Cicilline: Unfinished Business
Cicilline: Unfinished Business
Jeopardizing our Public Safety
Let me begin by stating that I am neither a democrat nor a republican. I am not a union member nor have I ever been affiliated with one. I am an independent voter, property owner and seriously concerned citizen. The Mayor's proposed staffing cuts at our Fire Department will jeopardize the public safety of everyone who lives, works or plays in this City (Providence).
Mayor David Cicilline has done some great things for our City. I, for one, am happy with my shiny new garbage can and the recycling bins (especially the recycling bins). Also, the lead water pipes on my street have been replaced.
However, Handling the contract negotiations with the Firefighters Union (Local 799) is not one of his crowning achievements.
Now we understand the Mayor has been able to cut down the number of employees on the City Payroll. But making those same cuts in the Fire Dept is not something we're interested in supporting because it endangers the public safety. In reality, he should actually be boosting the number of firefighters.
Why?
The cuts will most likely effect the number of firefighters responding to an emergency. Currently nearly 1/2 of our Engines are staffed below the minimum standard set by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). The NFPA is widely recognized as the authoratative source on public safety. The NFPA standard is 4. Half of our Engines are at 3. Additionally, the 4th man reduces the number of firefighter injuries.
The Mayor has not released the the basis for his intended cuts. I understand there is a report out there. We paid for it. We want to see it. NOW.
There is a lot of new construction out there that has been completed or is in the process of being completed (Providence Place Mall, Luxury Condos, Hotels). We want 4 firefighters on those trucks (all of them!) when they arrive should any of this be threatened.
Our property taxes are high and they are going up this year. Shouldn't we expect a fully staffed Fire Dept to respond if any of our lives or property are threatened?
Campaign Promises and Wasted Tax Dollars
In closing, when he was running for office, David Cicilline made a campaign promise to the members of this union (Local 799) to end this contract dispute within 30 days of taking office in exchange for their support. In my opinion, this is a little bit like having a contractor come over to your house, do an estimate, take a deposit, and then never return to start the work. Wouldn't you be angry? We are.
Further, the Mayor has spent 1 million dollars fighting this arbritration ruling. Just because he has a personal beef with the Union, doesn't mean he should be spending our tax dollars in this way. This is poor financial management.
Join our group by sending an email to provpublicsafety@gmail.com
Citizens for Providence Public Safety.
Joe Ouellette
223 Indiana Ave
Providence, RI 02905
401-419-6630
Posted at 12:11 AM | Politics | Comments (0)
May 6th, Mt. Hope Street Cleaning
Tonight I stepped outside and gave the street sweepers a hearty case of the clap for street sweeping on May 6th.
We pay substancial property tax in Mt. Hope, and on the property I live in on Locust Street I pay around 5K in property tax. For that money I get my street cleaned around 3 times a year.
By comparison, in Pawtucket, they've already cleaned each street 5 times already. In Pawtucket, where property taxes are much lower, they clean the streets once a week from April to November.
What's wrong with this picture?
Posted at 01:49 AM | Politics | Comments (0)
Former Dist. 8 Lt. Elected President of FOB
Congratulation are in order to former District 8 commander Lt. Kenneth Cohen who recently won election to the Presidency of the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge No. 3, of the Providence police union.
In a ProJo article, Patrol commander elected to head Providence FOP Cohen is quoted stating:
“I’m hoping to be less contentious,” Cohen said of the FOP’s future stance toward the administration of Police Chief Dean M. Esserman. “I think we have to open up a line of communication. But it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to fight for my people.”
Some important contract issues face the police union which has been without a collective-bargaining agreement sine July of 2005.
Lt. Cohen always struck me as very intelligent, almost scholarly, and a man of high integrity. I think the union made a good choice. Congratulations, Lt. Cohen, from Mt. Hope.
To read the entire article click the proJo link above or continue reading below.
Patrol commander elected to head Providence FOP
01:00 AM EDT on Friday, October 12, 2007
By Gregory Smith
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Lt. Kenneth Cohen, the Police Department patrol commander on the 3-to-11 p.m. work shift, has been elected president of the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge No. 3.
In a historically large turnout, the membership of the Providence police union picked Cohen by a wide margin over three rivals, incumbent Robert Paniccia, a retired sergeant; Capt. David Lapatin, 7 a.m.-to-3 p.m. patrol commander; and Detective John J. Coughlin Jr.
“I’m hoping to be less contentious,” Cohen said of the FOP’s future stance toward the administration of Police Chief Dean M. Esserman. “I think we have to open up a line of communication. But it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to fight for my people.”
There is an array of litigation and grievances pending between the union and the city, but no issue looms larger than the lack of a collective-bargaining agreement from July 1, 2005 through the present. The union and the city are enmeshed in arbitration for the terms of an agreement for 2005-2006 and that will not change, Cohen said yesterday.
One of the major issues in the election, according to Paniccia and Cohen, was Paniccia’s status as a retiree from the police force. Paniccia, who has served two two-year terms as president, retired from the force in September 2006.
“I guess some people thought a new direction was needed,” Paniccia said. “A lot of the younger guys bought into” the idea that a retiree could not properly represent the interests of active-duty members.
On the other hand, Paniccia said, he sought to underscore his independence from the police administration and the practical consideration that, as a retiree, he could not be influenced or intimidated.
Cohen said the retiree issue was the biggest of the campaign. As for himself, he said he is known as a union stalwart and a fair-minded person and that that reputation helped him. Other union members said Cohen enjoyed especially widespread support among uniformed officers.
Cohen, 55, is in his 30th year of service on the force. He formerly was commander of the Traffic Bureau, before the bureau was downgraded to a unit, director of human resources, director of two training academies, and, briefly, a detective.
When Patrolman James Bruno retired from the force, he resigned as FOP treasurer, and Paniccia appointed Cohen treasurer midterm. Although they wound up as election opponents, members say there is no animosity between them.
More than 600 members participated in the daylong election Tuesday, casting paper ballots at the FOP office on Sheridan Street. Paniccia said the turnout — more than 200 retirees also voted — was the largest in the history of the local.
Cohen attributed the turnout to the energy of new members and a push for involvement by union trustees.
“They also wanted to send a message that the membership does have concerns …,” he said.
In other contested elections,
• Patrolman Clarence Gough, who is assigned to the Special Victims Unit in the Detective Bureau, was elected first vice president. He outpolled the incumbent, retired Sgt. John Carnevale, and Sergeants Brendan McGrath and John Kaya.
•Sgt. Roger Aspinall was elected second vice president, defeating Detective Harold H. Zacks.
•Detective Paul Romano, treasurer, defeated Patrolman Francisco Furtado and Detective David Marchant.
•Patrolman Michael Imondi, financial secretary, beat Detective Robert Washburn.
•Patrolman Taft Manzotti was reelected unopposed as recording secretary, and Cohen said he intends to keep Manzotti as grievance officer to maintain continuity because of the turnover in the leadership ranks.
Under the collective-bargaining terms in effect between the city and the union, the FOP may designate two people to step aside from active duty and to work full time for the union while continuing to draw full salaries from the Police Department. They have been the president and grievance officer.
So Cohen will continue to draw his lieutenant’s salary — base pay plus longevity and night-shift differential — while serving as president. In addition, the six top officers also are compensated by the FOP. The president is paid one-third of a patrolman’s salary and the other officers are paid one-sixth of a patrolman’s salary.
Cohen is scheduled to be installed as president on Monday, when the election is certified.
Said Lapatin, “As soon as the vote was over, everybody threw their support behind Kenny 100 percent.”
Posted at 02:31 PM | Politics | Comments (0)
The Big Bad Budget
The Mayor released his proposed budget for 2008 with the promise to not raise property taxes, but the budget again seems contingent on its reach exceeding its grasp by relying on some sleight of hand accounting and hoped for transfers of state money to the City.
You can read the Mayor's Budget Address at the city Website. However I could not locate the proposed budget itself there.
I have been following the coverage in ProJo, though, and have included most of that coverage in this post starting with the most recent.
Some budget highlights from ProJO:
• Budget would rise 2.6 percent to $625.9 million and not raise taxes.• Schools would receive a 3-percent increase, close to the 3.5 percent they asked for — raising their appropriation from $311.7 million to $320.5 million.
• Does not include money for salary increases for city employees, despite contracts of all four major city unions expiring by June 30.
• Mayor Cicilline counts on the General Assembly granting Providence several new sources of income, including a statewide cable television franchise fee on Cox Communications, an annual state payment for operating the Providence water system and a $500 fee charged on the sale of any residential property
Not everyone agrees with the proposed budget:
Lombardi calls mayor’s budget plan unrealistic
01:00 AM EDT on Friday, May 18, 2007
By Daniel Barbarisi
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Councilman John J. Lombardi is firing out at the mayor’s budget in a letter to the City Council’s Finance Committee, saying
that his budget is unrealistic and instead proposing some grand plans — including selling the city’s water system and eliminating future tax breaks — to fix the city’s finances.
Mayor David N. Cicilline’s $625.9-million budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 projects that the state will give Providence $7.5 million in direct state aid on top of the $7-million increase the city is slated to receive under the governor’s budget. It also banks on the General Assembly approving five new programs that would give Providence a total of $10.5 million in new revenue.
Lombardi said that these are “unrealizable expectations” and that the mayor should have known better, while noting that he has tried similar measures in the past.
“To put a budget of this kind together is foolhardy,” Lombardi said.
In the budget for the 2006 fiscal year, for instance, the mayor hoped to receive $11.3 million in additional state aid that was never realized, and, in that same year, the mayor banked on receiving $4.5 million in payments from the state for managing the Providence water system, a proposal that was rejected by the General Assembly. The mayor is again counting on that state payment in his proposed budget.
Lombardi said that when, as predicted, the General Assembly rejects these measures, it will force the council to enact a tax increase. “I can’t see how not. This budget was voodoo economics,” he said.
He says that there are measures the city could take to raise money.
It could minimize or eliminate future tax breaks given to developers. It could sell the Providence Water Supply Board, which would undoubtedly bring in hundreds of millions in cash.
It could modify its benefit structure with city employees, and it could switch to a biweekly payroll schedule, Lombardi said. He also promoted floating a pension obligation bond to pay off the debt to the city’s pension system.
“Everything needs to be put on the table,” he said.
Cicilline’s chief of administration, John Simmons, said that some of these ideas are already in motion — the pension obligation bond, for instance — and others, the city is trying to enact.
On selling the water board, he said that the city has “been in discussion on that for months, if not years. The question is, for what and to whom,” he said.
Any changes to employee benefits are subject to collective bargaining, which is under way, and he said that while switching to a biweekly payroll system wouldn’t hurt, it also wouldn’t save much.
Council Finance Chairman John J. Igliozzi agreed with some of Lombardi’s suggestions, but said that eliminating or publicly minimizing tax breaks is premature, and would rob the city of a valuable economic development tool.
“We shouldn’t shut the door on that economic development tool yet,” he said.
Igliozzi said that after several weeks of reviewing the mayor’s budget, he has found that there are places where the city can save — although it may have to focus on its core services and cut back on some popular but nonessential programs.
“I think the City of Providence… needs to refocus [its] efforts to going back to the basics, and providing all the basic things a city provides. Some of the boutique items in the budget that provide positive public relations for everybody may need to be looked at,” he said.
Some State Reps think it's a bad year to ask for more State aid:
Cicilline told this is a bad year to depend on state aid
01:00 AM EDT on Friday, May 4, 2007
By Daniel Barbarisi
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — To balance his budget for the next fiscal year, Mayor David N. Cicilline counts on the General Assembly’s approving over $18 million in new financing for the city.
But the early word from members of Providence’s own delegation? Don’t count on it, Mayor.
“I commend the mayor for his advocacy, but surely we have told mayors across the state and town managers across the state to be extremely conservative in what they expect to get from the state this year,” said Rep. Steven M. Costantino, a Providence Democrat and chairman of the House Finance Committee.
Cicilline’s $625.9-million budget projects that the state will give Providence $7.5 million in direct state aid on top of the $7-million increase the city is slated to receive under the governor’s budget. It also banks on the Assembly’s approving five new programs that would give Providence a total of $10.5 million in new revenue.
But enabling legislation for several of the new programs that Cicilline is building his budget around has come before the Assembly in the past and met repeated defeat.
Cicilline’s budget, for instance, assumes that the state will pay Providence $5.2 million for owning and operating the Providence water-supply system, which is used by nearly 70 percent of the state.
But legislation to require that payment has been rejected repeatedly in recent years, and Providence Democrat and House Majority Leader Gordon Fox said that it’s always going to be hard to pass because it essentially taxes the rest of the state to find money for Providence.
“The mayor’s office knows what an uphill battle that will be,” Fox said. “The political reality on that one is that it’s very difficult to get people to vote against the interests of their constituents.”
Democratic Rep. David Segal of Providence said he expected that it would be a similarly tough fight this year.
“It will be tough. It will be very difficult,” he said.
Another Cicilline plan would impose a “franchise fee” on the state’s cable provider, Cox Communications, and spread the proceeds out among Rhode Island municipalities. Cicilline built $1.4 million into his budget from the plan. But Costantino said the Assembly had seen proposed bills dealing with that issue before — and never had the desire to require Cox to make the payment.
“That’s an old proposal, been kicking around for years,” he said. “We have not had the willingness — there’s never been a willingness to do it. I don’t know if this bill is different somehow.”
Fox said that the bill would mean a hard fight between two well-entrenched sides.
“They want it, Cox Communications opposes it, we’ll see if they could ever meet in the middle,” Fox said.
A third bill would eliminate the rental charges that cities and towns must pay for the use of fire hydrants, saving Providence $934,000. But Costantino said the Assembly had also seen that before, and rejected it, although its defeat may have been tied to other issues, he said.
Cicilline would also need legislative approval for plans to impose a transfer fee of $500 on the sale of residential property and $1,000 on the sale of commercial property, and for a plan to move the maintenance costs for fire-alarm call boxes from the city to private property owners. Together these bills account for an additional $3 million in revenue in Cicilline’s budget.
Costantino said the delegation has been very frank from the start with the mayor about not counting on much additional money from the Assembly this year. The state is facing its own budgetary problems.
“I think the mayor understands the situation the state is in. I don’t think we’ve been shy about it,” Costantino said.
Fox and Costantino said the delegation respected Cicilline and had an excellent relationship with him, and would fight for his bills and make sure they got full hearings.
But if they prove as tough to pass as expected, then the delegation will be coming to him soon to tell him that he needs to look in another direction, Fox said.
Cicilline, a former House member, said yesterday afternoon that he knew that some of these items would face significant opposition.
“I certainly recognize that this will be a very difficult budget year.
The General Assembly has some very difficult decisions to make,” he said.
But he said that the difference between this year and past years was that most of these bills — the water bill excluded — would bring in revenue for most cities and towns, and not just Providence. Because of that, they should have broader support, he said.
“What I think is different this year is that this is legislation that will actually assist all the cities and towns, and have statewide impact in terms of reducing the reliance on property taxes,” he said.
“It’s my hope that as all cities and towns are struggling with meeting the cost of local government, the assembly will look at this package” as another type of solution, Cicilline said.
Cicilline said that every other state has a cable “franchise fee,” and Rhode Island is lagging.
“That only happens in Rhode Island, and it shouldn’t be that way,” he said.
He also said that the $7.5 million in additional state aid was “not a number we just made up” — the figure comes directly from the governor’s five-year financial plan, he said.
But Cicilline also said he recognized that just because the aid is in the plan does not make it a reality. And if the state-aid numbers do not change, and some of his proposals prove as difficult to pass as his delegation predicts, “we will have to make further reductions in spending or try to generate additional revenue by raising taxes.”
“I think the mayor understands the situation the state is in. I don’t think we’ve been shy about it.”
Rep. Steven M. Costantino
“I certainly recognize that this will be a very difficult budget year. The General Assembly has some very difficult decisions to make.”
Mayor David N. Cicilline
But the reviews have been decidedly mixed: at least it looks like they range from "unrealistic" to "Unlikely":
Proposed city budget getting mixed reviews
01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, May 3, 2007
By Daniel Barbarisi
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Reaction to Mayor David N. Cicilline’s $635.9-million budget proposal for the next fiscal year was mixed, with some quarters saying they were happy that it did not greatly increase spending, and others worrying about its heavy reliance on state aid and General Assembly approval of new revenues.
“There’s a lot of ‘if’s’ there. But that’s been the case with every budget I’ve been involved with,” City Council President Peter S. Mancini said. “He’s hoping for more state aid, I don’t know how realistic that is.”
Cicilline on Tuesday presented his budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. The budget would not raise taxes, and it would increase the city’s budget by only 2.6 percent, but it includes no money for salary increases for the more than 5,000 city employees. Contracts with all city employees will have expired by June 30, and at some point when new deals are reached, the city will need to finance the salary increases.
The budget plan counts on the General Assembly to increase state aid by an additional $7.5 million on top of the $7-million increase already included in the governor’s budget.
It also assumes that the General Assembly will pass a number of bills giving Providence $10.5 million in new revenue — for instance, a franchise fee imposed on the state’s cable-TV provider, and introduction of a flat state payment to Providence for operating the Providence water system.
If that state financing doesn’t come through, Mancini said, it may mean a tax increase, after all.
“If we don’t get the added revenue from either the state or the Assembly fees, maybe a slight increase might be necessary.”
The budget plan also includes savings generated by sweeping changes proposed for the city’s retiree pension plans. But Paul Doughty, president of Local 799 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said that putting those savings in would be putting the cart before the horse — if the city tries to make changes by ordinance, it may end up locked in arbitration.
“To do it by ordinance is a mistake that’s going to end up costing them,” he said. “I don’t think it’s realistic.”
One group was happy with the budget projections — the School Department. The schools asked for a 3.5-percent increase, and Cicilline’s budget gave them 3 percent.
“Given the difficult financial environment that encompasses the entire state, the mayor’s budget clearly demonstrates his firm commitment to Providence schools and Realizing the Dream, our comprehensive plan for accelerating student achievement,” Supt. Donnie Evans said.
“While we have significant needs to support the strategies in Realizing the Dream, we’ll continue to operate in a cost-effective manner to stretch every dollar and reprioritize funds to maximize returns for student achievement. We will also continue to support the mayor in advocating for a fair and equitable funding formula from the state,” Evans said.
But another group did not think the increase it received was nearly enough. Cicilline earmarked $3.3 million for the Providence Public Library, a 10-percent jump over its current allocation.
The libraries released a statement today saying that the city’s allocation would mean layoffs and potentially a reduction in services across the library system, because it would take a $5-million contribution from the city to run the libraries at the current level of service.
“Mayor Cicilline’s $3.3-million allocation for library services in his proposed city budget indicates that he agrees with the library that there is a great value in providing municipal library services in the neighborhoods. It also indicates that the city understands it cannot fully fund the existing system and level of services,” the statement reads.
“We are hopeful the Providence city administration and City Council may ultimately decide to fully fund the current municipal system through a contract with PPL to operate and manage its municipal libraries. PPL had proposed a cost of approximately $5 million to continue to provide level services, including reinstating full services at Washington Park. If the city has less than this, then obviously it has some hard decisions to make regarding the level and scope of services. We already knew it would involve some reduction in staff,” it said.
But the city and the libraries are in the midst of separate negotiations on a permanent contract, so library financing may actually be decided in that forum, instead of during budget discussions.
The city’s Republican Party also weighed in.
City party Chairman David Talan said he liked Cicilline’s statements that when negotiating with the city’s teachers, he intended to push for a teachers contract that puts the children first — unlike, Talan said, the previous contract the administration negotiated.
“If he does that, good for him; if he doesn’t, he’ll be hearing from us,” Talan said.
And here is the report on the Mayor's budget presentation:
Cicilline’s budget holds line on taxes
01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, May 2, 2007
By Daniel Barbarisi
Journal Staff Writer
Mayor David N. Cicilline yesterday announces his proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez Ruben W. Perez
PROVIDENCE — Mayor David N. Cicilline presented a $625.9-million city budget for the 2008 fiscal year that does not raise taxes and gives the schools nearly all the money they are asking for, but is built on the assumption that the General Assembly will give Providence more money and will allow the city to levy several new fees.
Cicilline said this budget reflects a new Providence of stability and government held in check.
“Our skyline has certainly changed some in the last four years, but that is nothing compared to our bottom line. From a financial perspective, Providence is a whole new city.”
The budget is only $15 million higher than the current fiscal year’s $610-million budget. But that is largely because Cicilline’s plan does not include financing for salary increases for any city employees next year, a number that could be in the tens of millions when more than 5,000 city and school employees are taken into account.
The contracts of every major city union will expire by July 1, and when new contracts are reached, the city will have to find money to pay for the salary increases that are sure to come with them. But there is no money set aside in the budget, and city officials refused to discuss where this money would come from.
“I would prefer not to answer that,” said John Simmons, the city’s chief of administration, citing a desire not to tip his hand in negotiations with the city’s four major public employee unions.
The budget also banks on the General Assembly approving several new fees, and on additional state aid on top of what the governor’s budget recommends. Almost half of the revenue increases Providence is counting on to balance its budget require Assembly action.
Cicilline presented his plan last night in a budget address that was only partially about the budget itself — much of it attacked state leadership and dealt with state economic policy and education financing formulas.
“As you know, I have tried to ring the alarm bell for several years now that Rhode Island critically under-funds its schools, despite the increased effort of Providence and other cities and towns,” Cicilline said, sounding familiar themes about the need to rethink education financing formulas, and the danger of freezing state taxes and passing the tax burden on to cities and towns.
In his address, Cicilline boasted that the city’s tax rate would actually drop, perhaps giving the impression that residents would be paying less in taxes. That is not the case. Because of the ongoing property revaluation, the tax rate will be reduced to balance out the rise in property values in the three years since the last property revaluation. But the amount that most citizens pay in taxes will remain the same.
This budget relies far less on one-time revenues than does the current budget. In the current fiscal year, the city sold several buildings to generate revenue, ending up with $23 million in one-time income sources. This year, it counts on only $10 million in one-time revenue.
But it does count on the General Assembly approving a number of new revenue sources for Providence, totaling $10.5 million. It also expects that the state will approve aid on top of the $7 million in the governor’s budget, increasing Providence’s share by an additional $7.5 million.
The budget assumes that the legislature will allow Providence to charge a new fee of $500 to anyone who sells residential property, and $1,000 for commercial property. Half of the money would go into an affordable-housing fund, and the other half to help balance the budget — $2.1 million worth.
Cicilline also proposes imposing a franchise fee on Cox Communications, the cable provider serving Rhode Island. The city says that Cox brings in $300 million in receipts from Rhode Island, and that the state should charge a franchise fee that would be split among every Rhode Island city and town. Providence would get $1.4 million.
The city also wants the state to pay Providence $5.1 million for owning and operating the Providence Water system, which is used by 70 percent of the state.
On the schools, the school department asked for a 3.5-percent increase to its $311-million allocation. Cicilline said he will give them 3 percent, which would increase the city’s payment by $9 million.
Cicilline also committed to giving the Providence Public Library $3.3 million, an increase of 10 percent over its current allocation, but less than the $5 million library officials said was needed.
He also noted that the amount of new development in Providence in recent years has brought more than $75 million in new taxable property onto the rolls this year — increasing tax revenue by $2.5 million. The budget also reflects savings from pension reforms Cicilline hopes to enact in the next few months.
The City Council will now spend the next two months reviewing the budget, and normally passes its modified version close to the July 1 start of the fiscal year.
You be the judge.
Posted at 11:04 PM | Politics | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Mayor Asleep at Wheel (An Un-ploughed-y Day)
Lord, they tell me of an un-ploughed-y day . . .
I left home around 8 am, this morning and the snow was falling, and when I came home this afternoon around 4:30, pm, the snow was still falling, and the streets of Mt. Hope remained unploughed.
I climbed up Cypress Street in my pick-up, which has 4 wheel drive, and I passed, probably, 6 vehicles stuck in the unploughed snow on that steep hill, which was nigh impossible to navigate without 4 wheel drive. When I arrived at the steep hill that I live on I was not surprised to find that it too had not been ploughed.
This late winter storm had been well forecast, and I can't understand why our Mayor did not have our City well prepared. There is no excuse for such poor city services.
Steep hills unploughed and unsanded? Citizens stranded in their cars on their way home from work? Shame, shame, shame.
You can tell Mayor Cicilline what you think via email, just click on his name.
Or tell the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services Director, Rita Murphy what you think by clicking on that link.
But best of all you can tell the man directly responsible for cleaning our streets, DPW's John Nickelson, Director, 700 Allens Avenue, Providence, RI 02905, Phone: (401) 467-7950. Ironically, we cannot contact the DPW through the City's website. How 'bout that!
An old gospel song came to mind today, An Uncloudy Day, but morphed in my mind to An Un-ploughed-y Day. Good Lord!
Posted at 03:04 PM | Politics | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
International Women's Day
In Celebration of Every Woman
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Brouhaha-ha-ha
From the East Side Monthly, Letters
Protect ALL Our Houses
To the Editor:
Regarding Kathryn Laferte's response ("The Pleasures of Plastic," in the January issue of East Side Monthly) to my original letter, l want to say that my point is not concerned with the pros and cons (aesthetic, structural, or otherwise) of aluminum siding. It is about the right to economic self-determination and free expression - the very ideals upon which Roger Williams founded our state.
All homes are "historical" by definition - the designation of a particular neighborhood as an "historical district" is merely a strategy by which a DOMINANT HISTORY for that area is established and to which all community members, regardless of their actual historical backgrounds, are expected to conform. Such thinking is, at its core, a vestige of colonialism.
A history of architecture cannot be truthfully considered without an understanding of the human dynamics that shape the ebb and flow of design, construction, renovation, adaptation, and preservation. A three-decker Fox Point aluminum-clad tenement house purchased in the 1970's by a family of immigrants from Cape Verde is as much a part of the history of this city as a well-preserved East Side Victorian. Both merit preservation. Home owners in any and all neighborhoods should stand to benefit from tax incentives for home improvement with 1no special consideration given to color choice or materials preference. To create additional tax incentives for specific types of historically-correct renovations available exclusively within selected so-called "historical neighborhoods" (where property values and incomes are typically higher) is only another means of providing ADDITIONAL tax breaks for those already in upper income brackets.
The structural frame of a building is as much shielded from the elements by aluminum or vinyl as it is by wood. The writer betrays her ignorance of construction materials and structural engineering by making the uninformed statement that people who decide to go with vinyl and aluminum siding have houses "rotting away under all that plastic". However, more distressing is the snobbery and condescension in her supposition that anyone not in sync with her sense of proper architectural fashion is negligent and incapable of responsible home ownership.
Finally, in her myopic view of the supposedly burgeoning tourism industry, Ms. Laferte has apparently confused Providence with Main Street in Disneyland. Frankly, her chilling Speilbergian vision of Providence strikes this reader more as a depressingly nostalgic shrine to les temps perdu than the vibrant city I know and love. Providence is a place with a sense of maverick spirit.
Of course we should respect the past, but we should not place the history of our art and architecture in conflict with freedom of expression and the natural creative energy that springs from the diversity of human cultural experience.
Maurice Methot
50 Summit Ave.
Posted by John Twomey
Posted at 07:03 PM | Politics | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Lafete's Folly Redoux
On Catch-23 Redoux and Katie Laferte's allegations
“Mount Hope doesn't need fifteen organizations fighting each other. We're talking about twenty blocks here.”
“ . . . rather than staking out territory and duking it out like the kids are doing in their ridiculous ‘gangs . . . ”
I’ve learned to have a sense of humor in dealing with Mt. Hope's unselfish, though ambitious and thoroughly ambivalent citizen activists, because, well, a sense of humor is definitely needed in order to keep one's sanity -- otherwise one would rue the day they ever became active in neighborhood politics.
I think our illogical commenter, Ms Laferte, got caught a little bit off base in her mini-rant mini-skirt, about Mt. Hope neighborhood organizations, and here, she gets picked off base, to use a baseball metaphor.
I’ve been involved in community work in Mt. Hope and with GCCC for many years, and I have experienced no conflict with any other Mt. Hope organizations. The Mt. Hope organizations I know of have separate missions which do not overlap.
For instance, the Ministries do community outreach to poor people using government funds, and the MHNA uses government funds to provide after school programs, while the GCCC uses only member dues to do their work, which focuses on quality of life issues.
Our Catch23 writer says that, “
“Mount Hope doesn't need fifteen organizations fighting each other. We're talking about twenty blocks here.”
And even earlier, in a related statement, she compares Mt. Hope organizations to teenage gangs fighting over turf.
“ . . . rather than staking out territory and duking it out like the kids are doing in their ridiculous ‘gangs’.”
Who are these 15 organizations, Ms. Katie Laferte; which ones are duking it out; and what are they duking it out about?
I, myself, want you to inform me as I’m a long time member and leader of one of the organizations (GCCC).
And I assure you, Katie, the "kids" don't in any way see their gangs as "ridiculous" -- they see them as deadly serious, as you should, too, as we all should. How many have died?
It seems to me that this Katie commenter cemented herself concretely in an abyss of obese hyperbole, if you know what I mean. In other words, I think she’s got it all wrong.
Our Catch23 commenter asks that:
"The organizer of these meetings has told me she's contacted the GCCC leadership on a few occasions to extend an invitation to attend. I would like to pass on the information to a member who would like to get involved (not someone who would derail the process, but someone who would be willing to attend as a representative of the principles of the GCCC)".
My stance on meeting with other organizations at the request of CATCH is that it would be a waste of our time unless they provided GCCC with a clear agenda.
If CATCH had a concrete proposal for the GCCC organization asking GCCC to perform a certain function for them or aid them in a specific area or task we would have looked over the request carefully, put it to our members, and acted on it one way or the other. But we received no proposal, no phone call to discuss issues, just an e-mailed meeting announcement with no agenda.
Since my wife, Irene, was battling cancer at that time, all such insignificant activities, as GCCC leaders, we just put insignificant requests on the back burner.
GCCC categorically rejects Ms. Laferte's allegation that a rift exists between any Mt. Hope organizations and challenges her to prouduce evidence of her unfounded manipulative, delusional, and paronoid accusations.
But we (you) can certainly create a rift if you so desire!
But we did ask a GCCC member to represent GCCC at a CATCH meeting; Ellen Baver, and Ms. Baver left that CATCH meeting in tears after being viciously attacked by the woman who works at the Learning Center, Ann Marie Ready, and from someone from the Mt. Hope Neighborhood Association, a Mr. Carvallho,, and Ms. Devine, all for Ms. Baver’s writing a letter to the editor of the Providence Journal and the East Side Monthly expressing her point of view as a Mt.Hope mother, parent, and resident who walks Camp Street on a regular basis.
See the July 7th post, Pro Jo Editorials = Two of a Kind -- Does Mayor Get It? : the comments made under that post, using names like Kangroo Communique, et al.
Ghastly behavior!
I’m appalled at the gall of these people.
To publicly attack and criticize someone for exercising their right to free speech, their right to voice their political opinion? To verbally attack her out of the blue in front of all the other people present at the meeting.
One person implied, (in what I consider a manipulative lie) that Ms. Baver's letter offended Mt. Hope's youth -- can you countenance such an outrageous accusation -- who did Ms. Baver's letter offend, the youthfull drug dealers on Camp Street?
Another person told Ms. Baver that she intervened to keep somone from burning down her, the Baver's, house! Can you imagine?
Ms. Ready, Mr. Carvhallo, Ms. Devine, write your own letter of dissent to the editor, for Christ’s sake--voice your disagreement in the public forum like Ms. Baver had the courage to do.
Cowards! Cowards all!
Ms. Baver reported to me that she was totally unprepared for such a vicious, personal attack and that it really shook her and her family up. She left their meeting in tears and was upset for days afterwards. Ms. Baver is one of the Mt. Hope residents and GCCC members who has worked the most courageously, and unselfishly, for positive change in Mt. Hope.
What way is that to treat someone whom you invited to participate in your meeting?
I wish I had been there --I really, really wish I had been there.
Despicable behavior! Shame, shame, shame on all you who participated!
Since my wife, Irene, successfully beat her cancer (she’s cancer free, thanks, to all of you kind people who inquired) she has attended every meeting of CATCH. She has not yet heard of a proposal for GCCC from CATCH.
So what’s the deal, Ms. Laferte?
What have you and CATCH got for the GCCC?
What are you calling for?
You sat right next to Irene at the last CATCH meeting, and you had every opportunity to follow up on this Catch-23 post of yours, yet you were as quiet as a little mousey. Are you mousey by nature?
Here is another Laferte quote from the Catch-23 post:
“The much maligned CATCH program has held a series of meetings since the spring about "affordable housing." The fallout of these meetings is the idea that all Mount Hope organizations should get together and talk to one another, to develop trust and accountability and really try and deal with the various problems people perceive in the neighborhood rather than staking out territory and duking it out like the kids are doing in their ridiculous ‘gangs’.”
What do you mean, “The fallout of these meetings . . . “? Should we all be in our “fallout” shelters?
And by the way, Ms. Laferte, who told you Mt. Hope organizations don’t have “trust and accountability” -- or are you making that up?
CATCH, Ms. Laferte? Who? Empty rhetoric, Ms. Laferte: we await proof?
Has anyone observed anything like a gang war between Mt. Hope organizations?
I think Ms. Laferte needs to stick to organizing neighbors and community residents to clean up the empty land trust lot that blights the view from her house: she has organized at least two such clean-ups, calling them “Community Cleanups”, when in fact they only cleaned up the filthy part of the community that she could see from her front window:
I participated in one of her so called “Community Clean-ups, and I felt used and dirty afterward. And I vowed, never again.
There are many kinds of community activists -- Ms. Laferte is one kind.
Some people are only involved in CATCH because they think they can have some minor input into the affordable housing that is going into Abbott Court, the Walkway off of Knowles Street where Ms. Laferte lives. CATCH should be aware of such motives.
As far as for CATCH, none of the three principal organizers lives in Mt. Hope, nor have they invested financially in Mt. Hope. Only their meeting moderator, Ms. Devine, is a Mt. Hope resident, with a financial commitment to Mt. Hope. She is a professional in social work for Miriam Hospital. I wonder whether she is the CATCH front person only because she lives in Mt. Hope and only becaues she is a person of color.
In fact, most of the people involved in CATCH and the Mt. Hope Empowerment Network are what I refer to as Professional Liberals. They draw their paychecks either from the government or from organizations that draw funds from the government for social services. It is important for their careers, for their resumes, to be involved in something like CATCH.
I call it resume building.
Although these people all have an ulterior motive, I believe that these people strongly, honestly believe that they are doing good.
They just cannot tolerate anyone who disagrees with them.
I do.
I personally, strongly disagree with them.
Believe me, liberals are less tolerant than conservatives, and I am in no way a conservative, but I believe Professional Liberals are the least tolerant of all, as evidenced by their attack on Ms. Baver for voicing her opinion.
I consider the leader of CATCH to be Dr. Peter Simon, of the Health Department, and I wish he had the courage of his convictions to confront his associates for their viscious and unconsionable attack on GCCC's Ms. Baver.
I think CATCH, or now, The Empowerment Network, can do some good and bring some needed services to people who need them. I hope they can bring some of their ideas to fruition.
GCCC remains ready and willing to work with CATCH: we simply await a written proposal explaining what CATCH is all about and what role they wish GCCC to play in their plans.
I strongly believe that GCCC should be operated in a professional, legal, business-like manner. CATCH should approach GCCC with these principals in mind.
I respectfully ask CATCH if they have plans that include GCCC, please forward them in writing to us, or simply call us up on the phone, or e-mail us, and fill us in on the details. GCCC is open to considering any projects that will benefit the entire Mt. Hope community, as expressed in our Mission Statement.
GCCC also remains willing to reach out to the Mt. Hope learning Center’s Ms. Ready and to the MHNA’s, Mr. Carvhallo and to CATCH to work toward common goals benefiting Mt. Hope: but we strongly believe that the individuals who attacked Ms. Baver owe her an apology for their vicious and unconscionable, personal, ad hominem attack on her at the winter, 2005, CATCH meeting.
Yeah, one must have a “mind of winter” to behold “the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” To quote Wallace Stevens.
And, oh yeah, one must have a mind with a sense of humor, otherwise, well . . .
Drug dealers still operate freely right around the Crossrroads, Camp & Cypress, within sight of the Police Department's District 8 Substation -- it takes both a "mind of winter" and a "sense of humor" to tolerate that!
John Twomey
Posted at 02:24 PM | Politics | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Lead On?
House rental-prop rally for lead law
At a State House rally State Rep. Joseph A. Trillo claimed that less than 50 children statewide were affected by lead poisoning. According to ProJo’s article by Katherine Gregg, Trillo claimed that misinformation about the actual number of children affected by lead poisoning led to the adoption of the new Lead Hazard Mitigation Law.
Trillo proposes introducing legislation that will limit state intervention to buildings where a child has actually tested positive for lead, instead of mandatory testing for the state’s 145,000 rental units.
Information and statements like Mr. Trillo's lead me to ask, was it panic, hysteria, and hyperbole, along with resume building that led to the passage of the new Lead Hazard Mitigation Law?
Who has the accurate numbers that reflect the extent of the problem in Rhode Island? Is there really an epidemic of lead poisoning in Rhode Island?
Accurate statistics for the actual number of lead poisonings medically treated statewide should be available on a year by year basis to clarify the extent of the problem.
We need accurate numbers not numbers with "spin" on them.
You can read Ms. Gregg’s article in ProJo or below.
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John
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Landlords protest lead-inspection law
The new requirements will be unnecessarily costly for rental-property owners, say those in attendance at the State House rally.
01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, January 18, 2006
BY KATHERINE GREGG
Journal State House Bureau
PROVIDENCE -- Close to four dozen rental-property owners -- and their lobbyist -- rallied at the State House yesterday for changes in the state's new mandatory lead-inspection law to relieve scores of "innocent landlords" of what they characterized as an unjustified and unnecessary expense.
"There is no logical reason," said the leader of the rally, state Rep. Joseph A. Trillo. "No other state does this."
Trillo was the Warwick Republican -- and investment property owner -- who filed the court challenge that led Superior Court Judge Stephen J. Fortunato Jr. to declare portions of the state's new Lead Hazard Mitigation Law unconstitutional last week.
More specifially, the judge aimed his ruling at the exemption the law provided two- and three-unit owner-occupied buildings from key requirements, among them: a requirement that landlords take a three-hour lead awareness class and prove their properties meet state health department standards by having them certified as lead-safe at least once every two years, or each time a new tenant moves in.
The lawsuit was filed on Oct. 4, less than a month before the new law was scheduled to take effect.
Trillo yesterday repeated his accusations that the law was adopted based on "misinformation" suggesting there were many more lead-poisoned children in the state than there are.
He said there is "no logical reason to go after" the owners of 145,000 rental units, and exacerbate a "housing crisis," to cure a problem affecting less than 50 children, according to his own research.
Trillo said he will soon introduce legislation that limits intervention and enforcement to pre-1978 properties "where a child has tested positive for lead poisoning . . . in two consecutive tests, at least 30 days apart."
"The requirement of mandatory frequent inspections, potential costly renovations and obtaining a certificate of compliance . . . would not apply to properties where no child had been poisoned."
Trillo yesterday said that he owns eight pieces of property, all commercial except for one 10-unit, single-room-only apartment house in Warwick that was cleansed of any potential hazards when it was gutted and refurbished in 1980.
Also present yesterday was the lobbyist for the landlords' group, Thomas Hanley, a onetime top aide in the House Democratic ranks.
kgregg@projo.com / (401) 277-7078
Online at: http://www.projo.com/news/content/projo_20060118_thelaw18.12e2c238.html
Posted at 12:32 PM | Politics | Comments (0)
Lead Law Unconstitutional!
A Ruling Favorable for Fairness
The Providence Journal reported Wednesday that Superior Court Judge Stephan J. Fortunato ruled the state’s new Lead Hazard Mitigation Law unconstitutional because the exemption given to owner-occupied two and three family buildings violates landlords' guarantee to equal protection under the state constitution.
Confusingly enough for a layperson unschooled in constitutional law the judge did not restrict the state's right to enforce the law. That sounds to me like the judge left the door open for further court challenge on the constitutionality of enforcing the law. At any rate, expect the law to go back to the legislature for revising.
Get more details below from the article by Brandie Jefferson, Journal Environmental Writer, or in ProJo.com.
Judge rules lead-hazard law violates Constitution
But Judge Stephen J. Fortunato Jr. doesn't strip the state's ability to require that landlords' properties are certified as lead-safe every two years.
01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, January 11, 2006
BY BRANDIE JEFFERSON
Journal Environment Writer
A Superior Court judge has ruled the Lead Hazard Mitigation Law unconstitutional, but did not restrict the state's ability to enforce the law.
Judge Stephen J. Fortunato Jr. said there was "no rational basis" for the exemption of two- and three-unit owner-occupied buildings in the state's new law.
Although the law still stood, Fortunato wrote, "It is the hope of the court that the legislators will promptly revisit" the issue.
The Lead Hazard Mitigation Law, which went into effect in November, requires landlords to take a three-hour lead-hazard awareness class and prove that their properties are up to state Health Department requirements by having them certified as lead-safe every two years, or each time a new tenant moves in.
The law exempts owner-occupied two- and three-unit properties, housing legally restricted to people 62 and older, temporary housing and housing certified as lead-safe or lead-free.
A lawsuit filed by a landlords' association founded by Rep. Joseph A. Trillo, R-Warwick, claims that the two- and three-unit owner-occupied exemption violates landlords' guarantees to equal protection under the state Constitution.
"This is pretty much what we hoped would happen," Trillo said in response to the decision, "that [Fortunato] would rule but wouldn't necessarily try to stop the law."
The lawsuit was filed Oct. 4, less than a month before the law was scheduled to take effect. Although the plaintiffs had asked for an injunction to stop the law from going into effect, Fortunato denied the request and it became law Nov. 1.
Roberta Hazen Aaronson, executive director of the Childhood Lead Action Project, had mixed feelings about the decision.
"The law has been retained for the time being, that's good news," she said, and added "the future is uncertain."
The law was passed in 2002 and initially scheduled to go into effect in June 2004. It was delayed twice while stakeholders such as Hazen Aaronson and Trillo worked toward a compromise.
"We have to figure out what our next step will be," Hazen Aaronson said, speculating that she will likely find herself back in the legislative arena.
Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch's spokesman Michael Healey said Lynch will have to wait to hear from legislators before he takes action. Russell Cole, vice president of RI Lead Technicians Inc. isn't concerned about the decision. Cole is a landlord, teaches the landlord class and does home inspections.
Required lead-safe standards for landlords have been in place since the 1991 Lead Poisoning Prevention Act.
Landlords that are exempt from the new law, he said, "just don't have to prove that they have adhered to prior laws."
Brandie Jefferson has a fellowship with the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting.
bjeffers@projo.com / (401) 277-7133
Posted at 12:27 PM | Politics | Comments (0)
Trickle Down Corruption
Legislative Corruption & the Trickle Down Effect
I remember reading something, somewhere, some years ago, about the results of a study of political corruption: the state ranked number one in PC (political corruption) at that time was Arkansas. Number two? Rhode Island. Well, they produced, Bubba, Bill Clinton: who did we produce: Buddy? No contest! If ya know what I mean.
Now, we have Celona (see article below) on the state level and Delay and Abramoff on the federal level. How does this trickle down to us on the local scene? For one thing it is demoralizing. For another it negates our vote. Politicians selling influence to the highest bidder create tilted playing fields; it’s like fixing a ball game by buying the referees, who are supposed to be fair and impartial. Of course it is always our tax dollars being traded, bought, sold and stolen.
I, by no means, think I have the last word on this; I can barely articulate what I think are the implications of this type of corruption and the effect it has on the populace. I'm sure others could articulate it in more depth, more fully, and in more detail than I ever could.
Like the blues song says,
“It’s a mean ol’ world, child, to try an' live in all by yourself.”Or as the Celts say in Carrickfergus,
“But I’m old, now, and rarely sober, so I’ll sing no more until I get a drink.”Or as good old Robert Zimmerman said, in a line he stole,
“Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings, steal a little and they’ll throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.”And let us not forget that vagabond, Woody Guthrie, who sang,
"As thru this world I travel, I meet lot’s of funny men, some rob you with a six gun and some with a fountain pen.”
Am I jaded and cynical: you bet.
John Twomey
You can read the ProJo report on Celona’s corruption copied below.
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Roger Williams Medical Center indicted in corruption case
Also charged are the hospital's longtime president, its former vice president and the former head of a Providence assisted-living home.
09:25 AM EST on Friday, January 6, 2006
BY MIKE STANTON
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- Roger Williams Medical Center yesterday became the first nonprofit institution in Rhode Island ever to face federal corruption charges when a grand jury issued a 38-count indictment against the hospital, its president Robert A. Urciuoli and two others.
The institution is charged with conspiracy and mail fraud for allegedly hiring John Celona to use his position as a state senator to champion legislation that benefited Roger Williams, defeat legislation that would harm it, persuade communities to increase ambulance runs to the hospital and pressure health insurers to increase their payments.
The indictment, charging conspiracy and mail fraud, alleges that Roger Williams and its representatives stole the "honest services" of a Rhode Island senator, John A. Celona, by putting him on the payroll to do their bidding at the State House.
Also charged were Peter J. Sangermano Jr., the former president of The Village at Elmhurst assisted-living center; and Frances P. Driscoll, a former Roger Williams vice president.
The indictment alleges that Roger Williams Medical Center and the others hired Celona as a consultant to The Village at Elmhurst, which is partially owned by the hospital, but that Celona's real work was using his public office to influence legislation and perform favors.
The hospital, Urciuoli and Sangermano were each charged with 37 counts -- 1 of conspiracy and 36 of honest services mail fraud. Driscoll was charged with two counts -- one of conspiracy and one of honest services mail fraud.
A conviction for conspiracy carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Mail fraud is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The hospital, if convicted, could be fined up to $500,000 per count and receive five years' probation.
Celona, who pleaded guilty last year to selling his office, is cooperating in the investigation of Roger Williams and his financial dealings with two other companies: the CVS drugstore chain and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.
People familiar with the investigation say the focus will now shift to CVS and Blue Cross.
"This remains an extremely active investigation, one to which my office, along with the FBI and the Rhode Island State Police have devoted very extensive resources," said U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente. "We are continuing to move forward on a number of fronts."
Corrente said that he is aware of other cases where nonprofits have been charged, but none in Rhode Island.
The directors of Roger Williams Medical Center said in a statement that they were "shocked and deeply disturbed" by the hospital's indictment.
"This decision has threatened a respected 128-year-old institution that employs more than 1,400 people and provides millions of dollars of free care annually to Rhode Islanders who can't afford to pay for care," the hospital's statement said. "Hundreds of nurses, doctors and other dedicated caregivers devote themselves to caring for patients on a daily basis at Roger Williams. Their livelihood is now at risk."
Urciuoli's lawyer, Robert G. Flanders Jr., attacked the indictment as "a one-sided baloney sandwich, served up by John Celona. This is a conspiracy of one."
Urciuoli, 58, who has served as president of Roger Williams since 1988, said in a statement: "I have spent my entire career fighting to advance what I know to be one of the best hospitals in the region. Now, to see it put at risk for no apparent reason, really saddens me."
At a glance
Roger Williams Medical Center
Founded in 1878
Located at 825 Chalkstone Ave., Providence
Inpatient and outpatient services, and long-term care at The Village at Elmhurst and Elmhurst Extended Care
Affiliated with Brown University School of Medicine and Boston University School of Medicine
Unique to Rhode Island -- the state's only bone-marrow transplant unit, at The Adele R. Decof Cancer Center, and the only Center for Stem Cell Biology
* 1,396 employees
* 220 licensed beds
* In 2004, the emergency department logged 24,729 patients and 8,556 admissions to the hospital
* Total patient revenue in 2004 was $117.9 million
* Uncompensated care was $10 million in 2004
Source: Hospital Association of Rhode Island 2005 report and Roger Williams Medical Center Web site
The board at Roger Williams placed Urciuoli on paid leave last month. He earned $419,000 in 2002, the most recent year for which figures were available.
Sangermano was "disappointed" by the indictment and "denies engaging in any criminal conduct," said a statement issued by his lawyer, Thomas G. Briody. Sangermano and Roger Williams sold The Village at Elmhurst about a year ago to Benchmark Assisted Living.
Driscoll, who left Roger Williams in 2000, said through her lawyer, Kevin J. Bristow, said that she will assert "her factual innocence to these allegations."
No date has yet been set for the defendants' arraignment.
THE 30-PAGE indictment charges that the defendants conspired to hire Celona as a consultant in 1998, and that the senator was paid more than $260,000 over the next six years "to cause him to use his influence, power and authority as a state senator to benefit the political and financial interests" of Roger Williams.
Corrente said that the theft-of-honest-services law presumes that citizens "have the right to the honest services of their public officials. Everybody should be on a level playing field. Nobody should have a special advantage."
As part of the alleged conspiracy, the indictment says, the hospital disguised the true nature of Celona's work and deceived the state Ethics Commission when it sought an advisory opinion regarding the senator.
The hospital has maintained that Celona, a longtime North Providence politician, was hired to tap his extensive contacts among the elderly to recruit residents to The Village at Elmhurst.
Asked yesterday if Celona did any work for the assisted-living facility, Corrente replied, "Some." Corrente added that "a large part" of Celona's work was for Roger Williams.
According to the indictment, Celona asked Urciuoli for a job in August 1997, after the senator supported the hospital in a heated State House battle over approving a merger with Columbia/HCA.
The indictment chronicles a litany of actions that Celona allegedly performed at the direction of Urciuoli, Sangermano or Driscoll, from seeking to influence legislation to using his political muscle and powers of persuasion.
At Urciuoli's direction, the indictment charges, Celona pressured Blue Cross and UnitedHealthcare to increase their insurance reimbursements to Roger Williams.
After a 2001 meeting with a Blue Cross executive, the indictment says, Celona e-mailed Urciuoli: "I hope I didn't lay it on [the executive] too much yesterday. But it was done in a systematic fashion in order to get them 'in line' for us. Needless to say, I'll keep up the pressure."
Urciuoli allegedly responded that the Blue Cross executive "deserved to get cranked around."
After a 2003 meeting with a UnitedHealthcare representative, Celona wrote Urciuoli that someone from United had called the senator "to up the United figure. Did he contact you and do you want me to keep pressing."
Four days later, Urciuoli reported to the hospital's finance committee that a United executive had called him and agreed to a 25-percent increase for one year.
The indictment alleges that when Roger Williams was seeking a merger with a for-profit corporation, Urciuoli and Driscoll informed Celona that they opposed a Senate bill prohibiting hospital officials from serving on the board of a converted hospital.
Celona subsequently faxed Driscoll a note saying that he was making calls to "kill the bill in committee."
The indictment also accuses Urciuoli and Driscoll of telling Celona to oppose a 1999 bill creating a Rhode Island Cancer Council, to coordinate research and treatment, because it could hurt hospital finances and because they expected it would be led by a former Roger Williams doctor for whom they "felt animosity."
Driscoll subsequently directed Celona to threaten an unidentified state representative, the indictment says, "and advise her that she would suffer negative political ramifications if she supported the Cancer Council."
The legislator "agreed to do nothing to support the bill," Celona later wrote Driscoll. The indictment says that Celona also arranged for himself and Driscoll to have lunch with the lawmaker to lobby against the Cancer Council.
Urciuoli and Driscoll were also accused of directing Celona to attempt to influence municipalities to increase ambulance runs to Roger Williams.
According to the indictment, Urciuoli told Driscoll and others that ambulance runs were a source of revenue, but that the hospital was not getting its "fair share" from certain communities. Urciuoli also allegedly advised that he was "going to have Celona take care of the rescue run problem politically."
Celona met with local officials regarding ambulance runs, the indictment says.
Driscoll was charged with directing Celona to amend legislation to reimburse Roger Williams for a bone-marrow donation program. She was also accused of directing Celona to work to kill a bill to require nonprofit corporations in Providence to make payments in lieu of taxes.
In 2000, the indictment says, Driscoll directed Celona to oppose a proposed merger between Lifespan and Care New England, "because the merger could have an adverse financial impact" on Roger Williams.
In 1998, Driscoll and Sangermano allegedly directed Celona to work against a bill prohibiting health facilities, including The Village at Elmhurst, from offering care for Alzheimer's disease.
Sangermano was also accused of asking Celona to work behind the scenes to extend a moratorium on new nursing-home beds in Rhode Island, to help The Village at Elmhurst's finances.
LAWYERS FOR Roger Williams had negotiated intensively with federal prosecutors to strike a deal that would have avoided the hospital's indictment.
They argued that the hospital made every effort to ensure that Celona's hiring was proper, including seeking an advisory opinion from the Ethics Commission. And when a former federal prosecutor in 1998 conducted an internal review of various allegations against Urciuoli, he found "no basis for concluding that the [Celona] contract was illegal or unethical."
The lawyer, F. Dennis Saylor IV, is now a federal judge in Worcester -- and is now a potential defense witness, lawyers for the hospital have said.
In November, prosecutors offered the hospital a deferred prosecution agreement to avoid indictment. Under the agreement, the hospital would have admitted criminal wrongdoing and cooperated with the investigation, paid a fine, and implemented internal reforms.
But talks about a deal that would have averted yesterday's indictment collapsed this week, according to people familiar with the situation.
In 1998 -- the year that Celona was hired -- Urciuoli survived despite an internal review that concluded he had spent thousands in hospital funds on family dinners, golf trips and stays in luxurious hotels.
A Sunday Journal story detailing those expenses, and the board's decision to keep Urciuoli, has provoked outrage and prompted Lt. Gov. Charles Fogarty to call for legislation imposing a strict code of ethics on directors of Rhode Island hospitals.
Disclosures about the largess of another health-care executive, former Blue Cross President Ronald A. Battista, surfaced in the months after The Journal first began reporting on Celona's health-care dealings.
Battista, whose former company's dealings with Celona will also come under grand-jury scrutiny this year, resigned under fire in 2004, amid public outrage over his extravagant lifestyle.
Urciuoli has not been seen around Roger Williams Medical Center since the hospital put him on paid leave last month. When the indictment came down yesterday, he was with his family in Florida. Last summer, his wife bought a house on a golf course, the Country Club at Mirasol, in Palm Beach Gardens, for $939,000, according to Florida land records.
The house is just down the street from a $545,000 condo purchased two years ago by the former Rhode Island Blue Cross chief, Ron Battista.
mstanton@projo.com / (401) 277-7724
READ the full text of the federal grand jury's indictment against Roger Williams Medical Center and three others, at:
http://projo.com/rwuindict.pdf
Posted at 11:26 PM | Politics | Comments (0)
Right to Privacy II
Learning on the fly
More on the right to privacy in Wednesday’s NYTs, Can I Get a Little Privacy? By Dan Savage
Interestingly, in a Texas case, Lawrence v. Texas, where the SC knocked down a Texas law banning sodomy, gay and straight, Judge Anthony Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion questioning state’s laws against masturbation, adultery, and fornication. So all you wankers and tinker belles out there, you cheaters, and Sunday copulators, praise the lord and pass the right to privacy. (There is a song, Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.)
Mr. Savage points out that the three recent nominees, Roberts, Miers, and Alito all seem to have problems with the privacy issue, and it is widely believed that the conservative right will attack the right to privacy through the Griswold v Connecticut ruling.
In his piece, Mr. Savage explains a little about Ms. Griswold.
Mr. Savage proposes an amendment to the constitution spelling out the right to privacy so that this right is no longer open to ambiguous interpretation. But he admits that not even that will stop an assault on Roe v Wade.
His op-ed piece Can I Get a Little Privacy? below.
John
November 16, 2005
Op-Ed Contributor
Can I Get a Little Privacy?
By DAN SAVAGE
WILL Estelle Griswold ever be able to rest in peace? Although she died in 1981, the poor woman gets kicked up and down the block whenever someone is nominated to a seat on the United States Supreme Court. But few people remember who Griswold was or what she did.
In 1961, Griswold, the executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, opened a birth-control clinic in New Haven. She was promptly arrested for dispensing contraceptives to a married couple and was eventually convicted and fined $100. She appealed, and when her case reached the Supreme Court in 1965, seven of nine justices voted to overturn the conviction, striking down Connecticut's law against selling birth control (effectively overturning similar laws in other states). Americans, the court ruled, had a fundamental right to privacy.
Much of American jurisprudence since then flows from Griswold - including Roe v. Wade, which found that women had a right to abortion, and Lawrence v. Texas of 2003, which found that the right to privacy prevents the government from banning sodomy, gay and straight.
Problematically, however, a right to privacy is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. The majority in Griswold held that it was among the unenumerated rights implied by the Constitution's "penumbras" (which sound like something a sodomy law might keep you away from). The Griswold case didn't settle the matter, and the right to privacy quickly became the Tinkerbell of constitutional rights: clap your hands if you believe.
Liberals clap. We love the right to privacy because we believe adults should have access to birth control, abortion services and pornography as well as the right to engage in gay sex. Social conservatives hate the right to privacy for the very same reason, as they seek to regulate private behaviors from access to birth control to masturbation. (Think I'm kidding about masturbation? In Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, he wrote that the majority's decision called into question the legality of state laws against "masturbation, adultery, fornication.")
And now, with three Supreme Court nominees in three months, the issue is again on the front burner. In the 1980's, Chief Justice John Roberts was a Reagan administration aide who wrote a memo questioning the "so-called" right to privacy. During his confirmation hearings the press-release brigade at People for the American Way warned that these documents suggested that he believed that the Constitution did not guarantee a right to privacy.
In his hearings, when asked if he could a locate a right to privacy in the Constitution, Judge Roberts said that he could - but he was vague about what it actually covered. Heterosexual married couples have a right to use birth control, he conceded, but that was about as far as he was willing to go.
During her brief but thoroughly entertaining tenure as a Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers bumbled into a "he said, she said" dispute with the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Arlen Specter. According to Senator Specter, Ms. Miers told him in a private meeting that the Griswold case was "rightly decided." The White House, however, denied that Ms. Miers had said any such thing, and later she said that Senator Specter had misunderstood her.
Now it is Samuel Alito's turn. Senator Specter says he believes the nominee accepts the idea of a constitutional right to privacy. But we can still count on Judge Alito to be grilled about Griswold during his confirmation hearings next month. Does he believe in a right to privacy or not? Can he locate it in the Constitution or not?
Well, if the right to privacy is so difficult for some people to locate in the Constitution, why don't we just stick it in there?
Wouldn't that make it easier to find?
If the Republicans can propose a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, why can't the Democrats propose a right to privacy amendment? Making this implicit right explicit would forever end the debate about whether there is a right to privacy. And the debate over the bill would force Republicans who opposed it to explain why they don't think Americans deserve a right to privacy - which would alienate not only moderates, but also those libertarian, small-government conservatives who survive only in isolated pockets on the Eastern Seaboard and the American West.
Of course, passing a right to privacy amendment wouldn't end the debate over abortion - that argument would shift to the question of whether abortion fell under the amendment. But given the precedent of Roe, abortion rights would be on firmer ground than they are now.
So, come on, Democrats, go on the offensive - start working on a bill. Not only would enshrining the right to privacy in the Constitution secure a right that most Americans rightly believe they are already entitled to, it would also allow Estelle Griswold to finally rest in peace.
Dan Savage is the editor of The Stranger, a Seattle newsweekly.
Posted at 12:58 PM | Politics | Comments (0)
The Right to Privacy
Bedrock or Shifting Sand?
Current Events & Constitutional Law
I have been thinking about the” right to privacy” since the GCCC meeting of September 22, where during the wine & cheese reception the discussion came around to video surveillance in the cause of crime fighting. Someone suggested that video cameras be used to counter the outbreak of graffiti vandalism, since the city was considering using cameras for recording traffic violations at intersections. I vividly recall one member being visibly shocked that a member of GCCC would advocate such an invasive and reactionary tactic, and I myself piped up, with something like, “That would be an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, wouldn’t it? Isn’t the ACLU” (of which I’m a card carrying member) “fighting traffic surveillance cameras on just such legal grounds? Doesn’t it violate our constitutional right to privacy?”
A few weeks ago I read an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe, by Jeff Jacoby, Privacy by decree, that shed some light on this issue. I set it aside in the “idea” pile on my desk thinking that it would make a good, informative, thought provoking post for the blog, along with the other partly written posts that pile up waiting for the free time to actually finish the writing. Well, I worked on it in bits and pieces as time allowed, saving the essay, copying and pasting it into Word and typing a few thoughts to keep the slim thread of an idea alive. By the way, I figured out there is no “free” time.
Now, with the news of President Bush’s nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court being prominent in the news, especially the revelation of Alito’s background as a partisan and deeply conservative republican who seemingly opposes abortion rights on ideological grounds, I dug back though that pile on my desk and then found the computer file where I’d begun writing this post in early November.
What struck me about Jacoby’s op-ed piece was the opening line: “Nowhere does the Constitution guarantee the right to privacy.” Jacoby goes on to explain how Justice William O. Douglas, in 1965, discerned “zones of privacy” in “the penumbras, formed by emanations” pertaining to the Bill of Rights in his ruling on the case, Griswold v Connecticut, which struck down a Connecticut law banning the sale and use of contraceptives. This same perceived privacy right was again used in 1972 in a Supreme Court ruling on a Massachusetts case, Eisenstadt v Baird, giving the unmarried the same right to access contraception as the married. In 1973, this perceived right to privacy became the bedrock for the Roe v Wade ruling that guaranteed women the right to choose abortion, as well as the basis for the recent Massachusetts state ruling allowing same sex marriage.
But as bedrock, it may be less than firm, if I read Jacoby correctly. The conservative right in our country sees the chance to overturn Roe V Wade and make abortion illegal by the appointment of a conservative, partisan, ideologue to the Supreme Court bench: in Alito, have they found their man?
Maybe they will ban the teaching of evolution and ban abortion in one fell swoop.
At any rate, it pays to be well informed. I’m no legal scholar -- I don’t even play one on TV -- is there a legal scholar in the house?
I’ve provided the complete text of Jacoby’s, Privacy by Decree, below.
John Twomey
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Privacy by decree
NOWHERE DOES the Constitution guarantee the right to privacy. The word ''privacy" isn't even mentioned in the text. But if all you had to go by was the obsessive interest in the subject whenever there is a Supreme Court vacancy, you might imagine that privacy is the very bedrock of American constitutional law.
Few legal cows today are more sacred. A judicial nominee who referred dismissively to the ''so-called right to privacy" or insisted that courts should not ''discern such an abstraction in the Constitution" would stand no chance of winning confirmation. That is why John Roberts, who wrote those words as a Reagan administration lawyer in 1981, smoothly disavowed them during his confirmation hearings in September. It is why Samuel Alito's nomination to the court was no sooner announced than his most important Senate ally -- the Judiciary Committee's chairman, Arlen Specter -- called a press conference to say the nominee had assured him that ''there is a right to privacy in the Constitution" and that Griswold v. Connecticut was ''good law."
Griswold was the 1965 case in which Justice William O. Douglas, writing for a 7-2 majority, discovered ''zones of privacy" lurking in the ''penumbras, formed by emanations" from the Bill of Rights. On the strength of that gaseous finding, the court struck down a Connecticut law banning the sale and use of contraceptives. The ''privacy surrounding the marriage relationship," Douglas wrote, was one of those ''penumbral rights" that lawmakers had no power to infringe.
In 1972 the court decided that this newly minted right to contraception wasn't connected to marriage after all. ''Whatever the rights of the individual to access contraceptives may be," Justice William Brennan wrote in Eisenstadt v. Baird, a Massachusetts case, ''the rights must be the same for the unmarried and the married alike."
A year later, Roe v. Wade expanded the ''right of personal privacy" to encompass abortion. In a 17,000-word opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun surveyed the history of abortion from the ancient Persians to modern times, detouring along the way to hold forth on the Hippocratic Oath, English common law, and the views of the American Medical Association.
But when the flood of rhetoric subsided and he finally got around to constitutional law, Blackmun had nothing more to offer on than the airy penumbra privacy that Griswold had unveiled eight years earlier. Even some liberal supporters of abortion rights were appalled by the decision's flaccid reasoning. In a withering critique, the legal scholar John Hart Ely wrote in the Yale Law Review that Roe ''is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be."
Yet Roe lives on, and so does the right to privacy, which is now said to be located not only in those emanating penumbras but in the 14th Amendment's guarantee of liberty as well. In 1992, Justice Anthony Kennedy cobbled the two together, upholding Roe in a decision that rhapsodized about how the Constitution protects ''the most intimate and personal choices a person may make" and how ''at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." In Lawrence v. Texas 11 years later, Kennedy invoked that language in striking down a Texas law that made homosexual sodomy illegal. Soon after, in a decision citing Lawrence and the Supreme Court's pronouncements on privacy, the highest court in Massachusetts ruled that same-sex marriage must be permitted as a matter of state law.
From contraceptives to same-sex marriage is a distance that no one 40 years ago could have imagined the courts would travel. The thread connecting them is Griswold's judicially concocted ''right to privacy" -- amorphous, free-floating, and wonderfully handy for writing judges' personal opinions into constitutional law.
''I think this is an uncommonly silly law," wrote Justice Potter Stewart, one of the two dissenters in Griswold of Connecticut's ban on contraception. But it is not the job of judges ''to say whether we think this law is unwise, or even asinine." A statute can be foolish and unfair without being unconstitutional.
The other dissenter was Hugo Black, a champion of freedom who saw what was coming. He, too, found Connecticut's contraception ban absurd. But it is not the court's role to be ''a day-to-day constitutional convention," he warned, and adopting a standard as loose as the ''right to privacy" would set in motion ''a great unconstitutional shift of power to the courts which . . . will be bad for the courts, and worse for the country."
He was right. Griswold was wrongly decided, and its effects still poison American law and politics. But no Supreme Court nominee is prepared to say so. The last one who tried was Robert Bork.
From the Boston globe:
By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist.
Posted at 11:13 PM | Politics | Comments (10)
A Tale of the City
CLANDESTINE OPS THWARTS GRAFFITIERS
A battle for the soul of Mt. Hope.
As you know from the October 27th, post, Graffiti in Mt. Hope, vandals again defaced the Cypress Street Walkway overpass tunnel and sidewall. Around the time I made that post I received a call from Alec McLeod, a long time GCCC member, about the graffiti. Mr. McLeod had taken the initiative to call the City about the graffiti’s return, and he'd spoken to Mr. Al Buco, of the Public Property and Buildings Department, who runs the Graffiti Removal operation for the city. As GCCC member Jessica Stein learned when she called the Graffiti removal hotline, Alec also learned that this department is vastly understaffed has only two people assigned to graffiti removal and that that is only one of their duties.
Rather than wait for them to ". . .get around to it", Mr. McLeod convinced Mr. Buco to send a crew out to paint over the Graffiti on the underpass and to leave the remaining paint with Mr. McLeod in case (if & when) the graffiti returns.
Sure enough, late last week Mr. Buco’s crew came out and put a very nice coat of grey paint over the graffiti and left the remaining paint with Mr. McLeod. All was well.
Until this morning when I saw newly minted graffiti defacing the wall again, right over the fresh paint! The vandals must have struck the night of the 8th or the morning of the 9th. But this graffiti was to be short lived.
An Anonymous MHGRT caught in the act of graffiti "removal"!
I phoned Mr. McLeod and informed him of the defacement. He in turn placed a call to the Mt. Hope Graffiti Removal Technicians, a newly formed clandestine citizen’s organization. Their response was swift and merciless. In a flash of paint and rollers the graffiti had been “removed” and the MHGRTs had blended back into the day.
MHGRTs -- Protecting the Innocent
Only one problem: the city crew had left Mr. McLeod the wrong colour paint. They left him a container of Urban Tan instead of the grey that had been used on the wall.
An MHGRT Stands at "Attention".
Another call to Mr. Al Buco and a short time later a container of the correct grey colour had been delivered and again the MHGRTs appeared (this time with a slender, bespectacled, female, field commander), and a colour correction was applied.
Graffiti Gone -- Urban Tan on Grey (before colour correction)
That makes Mr. Al Buco a F.O.M.H. (friend of Mt. Hope). Thank you Mr. Buco, thank you Mr.McLeod .
When citizens take action, things get done.
After all, it's a battle for the soul of Mt. Hope!
John
Posted at 12:13 PM | Politics | Comments (2)
In Memorium
Rosa Parks: 1913 -- 2005
In 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress, sat down in the front of a Montgomery City bus, in Alabama, and refused to give up her seat on that bus to a white man and refused to move to the back of the bus as was required of black people by law at that time, Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation.
For her offense, she was arrested and convicted, fined $10.00, and $4.00, in court costs.
Ms. Parks action, her refusal to be a second class citizen, helped spark the Civil Rights Movement and helped bring an end to American apartheid. Her simple, courageous action has come to symbloize a universal message of courage, dignity, and equality.
Rosa Parks funeral was held today in Detroit, her adopted home town.
Montgomery Advertiser, via Associated Press
John Twomey
Posted at 10:52 AM | Politics | Comments (0)
VITAL CITY LINKS A Resource
Our Onsite Links -- Easy and effective -- Government & Media
Nada's decisive action on graffiti, calling Councilman Jackson, made me wonder if our sites visitors are aware of the direct links to city officials right here on the website, such as our Vital City Links.
Like, how easy it is from here to click on Office of Neighborhood Services to get them involved in Graffiti removal.
A phone call and an e-mail, mentioning gang graffiti and the East Side Boyz -- South Side feud, might spur quick action. It's worth a shot.
A two or three pronged approach would be the most effictive approach I think. Jess called the Graffiti Hotline, Nada's calling the Councilperson, and we need someone to call and send an effective e-mail to the ONS.
The ONS' Director has a directline to the Mayor and thus is important in keeping the Mayor's finger on the pulse of the city's neighborhoods. We should use the Office of Neighborhood Services often. It's a good way of keeping the City informed of our concerns.
Follow through and follow up and be persistant and relentless: it's the only way to succeed in this community work.
Explore Our Links
Click on our link Vital city Links found at the top left of the blog page or the top right of the Home page, and you will find useful information for contacting city officials without even leaving the website.
It is worth while to browse around the site to see what information is available. The Links we put onsite are useful and easy to access.
Vital city Links for instance connects you with contact info for the the Councilman, the Mayor, the Ofice of Neighborhood Services and Rity Murphy, its Director, the City Council President, and the Chief of Police.
Clicking on Government Websites give you three most useful websites, The City, The State, and Providence Plan.
Clicking on Providence City Hall opens ProvidenceRI.com. Our city has quite a good website. From it you can find contact info for almost any level of city government. This site is worth studying. Very useful and very informative.
Media Websites connects you to all the major media outlets.
Explore these resources and use them wisely.
The well written personal letter
Nothing is more effective than a peronal letter, an open letter to the mayor, the chief, the councilman, etc. etc. and a copy cc'd for publication to the Providnece Journal, the East side Monthly.
If we want to succeed we need to get our message out. And to get the message out to the people and institutions who matter and who can affect policy.
Posted at 12:46 PM | Politics | Comments (1)
Poem of the Week
The Thin People
They are always with us, the thin people
Meager of dimension as the grey peopleOn a movie screen. They
Are unreal, we say:It was only in a movie, it was only
In a war making evil headlines when weWere small that they famished and
Grew so lean and would not roundOut their stalky limbs again though
peace
Plumbed the bellies of the miceUnder the meanest table.
It was during the long hunger-battleThey found their talent to persevere
In thinness, to come later,Into our bad dreams, their menance
Not guns, not abuses,But a thin silence.
Wrapped in flea-ridden donkey skins,Empty of complaint, forever
Drinking vinegar from tin cups: they
woreThe insufferable nimbus of the lot-drawn
Scapegoat. But so thin,So weedy a race could not remain in
dreams,
Could not remain outlandish victimsIn the contracted country of the head
Any more than the old woman in her
mud hut couldKeep from cutting the fat meat
Out of the side of the generous moon
when itSet foot nightly in her yard
Until her knife had paredThe moon to a rind of little light.
Now the thin people do not obliterateThemselves as the dawn
Greyness blues, reddens, and the outlineOf the world comes clear and fills with
color,
They persist in the sunlit room: the wall-
paperFrieze of cabbage-roses and cornflowers
pales
Under their thin-lipped smiles,Their withering kingship.
How they prop each other up!We own no wilderness rich and deep
enough
For stronghold against their stiffBattalions. See, how the tree boles flatten
And lose their good brownsIf the thin people simply stand in the
forest,
Making the world go thin as a wasp’s
nestAnd greyer; not even moving their bones.
Sylvia Plath
Posted at 12:10 AM | The Arts | Comments (0)
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
strong>"Where have you gone Joe Dimaggio . . .
Manny Being Manny -- Globe photo
Red Sox Nation that is, turned its eyes to Manny, as the longest running soap opera in baseball chalked up another weekend of banner ratings.
Whew! The trading dealine is past, and the team is intact.
Manny will remain in red sox for a while, bloated contract, Manny Moments, and all, as well as the best hitter and run producer in the big leagues.
Some people will never get why baseball is such an integeral part of American culture, to those people, one can only say, "I'm sorry."
Posted at 12:05 AM | Politics | Comments (0)
Trade Deadline Nears
What if we could trade politicians?
This is the time of year when trade talks heat up in the world of Major League Baseball. The trade deadline is July 31st. Our own World Champion Red Sox may be making moves, and it is always difficult to say goodbye to players you may have grown to like but easy to say good riddance to those who were a burden or who didn’t hustle or come through for the team. Maybe Bill Mueller or Bronson Arroyo will have to be traded to shore up the shaky pitching staff. They would be missed. But maybe we can unload Manny Ramirez and his huge salary and lazy, disrespect for the game. His bat will be missed, but good riddance to your attitude, dude!
Wouldn’t it be cool if we could trade politicians the way MLB trades players.
We could send Dean Esserman to LA for Bill Bratton. That way Esserman could have the Bill Bratton type career he wants, and Bratton could bail out of LA where he is largely striking out. Esserman’s good at getting guns off the street, and I hear LA has guns galore to keep him busy, plus they have larger numbers of stats to manipulate. Bratton could come to Providence and concentrate on quality of life issues as he did in New York when he brought crime under control and made Manhattan livable again. That trade would be a win/win situation for both cities.
We could trade our Mayor, David Cicilline, for Martin O’Malley, the Mayor of Baltimore. Remember Prov Stat, where we were going to be able to assess the performance of City Departments; well that was the brainchild of O’Malley who called it City Stat in Baltimore, where it really works. O’Malley could come here and show us how Prov Stat should work. Cicilline could go to Baltimore where drug dealing and violent crime are out of control, and he would have no choice but to pay attention to it and to develop a “get tough on crime approach." After Baltimore, cleaning up Providence would be child’s play for O’Malley.
When he’s not mayoring, O’Malley plays and sings in an Irish Band. He could save us money by playing free concerts in Waterplace Park as part of his Mayoral duties. Why pay musicians when you can have one as Mayor?
Would you engineer a trade of Harold Metts for Bill Cosby. I would.
Would you package Fox and Jackson together for some good prospects and a politician to be named later?
As the trade deadline approaches I’m trying to trade myself, but not too surprisingly, I’m not getting any takers: who would have me and what could you get in return. Who would you trade and who would you want?
Ok, ok, guys, just kiddin’. We wouldn’t trade any of you guys for all the tea in China.
You just better get your On-Base-Percentage up there with the league leaders.
Posted at 10:13 AM | Politics | Comments (0)
Acadian Driftwood, Gypsy Tailwind
It was 250 years ago today. . .
It was on July 28th, 250 years ago that the English expelled the French Acadians from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, an area then called L’Acadie. The Acadians drifted down along the Eastern United States coast, settling where they could, till the remainder of them made it, eventually, to the bayous of Louisiana.
Today, I'm cookin' Cajun: let us celebrate the Acadians.
The music group “The Band” performed a beautiful song about this migration, written by their guitarist, Canadian songwriter Robbie Robertson, titled Acadian Driftwood. Here are the song's lyrics.
Acadian DriftwoodThe war was over and the spirit was broken,
The hills were smokin' as the men withdrew.
We stood on the cliffs, oh, and we watched the ships
Slowly sinking to their rendezvous.They signed a treaty and our homes were taken,
Loved ones forsaken, they didn't give a damn.
Trying to raise a family, end up the enemy,
Over what went down on the plains of Abraham.Acadian driftwood,
Gypsy tailwind,
They call my home
The land of snow,
Canadian cold front
Movin' in,
What a way to ride,
Oh, what a way to go.Then some returned to the motherland,
The high command had them cast away,
And some stayed on to finish what they started,
They never parted, they're just built that way.We had kin livin' south of the border,
They're a little older and they've been around.
They wrote a letter life is a whole lot better,
So pull up your stakes, children and come on down.Acadian driftwood,
Gypsy tailwind,
They call my home
The land of snow.
Canadian cold front
Movin' in,
What a way to ride,
Oh, what a way to go.Fifteen under zero when the day became a threat,
My clothes were wet and I was drenched to the bone.
Been out ice fishing, too much repetition
Make a man want to leave the only home he's known.Sailing out of the gulf headin' for Saint Pierre,
Nothin' to declare, all we had was gone.
Broke down along the coast, but what hurt the most,
When the people there said "You better keep movin' on."Acadian driftwood,
Gypsy tailwind,
They call my home
The land of snow.
Canadian cold front
Movin' in,
What a way to ride,
Oh, what a way to go.Everlasting summer filled with ill-content,
This government had us walkin' in chains.
This isn't my turf, this ain't my season,
Can't think of one good reason to remain.I've worked in the sugar fields up from New Orleans,
It was ever green up until the floods.
You could call it an omen, points you where you're goin',
Set my compass north, I got winter in my blood.Acadian driftwood,
Gypsy tailwind,
They call my home
The land of snow.
Canadian cold front,
Movin' in,
What a way to ride,
Oh, what a way to go.Sais tu, Acadie, j'ai le mal du pays
Ta neige, Acadie, fait des larmes au soleil
J'arrive Acadie
--
--
Last week in the Boston Globe I read William Fowler's essay about the role Massachusetts played the in Acadian expulsion, and I include it here for your interest.
A dark chapter in Mass. history
By William Fowler | July 23, 2005
IT IS TIME for Massachusetts to recognize a great wrong. Two hundred and fifty years ago this summer, Massachusetts helped launch a brutal campaign of ''ethnic cleansing" against the Acadians of modern day New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
In the early part of the 17th century hundreds of French peasant families migrated from France and settled in a region they called L'Acadie (modern day New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). These families diked and farmed the rich marshlands bordering the Bay of Fundy. Isolated from the principal French settlements in the Saint Lawrence River Valley, the Acadians evolved a distinct culture, one that drew heavily upon their native Micmac neighbors with whom they often intermarried.
Unfortunately for the Acadians, their homeland was contested ground as the world's two superpowers, France and England, struggled to dominate North America. In 1713, at the end of one of the many wars fought between these two nations, France ceded Acadia to England and with it sovereignty over the native Acadians. However, customs, language, and religion divided these people from their new English rulers. In neighboring Massachusetts, ministers and politicians railed against the Acadians. Venomous attacks on the ''perfidious" French filled newspapers while from their pulpits ministers damned the ''papists."
Behind the violent rhetoric venal land speculators, led by William Shirley, royal governor of the Massachusetts, schemed to seize Acadian lands. Nova Scotia's lieutenant governor, Charles Lawrence, along with Jonathan Belcher, chief justice of the colony, Robert Monckton, an army officer, and John Winslow of Marshfield, an officer in the Massachusetts militia, joined Shirley and laid plans to expel the Acadians and seize their lands.
At a meeting on July 28, 1755, Lawrence ordered Monckton ''to send all the French Inhabitants out of the Province." Monckton realized that he would have to move quickly before the Acadians discovered their fate. He turned to Winslow and the Massachusetts militia to help him.
On the morning of Aug. 6, 1755, Monckton summoned Winslow to his headquarters at Fort Cumberland near the northern end of the Bay of Fundy. He told Winslow that he planned to order all the male Acadians to the fort. Once they were inside, Winslow's men would surround and confine them. Unaware of their peril on Sunday, Aug. 10, more than 400 Acadian men entered the fort. All went according to plan. And as soon as the men were locked up, messengers were sent to their families telling them to report to the fort lest the men suffer. Those who fled would be hunted down and killed.
Less than a week later at the village of Grand Pre, Winslow pulled the same maneuver and several hundred more men were seized. Within weeks several thousand Acadians were taken up and the expulsion began. Thousands of Acadians were herded aboard transport vessels. Families were often separated and no one was told their destination. Some escaped and fled to French Canada, but most did not and they were shipped off to distant places including Louisiana where they became known as Cajuns. Nearly 10,000 Acadians died in this Grand Derangement.
Having successfully removed the Acadians Governor Lawrence published a proclamation in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia announcing that there was now ''a favourable Opportunity for the peopling and cultivating of the Lands vacated by the French." Over the next decade 10,000 Yankee farmers took up the ''vacated" lands.
In the early 1840s Horace Connolly, the rector of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Boston, heard the story of the expulsion from his Acadian housekeeper. He shared her tale with his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and in 1847 Longfellow published ''Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie." The epic poem begins ''This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks."
Although highly romanticized, ''Evangeline" helped keep the story of the Acadian expulsion alive. Over the last 250 years descendants of those Acadians who either eluded Winslow's troops or managed to return to their homes at a later time, have kept alive a vibrant Acadian culture in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Determined to gain an acknowledgement of the injustice done to their ancestors these modern Acadians brought pressure on the Canadian government. In December 2003, the governor general of Canada, on behalf of the queen, issued a royal proclamation acknowledging this ''dark chapter" and declared that henceforth July 28, the day on which the expulsion was ordered be every year observed as ''A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval," commencing on July 28, 2005."
This year marks the first commemoration in Canada. Perhaps on July 28 we, too, should take a moment to reflect on this dark chapter of our own history.
William Fowler is director of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Boston Globe article
Posted at 12:01 AM | Politics | Comments (0)
The Big Lie of Crime Stats
How the Big Lie Lies
Crime stats lie. They get right up in your face and lie. But the numbers themselves don’t offend: they simply get used and abused by someone or some organization who usually wishes to put a positive spin on those numbers.
How do they lie? Say you go to the fridge to get some chocolate ice cream and discover just a tiny tablespoon in the bottom of the box, so you turn to your pie-eyed, all innocent looking ten year old, the one with chocolate ringing their mouth, and ask, “Did you eat all the ice cream?”. “No, no, I didn’t eat all the ice cream.” says the ten year old, speaking with all the weight and conviction of truth.
Well, technically that is not a lie, since a lonely tablespoon of ice cream still remains in the box, but it is not the whole story either. It is a partial truth or a “spin” on the truth. It is a manipulation of the facts so that they appear to tell the story that the speaker wants you to hear. So it is with crime stats.
Statistics are easily manipulated to mislead the public.
I bring this up because I read a Boston Globe article titled Major Crime down 13%, through the first 5 months of the year, and that drew a chuckle from me because I understand the spin, and I fully expect to read or hear the same kind of spin coming out of our City Hall sometime in the not so distant future.
Once you get past the headline with the big bold Major crime down 13%, you get into the nitty-gritty of the stats, which community leaders living in crime ridden areas of Boston greeted with derision.
Most of the 13% decrease came in only 2 areas, Vehicle Theft, and Larceny. Larceny includes theft not fear inducing, such as car radio thefts.
Murders stayed the same, did not go down, but the headline did not read “Murder rate stays the same for period as City fails to reduce murder rate for another year!": that also would have been an accurate headline.
Rapes went down by a total of 5. No mention of how rapes usually go unreported
But the real news is that Burglary, thefts from residences, increased by 7% and that Robbery, often involving the use of force, jumped by 8%.
The Globe could have used a headline that read, "Home Invasions and Robberies up 15%", and that would have been just as accurate as "Major crime down 13%", but it would have given the reader a much different impression. Manipulation!
But all that involves manipulating the numbers. The numbers gathered themselves lie, because they are not accurate. How do crime stats deceive us?
Many crimes go unreported, and some are under-reported, such as rapes, robberies, theft from motor vehicles, and assaults.
If the police do not generate an incident report number the crime does not make the stats. Say you report an incident of vandalism and property damage, and the police who come and view the damage say “we will keep an eye on your property if we can and try to catch the perps.” But unless you ask for an incident report number, they usually will not offer you one, and they usually won’t write one up