Tom Sgouros: Short Takes

Tom Sgouros: Short Takes

Voter ID

Eric Holder, Obama's Attorney General, has intervened to block South Carolina's voter ID law on voting rights act grounds. From press reports, I can't see any way in which South Carolina's law differs from Rhode Island's. There was, however, one important difference in how the laws were enacted. The South Carolina law was the product of Republicans "concerned" about vote fraud, and not concerned about the effect on African-American and other minority voter turnout.

By contrast, Rhode Island's law was apparently instigated by Senator Harold Metts and Representative Anastasia Williams, two African-American legislators who live in an area of Providence fast becoming majority-Hispanic, if it isn't already. They, too, are "concerned" about vote fraud. Why the scare quotes? If they were truly concerned, they'd have looked at actual data and thought about measures that might help the real problems instead of asking everyone to show an ID, a measure which will prevent one voter from impersonating another, but will do little to address the real sources of vote fraud in Rhode Island.

On the brighter side for Metts and Williams, I gather from the extant data about the prevalence of IDs that the voter ID law will likely suppress Hispanic votes more than African-American votes, so this is a win from their personal perspectives. How that helps their state is less clear.

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Water, water, somewhere?

To us policy nerds, it often seems that the really important issues are widely ignored in favor of obsessing over what we call our indoor pine trees and similar vital issues. Here's one that gets virtually no press: water. Did you know that some parts of your state don't have adequate water supplies? Did you know that we have pretty much no plan to deal with that problem? Did you know that the state agency charged with keeping tabs on the issue was eviscerated by the 2011 budget?

In order: South County, for the most part, has enough water to drink for now. But it doesn't have much in the way of storage, which means that the dry times of year see the wells run dry in several towns. Encroaching development and land-use planning that doesn't protect wetlands adequately means it is getting harder and harder to find places to drill new wells. So summer water restrictions are not uncommon, though I see them honored in the breach and notice that only some of my neighbors seem to stop watering.

We already know that the watershed that serves North Kingstown, Quonset, and lots of the Kent County Water wells won't be adequate to meet growing demand in only a few years. Second: The Water Resources Board (WRB) has come up with a bunch of proposals to deal with the situation. Most of them are all about augmenting the supply, with the revival of the Big River Reservoir and the construction of up to four coastal desalination plants among them. There is a proposal to get more aggressive about reducing demand, but it was fourth on the list. Rhode Island did pass an important demand-management bill in 2009.

Third: The WRB saw its budget slashed, and independent authority taken from it in the budget passed by the legislature last spring. The board chair has resigned, saying that without any authority or responsibility, he can't see the point of chairing meetings.

No one is taking credit/blame for the move, but what it's done is to cloud responsibility for developing the plans, and leave it unclear who, exactly, will be enforcing the 2009 demand-management rules that go into effect next August. Effectively it means nothing will happen on this crucial issue for a year or two while we figure out whose job it is now.

Accountability?

I see via Matt Taibbi that the Senate will hold hearings on whether the SEC should be so free with its settlements that allow criminals to avoid admitting their crimes. Hooray for the rule of law.

Tom Sgouros is the editor of the Rhode Island Policy Reporter, at whatcheer.net and the author of "Ten Things You Don't Know About Rhode Island." Contact him at [email protected].

 

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