Darker Days and (Highway) Nights Ahead for RI

Darker Days and (Highway) Nights Ahead for RI

A health insurance program for some of the state’s poorest families and the pole lights along numerous Rhode Island highways would not seem to hold much connection to each other, but several headlines this week indicate they have more in common than it appears.

A news announcement this week from the state Department of Transportation (DOT) saying it plans to to expand its “curfew” of shutting off highway lights in the overnight hours to save money, came at about the same time word emerged that the Rite Care health insurance program for low-income families is targeted for a major cut in the General Assembly’s budget plan.

The Poverty Institute leadership was quick to douse the proposal. The Institute’s Linda Katz was quoted as saying the proposed cut, reported to be $26 million, would not only leave thousands of parents on the rolls with no health care coverage, but could also be problematic for the Legislature to enact in the first place, due to federal restrictions on changing Medicaid eligibility thresholds, which the proposal seeks to do.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

Katz also seemed convinced that Senate leadership, presumably Senate President Teresa Paiva-Weed, would not back the cut due to her long support for the program. But Katz’s observation underscores the unprecedented dilemma certain state Democratic leaders like Paiva-Weed are now facing.

The state’s budget deficit and overall pension liability, though they are separate debt problems, are linked in one key aspect: together, they now represent significant fiscal obstacles to the state’s vastly shrinking ability to provide human services and basic government services, and that conflict is becoming glaringly apparent from the halls of the Statehouse to the light poles on Rhode Island’s highways, and will only grow in the days to come.

Rhode Island’s debt crisis not only poses a serious threat to our local communities, our fiscal standing (Moody’s downgrades), and the state taxpayer’s ability to stay here, it is also beginning to force an unprecedented showdown between the governing majority and its traditional constituencies. The ground is shifting under the state Democratic Party as its decades-long unblinking allegiance to both the public sector unions and certain human service advocates can no longer be sustained.

If the growing turmoil in Providence is any indication, the leadership of the public sector unions remains either unrealistic, unprepared, or simply unable to accept the depth of the fiscal crisis, and the unavoidable workforce reductions and contract concessions which are going to be sent their way.

The outcome of this year’s budget deliberations will vividly demonstrate the growing division between the unions’ increasingly frantic demands to protect their benefit structure and the budget needs of all other advocates. It will become increasingly clear in the days to come they are not allies to the human service industry lobbyists or any other constituency now that the fiscal crisis has hit full throttle.

Keep an eye on what happens in the budget process to the Chafee proposal to hike teachers’ contributions to their own retirement plans to 11.75 %. That proposal, estimated to save taxpayers a projected $40 million toward pension costs, was one that has not sit well with the Chafee-supporting unions. But you are not likely to see the unions fighting to help reverse the proposed $26 million dollar RIte Care cut because that cut may be needed if they have any hope of reversing the planned higher teacher co-pay.

Advocates for human services, though long believed to be allied with the leadership of the public sector unions, are about to finally figure out they are not playing on the same team after all.

Whether it’s a fiscally collapsing city, a human service program on the chopping block, or cutbacks to basic government services like highway lights illuminating long stretches of dark roadway, union leadership’s willingness to step up to the plate and demonstrate it finally accepts Chafee’s own “shared sacrifice” mantra is about to be tested like never before.

As the Providence police union leadership heads to court over the layoffs now underway, it’s likely their contract negotiations with the beleaguered Taveras Administration will generate more heat than light in the coming days.

As the first heat wave of the summer takes hold this week, it seems a hot—and dark—summer, may be in the Rhode Island forecast.

If you valued this article, please LIKE GoLocalProv.com on Facebook by clicking HERE.

Donna Perry is a Communications Consultant to the RI Statewide Coalition (RISC) www.statewidecoalition.com