Dr. Downtown, David Brussat: Off the Bureaucracy!

Monday, December 15, 2014

David Brussat, GoLocalProv Dr. Downtown

 

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Gearing up for RhodeMap RI, courtesy of twitter.com

The State Planning Council approved RhodeMap RI unanimously last week, no surprise since no agency likes to admit its fecklessness. So let me admit it for them. Last week I wrote that instead of trying the same failed economic strategy again and again, Rhode Island should try something different: It should reduce taxes and regulations, not by cutting budgets but by cutting entire agencies. 

A good place to start, I wrote, would be the State Planning Council. But first let’s set down some markers. In 1984, when I first arrived in Rhode Island, the state budget was $1.2 billion. Today it is $8.7 billion. The state is not seven times better off than it was 30 years ago, even adjusting for inflation ($1 in 1984 is now worth $2.29). It may take more on its shoulders than it did three decades ago, but the economic strength of Rhode Island and its quality of life are not commensurately improved. Instead, the expansion of state government here has multiplied the cost and difficulty of creating private jobs here.

Go back in history and you’ll find that without an economic plan or an agency to create one, the state still led not just the nation but the world in a host of important industries. In 1900, the capital city’s income per capita was the highest in the nation.

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Providence Planning Department, courtesy of Flickr.com

ThoughtExperiment RI

This analysis is, shall we say, incomplete. So let us try a thought experiment. Instead of adding yet more layers to Rhode Island’s economic bureaucracy as the General Assembly did last year, and as would continue if the newly adopted RhodeMap were implemented in coming years … imagine there were no State Planning Council.

Poof! It’s gone!

Let’s be holistic here and assume that laws passed years ago to establish the council and carry out its duties are also history, along with the municipal agencies, programs and functions ordained by the council and its predecessors. The layers of bureaucracy that have mediated with ever greater complexity and inefficiency between the law and the citizen at every level of jurisdiction would be gone. We’d be back to square one – the same square from which began the thought experiment that is Rhode Island.

The laws would be simpler because legislators would be closer to the people and the aspirations of lawmakers would not be complicated by the aspirations of bureaucrats. The cost of creating jobs here and indeed the cost of living here would be diminished by the vast expense of the bureaucracy. A simplified political and regulatory landscape would simplify the legal landscape. Equity under the law would return to the domain of police and the courts.

A thought experiment is not meant to be carried out literally. Yet, much as Delaware’s simplified corporate environment has had business beating a trail to its door for decades, Gov.-elect Gina Raimondo deserves at least one untried economic strategy on her plate for her economic summit of “thought leaders” tomorrow. I correct myself : The “untried” strategy was tried, and succeeded – so many years ago that its underlying principles are new and unfamiliar to us in our current plight. If Rhode Island were actually to carry out this thought experiment, the media would look down their nose at us but the world would beat a path to our door. It would not be a race to the bottom but a race to the top.

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NetworkRI office in Providence, photo by David Brussat

In the Coils of EmployRI

Last Thursday, Dr. Downtown sent his fake mustache out to post its résumé online through EmployRI, a service of the Department of Labor and Training. A recipient of unemployment insurance in Rhode Island is required to accomplish this before the sixth check arrives in the mail. Without necessarily accusing the bureaucracy that ameliorates joblessness here of meriting inclusion in the above experimental thinking, the experience was eye-popping. This is how the process unfolds:

  • Begin by specifying where you are willing to work. The option of “relocating out of state” appears, but click it and it disappears. So you must click to indicate that your job search will be limited to Rhode Island or one of its counties.
  • Next, click on the type of job you seek. Hundreds are listed in alphabetical order, with spaces for yellow dots, red dots or green dots: “Bright Outlook Statewide,” “Bright Outlook Nationally” and “Green Occupation.” There was a fair share of red and green dots but only one yellow dot that appeared after scrolling through the entire alphabet of job types. It came early – accountant - first under “A”.
  • Select only one of these job types for your résumé. If you are willing to take more than one type of job, you must file another online résumé for each. 

Hmm. The doctor’s fake mustache reports that by the time he left the impressive building at 1 Reservoir Ave., he was unimpressed.

Blackstone to the Battlements

Tomorrow the City Plan Commission will continue its hearing on the subdivision of the Granoff estate on Blackstone Boulevard. If the same crowd of neighbors worried about the plan shows up, the fireworks could be phenomenal. It will be the first item on the agenda at 4:45 tomorrow at 444 Westminster Street. To the battlements, Blackstones!

 

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