“A retired teacher of 35 years, 33 in the Bristol Warren Public School System, and long-time community advocate, Susan worked with the local non-profit environmental organization, Save Bristol Harbor, to successfully stop the transportation of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) through Mount Hope Bay,” according to the news release. “Susan is the Chairperson of the East Bay chapter of Habitat for Humanity (HFH), a non-profit organization that builds homes and provides affordable mortgages to qualifying families. Under Donovan’s leadership HFH recently finished its fourth home and first in her hometown of Bristol; another deserving family has a place to call home. Susan will take her community leadership skills, her passion for education, and advocating for children and families to the State House and represent the good hard-working people of Bristol and Portsmouth with dignity and enthusiasm.”

Gallison resigned the seat earlier this week amid news reports about a law enforcement investigation. Subsequent journalism indicates an education non-profit he works for is almost entirely funded through State House grants and listed board members said they didn’t know they were board members.

Donovan has an exceptional reputation in Bristol, according to a September, 2015 ABC6 report. “If you live in Bristol, there’s a 99.9 percent chance you already know who our Hometown Hero is this month,” it says. “That’s because she taught there for over 30 years. Her name is Susan Donovan, Mrs. Donovan to her students. She’s retired now, sort of, but her community service reaches far outside of the classroom and beyond Bristol.”

In June of 2015, Donovan was recognized by the House of Representatives for winning the Bristol 4th of July Hattie Brown Award “for her civic commitment to the Town of Bristol,” according to a State House resolution sponsored by Gallison.

According to the release, Donovan, a Democrat, is married with three adult children.

Growing up, I learned everything I know about resiliency from my mom, who raised my sister and me on her own and made sure we got a great education and had terrific role models. My grandma, who was an executive director of Planned Parenthood in the years before Roe v. Wade, taught me the importance of empowering people to make choices for themselves. And my grandpa, a refugee of the Holocaust, came to America with the deepest appreciation for our democracy, which I carry with me every day.

I came here six years ago for school, and I stayed for Providence, and Rhode Island. I’ve chosen to make my home here because there is no city with as much beauty, character and diversity on every block as we have in Providence.

We live in an amazing place. But we all know our community faces huge challenges. There are too many people out of work, too many young people who aren’t getting the education they deserve. My family always taught me, when there’s a challenge, you roll up your sleeves and bring the folks impacted together to solve it. That’s why, in 2010 I co-founded a youth-led nonprofit that brings high school students together to push for stronger public schools. I’ve seen passionate young people in the Providence Student Union win healthier school lunches, change transportation policy so hundreds of students have a way of getting to school safely, and fight the misuse of standardized testing.

These students inspired me to run for office, because they’ve shown me what can happen when community voices are actually brought to the table. Too often in our state, decisions get made without the people, whether it’s our students or our small business owners or our neighbors.

I know we can do better. We can have smarter, bottom-up economic development. We can transform schools into places of real, authentic learning. We make our government more ethical and transparent. If our voices are heard.

I have been working hard to build a campaign worthy of your support, knocking on doors, listening to questions and ideas. I am humbled to see the energy and excitement around my candidacy, because – together – I know we can start something new in Rhode Island.

That’s why I want to ask you to join my campaign. Please sign up for updates on my website, let us know if you’d like to volunteer, and consider making a contribution to our campaign and an investment in new, progressive leadership for our state. Thank you. Time to get to work!

Labor gets a lot of blame for this in certain circles, but it’s a sick joke. The labor movement in Rhode Island is so disunited that pensions were “reformed” in 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2011, each time making pension coverage for state employee union members weaker and smaller. Whether it’s labor law, pensions, taxes, or municipal funding, it is difficult to think of a high-profile controversy in the legislature won by labor in the last 15 years.

The tragic part of this is that Rhode Island’s electorate is not nearly so retrograde as its legislature. Gun control polls well, as does reproductive justice and raising taxes on rich people, and yet the legislature does not act that way.

This accounts for the Machiavellian nature of legislative politics. The conservative Democrats who have held power there for decades rely on strong-arm tactics to enforce docility among the rank-and-file. Uncontroversial bills get held until after the budget is passed to assure its passage, committee chair and vice-chair seats are awarded to “team players,” malcontents are assigned to the standing committee on whatever they care least about. These are not a sign of power, but a sign of weakness. The leadership has long been aware that their hold on power is precarious, and they rely on the disunity of their opposition to maintain their hold.

Part of what maintains that disunity is the selective granting of power to a few individuals, who are allowed to sit as committee chairs or vice-chairs. These individuals imagine they have some leverage worth protecting and that their position allows them some access to the inner workings. This makes them reliable votes to protect the interests of the powerful. But a lot of it is illusion. I found myself once talking to the vice chair of House Finance committee some years ago on the very day that the Finance Committee issued its revision of the Governor’s budget. I was fascinated to notice that he knew as little about what was in it as I did. In other words, his position allowed him to think he had access, but in reality he had virtually none.

This is what is happening today. People with some small measure of influence — who will never get any more than what they have from Mattiello’s leadership — are unwilling to risk what little they have by supporting a leadership that actually favors their perspective. The tragic part, of course, is that if they could be united, they could make a change.

Tomorrow will be a test.

If Nick Mattiello becomes Speaker, the most powerful position in the state Democratic Party, it will be through the support of tea-party Republicans allied with representatives who do not believe he supports any of their priorities, but are willing to go along with him for the sake of small and ultimately meaningless favors. Do you want Republicans Doreen Costa and Joe Trillo to be kingmakers of the Democratic Party?

The conservative path of our recent history has brought us one bankrupt city and a couple more flirting with it. We have given up tax revenue and gotten nothing for it in return. Our schools, buses, streets, and virtually every other public service you depend on, has gotten smaller, weaker, dirtier, and meaner. The legislature has thwarted Governor Chafee’s attempts to restore Carcieri’s school funding cuts and any semblance of equity among the cities and towns, along with most of the other useful reforms he has proposed. You can be upset with him for not fighting harder, but he is not the obstacle to reform in Rhode Island. This is the status quo of our state, and if you are happy with it, then you have every right to be happy with the status quo of the Assembly leadership.

If you are not happy with it, though, please contact your state rep today and ask them to support change at the state house tomorrow. And if you are a state rep reading this, please remember that the bluff only works when no one stands up.

The tax hike was heavy, but necessary for the financially struggling city to avoid financial ruin. Instead, teachers and police officers will likely lose their jobs, vendors won’t get paid and the city will likely need a receiver.

But, alas, all that has already become the narrative of Rhode Island – cash-strapped city can’t pay its bills so contracts are broken and working class public sector employees and retirees get stuck with the bills. The strange new world is the General Assembly chose this path for Woonsocket.

Woonsocket’s mayor and council made the tough vote to ask the legislature for permission to raise property taxes beyond the cap the legislature put on it. And Gov. Chafee and his staff lobbied leadership hard to approve of the increase.

The House of Representatives was unwilling the increase taxes as a way for the city to pay its debts. And the road to receivership was paved by Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, Jon Brien and Bob Phillips – whose kamikaze tact of taking the city towards bankruptcy may prove the worst thing to ever happen to the city.

But the rest of the House of Representatives had every right – if not an obligation – to save Woonsocket from this potentially perilous gamble its politicians are playing.

Don’t look to Woonsocket Senator Roger Picard for blame – like the mayor and city council, he supported the tax as a last ditch effort to avoid receivership. He also didn’t sign on to a letter other members of the delegation sent to the governor’s office and legislative leadership earlier in the session that stated a preference for a receiver.

“It’s a philosophical disagreement,” he said. “When you have appointed commissions or receivers they don’t have the same type of investment that an elected official does.”

House Speaker Gordon Fox kept on the table the option of voting the tax hike through without the locals support. But in the end, even though the sharpest municipal finance experts in the state as well as the people elected to make such decisions for the city felt appropriate, it was deemed an unpalatable option politically. No one wanted to go into the election season having raised taxes on another city.

So instead of owning Woonsocket’s tax increases, Brien, Baldelli-Hunt, Phillips and the entire House of Representatives instead will own its insolvency.