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April 2007 Archives
9:12 AM Mon, Apr 30, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter  Email
The House leadership has, after 84 years, supplied female House members with that most basic of necessities: a bathroom. The first woman to join the state House of Representatives was Isabelle Ahearn O’Neill, elected in 1922. In the 2006 elections,......
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9:11 AM Mon, Apr 30, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
When House Speaker Murphy welcomed two New England Patriots to the House chamber last week, was he serious in implying that the football players had come to Rhode Island on a house-hunting expedition? No, as it turns out. The players......
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9:09 AM Mon, Apr 30, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
While some bills are introduced with great fanfare — never to be seen or heard again — Sen. Amy Rice, D-Portsmouth, has formally asked for a hearing on her bid for a public referendum on making lawmakers pay 10 percent......
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9:08 AM Mon, Apr 30, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
File cabinets, desks and computers lined the first-floor hallway outside State House Rooms 140 and 143 while legislators were away during the recent break week. The contents of Rooms 140 and 143 were temporarily moved to make room for the......
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9:06 AM Mon, Apr 30, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
There’s a new face in the legislative press bureau, and it’s one you may have seen on TV. Kerry Mone, formerly a freelance reporter for WPRI Channel 12, started work as a legislative publicist April 19. She succeeds Dana Laverty,......
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6:36 PM Tue, Apr 24, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Andrea Panciera Email
PROVIDENCE -- Gerald S. Aubin has been reinstated this afternoon as director of the multimillion-dollar gambling agency that oversees Powerball, Lottery-run Keno, scratch-ticket sales and the slots at Newport Grand and the former Lincoln Park now called Twin River. Aubin......
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9:39 AM Mon, Apr 23, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
How safe is U.S. Sen. Jack Reed’s seat as all eyes turn toward the 2008 election? The head of the state Republican Party told Political Scene last week that a legitimate challenger has yet to emerge. “There are plenty of......
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9:38 AM Mon, Apr 23, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Governor Carcieri has been putting his money where his presidential endorsement has gone. Carcieri and his wife, state First Lady Suzanne Carcieri, have each contributed $2,100 to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. They may have been returning the......
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9:35 AM Mon, Apr 23, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Two state Senate committees, in recent weeks, have boldly ventured where no senator — or at least no Senate committee hearing — has gone before: the State House subbasement. Below the basement level, there is a subbasement, with a complex......
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9:33 AM Mon, Apr 23, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Former Governor Lincoln C. Almond’s age was overstated in last week’s Political Scene column. On June 14 at the soon-to-open Renaissance Providence Hotel, his friends and former State House colleagues are throwing a birthday party/fundraiser to honor his 71st birthday......
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9:32 AM Mon, Apr 23, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Rhode Island’s 2008 presidential primary made national headlines last week — in The Onion. Political Scene’s favorite parody newspaper featured a “news brief” poking fun at the debate in various states to move up their primaries to beat New Hampshire.......
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9:25 AM Mon, Apr 23, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Legislative staffers were crowing last week about their newly designed Web site. First the good news for media outlets that do not have their own reporters at the State House and members of the general public who want to hear......
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2:56 PM Fri, Apr 20, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, have sent out an email to supporters inviting them to a book signing Saturday, April 21 at noon at the First Parish Church in Cambridge, Mass., to discuss their recently......
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7:30 PM Wed, Apr 18, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Andrea Panciera Email
SOUTH KINGSTOWN – The University of Rhode Island’s College Republicans today are pushing for reversal of a recommendation to “derecognize” them as a campus group for allegedly violating an anti-discrimination rule. The school’s College Republicans refused to apologize for offering......
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6:50 PM Mon, Apr 16, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Andrea Panciera Email
PROVIDENCE – A powerful state employees union has spent $10,000 on a television advertising campaign that blasts Governor Carcieri’s plan to privatize housekeeping and food service at the state-run Eleanor Slater Hospital. The move would save the state $5.4 million,......
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10:01 AM Mon, Apr 16, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Good things come to those who wait. Checks will soon be in the mail for 14 Rhode Island residents, from Chepachet to Wakefield, who filed claims last year with the state alleging damage for which the state is at fault.......
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10:00 AM Mon, Apr 16, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Rep. Richard W. Singleton, R-Cumberland, has gone national. The Rhode Island legislator appeared on ABC’s "Good Morning America" on April 7, the day before Easter, to slam the Tiverton school district’s recent decision to change the name of the Easter......
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9:59 AM Mon, Apr 16, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Former U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee’s campaign manager, Ian Lang, and speechwriter, Catherine Taylor, have opened a public affairs and political consulting firm in Providence. This will be the fourth collaboration between Lang and Taylor. In addition to Chafee’s ’06......
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9:57 AM Mon, Apr 16, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Call it a fundaiser. Call it a reunion of his Republican inner circle. It’s also a 75th birthday party for former Gov. Lincoln C. Almond, with proceeds earmarked for a scholarship fund bearing his name at his alma mater, the......
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9:19 AM Mon, Apr 09, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
He’s gone. Gerald Bedrick, the onetime insurance man from East Greenwich who became a poster child for a Senate inquiry into the Carcieri administration’s use of a private employment agency to fill hundreds of state jobs, resigned last week from......
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9:17 AM Mon, Apr 09, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
We stand corrected. A Massachusetts businessman took exception to last week’s Political Scene item about sacramental wine. A General Assembly news release described the difficulty Rhode Island’s churches and synagogues encounter in trying to buy wine for religious services, and......
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9:16 AM Mon, Apr 09, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Political Scene has learned there was a little confusion leading up to last week’s State House visit by former Irish Prime Minister John Bruton. Bruton, the European Union’s ambassador to the United States since 2004, addressed a special joint session......
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9:14 AM Mon, Apr 09, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
The torch has been passed in the Providence Legislative Caucus. The group of 13 legislators who represent the capital city recently voted Rep. Thomas C. Slater chairman. Slater, who is in his seventh term at the Assembly, succeeds Rep. John......
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9:13 AM Mon, Apr 09, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
As lawmakers look to help their constituents get a handle on skyrocketing home-insurance rates in the state’s coastal areas, they are taking a first step: hiring a consultant. The General Assembly is in negotiations with AIR Worldwide, a firm that......
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9:13 AM Mon, Apr 09, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
It’s an unusual sight in a State House hearing: witnesses testifying under oath. But that’s what happened last week in a series of hearings chaired by Slater, who heads the subcommittee on human services within the House Finance Committee. Beginning......
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9:24 AM Mon, Apr 02, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
Irony of ironies: Here, in the most Catholic of states, it is apparently not possible to purchase sacramental wine. The stores that want to do it — stores that sell religious books and other religious items — are not allowed......
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9:23 AM Mon, Apr 02, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
House Finance Chairman Steven M. Costantino injected a moment of levity into last week’s series of tense budget hearings with his comment on the collar-grazing hairstyle of Jeffrey J. Greer, associate director in the state Department of Business Regulation. Greer,......
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9:22 AM Mon, Apr 02, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
The State House community was abuzz last week after seeing the word “RESCIND” slashed in big black letters across one of the job postings by the Carcieri administration for two $110,549- to-$122,560-a-year executive directors to serve under the director of......
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9:21 AM Mon, Apr 02, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
A bit of mid-session trivia for those weighing whether Rhode Island needs a full-time legislature: Last Friday marked the three-month midpoint in what is usually a six-month session. As of Friday, lawmakers had introduced 2,144 pieces of legislation and passed......
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9:20 AM Mon, Apr 02, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
While fundraising events are not unusual at peak points in the legislative session, House Majority Leader Gordon Fox was feted at not just one but two last month. On March 1, he raked in an estimated $30,000 at his $150-a-person......
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9:17 AM Mon, Apr 02, 2007 | Permalink |
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By Pamela Reinsel Cotter Email
The two top elected state officials have had leadership roles at national policy conferences in Washington recently — Governor Carcieri at a summit convened by the U.S. Department of Education and Lt. Gov. Elizabeth H. Roberts at the winter meeting......
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