Question of the Week: Will Rhode Island ever be able to leverage its small size to get better public transit? Thanks for stopping by for my weekly column. As usual, your tips and comments are welcome, and you can follow me through the week on the twitters. Here we go.
1) RIPTA talks up the benefits of an improved statewide public transit system in a report outlining potential options over the next 20 years. But it often seems that transit in Little Rhody is held back by a chicken and egg problem: RIPTA needs a more reliable funding stream to expand its offerings, since gas tax revenues are slumping. Meanwhile, the absence of more robust public transit makes it more difficult to attract the additional residents and businesses that would help support such services. RIPTA CEO Scott Avedisian acknowledges the challenges of moving ahead in our car-dependent culture. “Obviously, when parking is readily available, it’s very difficult to get someone to decide that they’re going to take the bus,” Avedisian said on Political Roundtable this week. But he contends the critical mass is shifting in support of public transit. Avedisian points in part to plans for a pilot transit program for state Department of Education workers, after they relocate from the Shepard Building in downtown Providence to the Department of Administration building on Smith Hill. The RIPTA CEO noted how a downtown transit connector, set to launch in January, is slated to offer bus connections between the Providence train station and Rhode Island Hospital, and six stops in between, every five minutes. Avedisian said RIPTA is set to post a year-over-year increase in ridership, mostly thanks to how a transit pass program at Rhode Island College has sparked more than 4,400 additional trips per week. Finally, he said, an express service from Pawtucket and Providence to Quonset Point has gained steam since launching last January. All in all, Avedisian said, “I think there is a renewed sense of interest in what we can do to move people more effectively and more efficiently.”
2) There are nonetheless no easy answers when it comes to establishing a more reliable funding stream for public transit in Rhode Island. Speaking during Bonus Q&A, Avedisian said a number of other communities have considered a surcharge on ride-sharing. Adding van pools and subtracting buses could be part of the mix, he said, and possibly state bonds to pay for infrastructure.
3) U.S. Rep. David Cicilline was among the House Judiciary Committee members voting Friday in favor of the two articles of impeachment against President Trump. With the nation divided on the issue of impeachment, Cicilline has been among the most outspoken supporters of the issue, drawing a Twitter barb from Trump after appearing recently on Fox News. The GOP-held U.S. Senate is expected to squelch Democrats’ impeachment drive and the political fallout in next year’s presidential race remains uncertain. Republicans call the charges against Trump unproven. During an interview earlier this week, I asked Cicilline what the ultimate impact will be if impeachment remains a party-line issue. His response: “Well, I’d ask the reverse question. If we don’t hold the president accountable, and we allow him to invite or solicit foreign interference in our elections, in an attempt to rig the election in his favor by inviting a foreign power to help him, and we don’t hold him accountable in the House, what will be the consequence? You’ll invite this president to continue to seek out foreign assistance in corrupting our elections and you’ll invite all future presidents who face a tough re-election to reach out to China, or Iran, or the Russians and we will lose our democracy ….”
4) A new Brookings report outlines the challenge of spreading technology jobs beyond Boston and a handful of other tech-rich cities. The report finds that five “superstar” metro areas accounted for 90 percent of innovation-sector growth between 2005 and 2017. “By contrast, 60 of the largest metro areas lost ground, with many seeing quite dramatic shrinkages of their participation in America’s innovation economy,” the study states (page 23). “In this respect, no fewer than 224 out of 382 U.S. metro areas have seen their share of the national innovation sector decline since 2005. What’s more, 191 metro areas actually shed innovation sector jobs during the time period. For instance, absolute local employment in the innovation sector fell by over 20% between 2005 and 2017 in Colorado Springs, Colo., Providence, R.I. [emphasis added], Sacramento, Calif., Albuquerque, N.M., and Wichita, Kan.” Suffice it to say, despite Gov. Gina Raimondo’s attempts to spark more growth in innovation jobs, there’s still a long way to go.
5) Some General Assembly incumbents are reportedly less than happy about how General Treasurer Seth Magaziner turned out for a meeting this week of the RI Democratic Women’s Caucus. The displeasure is based on how the Caucus, which set up shop outside the confines of the RI Democratic Party, has some overlap with the Rhode Island Political Cooperative, the progressive group backing challengers to such incumbents as Senate Majority Leader Michael McCaffrey and Senate Judiciary Chairwoman Erin Lynch Prata, both Warwick Democrats.
6) Speaking of the Co-Op, the group re-opened the conversation about Rhode Island’s income tax by this week proposing a five percentage point hike in the top rate paid by people earning more than $467,700 a year, from 5.9 percent to 10.9 percent. In a statement, the Co-Op said the increase would translate to five cents on every dollar earned above $467,700 – money, they say, that would be well spent on various needs. “Instead of giving the wealthiest people in this state a billion dollar tax break, our leaders should have been fighting for working families – investing in better schools, healthcare, housing, roads and bridges and building the clean energy economy of the future,” said Co-Op Co-Chair Jennifer Rourke. “When RI Political Cooperative candidates are elected, that’s what we’re going to do.” (The group also rallied behind raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, from $10.50, and it unveiled three more candidates: Rep. Moira Walsh of Providence; Lenny Cioe, who is challenging Senate President Dominick Ruggerio; and Ward 2 Central Falls City Council candidate Adamaris Villar.) The proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy jibes with the progressive current backing Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, although it seems unlikely to find favor with Gov. Gina Raimondo or House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, even with the state facing an estimated $200 million deficit for the next fiscal year. (Via Raimondo spokesman Josh Block: “The governor has never proposed an increase in the income tax, and she would not support a near-doubling of the tax rate for this bracket.)
7) The politics of climate change is making for strange bedfellows. Sunrise Providence is pressing the issue in Rhode Island. Time named 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg its person of the year, sparking criticism from President Trump. Meanwhile, College Republicans are calling for the GOP to take action on the issue.
8) Short takes involving Scott Avedisian: he isn’t ruling out a return to politics, but the longtime former Republican mayor of Warwick admits to not thinking about it much – likely because of the difficulty of running as a moderate in a GOP primary …. Avedisian said he has not been contacted by the FBI or others in law enforcement since leaving City Hall, unlike the president of the Warwick City Council. The former mayor said he’s unsure what investigators are focused on, although rumors swirl involving different city agencies .… Avedisian said he expects a high-speed commuter rail to be established between Providence and Boston within the next 10 years, due in part to growing support in Massachusetts. (Meanwhile, train enthusiast Peter Brassard reports separately: “15 AEM-7 electric locomotives are en route from Bear, Delaware to Quonset for long-term storage and possibly lease to MA and/or RI for Providence line commuter rail service. The company that owns the AEM7s is Rail Propulsion Systems (RPS) from Fullerton, CA. The locomotives are former Amtrak equipment that was used for the Regional train service. The locomotives should arrive in Quonset starting [this weekend.”)
9) Via The College Hill Independent: “A flawed system is endangering RI’s homeless”
10) On a related note, activists were encouraged when Gov. Raimondo expressed support a few weeks ago for creating a dedicated funding stream to create more housing in Rhode Island. During a related summit held Wednesday at Rhode Island College, discussion focused on some of the potential next steps. Liz Klinkenberg, communications director for RI’s Local Initiatives Support Corporation, reports that the HomesRI coalition unveiling a framework focused on four priorities. Meanwhile, participants identified two broad needs: creating capital investment to build safe, healthy and affordable homes, with a permanent source of at least $8 million to create gap financing for construction of new units; and pursuing low or no-cost legislative strategies that would have broad impact on housing.
11) Kansas City, Missouri, may become the largest U.S. city to offer free public transit throughout its system. Is that an idea worth pursuing by RIPTA? “I don’t know where we would come up with the money that we get from collections now, especially from a lot of third-party payments,” Scott Avedisian said on Bonus Q&A. “So we would have to do a lot of research as to where that money would come from.”
12) Via CJR: “ ‘US officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it.’ That’s how the Washington Post summarized “The Afghanistan Papers,” a slick package of stories it just published revealing the rot at the heart of America’s longest war. Craig Whitlock, a reporter with the paper, obtained more than 2,000 pages of interviews with more than 400 officials—generals, diplomats, aid workers, and more—conducted during a federal review of the ‘Lessons Learned’ in Afghanistan. He also obtained hundreds of pages of memos filed by Donald Rumsfeld when he was George W. Bush’s defense secretary in the 2000s. (Rumsfeld called the memos ‘snowflakes’; how the right has changed.) Taken together, Whitlock writes, the documents ‘constitute a secret history of the war and an unsparing appraisal of 18 years of conflict.’ ” Meanwhile, Rhode Islander C.J. Chivers, who has reported extensively on the war for The New York Times, offered this observation on Twitter: “The Post’s fantastic project contains little surprise. The failures of the war, down to particulars, had been largely & publicly established. Anyone paying close attention knew them. The value here has been in presenting a thorough, coherent view of the gaslighting.”
13) Clint Eastwood’s latest movie is under fire for inventing a storyline about a female reporter (now deceased) trading sex for information. Critics say this misguided trope is way too common in movies and television.
14) Via NPR’s Planet Money: “In 1794, George Washington decided to raise money for the federal government by taxing the rich. And he did it by putting a tax on horse-drawn carriages.”
15) Brown alum Andew Yang is hanging in at the margins of the Democratic presidential field. The Boston Globe’s James Pindell reports that Yang has persisted in part by spending big on TV ads, more than $5 million through late November. As Pindell notes, spending a lot of time in Iowa and New Hampshire is important, as is media savvy. “What you need is a clear sense of what is making millions of Americans miserable, and a real set of solutions, and a vision for the country moving forward,” Yang told the Globe. “That sounds like really obvious, but they are inobvious to just about everyone in the race.” Yet the candidate still has to battle to make it anyway near the top tier of candidates.
16) Is Friday the 13th all that bad? The number has considerable staying power as a form of superstition. Then again, my first work day at The Public’s Radio was on a Friday the 13th, and that seems to have worked out ok, right?
