Congratulations to the winners in last week’s election. Unfortunately for Rhode Islanders the ticket leading our state will have to deal with fundamental fragility of Providence whether they are Mayor, Governor or Treasurer. Tragically 2014 was a wasted year as amazingly the RI electorate and media could not focus on the unstable nature of our State economy and the virtually assured bankruptcy of our capital City. Mayor Elorza most assuredly will find the pension plan is in complete chaos as Taveras lied about $57 million in assets to retirees and understated liabilities by $1.5 billion dollars. Elorza will need to recognize that lie and explain that to bondholders in order to avoid charges of misleading by the SEC. The Mayor will also need to bone up on investments and his role as chair the Investment Commission.He clearly cannot rely on City Treasurer Lombardi, Mancini or even Mayor Taveras for guidance. The first item should be transparent and ethical by finally putting out an “RFP” for replacement of the investment adviser, Wainwright Investment Counsel LLC . This adviser was originally hired by Buddy Cianci in 1995. You know, the same Buddy Cianci of long ago that Elorza declared in his campaign, was operating a criminal enterprise run by” Buddy’s boys”. Well one of Buddy’s boys is still there and picking investments retirees will depend on, including Hedge fund Renaissance.
This is Providence’s Problem
Governor Raimondo can no longer avoid discussing the fate of cities and towns and should keep a very close eye on teetering Providence. Raimondo famously threw the Cities and Towns pension Crisis under the bus declaring it “too hard”. Leadership from the Governor could go a long way in easing growing concerns that the state and state taxpayers will bail out Providence’s legacy pension debt using State Taxpayer dollars. I am certain that State taxpayers will not take lightly any state taxpayer financed bailout of Providence. This predicament ironically presents a golden opportunity for East Side Progressives under the Guidance and leadership of Mayor Elorza, Governor Raimondo and Treasurer Magaziner to stand behind their progressive principles and do what’s right and put their money where their mouth is. They have all espoused strong progressive leanings and fiscal integrity. The Providence Pension Liability will be calculated at over $2 billion plus the $1.2 billion in OPEB liabilities soon by Moody’s. Existing Providence residents have already received benefits of city services over the last few decades, yet expect future generations or other Rhode Island residents to pay for it. The legacy cost of not properly funding for pension costs should be paid for by Providence Citizens and only Providence citizens. The burden suggests, and history confirms, that Brown, PC and the hospitals will not be coming up with “PILOT’s” totaling the $3.3 billion necessary to restore equilibrium. Yet, without that $3.3 billion Providence will still be underfunded. Who should pay? We need Governor Raimondo to make clear to all voters that this is not Westerly’s debt, or Central Fall’s or Woonsocket’s, it is Providence debt alone and as such requires a Providence solution.
Treasurer Magaziner has said he will focus on the pension issue and obviously he will be forced to deal with the Providence nightmare. If he does not focus on Providence he will have let down everyone in Rhode Island. He too should declare clearly that the state taxpayer will not bailout Providence Public workers.
Let’s use Progressive ideas to pay for Progressive problems
Recent Bankruptcies have proven that public employees can have their “contracts “ altered and are not immune but the changes to public worker contracts in Detroit and Stockton were very minor. The bond holders and unsecured Creditors were almost wiped out in Detroit. Stepping up to pay off debt in Detroit were several foundations across the State. Should Rhode Island Foundation plan to contribute between $50 and $100 million within a few years? Maybe so and given that Providence has very little to sell (example Water), and that the Assembly in 2011 passed a law that protects bondholders over workers. There are only two places to go for revenues. The two sources for revenue are municipal taxpayers or state taxpayers in a bail out. May I suggest several alternative ideas that have been floated over the past few years by Providence and Rhode Island Progressives? First, they can impose a Wealth Tax on the Providence “well to do." Senator Whitehouse wants that policy nationwide.
How much Pension debt needs to be Paid?
Providence taxpayers will need to come up with $ 3.3 billion just to properly fund the pension completely, and ignoring all other services in the city. A Providence “wealth tax” would be structured over ten years or less and entirely devoted to paying down pension debt. This works out to $55,234 per household if we included all 61,556 households but no one imagines taxing the poor and the renters. So the cost will be properly focused on the 1% so demonized by the progressives. Except in Providence they are one and the same.
Progressives can’t expect the poor to pay?
Assuming Progressive’s taxing the poor is out of the question, we need to focus on the rich. Rather than every household confining the wealth tax to the top 1% of Providence Households in terms of either earnings or net worth this works out to be $5.5 million per the elite household. In addition Progressives should also add a real estate surcharge of 25% on any home currently valued at more than $750,000 with proceeds going to pay down those services already performed for those citizens and to help “lower value” homeowners reduce their tax burden. What better place than Providence, who severely needs the money, to impose Sheldon Whitehouse’s attempted legislation of an extra tax over $1 million in income? Providence can be our Senators’ and RI leaderships shining experiment. No one else in the state can or should pay for Providence malfeasance and years of lying and misleading the public. Who better to pay than those who voted for the leaders who mismanaged the city and finances?
We all believe it’s time for Providence to have a resurgence. A real commitment by East Siders to stand up and fund the promises that they voted for is not only appropriate, but it would also show us skeptics that Progressives are willing to pay for their policies.
Michael G. Riley is vice chair at Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, and is managing member and founder of Coastal Management Group, LLC. Riley has 35 years of experience in the financial industry, having managed divisions of PaineWebber, LETCO, and TD Securities (TD Bank). He has been quoted in Barron’s, Wall Street Transcript, NY Post, and various other print media and also appeared on NBC news, Yahoo TV, and CNBC.
Related Slideshow: Surprise Winners and Losers for 2014 Election
The 2014 Election cycle proved to be one of the most exciting and expensive - take a look at the winners and losers.
Raimondo is the perfect candidate. Local girl, brilliant education and success in the private sector. Next up, she was elected General Treasurer in 2010 and made history and caused a major uproar with the most powerful unions by leading the charge for pension reform.
In the Democratic primary, Raimondo raised a tremendous war chest and caught a big break when Bob Walsh, RI National Education Association's boss, and other union officials put Clay Pell up to beat Raimondo and it had the opposite effect. It split the anti-Raimondo vote between Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and Pell.
Now, Raimondo has made Rhode Island history. Where Betty Leonard and Myrth York failed, Raimondo has smashed the glass ceiling.
It was a beat down. A throw in the towel. A Brady vs Manning moment.
Despite 80% of Rhode Islanders believing that the state is on the "wrong track" - Rhode Islanders gave the Democratic Party a series of sweeping victories.
All four members of the Congressional Delegation are Democrats - three returned by more than 20% margin Tuesday night. All five members of the General Officers are now Democrats. The Providence Mayor is a Democrat with the election of Jorge Elorza and the GOP barely made an impact on the Democrats overwhelming control on the General Assembly.
How bad was it for the GOP? Fung only received 36% of the vote, Taylor only 33% in her effort for Lt. Governor, John Carlevale who barely ran a campaign scored 39% of the popular vote and Hodgson only captured 43% of the vote for AG. The GOP did not run a candidate for General Treasurer.
He never had run for office before. He started the effort with zero name recognition. He fought his way through a crowded Democratic primary and ultimately defeated one of America’s most celebrated and infamous politicians - Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, Jr.
Elorza is now faced with a city with tremendous challenges and the need for on the job training at record speed.
He ran nearly flawless campaigns in the primary and the general - now the hard part - he has to govern.
Elorza's victory by 3375 votes was fueled by an overwhelming advantage on the East Side, where he tallied 4758 more votes than the former mayor - Cianci - out of 9263 total votes, a remarkable advantage of 52.4%.
His 74.7% to 22.3% East Side advantage bested huge pluralities there in previous elections. Elorza actually bettered his East Side advantage he garnered against Michael Solomon there in his September Democratic primary victory, 68.25% to 25.6%. The East Side, which started Buddy Cianci's political career by supporting him in his initial mayoral run in 1974, has probably ended it with this overwhelming rejection of his candidacy.
Imagine this: a multi-timed failed candidate who raises no money and he organizes no campaign, yet he wins 22% of the vote. The winner, Gina Raimondo only won only 40% of the total vote. Imagine if he tried.
Healey may have been the skunk at the picnic for Fung as the combined Fung and Healey vote received 58% of the vote. Raimondo's 40% popular vote is just a tad higher than what Chafee won with in 2010.
Dan McKee has been the champion of education reform. He has looked the most powerful union - NEARI - squarely in the eyes and not blinked. While the unions went all in to beat him in the primary he split the three-way and won.
Then, in the General Election, the unions threw their support at Catherine Taylor, a Republican and he defeated her soundly (54% to 33%). Now, McKee can push a focused education reform agenda in 2015 through the General Assembly.
Now, neither the Governor nor the Lt. Governor owe anything to the public sector education unions.
The former Mayor and Ambassador to Malta had another bad election day. Paolino not only lost on the ballot question in Newport that would have made his investment group’s purchase of Newport Grand a reality, but Paolino also saw former mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci lose his comeback bid to regain Providence’s top job.
Paolino’s group promised to invest millions into the Newport Grand facility and produced a plan that would have saved the jobs at the facility that are now in jeopardy, and would have also added at least $1 million per year into Newport’s municipal coffers. But voters, many of which were fatigued from having been asked to approve table games at Newport Grand just two years prior, rejected the measure. Scores of Newport residents have long resented the facility being located in their backyard and won’t shed much of a tear if the facility were to shut down.
Paolino and Cianci started off as political rivals, but have developed a close friendship over the last 10-15 years beginning when Cianci ran into trouble with the federal government. To a large extent, it was Paolino who convinced and lobbied Cianci to throw his hat into the mayoral ring this year.
These losses add to a painful run of elections for Paolino over the span of the last 3 decades. Paolino’s last electoral victory was in 1986, when he was reelected Mayor of Providence. Since then, he ran for Governor in 1990, but was defeated by former Governor Bruce Sundlun. In 2002, he ran for Mayor of Providence as an independent, but was defeated by David Cicilline. He flirted with running for Mayor in 2010, but decided against it.
Make no mistake about it: with these two losses, this election cycle was another loss for Paolino.
When Moderate Party founder Ken Block envisioned the entity, he saw it as a mechanism to reform Rhode Island’s government. Four years later, Block will be the first to admit that his goal has been an unmitigated and dismal failure. If anything, his dream has turned into a nightmare.
In 2010, it’s almost a certainty that Ken Block’s candidacy as the Moderate Party Candidate doomed Republican John Robitaille’s chances to become Governor. Both Block and Robitaille were running on reform agendas.
This year, Robert Healey, as the Moderate Party’s standard bearer, won more than 22 percent of the vote this year—effectively giving the Governor’s office to Gina Raimondo. That means, in two consecutive gubernatorial elections, the moderate party has effectively stopped the Republican Party, which aims to reform state government, from winning the election.
Going forward, reform-minded citizens in Rhode Island need to gather together around one party with one standard-bearer if they’re going to enact the reforms they believe will improve the state.
The Constitutional Convention was promoted by good government advocates as a method for the state to enact good government reforms that could fundamentally change the way Rhode Island ‘s government functions.
A Constitutional Convention would have been convened after a special election was held in each of the state’s 75 representative districts. Each district would select one individual to represent the portion of the population at the convention. The representatives would then have recommended changes to the constitution, which would have then become questions before the voters. If the voters approved the changes, the constitution would have been amended.
The advocates argued that the convention could have been a good mechanism to reform government by giving the governor’s office more power in the form of a line-item veto. The Convention would have also been a mechanism to implement term limits on state legislators as well as an opportunity to implement ethics reform that would have held state legislators to the same ethical standards as every other statewide and local office holder.
Opponents claimed that the Convention could have have been easily hijacked by outside special interest groups that could have used the Convention to limit individual freedoms such as women’s and minority rights.
In the end, the opponents won out, but it remains unclear if the ballot question failed due to voter opposition to the matter or simple confusion. If voters did not really understand what was really at stake with respect to a Convention, they may very well have simply rejected it offhand.
It’s a fair question to ask what circumstances it would take for the Rhode Island Republican Party to make any gains in the state of Rhode Island.
In a year that represented a Republican wave nationally, in which the Republicans took control of the United States Senate, and the increased its margin in the House of Representatives, the Rhode Island GOP failed to win any statewide seats, and also failed to make significant gains in the state legislature.
Unfortunately for the GOP, many analysts believed the 2014 election cycle held significant promise for the GOP both the top of the ticket as well as the in the legislature. Neither became a reality for the Republicans.
As much as good government folks say that the state government should have a functioning two party system, it’s difficult to see when and how that dream could actually become a reality at this point given this year’s electoral disappointment.
Despite the fact that the Democratic Party scored huge victories, the 2014 elections will go down as a painful election cycle for the Rhode Island National Education Association.
That’s because the two state top state office holders, Governor-elect Gina Raimondo and Lieutenant Governor-elect Daniel McKee are both known as a pension reformer and an education reformer/charter school advocate respectively. Those two positions are probably the two biggest affronts to the NEA’s statewide agenda. Pension reform, spearheaded by Raimondo, saw pension benefits for current and even retired teachers slashed. Charter schools, and the education reform they represent, will likely decrease NEA’s ranks because charter school teachers are typically not unionized.
To a large extent, the NEA shot itself in the foot this election cycle by overplaying its hand. In the Democratic Primary, the NEA refused to back Providence Mayor Angel Taveras because he supported charter schools. They then recruited Clay Pell, the grandson of former Senator Claiborne Pell to run in the Democratic Primary. Pell split the public sector union vote with Taveras and gave Raimondo the opening she needed to prevail in the election.
After weeks of deliberation following the Democratic Primary, the NEA decided to back Raimondo in the Governor’s race, but astute political observers knew the endorsement was, at best, half-hearted. Cranston Mayor Allan Fung had already said he wanted to see Rhode Island become a “right to work” state, meaning union members wouldn’t be forced to join a union of they didn’t so choose. That left the union with little choice but to begrudgingly back Raimondo.
The NEA however passed on endorsing McKee, instead backing Republican Catherine Taylor for Lieutenant Governor. Taylor lost the election by a stunning margin of almost 20 percent. That question will likely have political observers wondering if the NEA’s clout has diminished.
