Whitcomb: Regional, Not Municipal; Speed Bumps, not Cameras; ‘Affordable Housing’ Paradox; Pumas

Monday, May 07, 2018

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

Robert Whitcomb, columnist

The time that hints the coming leaf,
When buds are dropping chaff and scale,
And, wafted from the greening vale,
Are pungent odors, keen as grief.

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--“Early May,’’ by John Burroughs

The leaves explode on a day when it hits 80 for the first time in spring.

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Scituate Reservoir

Providence should sell or lease the Providence Water Supply Board, assuming that the city has the legal right to do so. It would presumably get hundreds of millions of dollars with which to properly fund a municipal pension fund that’s woefully underfunded because of outrageous giveaways to city workers by the outstandingly corrupt late Mayor Vincent Cianci. Republicans are, of course, blaming current Mayor Jorge Elorza for problems created by “Buddy” Cianci.

A sale of the water utility could put Providence on its most stable financial footing in decades. That would be good for all Rhode Islanders. After all, the place is something of a city-state. Of course, we’d need assurances that water ratepayers would not be stuck with big increases in the process.

The fact is that the Water Supply Board supplies 60 percent of Rhode Island’s population, mostly from the Scituate Reservoir. It’s really a regional utility.

The big idea now is to sell or lease it to the Narragansett Bay Commission, which makes sense. The NBC, like the Water Supply Board, is in the pipe business. It has many of the same engineering concerns as does the Water Supply Board. Indeed, other regional water agencies in the state should eventually be wrapped into such a statewide authority to reduce duplication and cuts costs in such a tiny jurisdiction, which has too many agencies, which slows decision-making and raises the cost of doing business.

For example, the powers of the Coastal Resources Management Council should be transferred to the Department of Environmental Management. And the state should cut, not add to, its list of licensing entities. An example of unneeded regulation and licensing is a bill in the General Assembly that would mandate licensing pet groomers, with annual licensing fees, of course.

To save money and increase efficiency, Rhode Island needs more regionalization and fewer layers of approval. Regulation must be rigorous but it should be clearly understood, expeditious and streamlined.

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Providence's traffic cameras

I have no problem with those speed-measurement cameras, and the fines that they spawn, that seem to outrage so many people. Why is it so irritating to have to obey laws meant to prevent deaths and injuries? So what if so many people are going dangerously over the speed limit (often while texting)? But a new friend of mine suggests that a better approach is not cameras but more speed bumps, in speeding-prone areas, especially near schools. But, he suggests, have the bumps not go the full width of the road, so that wide-bodied fire trucks can negotiate them smoothly.

For an example of what he’s talking about, check out the road behind the big, 24-hour post office in Providence. It has a couple of the special speed bumps I’m referring to, presumably to let postal trucks, as well as fire trucks, drive down the street smoothly.

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“Affordable housing,’’ a vague term, is an increasing problem in many parts of New England. But do “affordable housing’’ mandates make things worse? That’s the argument of Steve Wintermeier, a Boston financial consultant, in a recent article in The Boston Guardian.

Among Mr. Wintermeier’s remarks:

“Affordable housing for the middle class is a worthy goal,

but ironically, affordable housing policies themselves are a

reason that Boston real estate is so expensive. Developers do

not make money on the affordable housing units the city

requires them to build, and in fact may even lose money on

these units. Those losses must be made up on the market rate

units they sell or rent. Consider a 100-unit condo project

that costs $50 million to build and needs to demonstrate a

$5 million profit to obtain bank funding. You should be able

to sell each unit for $550,000. If you add a cost of $10

million to build the required affordable housing, now you

need to charge tens of thousands of dollars more per market

unit to meet your cost and financing obligations. Without

demand for the market-rate units at a premium over what

they should otherwise cost, that project just does not get

built. And yet we continue to elect politicians that argue for

lowering the cost of housing by increasing affordable housing requirements,

which of course makes Boston’s housing even

less affordable and exacerbates our housing shortage.

“The final sacred cow is the residential exemption that

grants property tax discounts to those that own and live in

their homes. The ‘exemption’ does not lower the amount

of taxes the city collects.

The taxes not paid by homeowners

simply get shifted primarily to landlords, driving up the cost

of renting apartments in the city. Even worse, if someone is

purchasing a home on, for example, a budget of $2,500 per

month, they cannot put that {tax} discount in their pocket when

they buy the home. They must use that discount to bid up

the price of the home, which usually means a bigger

mortgage and requires a bigger down payment. If they do not, the

next person will take that discount, bid higher and buy the

home. Without getting into the arcane mathematics of this

‘benefit,’ this likely drives up prices of lower-priced homes

more, disproportionately harming those who can least afford

it.’’

The pesky law of unintended consequences.

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DOT pushing forward

Providence officials want to use automated vehicle technology to connect downtown to the Woonasquatucket River Corridor, which includes the arts and entrepreneurial center in the Olneyville neighborhood. The Rhode Island Department of Transportation will soon begin looking for vendors.

This involves self-driving technology being used by 45 cities around the world. (Cambridge, Mass., will soon start autonomous vehicle testing.) The technology encompasses applications that range from automated taxis to trains. Many people are very anxious about getting into self-driving vehicles, and there have been accidents. Still, computers and machines are much safer operators than people.

I prefer a trolley-on-rails service with wait times of no more than 10 minutes. Obviously, the more frequent the service, the more customers -- a virtuous circle.

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The former Newport Grand

The Carpionato Group, a big and sometimes controversial developer, has closed on its about $10.2 million purchase of the 23.5-acre Newport Grand property from Twin River, LLC. The gambling (please don’t call it “gaming”) operation will be moved to a new site in soon-to-be-less-bucolic Tiverton expected to open later this year

Here’s an opportunity to beautify a gateway to a storied Newport that has long been defaced by the hideous, sterile Newport Grand building. The site, at 150 Admiral Kalbfus Road, is, unfortunately, visible to people arriving in the City by the Sea as they exit the Pell Bridge. Tear the whole thing down! And plant lots of trees.

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I confess that I sort of like the latest, squiggly “organic’’ version of the 46-story residential/ retail skyscraper proposed for downtown Providence. I’d like it to be even taller. But I ’d also like to know more about the building materials that would be used – how well would they age? -- and the building’s energy efficiency.

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Jason Fane's proposed tower

The review process for the project grinds on, all too slowly, in another demonstration of how difficult it is to get projects done in Rhode Island despite (or is it because?) of the minuscule size of the state. Jason Fane, the New York developer leading the project, told GoLocal that the cost of the project is between “$250 million and $300 million,” up from around $150 million because of review delays.

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Mountain lions (aka pumas and cougars) co-existing with us in densely populated parts of the Northeast? Wildlife expert Bill Betty, who lives in Rhode Island, sees that as a possibility. After all, sightings of the big, beautiful cats have been increasing in New England. They seem to be well established in nearby Quebec and New Brunswick.

These smart, highly opportunistic animals have adapted to life in such densely populated places as coastal Southern California. Heavily wooded New England, with its large number of whitetail deer, could be next. Decades ago coyotes moved into and prospered in New England, dining on the expanding deer population, garbage left by people, small wild animals and domesticated cats (of which there are far too many) and small dogs. Mountain lions may end up reducing the coyote population as well as the number of deer unless a few horror stories of attacks on people lead to efforts to eradicate them.

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North Korea’s peace offensive is nothing new. The Kim family’s brutal Communist dictatorship has from time to time offered concessions (which turned out to be empty) and gotten bribes from South Korea and other nations to behave itself, all the while continuing to build up its nuclear and missile capabilities. Like most dictatorships, it will not keep its word about anything important.

The regime may well let outside observers/inspectors tour what has been its main nuclear-bomb testing facility, which might no longer be useable anyway because of damage from the explosions, while expanding nuclear-weapons and missile operations elsewhere.

What Kim Jong Un primarily seeks from Trump is the exit of U.S. forces from South Korea and the end of our security guarantee for the South; he’ll very cleverly try to manipulate Trump to get it.

Back in 2000, a glorious lovefest took place between then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, in which there were euphoric declarations of “reconciliation and cooperation.’’ From 1998 to 2008, the South gave the northern tyranny $8 billion in economic aid, which didn’t include an offer of a $500 million bribe to Kim Jong Il.

This largesse gave North Korea (or, rather, the dictatorship, which doesn’t share much with its often starved subjects) resources with which to reinforce its police state kleptocracy and boost its ability to threaten South Korea, Japan, and the United States, with the ultimate aim of controlling the whole peninsula.

Kim Jong Un has found a perfect sucker in the ignorant-of-history, narcissistic and desperate-for-a-PR victory Donald Trump, who would love to proclaim that he has defanged North Korea. But Kim is a tougher con man than even Donald Trump.

It’s amusing that Trump is so eager to do a deal with North Korea, which breaks virtually all its promises, while denouncing the multinational Iran nuclear deal, which has so far worked pretty well and involves a regime that, while awful, is far less so than Kim’s.

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President Donald Trump

As an attendee of several annual Gridiron Club dinners (white tie and tails), where members of the media yuk it up with Washington’s political, lobbying and other leaders, I’ve come to believe we’d all be better off without such collaborations, especially involving a regime that has little respect for the First Amendment or of many of the basic decencies of daily life, including truthfulness.

Consider the White House Correspondents Association dinner on April 28, at which comedian Michelle Wolf lambasted the outstandingly corrupt Trump administration, and was in turn denounced by Trump and his followers. But her insults were milder than what we frequently hear from Trump (especially in his early-morning tweets) and his minions, who, like him, spice their insults with innumerable lies.

Still, it’s better, at least for the country, not to get down into the sewer of the Trump White House. As David Frum wrote in The Atlantic:

“As Donald Trump is cruel, vengeful, egoistic, ignorant, lazy, avaricious, and treacherous, so we must be kind, forgiving, responsible, informed, hardworking, generous, and patriotic. As Trump’s enablers are careless, cynical, shortsighted, morally obtuse, and rancorous, so Trump’s opponents must be thoughtful, idealistic, wise, morally sensitive, and conciliatory.’’ Well, to a point….

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Justice Department

With the announcement that Amazon will hire at least 2,000 more people for its Boston operations – and maybe 50,000 more there if it chooses the city for its “Second Headquarters’’ – it’s nice to know that the online mega-retailer has been talking with people in candidate cities about affordable housing and traffic/transit issues that would be raised by so many new people.

In the case of Boston, have the city and company discussed, for example, Amazon helping to pay for the additional MBTA service needed if the company builds the Second Headquarters there, and helping to finance a lot of new housing to limit the rise in living costs in what is one of America’s most expensive places? Considering the huge tax incentives offered in order to lure the company, those questions are fair.

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The long decline in federal antitrust enforcement has played a part in low wage growth in the past few decades. With less competition, current and potential workers have less bargaining power. A few huge companies, with vast pricing power, can keep down or out new competitors, even if the latter have superior goods and services – or buy the companies to eliminate rivals. The rise of monopolies because of weak antitrust enforcement also explains some of the slowdown in technological advances in the past few decades: New small businesses tend to be the big innovators.

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos

The oligopolies Google and Facebook have done particularly well.

Sometimes, however, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division awakes briefly from its torpor and reminds us of a time when the Feds took restraint of trade seriously. For example, it has been probing AT&T and Verizon on the suspicion that the two companies have colluded to suppress a technology that could make it easier to switch wireless carriers.

But the Trump regime is in charge, and Donald Trump doesn’t like AT&T: The company is trying to buy Time Warner, which owns CNN, which Trump hates. So who knows what the federal probe really means.

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The decline of academia:

“All candidates applying for faculty appointments at UC {University of California at} San Diego are required to submit a personal statement on their contributions to diversity. The purpose of the statement is to identify candidates who have the professional skills, experience, and/or willingness to engage in activities that will advance our campus diversity and equity goals.

“Departments and search committees should consider a candidate’s statement as part of a comprehensive and transparent evaluation of their qualifications.’’

I guess that scholarly achievement and teaching ability must vie with diversity-quota demands. Not necessarily good news for scholarship or for the students.

Stephen Bainbridge, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, quipped in a blog post:

“I expect a detailed discussion of how one has tried to promote diversity within the academy by resisting the left-liberal hegemony would not be acceptable.’’

To read more, please hit this link:

And on the right, here’s yet another example of the Koch Brothers leveraging their fortunes to promote public policies that further enrich themselves via more tax cuts and less regulation: George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va., has ordered a probe into, among other things, past donations by the Charles Koch Foundation to the school, which have included Koch recommendations on which faculty members it should hire with money from the right-wing foundation, which operates as an arm of the Republican Party. The probe was started after a freedom-of-information request that turned up what the university’s president, Angel Cabrera, called “problematic gift agreements.’’

It’s been hard for George Mason to resist the bribes to the school, which has national influence in part because it’s just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. After all, the Kochs gave $48 million to George Mason from 2011 to 2014 and in 2016 another $10 million to rename its law school after the late (and brilliant) U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s most “conservative’’ member.

Of course, these are all tax-deductible gifts, which means that all income-tax payers are subsidizing them.

The Kochs have long been doing this sort of thing around America – for business reasons. To read more, please hit this link:

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Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg says that he’s all for professional journalism but that Facebook won’t pay publishers for the journalistic content that the social-media behemoth has long used for free to draw “friends” and thus ad revenue.

The impressively avaricious CEO, a prince of our current Gilded Age, won’t do what the cable TV providers do and pay annual fees for content. Zuckerberg has done a great deal of damage to American civic culture by grabbing so much of the ad revenue that supports serious journalism, by having his company act as a platform for Russian and other fake news and by profiting by using algorithms that favor hate and misinformation.

Why stop now?

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The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, by Jana Jasanoff, is a brilliant mix of biography, history and literary analysis of the great writer’s (1857-1924) work, which includes such masterpieces as Nostromo, Lord Jim and The Heart of Darkness. Conrad, a Pole, whose third language was English (!), wrote vividly about such forces as mass migration, sometimes rapacious international capitalism, European colonialism at its high tide, nationalism, racism, terrorism and transportation and communications revolutions that can both unite and divide people. Informing much of his work is the sense of the fragility of civilization, the proximity of barbarism and the inscrutability of the universe. He diagnosed a lot of what we live with today.

The most famous quote from Conrad? “The horror! The horror!’’ from Heart of Darkness.

Whitcomb: Regional, Not Municipal; Speed Bumps, not Cameras; ‘Affordable Housing’ Paradox; Pumas

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Whitcomb: Regional, Not Municipal; Speed Bumps, not Cameras; ‘Affordable Housing’ Paradox; Pumas

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