Why the last minute?

Anyone looking for an insider’s view of how decisions were made on the state budget, Deep Water’s proposed offshore wind farm and other key pieces of legislation during the final days of the General Assembly got one at last week’s Rhode Island Voter Coalition-sponsored candidate forum in North Kingstown.

The six House candidates who attended were asked at one point why the Assembly “literally waits until the last minute” to pass dozens if not hundreds of bills without normal postings, pressuring lawmakers to vote on bills they haven’t read.

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Editorial: Sanity restored

ALEXANDER WILLIAMS JR., a federal judge in Maryland, committed one of the more egregious recent acts of judicial overreach last year when he decided that he -- not local elected officials -- would determine budget priorities in Prince George's County. Last week, his decision was resoundingly reversed by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Local governments around the country should breathe a sigh of relief, and trial judges take note.

Judge Williams, of the U.S. District Court for Maryland, ruled in favor of unions representing Prince George's government workers who complained that the county had acted unconstitutionally by breaking their contract and imposing furloughs -- in effect, pay cuts -- in 2008. By imposing furloughs, the county avoided layoffs. And it still managed to give its employees net salary increases thanks to across-the-board merit raises and cost-of-living adjustments.

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Woonsocket: Cash crunch looms for city

WOONSOCKET – Despite its fragile cash position, the city managed to pay off a short-term loan of $9.3 million to Citizens Bank on Friday, but it's hardly out of the woods yet. In the next couple of weeks, officials will be wrestling with “the worst cash crunch the city has seen for a long time,” said Finance Director Thomas M. Bruce.
To cover operations, Bruce said, the city has about $3.1 million in reserve – funds that will be largely spoken for by the salaries of teachers and city employees – before new revenues start rolling in from other sources when another fiscal cycle kicks in July 1.

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Find out who's running

As the three-day candidate filing period unfolds this week, Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis has promised to post daily recaps of who has filed for Rhode Island’s state, federal and local offices.

Candidates must file their official declarations of candidacy by 4 p.m. Wednesday to be eligible to appear on the ballot.

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Public employee unions gaining, while private sector counterparts losing members

Where the union movement might have once been able to present itself as an institution dedicated to protecting members’ interests in the workplace, it is becoming more and more a political animal.

Recently released federal reports filed by several of the nation’s largest unions show that private-sector unions are losing members and dues revenue, while government employee unions are gaining both. At the same time, unions are putting more of their dues money into activism.

The United Auto Workers is the most prominent example of a shrinking private-sector union. Over the course of 2009, the UAW lost 75,000 members. That represents nearly one-sixth of the total it had at the beginning of the year. Annual dues income sank $38.4 million, a drop of nearly 25 percent compared to 2008.

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Clifford Smith: Two kinds of unions

It’s time that Rhode Islanders realized the difference between labor unions that have actual competition for jobs, (carpenters, hotel workers, machinists, etc.), and municipal-employee unions (police, firefighters, teachers, etc.) that do not.

Members of the first group are held in check by the economy, trends in their field and, most importantly, by the fact that the jobs they do can be awarded to non-union workers if they are not reasonable in their demands.

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Rick Jackson: Lethargic hacks

Rhode Island’s Department of Transportation estimates that it will take two years to rebuild the Union Avenue Bridge over Route 10. Two years? It took less than 13 months to build the Empire State Building. It took less than a year to rebuild the eight-lane Route-35 bridge in Minneapolis after it collapsed into the Mississippi. Two years to rebuild a 75-foot-long bridge? Oh, yeah, I forgot, they’re still working on the Barrington Bridge 13 years later, so I guess two years is lightning quick by Rhode Island standards.

Seven-hour waits at the Department of Motor Vehicles, years to build bridges that would take months elsewhere. Why do we tolerate this?

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Labor’s New Critics: Old Allies in Elected Office

TRENTON — Stephen M. Sweeney, the president of the State Senate here, glowered with disgust as he described how one New Jersey town paid out nearly $1 million to four retiring police officers for their unused sick days and vacation time.

Mr. Sweeney, a Democrat, also scowled about the estimated $46 billion New Jersey owes in pension contributions and its $58 billion in liabilities to finance retiree health coverage for government employees.

For years, Republican lawmakers have railed against public employees’ pay and benefits, but now another breed of elected official is demanding labor concessions, too: current and former labor leaders and allies themselves.

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Want Government to Listen to You? There’s an App for That

These days, there is seemingly a smart phone app for just about everything.

Now a city council candidate in Providence wants to use an app known as SeeClickFix to improve how local government works.  

“The idea is this—you shouldn’t have to know somebody in the city government to get something done,” said Bryan Principe, a Democrat who is running for the Ward 13 seat. “I feel that the process right now is not transparent—is not accountable.”

If you ever wanted to report a pothole, a cracked sidewalk, or an overturned trash can and felt that your calls to city hall fell on deaf ears—this technology is for you. Just simply snap a photo of the issue with your iPhone, BlackBerry—or other smart phone that connects to the Internet—and use the SeeClickFix app to report it to city hall.

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