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On Smith Hill, ‘lawmaking’ a dubious term

By Christopher Curran
Posted 3/24/16

At the Rhode Island General Assembly, we have 113 legislators in both the House of Representatives and the state Senate.

They are for the most part a “strange aristocracy” consisting primarily …

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On Smith Hill, ‘lawmaking’ a dubious term

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At the Rhode Island General Assembly, we have 113 legislators in both the House of Representatives and the state Senate.

They are for the most part a “strange aristocracy” consisting primarily of the connected and inter-connected. Most are attorneys, and teachers, or unionists. Thus, they create legislation and regulation from which they can personally benefit, or those to whom they are connected can benefit. The taxpayers’ concerns are supplanted by those who place their avarice centered snouts in the public trough.

Perhaps most importantly, in our diminutive state of approximately one million citizens, we should have a unicameral legislature of a much smaller size on a full-time, year-round basis. This would permit much greater research, examination, and discourse about key issues and selective elimination of superfluous legislative ideas.

Speaking of which, some legislators this session have offered bills that address their own personal pet peeves, such as dining dogs and pesky pine needles. Thus, they are using the legislative branch of our government to satisfy personal needs rather than the people’s needs.

Additionally, the Ocean State’s legislative bodies cease to be serious, deliberative forums for citizen input and are instead myopic endorsers of whatever the leadership desires, along with being creators of ludicrous, unnecessary laws. With little review and lemming-like submission, lawmakers concede to the wishes to the all-powerful and all-knowing Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and Senate President Teresa Paiva-Weed. As long as an elected official can revel in his or her title and station and perks and specialized license plates, the real business of serving the people of Rhode Island is eclipsed by the “Smith Hill Circus of Self-Congratulations.”

Often upon passage of some legislation that members do not fully comprehend, they collectively take a self-acclaiming victory lap when in reality they have not even run the race of debate and scrutiny.

This sad reality has been present in past sessions of the General Assembly and it is certainly present this year as well. After the catastrophic debacle known as 38 Studios in which most representatives had not a clue of what they were voting for, but decided to blindly follow the leader anyway, we citizens hoped for a sea change in the way legislative business would be conducted. Our hopes have been dashed. This session a pernicious truck-tolling bill passed into law against an overwhelming majority of taxpayers’ objections. Equally heinous, electronic registration for potential voters opened the door for illegal aliens, casting votes most likely for Democrat candidates. Strong impediments for the proven effective mayoral academies and charter schools have now been established this session, ensuring union teachers’ corner on the market.

On the horizon are such unfair and costly ideas like increased accommodations for low-income housing and guarantees for low-income students, ridiculously restricting businesses with a “Carbon Pricing Act,” and a business counter-intuitive scheduling “Fair Work Week Act.”

Then there are the representative personal service bills, one of which would legalize dining with dogs in public venues and one of which proposes powerful punitive punishment for pine needles.

Alas, the structure of the General Assembly itself is the reason why it is so disconcerting. Being essentially a seven-month, part-time endeavor, representatives do not have adequate time to research and debate bills. Also, we are over-legislated. With 113 members of both houses dying to pass any law with their name on it, often as an ego trip, many superfluous bills are proposed.

Similar size populations are more effectively served. Specifically, there are four American cities that have approximately one million citizens – San Antonio, Texas; Jacksonville, Fla.; San Diego, Calif.; and San Jose, Calif. Their legislative branches of government consist of a 16- to 25-member council. That’s it!

Our small state is legislatively inefficient and meandering considering the excessive size of our legislature in relation to the size of the populous. Nevertheless, our legislative branch is the most costly per capita in the nation.

The unwieldy chambers give sway to some absurd proposals. For example, Democrat Senator Frank Ciccone, who was apparently incensed over the landscaping recklessness of his neighbors, has proposed a law that would assign a $500 fine if “plant litter” falls on a neighbor’s property. The notion has already passed the Senate. Fearful of pernicious pine trees, Ciccone exclaimed the following: “Pine trees are nice in the forest, nice in certain areas, but they shed these pine needles and sap onto adjacent vehicles and driveways.”

Equally ludicrous, Rep. Charlene Lima would like the ability to take her well-loved canine Keiko out to dinner at restaurants that offer outside seating. So, she is proposing a bill that would permit dogs to dine with patrons. Since these bills are so absolutely ludicrous and so obviously a result of some personal umbrage, one would think they would be eradicated from the legislative calendar on their face. Yet in Rhode Island, they may become law.

Similar wrong-headedness abounds in other legislative actions. The incubation of the “Rhode Island Replacement, Reconstruction and Maintenance Fund-Tolls” law saw strong public and business outcry against the idea of creating toll gantries and adding bonded indebtedness. Although the final version of the law may have been somewhat better than the original billion-plus plan, the entire paradigm of the General Assembly was the opposite of the taxpayer’s sentiments. Overwhelmingly, the public wanted a 2-percent trimming of the $8.9-billion budget to finance bridge refurbishment. But the tax-and-spend legislature would not even remotely consider a mild cutback of any kind.

Contrary to reality, Mattiello coined the phrase “the loud minority of no.” He asserted that businesses and citizens were fully on board with the assembly’s final plan, which is a blind fiction. His expression is symptomatic of the isolated self-righteous myopia that the General Assembly is historically known for. Rhode Islanders want our roads and bridges fixed. We simply want some fiscal diligence and do not want the road repair funding to conduit through the black hole of the general fund. We know the gantries will eventually pick the pockets of all vehicle drivers, no matter what referendum required to include cars is currently in the law.

Also serving union interests are two new laws related to mayoral academies and charter schools. These successful alternative paths to education now have almost insurmountable impediments to their survival in the present and their growth in the future. With school committees and teachers union objections mandatorily addressed, and elementary and secondary education councils necessary to approve these productive schools, they will undoubtedly become a movement of the past. Essentially, these laws ensure the status quo of public school teacher financial security.

Equally frustrating is a redistribution of wealth effort in the “Education Equity and Property Tax Relief Act.” It attempts to increase low-income housing and intends to index education aid to provide lower-class children with more educational opportunities. To try social engineering once again when it has never worked despite an alphabet soup of failed programs in the last 50 years is merely a manner of wasting precious taxpayer’s money.

Not surprisingly, insanity reigns supreme in the “Clean Energy Investment and Carbon Pricing Act of 2016.” This climate-change bill, which worries about little Rhode Island’s carbon footprint, eventually intends to penalize businesses and residents for excessive emissions. The bill states: “Carbon pricing has been established as the most effective and efficient market-based means to achieve emission reduction.” This idea is strictly anti-business, and anything Little Rhody does will have a miniscule effect on the world’s problem.

In addition to affording illegal immigrants with the possibility of bogusly founded voter registration online, the General Assembly is most likely going to allow these lawbreakers to obtain legitimate driver’s licenses. The governor, the speaker, and the Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin say that along with these new licenses will be an effort by illegal aliens to register and insure their cars.

What makes any reasonable person think that someone who is in the country illegally and has disregarded our system of laws will all of the sudden comply with our insurance requirements? Illegal immigrants will use this new document to vote and substantiate other endeavors in our society.

Also being considered is a bill that would require an employer to give a permanent work schedule to an employee two weeks ahead or suffer paying the worker anyway and enduring a potential fine. This bill is untenable and chases commerce away and threatens active businesses, no question.

All in all, the General Assembly this session has proven the worst of the consistent accusations against them. They are once again ignoring the will of the people and indulging special interests and their own idiosyncratic passions. They are demonstrating their illusion of infallibility.

We deserve better.

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