Moore: Rhode Islanders Yawn Over Legislative Summer Stalemate

Monday, July 10, 2017

Russell J. Moore GoLocal MINDSETTER™

The feud between Senate President Dominick Ruggerio and House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello makes for great drama.

But does it really impact the lives of Rhode Islanders in a tangible way that they actually care about? I think not.

If anyone walked around the crowd at the Bristol Fourth of July Parade and asked spectators what they thought of this highly publicized feud I’d venture to guess at least half wouldn’t understand the question. Another large percentage would mumble something like ‘that’s just the legislature being the legislature, who cares, you’re not going to change anything anyways.’

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How do I know? I know because I’ve asked. And those are the responses I get from people who aren’t political junkies.

Unless we’re closing banks and people cannot get their hands on their own money, the average person doesn’t much care. They’d rather vote for someone they know, and don’t agree with, than someone with a stronger platform. At least they’ll feel important when their representative says hello them.

Relevant

This is Rhode Island. And no price is too high to pay to feel relevant.

We’re a little over one week past the close of the legislative session. Mattiello brought the session to a screeching halt when he sent the House of Representatives home after learning that the Senate planned to amend the state budget by changing his car tax proposal. The proposed change would have prevented the implementation of the car tax phase out in years when revenues or federal aid came in shorter than expected.

There’s obviously more to the story. The Senate’s change to the budget didn’t impact anything relative to this year. The change would have potentially impacted future years, but that battle could have been fought in the future.

And we all know that Ruggerio’s decision to amend the state budget before attempting to send it back to the house was a power play. That’s why Mattiello’s decision to end the session wasn’t totally surprising. Yet what caused the bad blood remains unknown.

Who Cares?

Rhode Islanders can sit around in coffee houses, barber shops, or bars and speculate as to what’s really divided the two most powerful men in the state legislature. Yet I don’t think most people really care all that much.

The car tax is probably the biggest impact of the feud. Of course people want a break on their car taxes. But what are they going to do if the legislature doesn’t give it to them? Probably nothing. The taxpayers didn’t do anything when the legislature broke their promise to stop phasing out the car tax last decade.

The standoff has also endangered Governor Gina Raimondo’s free college tuition at the Community College of Rhode Island. Yet the cost of the program to send students to CCRI to state taxpayers is just $3 million per semester.

Governor Raimondo has already said that she will find the money elsewhere to implement the program. Mattiello said that would be illegal. But it’s hard to believe that the Governor cannot find $3 million in a roughly $9 billion budget to fund a program that she’s so heavily relying on for good public relations headlines.

Yawn

There were other important bills lost in the shuffle, such as a bill mandating guns be seized from domestic abusers and another that would have provided working Rhode Islanders with a modicum of sick time.

Yet neither is important enough to cause an uproar from the masses. So we can expect this standoff to continue, until each side decides that ending it will make things better personally for each leader.

Yawn.

Russell J. Moore has worked on both sides of the desk in Rhode Island media, both for newspapers and on political campaigns. Send him email at [email protected]. Follow him on twitter @russmoore713.

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