CITY/STATE: Rhode Island's Problem Isn't Poor Leadership

CITY/STATE: Rhode Island's Problem Isn't Poor Leadership

Introducing City/State from Aaron M. Renn, a new GoLocal column which will examine the civic landscape both local and regional.

What accounts for the poor economy and manifold other problems facing the Providence region and the state of Rhode Island? One popular theory I’ve heard over and over since moving here is that Rhode Island’s

leaders are the problem, and that this place has the most venal and incompetent leaders around.

Is poor leadership really the problem? Don’t bet on it.

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Complaints about poor leadership and corrupt politicians are a standard part of almost every community. It’s hard for me to argue that Rhode Island’s leaders are particularly bad in a way that goes above and beyond others.

Consider Chicago and Illinois, for example. The two previous governors of the state have been in federal prison, with one of them just getting moved into a halfway house. A study by the University of Illinois at Chicago rated Chicago as the most corrupt city in the United States. Since 1970, 340 officials have been convicted of corruption related offenses, including 31 aldermen (city council members).

The party leaders in the Illinois General Assembly have almost dictatorial control over their caucuses and Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan is generally considered the most powerful politician in the state. Almost nothing can happen at the state level without his approval, leading Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass to label the state “Madiganistan.”

A similar power structure prevails in New York, where the state legislature has a “four horsemen” system. Without the approval of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, nothing happens.

In Cincinnati it’s “government vs. government.” The city government, run by a Democratic mayor and council, has been trying to build a streetcar. New Republican governor John Kasich revoked funding slated by the previous administration and also attempted to get the state legislature to prohibit funding just in case. The US Representative for downtown Cincinnati is a Tea Party Republican who actually introduced an “anti-earmark” to keep the federal government from spending any money on the streetcar. Regardless of the merits of the project, this level of fighting between various levels of government makes is nearly impossible to get anything done.

In my home state of Indiana, Harrison Ullman, longtime editor of the Indianapolis alt-weekly Nuvo, used to refer to the Indiana General Assembly as “America’s Worst State Legislature.”

And need I mention the US Congress?

Go anywhere and you can find something to complain about in the leadership or structure of government. And certainly politics attracts more than its fair share of hacks and opportunists.

However, politics is hard. There are many competing interests that have to be balanced in order to get legislation approved, for example. Unlike most other institutions, governments do their sausage making in the full glare of the media and public spotlight. Anywhere and everywhere this is an ugly, difficult process. That doesn’t mean the people involved in it are all crooks or incompetents, though certainly some are. But I see nothing to indicate that Rhode Island politicians are any worse than those anywhere else.

Also, the notion that Rhode Island’s leaders are the problem is belied by at looking at neighboring states. Western Massachusetts and many parts of Connecticut are in just as bad a shape. It’s hard to argue that Providence is worse off than New Haven, for example.

In the Northeast there are basically two sources of significant wealth generation: metro New York and Metro Boston, with a bit of indigenous insurance money around Hartford as well. If you are plugged into New York or Boston, you’re doing well. If you are in New England but aren’t plugged into those, you are doing poorly. It’s basically that simple.

Greater Providence suffers because it only has a limited participation in Boston’s economy and is too far away to really tap into New York at all either. Thus it is stuck with a structurally challenging post-industrial landscape to navigate.

People might say Massachusetts is so much better or that they have so much smarter leaders. And maybe they do. But if so, those folks haven’t managed crack the code on the problems of the so-called “Gateway Cities,” which are the parts of Massachusetts that look an awful lot like Rhode Island.

I’m all in favor of ending corruption and upgrading the quality of leadership in a community. But the idea that poor leadership is the biggest thing holding Rhode Island back is flawed. The region is not going to truly recover until it manages to overcome Rust Belt legacy challenges. That’s hard no matter who your leaders are. Residents would be better off focusing on the actual problems of the community rather than defaulting to criticism of leadership. Because although better leadership is always desirable, and Rhode Island could definitely use some new blood in the worst way, even smarter and less corrupt leadership alone would not likely change our civic trajectory.

Aaron M. Renn an opinion-leading urban affairs analyst, entrepreneur, speaker, and writer on a mission to help America’s cities thrive in the 21st century. In his blog, The Urbanophile, he has created America’s premier destination for serious, in depth, non-partisan, and non-dogmatic analysis and discussion of the issues facing America’s cities and regions in the 21st century. Renn’s writings have also appeared in publications such as Forbes, the New York Times, and City Journal. Renn is also the founder and CEO of Telestrian, a data analysis platform that provides powerful data mining and visualization capabilities previously only available in very expensive, difficult to use tools at a fraction of the cost and with far superior ease of use.