Students stand up for Central Falls school chief

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A student-run group called Young Voices rallied in front of the Rhode Island Department of Education at noontime on Wednesday to support Central Falls Supt. Frances Gallo, who plans on firing all of the city's high school teachers as part of a state-ordered reform initiative.

Some 20 students from Providence gathered to speak on behalf of students in Central Falls, who were not invited to the rally because Young Voices was worried about the possibility of reprisals from the Central Falls' teachers.

According to Karen Feldman, one of the co-directors of Young Voices, Central Falls youth said that teachers have been telling their students that they might lose their houses if they are fired. According to Young Voices, students have said that their teachers are using the classroom as a bully pulpit to express their outrage with Gallo's decision.

The Push to Consolidate

"Consolidate, consolidate, consolidate." If there was one overarching theme of the first day of Governing's Outlook on the States and Localities conference (being held this week here in Washington, D.C.), it was the idea that cities and counties must work together if they're going to survive the current economic downturn. Everyone who spoke agreed on one thing: The key to reducing costs is consolidation.

"Perhaps now more than ever, cities and counties have got to get together," said Memphis mayor A C Wharton, Jr.  "There's really no room for division between our cities and our counties, given what we're up against. We need to pursue with as much vigor as we can the functional consolidation of services."

Woonsocket: Mayor wants to broaden tax incentives

  In his most ambitious effort yet to make the city more business-friendly, Mayor Leo T. Fontaine is rolling out a package of tax incentives for commercial investment that results in job creation.

The initiative broadens the incentives for commercial investment in a measure known as the Job Creation Incentive Program — on the books for almost two decades. Fontaine says the existing JCIP is antiquated because the benefits are mainly engineered toward drawing in outside investment for the first time, and they are heavily weighted in favor of manufacturing and warehousing operations.
The new JCIP would markedly expand benefits for existing companies that invest in new construction, major renovations or takeovers of vacant buildings. Also, it would offer equivalent benefits for jobs created in any sector of the economy, so long as they're at least 30-hour-per-week positions with employer-supported health care.

Richard C. Anthony: Don’t dismiss grassroots activism as extremist

The debate between political factions today is no less intense than it was be­tween 1790 and 1815. In many re­spects, the issues and the conduct were the same. Parts of the populace were equally fervent. In some cases, duels settled disputes. Nowadays, ver­bal assassination is the tool.

What was different? There was no TV news or the Internet. There were few newspapers. Political parties did­n’t have the form or the power they do today. Service in Congress cost the of­ficeholder time and money. Today, candidates and officeholders spend huge amounts of time raising cam­paign funds and running for office. Many seemingly lose their core values to gain or stay in office. They come home richer than when they left and then sit on high paying boards. While in office they show little restraint in spending and no respect for the tax­payer. The essential values, the will, the energy that made America great is being buried under an avalanche of debt and disrespect for our history and our institutions.

The grassroots movements which may be or may not be Tea Parties are rising up in protest. They should not be ignored by those in power, ridiculed or called extremists. They desire to be treated honestly and with some re­spect. Wanting a future for their chil­dren and grandchildren isn’t un-Amer­ican. Many people think the political parties, the special interests, and sim­ple greed are running this country off the rails. Hoping that it is a temporary miss-step is making them activists.

Keep this thought in your heads. A mind is like a parachute. Unopened, it won’t work.

Dick Anthony Westerly Anthony is a member of the Westerly Town Council.

Quonset awarded $22 million for projects

NORTH KINGSTOWN — The Quonset Business Park has been awarded $22.3 million in federal stimulus funds to improve piers, roads and rails and to install a crane in preparation for offshore wind development, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced Wednesday.

The money from the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program will also go toward positioning the state-owned industrial park on the Davisville waterfront as a short-sea shipping port that could accommodate shallow-draft barges loaded with containers from larger ports on the East Coast.

R.I. goes public with top 100 tax delinquents

As Rhode Island faces a $219-million deficit in the current budget year, delinquent taxpayers — including a boxing champ, a disgraced political operative and a Red Sox pitcher — owe the state more than $67 million, according to the state Division of Taxation.

The state uses a variety of tactics to try to collect that money, according to state Tax Administrator David M. Sullivan. The most prominent is posting the names of the top 100 delinquents on a state Web site, along with the amount and types of taxes owed.

“It’s very effective,” said Paul H. Guertin, chief of compliance and collection for the Division of Taxation.

Program to prepare students for college while in high school

PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island is one of eight states selected to participate in a pilot program designed to help more students do college-level work before they graduate from high school.

The program, sponsored by the National Center on Education and the Economy, is aimed at preparing students for college work as early as the 11th grade, and ensuring that when students get to college they won’t need remedial classes.

Editorial: New manufacturing base

New England is still a manufacturing power, says a New England Council study written by Michael Reopel, of Deloitte Consulting. The region is a center for high-tech, advanced manufacturing –– in large part because of its concentration of engineers, scientists, university research facilities and venture capitalists.

Rather than the low-wage manufacturing associated with such once powerful New England industries as textiles and shoemaking, advanced manufacturing relies heavily on people with a high degree of technical education. Such firms make things of very high added value, such as medical and navigation devices and nanotechnology products.

States renege on local aid

In December, Stephen Laker found himself in an agonizing position. As public health administrator for the Vermilion County Health Department in Illinois, Laker was six days into a $9,500-a-day payroll cycle but he had only $7,000 in the bank.

Under a grant arrangement with the state of Illinois, the public health agency was committed to providing certain services for which it would be reimbursed by the state. But massive budget shortfalls forced the state to withhold the reimbursement. As of December 1, Illinois owed the Vermilion County agency almost $800,000.

Laker’s dilemma is familiar to cities, counties and school districts nationwide. State lawmakers are holding onto payments owed to municipal governments and using the money to balance state books. In New York, Governor David Paterson temporarily held back $750 million in local aid last December. In Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer proposed delaying transfers to schools. In Rhode Island, Governor Donald Carcieri targeted aid to cities and counties as part of his proposal to close a nearly $650 million gap through the end of the next fiscal year.

High Schools to Offer Plan to Graduate 2 Years Early

Dozens of public high schools in eight states will introduce a program next year allowing 10th graders who pass a battery of tests to get a diploma two years early and immediately enroll in community college.

Students who pass but aspire to attend a selective college may continue with college preparatory courses in their junior and senior years, organizers of the new effort said. Students who fail the 10th-grade tests, known as board exams, can try again at the end of their 11th and 12th grades. The tests would cover not only English and math but also subjects like science and history.

The new system of high school coursework with the accompanying board examinations is modeled largely on systems in high-performing nations including Denmark, England, Finland, France and Singapore.

States Sink in Benefits Hole

State governments face a trillion-dollar gap between the pension, health-care and other retirement benefits promised to public employees and the money set aside to pay for them, according to a new report from the Pew Center on the States.

States promised current and retired workers a total of $3.35 trillion in benefits through June 30, 2008, said the report from the nonprofit research group, a division of Pew Charitable Trusts. But state governments had contributed only $2.35 trillion to their benefit plans to pay current and future bills, the report said.

Muni Threat: Cities Weigh Chapter 9

Just days after becoming controller of financially strapped Harrisburg, Pa., in January, Daniel Miller began uttering an obscure term that baffled most people who had never heard it and chilled those who had: Chapter 9.

The seldom-used part of U.S. bankruptcy law gives municipalities protection from creditors while developing a plan to pay off debts. Created in the wake of the Great Depression, Chapter 9 is widely considered a last resort and filings under it are more taboo than other parts of bankruptcy code because of the resulting uncertainty for everyone from municipal employees to bondholders.