of the price’s introduction.

Total gross state product would rise as well, with the construction industry gaining roughly $86 million. The only industry that takes a serious hit due to the price is chemical manufacturing, which would lose $16 million. Real personal income would also increase between $80 and $100 million dollars during that time.

Nystrom also explained that instituting a carbon price could result in a population increase.

“Because the labor market is stronger, it draws more people to the state to an extent,” he said. “They move into the state as a consequence of the labor market, they buy a house, they settle down, and they increase the state’s population.”

With all of the new jobs and people living in Rhode Island, state revenues would be on the rise as well, earning between $200 and $900 million through the 2030s.

For all these benefits, cost of living would only increase minimally.

“Even though this does increase the cost of energy for states, It’s about a half a percent,” Nystrom said. “This means you have three months of extra inflection between now and 2040 than you would have otherwise.”

Carbon emissions were not the main focus of the study, but Nystrom did add that they would decrease over the course of a few years, and then stabilize.

“Emissions are purely a byproduct,” he said. “This is a result of the model.”

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