The State of the State Address is poorly named. Most Rhode Islanders know the state of their State: unemployment steady at 10.8 percent; Central Falls in financial ruin; infrastructure in dire need of repair; property taxes at a nearly unbearable rate; foreclosures in abundance; and a projected budget deficit of $120 million.

What the State of the State Address should be called is “How On Earth Do We Improve the State of the State … Address.” Constituents do not hang in wait to hear more about the small steps of progress we’ve made to a seemingly more unattainable goal. What people are listening for are answers, plans and guidance.

In Tuesday’s State of the State, listeners got an earful of Charles Dickens’ quotes. They also got to review the “ABC’s” of economic revival, which included “assets, budget and corruption” – with an extra “c” for “civility.” The governor also peppered his speech with quasi-catch-phrases like “Meds and Eds” to describe Providence’s asset of Brown University and its Ivy League medical school. It was reminiscent of a lesson plan that doesn’t teach much of anything.

Chafee’s speech briefly touched upon his budget proposal, but didn’t explore the numbers or details in his $88 million in proposed tax hikes and $44 million in spending cuts.

The address failed to provide the listener with a sense of hope. Instead, it instilled in many a sense of dread.

How, in a time of economic recession, with a joblessness rate that far exceeds our New England neighbors, can we hike taxes? How, when so many people are in need of human services, can we slash their funding?

We’ve gotten ourselves into a bind.

The answers to the dire questions about job creation and economic revival may not be clear to the layperson, but we should be able to count on our elected leaders to figure it out.

The State of the State Address shouldn’t be a time when Dickens’ melodramatic words about the French Revolution make a comeback. It shouldn’t be a lesson on our ABC’s. Somehow, those things make the issues at hand seem less important. The adolescent references make the approach to the State’s problems seem just that – juvenile.

Perhaps it’s not the speech itself, but the overall idea of the State of the State that’s misguided. People want forward, proactive thought, not a scripted summary of the past. And if we’re looking toward the future, maybe we should leave the dusty 19th century literature on the shelf.