hard deadlines

From: John McDaid
Date: April 23, 2007 6:33:38 AM EDT
To: dcanario@portsmouthri.com, seveney@cox.net, ww2051@cox.net, pmcintyre@portsmouthri.com, lkatzman@portsmouthri.com, hlittle@portsmouthri.com, kgleason@portsmouthri.com
Subject: Opposing proposed charter change

Mr. President and members of the Council:
I can't attend the Town Council meeting tonight, but wanted to share my thoughts on proposed language for charter change proposals shared at the last session, and urge the Council to move forward with a special election as quickly as feasible. The language of concern appeared in the draft version a proposal, so it may no longer be relevant, if so, please ignore the following.

First: language linking an automatic vote to the specifics of 44-5-2 (b) fails to protect taxpayers should the numbers in this section change. Writing a hard link into the Town Charter is imprudent; should the number in the statute get larger, we would have no recourse without tinkering with the Town Charter.

Second: Far be it from me to defend the rights of the PCC, but it would seem that the current language would only allow a Special Financial Town Meeting in the event that the cap was exceeded. When asked directly if the PCC would call a Tent Meeting if the budget presented was within the cap, PCC President Larry Fitzmorris replied, "The PCC has no position on that." So to protect the rights of this constituency, it would seem prudent not to place such a restrictive proposal on the ballot.

Finally, the intent of this Charter Change is clearly in conflict with 44-5-2(d), the stated purpose of which is to provide emergency relief for towns experiencing fiscal problems due to clearly defined situations. While it is of course possible for the state legislature to ratify such an exception for Portsmouth, the existing case law -- reaffirmed by Judge Indeglia in the recent Caruolo action -- suggests that Town charters may not trump state law. It would be imprudent in the extreme to place a charter change option before the voters known to be in conflict with state law. I would even argue that this would tiptoe right up to the border of the Council's oath to defend the Constitution of the State of Rhode Island.

For these reasons, I respectfully urge the Council not to place this or substantially similar language before the voters.

I thank the Council for your attention, and urge you to schedule a special election this evening. Council President Canario promised two weeks ago that this meeting would bring closure, and I hope you will all support him on that.

Kind Regards.
-John McDaid

Second clip from the cable-access Newport County Forum on 4/19/07, where Sen. Majority Leader Teresa Paiva Weed discusses the urgency for crafting a funding formula for state educational aid to towns.

I take Sen. Paiva Weed at her word that she is committed to working to get this passed in the current session. Our Portsmouth Senator, Chuck Levesque, in his appearance on WADK last month, said that he had initially held out for the education funding piece first, but was convinced by Paiva Weed to vote for S3050, so we know he's on board.

There is enormous political will to get this through, and there is a dire need, as every community comes up against the cap. Let's keep reminding our legislators that this needs to get done.

Howdy neighbor. I've noticed a lot of Google searchers visiting the site looking for info on Caruolo, and my guess is it's those supplemental tax bills that hit mailboxes today. I have coverage here going back to last Fall, as well as daily reports from the trial. You can click the "Blog Index" link above to browse. Prefer to read off-line? I've collected the key blog entries, and attached is a 100k Adobe Acrobat (pdf) file, formatted for easy printing. You can click here to open, right-click to download.

Tomorrow and Friday, local and state government folks, academics, consultants, and members of the public will gather at URI's Narragansett Bay Campus for a two-day conference on wind energy. Open to the public, but not sure if the event is full — you can find out more at the conference site.

There is also supposed to be a live webcast, but I've never seen a conference webcast that I could tolerate for more than about fifteen minutes. (Steve Jobs's keynotes at MacWorld excepted.) The published link is mms://streamer.rwu.edu/rwulive, but that apparently was set up when the conference was slated for RWU, and may not be working tomorrow. If you're interested, give it a try.

Heard about this at the Portsmouth Economic Development Committee (PEDC) meeting tonight where it was a major agenda item. Gary Gump of the Sustainable Energy Subcommittee will be presenting Friday afternoon on the work that's been going on here in Portsmouth.

Also discussed tonight, the EDC is still working to finalize dates for public workshops on wind energy in May, watch your local media for dates. In the meantime, you can keep up with developments by checking the Sustainable Energy web site.

UPDATE: Read the ProJo story on the conference, and download the Governor's RIWINDS study.