Projo Politics Blog

May 5, 2008 Archives

A 26-year-old Cranston native spearheaded last Saturday's upset special election of a Democratic U.S. House member from a very conservative district anchored by Baton Rouge and its McMansion suburbs.

Meet Katie Nee, who tomorrow will become the youngest chief of staff in the U.S. House after her boss, U.S. Rep.-elect Don Cazayoux, takes his seat tomorrow. The seat was open because a Republican incumbent left it to become a lobbyist.

Nee was not available for an interview today: She was on an plane from Baton Rouge, a city best-known as the home of Louisiana State University, to Washington.

Katie Nee's father, George Nee, is secretary-treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL_CIO, and her mother, Anne Sliney, is a nurse who works with the Clinton Foundation battling AIDS in Third World countries.

"She seems thrilled,'' said George Nee yesterday."They were a little nervous election night but it all turned out all right in the end.''

Katie went from Cranston High School East to the University of Virginia. She graduated from UVA in 2003 and started working in politics shortly after. Katie Nee worked on Dick Gephardt's 2004 presidential campaign and in losing Democratic campaigns in Republican-leaning House districts in Indiana and Arizona.

At the outset, the Louisiana district near Baton Rouge looked like an unlikely place for a Democratic victory. The seat had been held by Republicans since the 1974 election. President Bush carried it by about a 2 to 1 margin over Democrat John Kerry.

The Republican candidate was Woody Jenkins, a very conservative Republican who tried to tie Democrat Cazayoux to Democratic presidential aspirant Barack Obama, the Illinois senator.

`"This was obviously the Republican test case for nationalizing Congressional races, and it failed completely,'' said Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

That U.S. Sen. Jack Reed is indeed the "Irish Pastore" was on display once again yesterday at Reed's annual family breakfast at Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet banquet hall in his native Cranston.

The reference, of course, is to the late Sen. John O. Pastore (D-R.I.), at right, the first Italian-American elected to the U.S. Senate. Pastore served from 1950 to 1976.

Pastore rose from the searing poverty endured by Italian-American immigrants in the early 20th century to become a crucial voice in the establishment of the government programs that limn the Kennedy_Johnson years, from civil rights legislation to Medicare, and legislation that in 1965 lowered barriers to immigration to the U.S. from such countries as Portugal.

He was also the father of public television and a major figure in approval of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban treaty with the U.S.S.R.

As is the case with Reed, Pastore for the most part avoided the local political fights, the petty dust-ups, State House rivalries and ethnic solidarity that has long marred Democratic politics in this state.

>> Continue reading: Scott MacKay: Reed and Pastore, the parallels

Rep. Stephen R. Ucci, D-Johnston, has proposed that General Assembly members be limited to three terms and that the length of a legislative term be doubled, to four years.

“Longer, four-year terms for lawmakers would result in more stability in the legislature and ultimately more voter trust and confidence in the General Assembly,” Ucci says. “Most legislators cannot accomplish everything they’d like to for their communities in a two-year term.”

Increasing terms to four years would allow them to spend less time campaigning and fundraising and more time working for constituents, he says.

His legislation would limit any senator or representative who has served more than four years in the chamber as of Dec. 31, 2010, to serve two additional four-year terms. Ucci, a lawmaker since 2004, would qualify for the additional time.

The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that 15 states have term limits for legislators.

Ucci’s bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee. No hearing has yet been scheduled.

The public spotlight placed on their free health-care benefits has prompted several more state lawmakers to offer to pay 10 percent of the cost of the premiums costing up to $16,233 a year for family coverage.

In recent days, Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, newly elected Sen. Roger Picard, D-Woonsocket, and Representatives Edwin Pacheco, D-Burrillville, and David Caprio, D-Narragansett, have joined the relatively small group of lawmakers already contributing voluntarily because they thought it was the right thing to do.

Including the newcomers, the number of $13,508-a-year lawmakers paying a portion of their health insurance premiums now stands at 26 of 113.

Others either get it for free, or they get a $2,002 waiver payment for giving it up.

A handful opted to return 10 percent of their waiver payments. Only two — Sen. Paul Jabour, D-Providence, and Rep. John Patrick Shanley, D-South Kingstown — said no to the free insurance and a waiver payment.

Attention turned to the lawmakers’ free health care after an hours-long debate last week, on a bill to cut $168 million out of the current-year budget, that saw lawmaker after lawmaker rise from their seats to talk about the need to “share the burden” and “share the pain.”

A key lawmaker said the House Democratic leadership was willing to attach a requirement that legislators start contributing to the health-dental and vision package, but the senators signaled they were unwilling to go along during an unannounced caucus from which the media was excluded.

According to the legislative business office known as the Joint Committee on Legislative Services (JCLS), the following lawmakers are receiving free health-care packages:

In the House: Representatives Joseph Almeida, Jon Brien, Kenneth Carter, Elaine Coderre, Arthur Corvese, Elizabeth Dennigan, John DeSimone, Grace Diaz, Robert E. Flaherty, Raymond Gallison, Al Gemma, Arthur Handy, J. Russell Jackson, Donald Lally, Jan Malik, Nicholas Mattiello, John McCauley, Joseph McNamara, William Murphy, Eileen Naughton, Peter Palumbo, Peter Petrarca, Henry Rose, William SanBento, Gregory Schadone, Joseph Scott, Agostinho F. Silva, Richard Singleton, Thomas Slater, Peter Wasylyk, Anastasia Williams and Timothy Williamson have family plans. Edith Ajello, Steven Costantino, Gordon Fox, Brian Kennedy, Peter Lewiss, David Segal and Raymond Sullivan have individual plans.

In the Senate, Stephen Alves, Leo Blais, Frank Ciccone, Daniel DaPonte, James Doyle, Hanna Gallo, Daniel Issa, Beatrice Lanzi, J. Michael Lenihan, John McBurney, Michael McCaffrey, Josh Miller, Joseph Montalbano, Paul Moura, Juan Pichardo, Leonidas Raptakis, John C. Revens Jr., Dominick Ruggerio, Susan Sosnowski, and William Walaska have family plans. Daniel Connors, Maryellen Goodwin, Charles J. Levesque and Rhoda Perry have individual plans.

Twenty-one lawmakers who do not want or need the coverage each get a $2,002 annual waiver payment for giving it up.

>> Continue reading: A small group of General Assembly members are paying for some of their health insurance

Before getting too comfortable in her new job, Jane Hayward, former health and human services secretary, decided to check in with the state Ethics Commission.

On April 3, Hayward asked the commission what she can and cannot do — under the state’s revolving door law — in her new role as president and CEO of the Rhode Island Health Center Association, a trade organization that provides management services and advocacy for 12 member health centers who, in turn, have grants and/or contracts with the two of the agencies in her former realm: the Department of Human Services and Department of Health.

The revolving-door law places restrictions on what elected and senior officials can do within a year of leaving state government.

In her letter, Hayward said she deliberately negotiated an employment contract that puts someone else — the clinical director — in charge of the management and supervision of the state department contracts until the one-year revolving door ban expires. “In her role as the president and CEO,” the letter promises, Hayward “will have no ministerial or substantive participation in these grants and/or contracts and will not appear before any of the five health and human services departments on behalf of RIHCA.”

Her question to the Ethics Commission: Is that sufficient?

A draft reply from the commission’s executive director, Kent A. Willever, said she needs “to be vigilant in insuring she does not disclose or make use of confidential information acquired during her state service.” But beyond that, Willever said, she can lobby the legislature and general officers, but not represent herself or others before the governor’s office or the Department of Administration for a year. The full Ethics Commission weighs in tomorrow.

Rep. John Loughlin, a Tiverton Republican, told Political Scene last week that he is considering whether to challenge U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy in November.

“It has not been ruled in or ruled out at this point,” said Loughlin, 49, a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel. “I’ve had some discussion with folks in Washington about the race.”

He declined to identify the “folks” he spoke to in Washington, describing them only as “folks in the Republican Party apparatus.”

Loughlin said he would at the very least run for reelection to his House District 71 seat.

Campaign finance reports suggest that he isn’t well-positioned for a run at an incumbent congressman with deep pockets.

Loughlin had $7,973 in his campaign account as of March 31, according to the latest filing with the state Board of Elections.

Kennedy, meanwhile, had $617,182, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The citizens-advocacy group Operation Clean Government has a new best friend.

Who? The state Republican Party, which issued an e-mail under its own e-Pluribus banner last week reminding one and all of OCG’s “Second Annual Forum.”

And why would the state’s hugely outnumbered Republicans give the organization’s May 10 breakfast at the University of Rhode Island a free election-year plug? Perhaps it’s the theme.

“The General Assembly: Private Deal$ and Public Corruption.”

According to the statement, “the lively discussion will include: a review of legislative corruption and high profile violators; is our legislature worse than those in other states; how corruption affects you; causes of corruption at the legislature; how effective are the existing tools to battle legislative corruption; what else needs to be done to reduce legislative corruption.”

The scheduled panelists include former Republican Attorney General Arlene Violet; WPRO talk show host John DiPietro; Channel 10 political reporter Bill Rappleye, former Senate policy adviser Kenneth Payne; Ross Cheit, a Brown University political science professor and member of the state Ethics Commission; and Edward Achorn, deputy editorial page editor for The Providence Journal. Onetime Channel 6 anchor Dave Layman will moderate. Further information on the cost and location is available at www.ocgri.org