I beg your pardon, governor - we never promised you a rose garden

View on the news

Christopher Curran
Posted 2/25/15

This past week, the governor of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Gina Marie Raimondo, explained to her fellow citizens how dire a position the Ocean State is truly in.

The …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in

I beg your pardon, governor - we never promised you a rose garden

View on the news

Posted

This past week, the governor of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Gina Marie Raimondo, explained to her fellow citizens how dire a position the Ocean State is truly in.

The governor used words of surprise when she described our current situation as “out of whack,” “alarming” and “scary.” She instructed her quite costly staff to compile a state-by-state comparison of how Little Rhody stacks up versus other states in the union.

This study was unnecessary, considering that everything presented has been discussed redundantly before in article after article, periodical after periodical and government survey after government survey.

Her presentation, titled “Fixing What Ails Rhode Island,” brings forth no new revelations. One wonders why, considering that she held the general treasurer’s position for four years, she would have been oblivious to the facts that any consistent newspaper reader already knows.

What seems most vexing for our new governor is not just the enormity of our financial peril, and the confounding condition of our bloated and inefficient government, but that the multifaceted, deleterious, and entrenched paradigms cannot likely be reversed. Simply, to achieve any remedies might be insurmountable. To quote country singer Lynn Anderson: “I beg your pardon (Gina), I (we) never promised you a rose garden!”

The first factoid “revealed” was that Rhode Island is second highest in Medicaid spending and second highest in fire safety costs. Especially in the last decade, we have had a surge of population of those citizens dependent upon government services. Simultaneously, we have had an exodus of retirees who can stretch their dollars more effectively elsewhere.

Naturally, the state loses both tax and consumer spending and the related sales tax income.

Unfortunately, we are known as an “Easy Welfare” state. While some nearby states have tightened up eligibility requirements and brought efficiencies to their public assistance and public medical system, we have not. To lessen Medicaid costs to the state when they have astronomically increased over a billion dollars in just the last two years will be a tall order. As the governor stated, no one is happy with the current system, not medical professionals nor hospitals.

In regard to fire safety expenses, any Rhode Islander knows the egregious costs are in “minimum manning” rules, which have been bargained through unionism. In many states, if you need an ambulance, you call an ambulance and only an ambulance arrives. However, in Rhode Island when you call an ambulance, you also get a fire engine and sometimes a battalion chief. Obviously, this adds greatly to the number of expensive “runs” in a month. Since this rule is embedded in hard-fought union contracts on a municipal level, the governor’s ability to lessen fire safety costs will be next to impossible. First responders should be well compensated considering the nature of their work. However, how many of them do we actually need? This factor needs to be studied by outside-the-state professionals who are experts in public safety. Only then can a true cost-benefit analysis be established.

The apparition of unionism also is the difficulty when it comes to public sector employee compensation. As Raimondo stated, we have the third-highest public employee compensation in the nation. Our public employees are paid substantially more than their private sector counterparts and substantially more than our neighboring states’ employees. The only way the governor can counter this problem is to privatize government services on a grand scale.

Also apparent to anyone who drives even minimally around the state, our roads are 45th in road quality in the nation. Yet, we pay the fourth-highest amount for them per capita. Not only is this waste of the taxpayer’s dollar related to costly private contractors who do substandard and over priced finished work, but the situation is also due to the usage of planned obsolescence road repair material by the our Department of Public Works. Other types of road material is more durable and long lasting, yet we use make work material that is timed to fail. The executive branch of government should be able to somewhat rectify this problem by expanding the bid processes and requiring the use of road material of a greater more long lasting composition. Of course, we will need to find the money for the extensive repairs needed since federal highway fund contributions to the state are in jeopardy.

Also in her presentation were ongoing concerns about the Ocean State’s students, who are not doing well. Our children’s performance is lackluster compared to students performing in other states in the country.

Educationally, we are eighth highest in cost and 27th in educational achievement. This problem can improve with greater teacher effort and new education paradigms with more accountability.

First, most of our teachers have an adverse attitude toward standardized testing. We have seen outspoken reluctance to both the erstwhile “NECAP” and the “PARCC” systems of examination and measurable achievement.

Thus, students are continuing to receive social ascensions without fulfilling the criteria needed to reach the next grade or graduation. This is the reason why 66 percent of new Community College of Rhode Island students require remedial courses.

Second, and equally challenging, are the tremendous amount of students classified with costly “individual education programs.” This part of the equation is related to the influx of government-dependent families, which foster more children in need. How a governor can reverse migrations of government-dependent people into the state is a mystery.

However, the governor in tandem with educational leaders in the administration might be able to negotiate with the teachers union to set some sort of reasonable testing standards.

Additionally, a lengthening of the school day or an elongating of the school year would help student achievement considerably. The question of course is, would the teachers be willing to give a little more of themselves for the overall good of Rhode Island’s students?

Certainly, cutting the cost of government for the taxpayer can be best achieved by regionalization, consolidation, streamlining and privatization. None of those sea changes can occur without the cooperation of unions or the diminishment of their stranglehold on the state. The General Assembly is constitutionally the only entity that can break the cycle of unionism and the extraordinary costs involved with the continuance of this strange aristocracy.

Furthermore, since the legislature has been long swayed by special interests and has been jam packed with unionists, the likelihood of significant dynamic change initiated by the governor is small.

Just imagine public sector employees as “employees at will” who are accountable to the taxpayer. Most simplistically, the following equation is irrefutable. For every financial gain by a public sector union, the taxpayer has lost. After eight decades of ever increasing public sector costs, the state has reached critical mass. To levy more taxes will cause an implosion.

During this speech, Raimondo floated the trial balloon of raising the sales tax to 8.3 percent in 2016 and 8.8 percent in 2017 to meet budget shortfalls and escalating costs. She brought this idea forward for what she called “illustrative purposes.” In reality, she was testing a reaction. To present this as a solution is counterintuitive, to commerce and a healthy economy. To escalate the sales tax will not only further reduce our ability to compete with neighboring states, but could finally result in the aforementioned thermonuclear financial disaster.

What ails Rhode Island is conspicuous and has always been. The governor should have long been aware of our perilous circumstances. What remains befuddling is that the remedies for the Ocean State’s woes are known yet difficult to implement. Sadly, we all are stricken with the same disease, although the known cure is beyond our reach.

The American Legislative Exchange, an economic think tank, in their “Rich States, Poor States” 2014 report calculated that our state is 47th in economic performance, has the seventh-highest per capita taxation, and is 45th in future economic outlook. The report reveals what our governor has stated in an ulterior fashion. Our government is poorly run, union saturated, bloated and duplicative in costs. Our public sector employees are generously paid comparatively, but the yield to the taxpayer is below par. Whether our governor, Gina Raimondo, can effectuate any positive change is questionable. However, our state of affairs is not “alarming” to anyone, but it is “scary.”

If we continue doing the same thing, that classic adage about the meaning of insanity will prove true. We will be a bankrupt, decaying, overburdened, and hapless state.

Indeed we will not be a rose garden, but forever an overgrown lot of weeds, with no promise to anyone at all!

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here