You seem to miss that there is no community merger going on. It is a consolidation of backend services only. Your comment shows that you did not read the article as not only is there no 'merger' there is also no representationally based control, so I'm not sure how community size would relate at all. This is something that would have to happen at the state-level anyway in terms of amending state laws.

I don't know what discussions you've been a part of that end in merging, but no one I know is talking about that at all. The idea of this plan isn't to end cronyism, that's a whole other discussion, it's to save money by not paying 39 city Finance Directors $70,000 to $125,000 a year, in some cases for a town with a few thousand residents. That type of waste is structural in how we handle municipal affairs in Rhode Island and is a complete separate issue from nepotism and cronyism.

Massachusetts has always had a week county government and all the do is fund the county jails. If you look at most states they have strong county governments. I don't think this plan goes far enough police, fire and public works should also be included. We don’t need to pat 39 police chiefs and fire chiefs $100,000 plus a year also in a state this size we don’t need both local and state police it is a waste of money. A whole new state system needs to be set up we duplicate services on both the state and local level. The state government is totally out of control elect state legislators on a county basis fewer people have a better chance to get things done. Each year have a referendum and let the people vote the newly proposed laws in of out and you will have no need for a governor. none of this will ever happen because the people in power will never give up that power to he people of this state but if they did this state would be the only true democracy in this country.

@ Mike

There would be some cost to it up-front, but it shouldn't be massive, especially compared to what we are paying now in duplication. As far as an increased scope of service delivery, that's why the idea is to focus on back-end services, that way there is little to no demand from the public on county level services. The only 'public facing' service would be water / wastewater, which is a shrinking service. Same thing with the problem of a "disproportionate distribution of service" we are talking about cutting paychecks, managing a ledger, handling employee benefits, we aren't talking about public services.

@ Robert E

Too far or not far enough? we have to start somewhere, I think Rhode Island's small local communities are a strength and we should think before we start regionalizing services that are key parts of the community. That said, it is needed to start some regionalization somewhere and if it is successful and we have a need to go further, we can look at going further.

Great argument you make there, care to elaborate some more?

If schools in RI became privatized, I'd move. Sorry, but the only group worse than government at providing public services is big business.

@JJD

Really? Have you seen a restroom at Disneyworld? It makes those rest areas that Chafee closed on 95 look like operating suites. I've never seen an unpaved lot or poorly surfaced road on a corporate campus and the office equipment is always first rate. I will agree that a full privatization is probably not in the best interest of a institution that must be all things to all people but in a whole host of areas of education- basic instruction, facilities management, payroll, HR, compliance- it can't do any worse.

@Mike

Care to cite some research to sustain those claims you made in the first paragraph?

It's not the case when you're talking about a single parochial school, that's not what we are talking about. We are talking about a company running a school district.

Just how big do you think that Rhode Island is? There are states with counties bigger than RI. East Providence is one of the larger communities in this state and pretty much everyone knows everyone else.

I can't imagine having yet more government, the town of Riverside, now having to build their own high school, guess what, now they are paying yet another Finance Director to the tune of 90,000 a year, so is the newly formed town of Rumford. Sorry that doesn't make sense in the abstract or the reality.

Lastly, no one is talking about poor communities raiding the coffers of wealthier communities, the cost savings would be universal for all communities involved.

The wealthier communities will have the money but not the numbers. Would worry about that as decisions are made. And I fear the problem would only get worse since the only thing the poor are good at is reproducing :)

The physical size is only one parameter. There are about a million people in RI and around a million and a quarter in Maine. In a very rough and ready way they have about the same populations.

What matters is not the physical layout so much as the ratio of elected officials to the people doing the voting.

In Maine the roads are roughly the same in quality as in RI and perhaps a bit better. ME is half of all of New England land area wise.

I would say that failing to take into account the several cultures within RI is a huge mistake. There is not one thing that can or will be done that will prevent the entire state going bankrupt unless they find gold under the streets of Providence and Central Falls.

Any efforts made at saving money will be instantly snapped up and wasted by a combo of proudly stupid and refexively corrupt people.

You have far above the critical mass of corrupt, foolish and shortsighted people necessary to completely offset any tiny effort at fixing the state that might be accomplished.

In harsh world in another time and place, f you were wiling to death camp about 25% of the population or throw them out of the state bodily.... and imprison another 40% of the population in a work camp gulag you might be able to solve the problem if you selected the carefully.

As that is too evil to really do, get used to the idea of living in the 3rd world.

Please speak for yourself, that example is close to being downright rude. Neither myself nor anyone I associate myself with would behave like that, painting all Rhode Islanders that way is repugnant.

@JJD I would suspect you are probably EXACTLY the kind of endemically corrupt person of which I speak.

Complete and total failure to recognize corruption as corruption is one of the primary symptoms of the RI flavor of corruption. Anyone who tries to claim RI is not more corrupt than most places is either inexperienced, naive or a liar.... or they are one of the endemically corrupt.

Imagine a community that has a poorly run sewer plant to where the atmosphere always reeks of sewage. Eventually, after a half dozen generations have lived there, these people do not even smell sewage and feel discomfort if they are exposed to fresh air.

So it is in RI...... there is a complete and total lack of any sense of corruption being wrong in a too large segment of the population, close to the majority, and these people cannot even recognize it as crooked. They are so used to simply conning and lieing and taking what is not theirs to take that they are unable to recognize it as wrong.

Up to now.... most RIers who left the state in disgust were welcomed elsewhere as they share the national notion of what is or is not acceptable conduct.

As RI flushes itself down the toilet, soon enough the endemically corrupt will go like the proverbial rats leaving a sinking ship.

Soon thereafter it will be a good idea to hide your RI heritage as you will not be welcomed elsewhere as you will be presumed crooked for good reason.

Caroline, I would suspect that those like you are the problem in RI. People like you that complain and point fingers and make accusations, but what have you done to change anything? You are fine talking about RI becoming a third-world state almost gleefully, what are you doing to prevent it? or are you happy to see people suffer? You are complaining about corruption but what are you doing to change it? Someone posts an idea for some change to save the taxpayers money, and you cannot discuss the substance of the post but rather rail against the state in which you live and accuse anyone that disagrees with you of being corrupt. You are the problem, not the solution.

Interesting comment Caroline. never looked at quite that way, but I can somewhat see your point. Although I,m not sure its just here in RI. Political arguments across the country, and particularly around here live along the extremes....concervative vs liveral, unions vs corporations, FOX vs MSNBC etc. The good hearted person in the middle who has the ability to critically think about all these ideas is left in the cold......no special interest group, no lobby with billions of dollars to spend on TV commercials.
As George Carlin so eloquently said,
"They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Thats what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue $%#@ thats being jammed up their $%^#@# everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth.
Its called the American Dream,because you have to be asleep to believe it."

I am sorry, but you must be around a lot of low-life people to have that opinion of the the RI community. Perhaps it is you that needs to broaden out who you associate with because I honestly don't see in the average RIer what you see.

I think the plan that was posted isn't trying to 'legislate' a good heart, but rather it is trying to address an issue with how we govern in the state, namely that at the municipal level, we are overstaffed and top-heavy.

Joe, I am shocked you are buying into this dystopian view too.

@Joe Botelho

What I see and know from personal experience is what is tolerated in the way of corruption.

Mainers whose town clerk stole $1,000 from the till will freak out and insist on jail time and get it.

In RI.. the same town clerk would not even be noticed until they stole $10,000 to $50,000.. and after arrest... 40% of the population would write letters to the editor asking for slack since Tommy the Town Clerk was such a nice guy..... and, after all, they are going to make him pay it back. In RI.. there would only be outrage at corruption if the guy doing the stealing had a nasty personality, too.

That is the difference. The racket over corruption might be the same in several places.... but take a look at what is considered too corrupt to tolerate in the compared populations.

Ahh Jason.... Just had down moment. I ike the article in The Sunday Journal today (5/6/12) that suggested we focus on RI's positive points rather than our challenges. The writer correctly suggests that success is an attitude that attracts more success. But as others suggested here, we need visionary leadership to help us get there. I'm not above feeling down on occaisions when I think about where we are today because we used to be in a much better place. But your point is well taken, we ought to focus on solutions and the nay-sayers be damned!

John, A lot of lilliputions need a little guidance and leadership. Something the gullivers are lacking.

Gulliver was a work of fiction much like a few of the ideas rolled out here.

Greg, you can be a 'Gulliver' and provide the guidance and leadership. Run for office or just try to lead in your community. My post is my attempt to be as John describes a 'Gulliver' and present ideas instead of just complaining about the cost of government.

DownTown, any idea or plan is fiction until people stand up and fight to make it a reality.

I think in a lot of cases it would be unweildy, as you point out, geography isn't the only factor, so is population. We have a lot of rescue calls in EP alone, I can see some smaller towns banding together but the urban and urban ring cities wouldn't make sense. Then where resources are placed throughout the state also becomes politicized.

Jason.... one of the only things that it makes sense to centralize is emergency services.

So many of the things you propose to centralize are exactly what will not work as centralized services..... yet one of the ones that is already quasi-centralized thru mutual aid pacts, you oppose.

I speak as a pro in that field.... and senior enough to command those kinds of combined ops, and my area of responsiibility was all of CT, a big hunk of NY and a little hunk of RI.

While I respect your expertise in the emergency management field, I think there is a large difference between the USCG role and what local police/fire/rescue do on a daily basis. In policing for example, there's activites ranging from community policing to traffic enforcement to VICE and Detectives. In the USCG you also weren't unionized, you will never get firefighters to agree to cover cops and honestly I wouldn't want them to, while in the USCG you emergency management was exactly that, on a more local civilian level it is a bit more specialized.

Jason... you have zero expertise in emergency services at all... and yet you feel qualified to "overrule" someone who was very senior in that field and followed it up with a 25 year career in tax law, corporate counseling and accounting.

This is a symptom of why RI is doomed. People of zero experience and expertise feel quite free to disregard what those who know what they are talking about have to offer.

Your union argument makes no sense at all... as a consolidation of emergency services would only negatively impact police chiefs and fire chiefs who are management personnel themselves and ought never be union members as it is a major conflict of interest.

Sadly.. as well-meant as your ideas might be... and it is good to see someone trying... your ideas are infected with the RI disease where those who know little figure they know more than those who know much.

"you have zero expertise in emergency services at all... "

And you know my background how?

"yet you feel qualified to "overrule" someone who was very senior in that field..."

You obviously like to wear the credentials you claim to have as a badge, but your opinion matters no more than anyone elses, I'm not under your command, you don't get to order or 'rule' & therefore were not 'overruled' I merely have my own opinion, that's still allowed last I checked.

"This is a symptom of why RI is doomed. People of 0 experience & expertise feel quite free to disregard what those who know what they are talking about have to offer."

Your expertise is at-best a professional recommendation. Both local government & the USCG have to ultimately answer to civilians with varying experience.

"Your union argument makes no sense at all as a consolidation of emergency services would only negatively impact police chiefs & fire chiefs who are management personnel"

My point was to your idea that you will use firefighters as police & vice versa, that will never fly with unions.

"your ideas are infected with the RI disease where those who know little figure they know more than those who know much."

You missed your calling as a preacher lecturing from on high how the rest of us are unworthy. As said above, expertise is no replacement for public scrutiny & debate. I can find an expert to say anything, experts with groupthink often cause more problems then they solve.

Goes a little farther than I would recommend at this point, I think a state run school department would be very impersonal. water as I proposed should be regionalized but I could also see water/sewer being statewide given the expenses involved. I could live with a unicameral General Assembly, though slightly larger to make up for it, allowing more localized representation. I really don't think the House and Senate work as a check & balance to each other and haven't for a while.

In the early 1960's Colonel Walter Stone testified before the McClellan committee

"Certainly if we had the cooperation of the citizen, we could cope with the situation, but when you don’t have it, certainly you can’t,” Stone testified. “Law enforcement on a state and local level I would say is not in any position to compete with them (the Mafia)"

This was the head of the State Police saying the people who lived here were in league with criminals. That same mind set has passed down generation to generation.

The only thing different is that now criminals (all ethnicity's) get elected and steal from taxpayers with impunity.

NY city has over 8 times the population of the state of RI. Los Angeles has over 4 times the population of RI. What does population have to do with it. There are plenty of single jurisdictions in this country that have higher populations then the state of RI and they have no problem functioning as a single jurisdiction.

The egg analogy was too complicated?

There are a number of boroughs in NYC... and it can hardly be suggested that is a place where people feel they have a meaningful and comfy relationship with any of their representatives on any board or committee.

I am forever amazed at people who want to make sure they are so isolated from any direct knowledge of the people they elect to run their lives for them.

Whaddya? Mental? Ya wanna make sure you get fed a line of marketing crapola as your only means of evaluating a candidate?

Each of the five boroughs has a higher population then RI except for Staten Island. As for the representatives they don't listen to us anyway the problem is there are too many representatives to get anything important done you can get a small number of people to aggree a lot better then you can with a large group. I am not worried about putting all my eggs in one basket we only have enough money afford one egg anyways.

Population is great, but not all services are population dependent, some are geographically dependent and some aren't dependent on either. I also don't get a why you need to be best buds with your elected leaders, I'm looking for a leader not a friend, I think in a lot of cases the corruption you rail against is exactly do to the elected 'leadership' being chummy with too many local interests and power brokers, and being the self-appointed king of their own little kingdom.

I think what Caroline is saying is 'Absolute power corrupts absolutely'.

The more it is concentrated the more of a system of checks and balances are necessary.

Look at what has happened to Warren with the schools. They don't have any control over what the town will spend on schools because the voting power belongs to Bristol. Maybe not 100% relative to this but partly anyway.

I also fail to see how garbage collection can be consolidated. Will there be less trucks or people collecting garbage? Or is this a privatization scheme that can't be applied to schools also?

In fact in each case presented there would either be added layers of personnel necessary to do the work or there wouldn't be any savings.

DownTown;

Just on Finance Directors and HR Directors alone you would save a couple of million. You would need a large department, but not as large as if you added up all the local employees together, you can get synergies and decrease the number of people needed. Also with garbage, in EP it is already private, the savings there would be in negotiating power, and not having to have an employee in each town managing the program. As for representation, it would be one person per town, so no town could dominate, and the funding would be passed through the state in lieu if state GiA, so no town would be essentially charging another town as you describe in the Bristol-Warren scenario. That is also in part why I stayed away from services like schools for now.

Jason you've obviously thought this out.

I'm willing to bet that any savings presented to Warren and Bristol right now would be welcome. Were being hammered by the state school funding formula as you probably know.

Maybe a trial period with just the two towns as a beta test could show the savings and more would sign on. East Providence would certainly welcome some savings but Barrington well who knows. In fact the largest communities you mention such as Providence, Pawtucket etc are desperate for cash savings right now.

You ought to sit down with John C because even though I have deadpanned his tax idea he does have some creative thinking and he's been able to present the idea to someone in the Legislature which is an avenue you might need.

What I find most bizarre is Jason's out-of-hand rejection of the idea of consolidation of emergency services... one of the only forms of consolidation that actually makes some sense and which is already semi-in-place in the form of mutual aid pacts.

It is one of the services that RI's small size makes possible and sensible... something that would be pointless and "in name only" in some huge state of similar population.

Consolidating emergency services reduces the number of police and fire chiefs as administrators. Administration tends not to be their strong suit anyhow if promoted from within.

You still need leadership staff.. fire captains ans watch commanders for example.... but their most important value is commanding at the scene of an emergency and in training/prep in advance of an emergency.

You avoid the spectacle of 78 negotiations.... which is what you would have if all 39 towns had police and fire depts on the payroll.

It would also be worth considering making all emergency services part of the same agency.. with cross training for the staff.... so a cop would have fire training and vice versa. People would have primary duties as cop or firefighter or EMT... but could aid in an emergency where things were shorthanded on scene at that moment.

This is not even a new idea.... the USCG is police, fire and rescue, in its civilian roles... as well as being a fully trained and equipped naval military service.

I think local cops would be the ones who would whine the loudest as local depts are awash in people of marginal ability who are on the force due to connections and the fact nothing much happens except car wrecks and domestics... so it matters not if they are barely able to do the job.

It isn't making someone do the job of three or four people, it's making someone do the job of 1 person for the first time. Population wise, these regions would be roughly the population of Providence, so it would be like being the Finance Director of a major city rather than a tiny town. As for an increase in support staff, if each Finance Director has a secretary, that's 39 secretaries, surely the combined Finance Director will not need that many, so while he may need 3 instead of the one, total state-wide, it is 21 less.

I don't understand how this system is any more prone to corruption than the current system, it isn't less prone I'll admit, but then that wasn't the goal either.

Caroline,
There is a problem with your idea. While regionalization may in fact remove some of the 39 "Chiefs", it will not save nearly as much money as you think. You can not simply remove their salaries as line items because a large scale EMA agency as you propose will still need senior management located geographically. Or do you propose that we let the rank and file manage themselves? So, instead of a Town or City police chief, you end up with a "Capt." who will end up making close to or exactly the same salary as the position he/she is replacing.

The one thing that all of you fail to understand is that service duplication (39 separate entitiies) is not the real problem. Public sector unions is the albatross around all of our necks. (Also the reason why privitization will never occur here).

@J Lane

For one.... you oughta know my background as a quite senior person in the USCG quite a few years ago and worked in commanding commbined operations Fed/State/Local.

The main reason forf consolidating emergency services is that the state is physically tiny and all emergency services always involves moving resources to the location of an emergency.

Chiefs mostly are paper-pushers who spend (or ought to if they are doing their job and are actually needed) most or all of their time pushing those papers.

There is nothing so laughable as some local police chief with four stars on his collar like he thinks he is Patton. The State Police are the most professional emergency organization the state has going. all cops ought to be state cops.

Fire and rescue already operate under mutual aid pacts, so you already HAVE the skeleton of a consolidated force.

There is zero need for a lot of chiefs all over the state.. it is a vanity position in most cases. The DOT can manage its snowplow ops without three dozen DOTs scattered around the state.. and RI DOT does a great job of street clearing even if other aspects of DOT are iffy.

Caroline,
You have completely missed the point and fail to address it. Your background is irrelevent. Your time with the CG, while admirable, does not make you and expert on government or public policy. Last time I checked, the USCG wasn't a union shop. It also does not make you an expert on regionalization or consolidation. Tell me where you got your Public Administration degree and I might give you a little more credance.
MORE senior management positions (albeit with a different title) would be needed to actually manage the stations.

Your anaolgy to DOT is also a failure. You open the door to a statewide DOT taking care of all the roads, yet how does this get paid for? Does the State start collecting our property tax payments? Who, at the state level allocates those funds and makes the priority list for road repair?

Also, and I quote "all cops ought to be state cops". So my question is: How do you handle jurisdictional differences? What is illegal in one town or city, may not be illegal in another. Or do you propose one set of codified laws for the entire state? If so, let's go one step further and remove local and state governments entirely and just create a strong central federal authority. Oh, wait.....seems to me the US has had this arguement before.

I absolutely agree that we need to raise money in RI, attract smart businesses, boost tourism and develop a friendlier small business climate. But the current system doesn't make that possible, not if those small businesses have the yoke of each little town fiefdom on them, demanding taxes to pay their 90,000 a year Finance Director in a town the population of 10,000 people.

As noted in another of your comments, I am not seeking to make these administrators work for anything less than the going rate for a municipality of the size/scope that they would be working in, which under this plan would be around the population size of Providence.

A $90,000 per year employee in a town of 10,000 costs $9 per resident per year. At a nickel each, this means each resident could pay for this employee by picking up 180 bottles and cans off the side of the road... which is only 30-six-packs... that is only six.30-packs of beer cans!

In a rough and ready way someone who drank a six-pack a week and gave the deposit money to the town could pay their share for TWO highly paid employees.

The whole point is this.... how much headache inducing rigamarole is it worth to save $9 per year??? And even that is not entirely saved... as SOME amount would be paid toward the consolidated position.

So you adjust it from $9 to $3, say. Whoop-ti-stinking-doo might be the response, eh?

Oh there is plenty of room to dream up ways to run RI (or anyplace) better.... but have you figured in the, usually quite substantial, costs for converting from the current way to another one?

This is ever the problem in considering change.... one can see how it is now.... one can dream up a desired result.... the nightmare is how to do the transition... and that transition cost can easily completely swamp and destroy any savings realized.

The point being... where is the cost-benefit in this whole scheme?

And where are the calcs of transition costs? What kind of real world analysis has been done to see if these "directors" actually do anything worthy of their pay or are they already being hosed and over-producing considering their pay rate?

As to "smart businesses" Just what kind of smart business do you think RI is ready to provide a workforce for? Hiring the people who already live there and not a lot of importees from elsewhere?

RI does not have a backwards peasantry, barely literate.. but it also is hardly awash in highly educated geniuses with advanced degrees in anti-matter engineering either.

The kind of work that would fit a lot of those who most need work is blue-collar skilled trades.... trades that can be taught in a modest amount of time... preferably on the job... maybe a 6 week program.

Shipbuilding is one of those kinds of industries... and industry that needs a fair supply of modestly skilled sweepers and painters and grinders... one that needs welders and shipfitters and electricians, skilled trades.... and needs also some engineers and their support staff.

Something LIKE shipbuilding would work well. RI is not a pure brainwork state.

There is far too much get-rich-quick scheming where somehow money is supposed to be almost printed behind closed doors someplace doing some thing that in some abstract way sound nice, but has nothing to do with the real environment of RI.

You cannot just WILL the state into being some giant pulsating brain that all the planet will shower with money for its brilliance.

Let us work with what we have got... and leave the grandiose get rich quick scheming aside.

Wait...you left RI? Oh Good...then I won't waste my time. All you have done here is complained about how bad the state is and tried to convince everyone of your "immpecable" qualifications. Your not a solution. Your part of the problem. From the sounds of things, you didn't get your way and now you want to whine about it. Yeah, that sounds like someone who was "a quite senior person in the USCG". Do RI a favor and go fix problems where ever it is that you live now.

The devil is in the details..... and transition is so very often a very, very, very headache producing event.

The $20milion reckoned above is truly a very conservative, lowball figure.... and presumes the records and systems being merged are actually "up to code" and are not incomplete or done wrong and in need of reconstruction.

The estimate is personnel costs alone, too... not one penny is figured in there for hardware and office space and travel and tellecommunications expenses.

Firstly, the 2 million is just for the Finance and HR Directors, not the total savings. Secondly, in EP where that would save us about 100,000 all said and done, that would save a library that we have to close, or our middle school sports program. Thirdly, that $20 million in costs is absurd, we combined IT and are combining Finance between the city and schools in EP to a huge cost benefit, even though the school was on a completely different system, we have run into very few costs. Our state Budget Commission has encouraged both consolidation and regionalization to continue savings, and they are experts in public finances, Major Bannon of the state police has sadly not mentioned anything about consolidating the EPPD though. As for building space, at-least in EP there's plenty of it.

No Jason... the $20million dollars is not even close to absurd. I spent 25 years advising people.. as in corporations and small business on just these kind of issues.

There is a huge problem in this whole proposal of know-it-all-ism on the part of people who simply have not got a particle of background that would inform them of the real costs of this.

The state government has an unbroken track record of complete and total failure in any and every effort to comprehend finances and the real world.. they are the problem.. not the solution. Quoting those who are proven to be far, far less than competent.... is not real convincing.

Again.. this is part of the RI attitude problem... a complete refusal to listen to anyone who actually KNOWS what they are talking about due to training and due to experience.

I doubt in a huge way the books in EP would stand a close audit when it comes to demonstrating actual savings of the sort you mention. Cooked books are a way of life in RI... and cooked books when it comes to cost-accounting is extremely common as cost-accounting is a management tool and not subject to prosecution like cooking the bookkeeping system would be.

This proposal is awash in amateur assumptions when it comes to both savings and costs... and we might well look to who is advocating this to see what contract they expect to be awarded for trying to do it.

All this talk of regionalization seems to be fantasy that there exists some magic bullet to solve the problems of a bankrupt state with precious little reason for industry to move there and no real solutions at all.

The potential for RI to save itself is reduced even further below the basic dismal prospects because RI is unwilling to buck up and actually face the reality they face.

It is all get-rich-quick type schemes.... and all kinds of pink and fluffy projections for rescue dreamed up by disregarding any inconvenient facts that would un-pink or de-fluff the wish-filled projections.

It is just tooooo typical to just kind of wave-off the costs of transition... and to figure that can somehow be done on the cheap or not at all.

How on earth can somebody figure there are no cost of transition.... and an average of ten full timers per town for a year is hardy even remarkable... unless you figure to just go thru the motions of consolidation and just pack up boxes of records and dump them on the front steps someplace in the hopes the wind will choose to sort them out, gratis.

This expectation that the winds and the tides, perhaps, will magically do the hard work is too typical of plots by RI politicos... they spend their time writing self-congratulatory press releases and pretty much let the details take care of themselves.

Curiously enough, this is why nothing ever works well in RI.. .the winds and tides hardly ever do the work for us.

Right, everyone that lives in RI is an ignorant hack, except you. I think you live in the fantasy world.

Jason.... not everyone... just some too large minority.. perhaps a bare majority... are ignorant AND proud of it. And did you do a typo for "hick"?? and type hack??

And no, they are not "hicks" because if they were hicks.. as in farmers or country dwellers.. they would have enough common sense and wisdom and life experience to know a line of drifty wishful thinking when they heard or read it.

No.... it isn't "hicks" that are the problem.. it is people who have about as much real life savvy as a lifer indoor kitty cat... who thinks hunting is for hicks since "everyone knows food magically appears in the self-feeder".

And the problem is these proudly ignorant hacks have wedged themselves in place in the political life of RI.. so it doesn't matter what percent of the population is proud to be ignorant.. what is important is the pridefuly ignorant cliques dominate politics and elbow out anyone who is not in harmony with them, ignorance-wise.

"And no, they are not "hicks" because if they were hicks.. as in farmers or country dwellers.. they would have enough common sense and wisdom and life experience to know a line of drifty wishful thinking when they heard or read it."

No one said hicks except you

"No.... it isn't "hicks" that are the problem.. it is people who have about as much real life savvy as a lifer indoor kitty cat... who thinks hunting is for hicks since "everyone knows food magically appears in the self-feeder"."

Again, no one mentioned hicks but you.

"And the problem is these proudly ignorant hacks have wedged themselves in place in the political life of RI.. so it doesn't matter what percent of the population is proud to be ignorant.. what is important is the pridefuly ignorant cliques dominate politics and elbow out anyone who is not in harmony with them, ignorance-wise."

Right see I knew you viewed us all as hacks, anyone that disagrees with you. It only took three paragraphs to get there because you tried to change the word I said 'hack' to 'hick' for some inexplicable reason.

Jason,
Your wasting your time with her. She is a malcontent. She sees corruption everywhere. Read back and look at her posts and ask yourself, "Does this look like the writings of a senior CG officer?" Or even someone who claims "a 25 year career in tax law, corporate counseling and accounting." ? The short answer is no. This is a crackpot. Plain and simple.

Thanks J. Lane, sometimes when you deal with someone like that long enough you begin to question yourself and think maybe you're the crazy one. We have a similar regular poster called 'Veteran' that claims to have an M.B.A. and rails against the Police and Fire departent on every article. It could be an article on a community cleanup and he posts that firefighters get double time for working on their birthday.

Little do these two know just how truthful is my description of my resume... and how much more extensive it is than I have described here.

The only people who are condemned as fools in a conversation like this is people who make idiot slanders the basis of their "defense" of their ideas.

You came into this conversation calling people corrupt, including referring to another poster as "endemically corrupt" when disagreeing with your tone, so if you now want to play the 'personal attacks' card, you're only going to look like a hypocrite. You make arguments that it will take 20 million dollars to consolidate HR processes, based on a number that you made up that it will take 400 people, I'm assuming on top of existing employees, which given the examples we've seen elsewhere in the state just doesn't bare fruit. It isn't that we aren't making an argument back, its that you are dismissing our arguments because we aren't 'experts'. There is more than credentials and resumes, someone that's truly a professional doesn't need to bring it up non-stop.

I am dismissing you because you disregard entirely the expense of transition based upon one rinky-dink effort at consolidating stuff in EP and which you claim all kinds of grand savings occurred and yet zip zero nada is offered in the way of details.

You seem to have made zero allowance at all for transition costs.. which is one of the most important considerations in a question like this. And so.. I tend to disregard these consolidation ideas as half-baked and incompletely thought through.

My estimates of transition costs are exactly what a careful person would allow until such time as they gathered more exact info.

$50,000 per year per person with the skillset to do this stuff.. and at temp assignment rates which are aways higher than long term contract rates... is quite reasonable.. and may even be low.

10 people per town would be an average.... Warwick would require more, Block Island fewer.... Providence loads of them.

The experience you had in EP is not even close to the complexity potential when deaing with 39 towns and who knows how many subsets bookkkeeping systems within those town. It is no trivial project... not even close.

400 people working for a year is not even close to what the worst case scenario might be.... it is an okay-ish rough and ready guesstimate that is somewhere in the middle of potential costs. The chance of it coming in lower is not zero but is real unlikely.

And so we get back to the $20million transition cost.... excluding all costs for materials and rent and equipment.. .and admin people to pay and supervise the transition team... never mind coordinating it all with some project manager(s).

And yet you have not offered any specifics on where you get your 20 million / 400 people number. You are an 'expert', what are the detailed costs for each part of the process that I am overlooking in your opinion. It is obvious that there will be some one-time costs to consolidate, but I don't believe that it is more than the savings offered. I also think that it's worth the one-time cost for long-term savings and sustainability.

Providence is exempted from the proposal I outlined due to size. In EP we have been able to merge two entirely different systems with just a preliminary study as an extra cost, if you do it with 9 or 10 communities in each region of the state, at worst it would mean having to keep the overlapping staff on for the transition. These aren't all Warwicks or Cranstons we're talking about, some of these are towns with a few thousand people.

Jason: Your proposal makes zero provision for transition expenses. Then you object when someone with 25 years experience working on generally similar projects gives you a rough and ready estimate.

The rates of pay for people to do a combo of accounting and tech work as well as troubleshooting it all is not a secret.. Do you follow the rates of pay in the job market? I do and so will a good many readers of this... and they will know full well that is what it cost to hire temps with strong, speciallized skillsets.

Do you have ANY idea how much paperwork and data is collected on staff? Do you have any idea of the retention requirements? Do you have any idea of how many years worth of info you are required by law to retain? A bare minimum of seven years worth... just to meet the most basic audit requirements... never mind the fact you actually have to keep records for the ENTIRE careers for people who work for 20-30 years. It is a HUGE undertaking.

I think you have made a case for the work in EP to be audited by outsiders since you seem to be wholly clueless to these inescapable legal requirements.

One of my tax clients was an auditor of municipalities. There are CPA firms that specialize in this stuff because it requires pros. You have, in a public forum made a good case that an audit of EP be done since you have suggested a pack of rank amateurs may have violated who knows how many laws and GAAP/GAAS standards.

Caroline,
I really have to question your reading comprehension skill set.
You contend that Public Safety is one area where consolidation would work, based on your "immpecable" skill set. So let me point this out to you:
Your time with the CG was time spent in a bubble. Nothing you learned there translates to the real world because you are not dealing with any of the public policy issues that occur in a real municipalitiy. ie: Unions, jurisditional differences, etc. Instead, your arguement changes to "Corruption, corruption, corruption". Do you, with your vast expertise, understand that most, if not all of the RI individual municipalities have studied and looked at consolidation?

My opinion of you has not changed since I read a couple of your "corruption" posts, you feel as though you were wronged somewhere and want to whine about it. Well, go somewhere else and complain.
Jason is at least trying.
And as a side note, generally when some "brags" that much about there credentials...there is probably a problem. So I'll be the one to ask, you claim you were a CG officer, so, where did you recieve your degree and what commisioned rank did you leave with?

Caroline so you were in the Coast Guard we get it nobody cares you don't need to remind us in every post. If there is a boat sinking off fogland pt we will let you know. You are so full of yourself you need to make yourself feel important by posting your qualifications. Why don't you stick to issues in Maine you have no horse in this race. You seem to feel the need to put people down all the time you have managed it insult a whole state full of people I am sure the Coast Guard would be so proud of you. Yes there will be start up costs we know that we are not as stupid and backwards as you think. We are not looking at the short term but at long term savings. With all your expertise you should be able to understand that. What I can't understand is why you feel the need to interject yourself into a conversation that has nothing to do with you. You do not live in RI you do not like RI and you have such a low opinion of the people of RI why are you so obsessed with what goes on in RI. Do the entire state a favor and and start worrying about Maine for a while and let us run our own affairs.

Again I find it amusing how people whose opinions are valueless in this discussion feel the need to make fools of themselves ranting and raving.. mostly complaining that someone who actually HAS the background to have an informed opinion offers one.

And.. sadly for these ill-informed typists... they are typical of why people leave the state rather than stay and fix it. There is a nearly endless supply of this kind of "proud to be ignorant" people who not only are ignorant... but seem to think it really clever to give the people who know more than they do a hard time.

God forbid they ask questions or offer ideas for critical consideration.. Goodness NO that would never do. Just have a childish stompy hissy fit and plug your ears and close your eyes and mutter naanaanaanaaa so they cannot hear what is being said.

Sorry goobers... you ideas won't work... you didn't think them through.. and that is YOUR fault and nobody elses's.

You are whining that someone found objections that you cannot refute in your ideas. Again... that is YOUR fault... not the fault of those who can see these problems that have been overlooked.

Get used to the idea that your can dream up all the stuff you want.. but if it does not map onto the real world don't blame the real world for refusing to cooperate with you.

Caroline you keep saying you have all this expertise but offer no proof you claim to have been a senior Coast Guard officer but offer no real proof are we supposed to just take your word for it. I have searched the internet for Caroline Evans USCG and the only things to come up are you making statements that you were a senior Coast Guard Officer but no records to back that up. I can't find one reference to you being in the coast guard at all except you saying so. I also could nothing under Caroline Evans atty at law even though claim to be a tax attorney I am beginning to believe you are just another Dan Gordon making up a past as you go along. You are no expert just a bitter person with a personal grudge against Rhode Island. Caroline if you want to continue to make claims at being an expert please produce some credentials because we are not just going to take your word for it. I can claim to be the former President of the United States but I doubt you would take my word for it.

@J Lane McMahon... you seem to have about no idea what you are taking about.

Imagine some clod rattling on about USCG time as "living in a bubble".

It is incrediby obvious that you have not one particle of knowledge about the subject about which you have such certain opinions.

No... "J".... it is plain to me... as it is to anyone who reads this thread and who has some real world experience... that you are just some idle clueless spectator of ife who is used to ranting on to other know-littles about things that none of you know anything about except what you read in a manga book or saw on some scripted drama.

If you don't like the fact that people in this world who have actually DONE something hold you in a low estimation... I suggest you go DO something.

If you don't like the fact you are outclassed by others in every way.... don't complain that they outclass you.... either shut up and accept your lowly status.. or go accomplish something in the real world... and gain the right to have an opinion worthy of consideration.

Your complaint is against yourself ... if you know less that do others and those others make it obvious you complain about them having the audacity to do so instead of seeking to improve yourself.

"I think you have made a case for the work in EP to be audited by outsiders since you seem to be wholly clueless to these inescapable legal requirements.

One of my tax clients was an auditor of municipalities. There are CPA firms that specialize in this stuff because it requires pros. You have, in a public forum made a good case that an audit of EP be done since you have suggested a pack of rank amateurs may have violated who knows how many laws and GAAP/GAAS standards."

We just had our audit from an independent auditor Bacon and Edge. We had a Roger Williams University study done on consolidation prior to starting it. We have both a Budget Commission of financial and administrative experts and the State Auditor-General and state Director of Revenue overlooking our finances. All of these sources have either recommended cosolidation or concurred that our decision to do so was the right one to make.

Agreed.

Schools aren't part of the proposal and maybe I'm being naive but I would hope and beleive that Rhode Islanders as a whole are better than to refuse to collaborate on a service because of the diversity of backgrounds, ethnicities and socio-economic classes involved.

And tell us Robert E.... what do you know of the pecking order in law enforcement? Nothing? Tell us why you decide to simply lie and say this is from some "anti-police Facebook page?"

No Robert E.. who is too cowardly to post your whole name... what you tell the reader is that YOU are part of the problem.

YOU are, quite simply, a willful liar...as that is the only way to characterize your words.

And this is the perfect exemplification of the corrupt RI mentality that infects far too many RIers.... a pure and instantaneous reflex to be dishonest and dishonorable in response to even the most tiny slight.

What is extremely funny is that these clowns have not got the wit to know they are outting their mentality for the observer to easily see.

When they are shown to have no idea what they are talking about.... the first response is to try, desperately, to slander anyone who points out their shortcomings.

Local police do not 'obey' 'the Feds'.

Each State is a Sovereign entity separate from the Federal government. The legal term for how they deal with each other is 'comity'. Mutual respect and reciprocity between separate jurisdictions is basically comity. Separate jurisdictions work together.

Robert E.... we cannot help but notice you rant and rave and have yet to make even the vaguest most general statement about your own experience and qualifications... yet you demand a detailed resume from others.

Sheesh.

Thanks, though.... I expect to bookmark this conversation and use it as an example of the too typical mentality of far too many RIers.

We see dishonest and dishonorable conduct engaged in by reflex.... and pride in ignorance.... and a reflex to freak out in crazy middle-school-kid ways when half-baked, ill-considered ideas are demonstrated to be such.

Caroline I do not claim to be an expert like you have all I am saying if you want to claim to be an expert show some proof. Because you want to go on the attack and dont want to show proof I will just have to infer you don't have any. If you want to use me as an example of a typical RIer go right ahead I am proud to be from RI.

A little research is a beautiful thing, here's the truth about Caroline.
- She spent 5 years in the USCG, how 'senior' you can get in 5 years is questionable. Even that information came from her based on a form she filled out, no independent verification.
- Caroline is an IRS Enrolled Agent, (someone allowed to handle federal tax matters without being a CPA) so she isn't a CPA.
- Caroline is a certified legal assistant, certainly not a lawyer, not even a paralegal.
- Before leaving RI, she was Technology Coordinator for the Tiverton Public Library.

A couple of things to note, I couldn't find what precipitated Caroline's exit from TPL, but I would venture to guess that it wasn't pretty for a few reasons. First being that the CLAN technology committee minutes do not state her departure, while in cases of retirement or amicable resignation it is usually put in. Second, she made an unsubstantiated and barely relevant comment earlier about a supposedly corrupt librarian. Third her rants about RI do not start until after she was no longer there. Fourth and the one that I find most curious, is that she makes no mention of her IT background, despite IT consolidation being mentioned numerous times and instead chooses to inflate her other credentials, like she's running from that part of her past. Nothing about her credentials is shameful, but they don't make her an expert in public finance.

A little stupidtiy is an amazing thing to view.

An Enrolled Agent is licensed to practice law in Tax Court and a certified legal assistant is one step above a paralegal. CPAs commonly seek the advice of EAs on tax matters as the EA credential is a stronger credential in taxation than is a generic CPA credential. CPas have stronger skils than an EA in other aspects of accounting.

A person who, inside of five years is promoted to a command position that includes exercising federal authority over pretty much everyone from the governors on down of three states is someone who is highly qualified else they would not be assigned that job.

You see JJD.. it would seem your problem is that you have never accomplished anything in your ife and are simply jealous and envious when when someone of ability comes to your attention.

And so JJD.... we see that you cannot even do research worth a darn and make any use of it.

Sheeesh... you could not do more to prove how RI halfwits go out of their way to try to jerk around anyone of ability and accomplishment.

And that is part of the halfwits' problem.... you can point out to them overtly that they are halfwits and they wlli go on and on and on proving it for you.

JJD.. how about you actually post under your real name?

You seem to have zero qualifications of any sort and hide behind a pseudonym out of shame??? Whose relative are you? What interest do you have in this consolidation project? Do you and Jason have it figured to land a contract doing this based upon his EP efforts?

Do you not know how incredibly funny it is to watch you so desperately spinning your wheels with your idiotic efforts at "investigation".

My resume is four pages long... and I had to abbreviate things at that.

Get used to the idea that you are making my point for me... in spades. You are an anonymous poster on some minor buy growing online publication.

You spend all of your time in this thread desperately working up slanders and mostly because you feel put down because your ideas don't fly when you run them by someone who actually has the qualifications to evaluate them.

You don't even know what you are talking about when you speak of the CLAN LIT committee. Everything you have researched about me simply confirms my self-description.

You have yet to bother yourself with much related to the subject of this thread... instead wasting space on your crazy efforts at slander.

An Enrolled Agent is not automatically allowed in the Tax Court Bar, according to 26 USC there is a further examination to practice before the Tax Court. An Enrolled Agent is allowed to represent someone before the IRS. Nothing wrong with being an enrolled agent, but it is not what you made yourself out to be as an accountancy expert.

As for paralegal and legal assistant, many states don't legally recognize the difference, though the National Association of Legal Assistants offers Certified Advanced Paralegal as it's top certification, with Certified Legal Assistant as entry level.

You can't criticize me as attacking you when I bring up facts about you, and then in the same breath says things like "I've never accomplished anything in my life"

As for your claim that I have no qualifications, that's your opinion, you haven't got a clue who I am and what my background is, mainly because I don't mention my resume in every post and inflate it in a vain attempt to give me authority in a discussion.

It is obvious you have a chip on your shoulder, and the sad part of it is that in reading about your work in the library, it's evident that you weren't always like this. Whatever happened, you let it change you into someone bitter and crass. You've allowed hate to cloud your thinking and because of the wrong (real or perceived) you endured, you see the 'corruption' bogeyman around every corner.

Resignations of Enrolled Agents
Under Title 31, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 10, an enrolled agent, in order to avoid the institution or conclusion of a proceeding for his or her disbarment or suspension from practice before the Internal Revenue Service, may offer his or her resignation as an enrolled agent. The Director, Office of Professional Responsibility, in his discretion, may accept the offered resignation.
The Director, Office of Professional Responsibility, has accepted offers of resignation as an enrolled agent from the following individuals:
Name Location Designation Date
Evans, Caroline Tiverton, RI May 7, 2003

...so the fact RI celebrated Independence Day 2 days ago and was the last to join the 13 colony's messes up your logic? The ones you point the finger at are RI's. The ones you point the finger at live/consume/pay taxes/and are part of the State with heritage of independence. I suggest you take your middle school blog here and do something useful with it...i.e. join the girl on the other side of the state concerning the school banner...at least that has focus and passionate backing outside of a handful of folks as this topic does.

Caroline,
Wow...you really can't read. Not once did I say I was in favor of consolidation. As a matter of fact, I pointed out why it won't achieve the author's stated goals.

And as to pseudonyms, this is my name. And has been.
And quite frankly, I don't care what your opinion of me is.
I get that you feel you were wronged somewhere along the line. Ok, that 's too bad. But life goes on, get over it. Bashing an entire state? Corruption everywhere? Come on, at least try and act like a grownup.

I think i'm more shocked that you actually put your name on this blog than the disrespect you give to our State and towns. Also, you may want to go to bed, obviously if i'm going to truly toss a disrespect your way i'd point out the obvious - you post at all hours of the night - a Saturday night...my imagination is all of the map here...

Again, a quick search on Vision Appraisal as to the local and socio-economic of this individual warrants and other obvious question as to ones position in the class of Portsmouth. This is wrong to make this statement but when one uses philosophy 101 to position themselves I find myself organizing my thoughts in the direction of philosophy laced with emotion. Check mate.....

East Side:

Respect is earned as is disrespect. RI has earned its negative reputation and too many people seem to go out of their way to retain it.

And I cannot help but note you seem to be one of them. You post behind a pseudonym and make middle-school insult the core of your posting and seem to wonder why RI has a reputation for being one of the most gaffed up places in the nation.

Does it not strike you as rather silly to waste your time "defending RI" by acting like a bent out of shape middle schooler???

So long as people think they can wish the state into sanity and health... and disregard anyone and everyone who can actually evaluate ideas like adults... and even go out of your way to smugly give them a hard time... you can watch the state continue to sink deeper and deeper into oblivion.

Sadly, RI's main value to this nation is as an example of what not to do and how not to do things. And this is a sad thing to see.

True statements here...also true is that this is a very small island. Also small on this island is employment so think about this when you post your name. Your family is also tied to your name - and when your family works on the island and people like me don't use their real names you never know whom knows whom. Do you say these things to assist you with your business or are you just so out of line with reality something else is going on here?

East side don't even bother to answer here rants nothing she posts on here matters. She is nothing but a fruad and any statment she is making here are not based on any qualifications and expertise she may or may not have but on on an imagined wrong she feels the people of RI did to her. The views of even the best expert means nothing if they come into the discusion with a preconceived notion that clouds their impartiality. I feel sorry for her to have so low a selfworth that she need to inflate her credentials to make herself feel important.

East Side.. you are exactly right as to why people feel a need to remain anonymous in discussions like this.

They can almost COUNT on some pathetic, petty, nasty little jerkwad twit screwing with them or their family or friends. They would have to worry about someone killing their pets or slashing their tires.

And why? For daring to speak the truth.... or daring to make a pinhead look like the pinhead they are.

We see a toy version of it here as these idiots try to slander me instead of speaking to the subject.

And these are the same jackasses who got all harumphy and bent out of shape I described the endemic corruption.. endemic petty dishonesty... endemic dishonorable conduct that plagues the state.

And then they could not have done more to prove my point if they had deiberately set out to do so. They have an irresistible reflex to act in petty, dishonorable ways... and even when they KNOW they are being observed in a public forum... they do it anyhow.

They cannot even figure out how to camouflage it.

Robert E:

Tell us about YOUR military career, honey? Do you have one.. or are you another video-game fan who figures some WOW time renders you a Patton?

It is obvious you have not one single clue about any branch of the service... much less about the USCG and who is assigned what duties and with what authority.

II'm not going to bother about it but do you know wrongfully calling someone a liar in public is actually an civil suit waiting to happen? Sadly for you... I have documents to prove what I say.

Your defense to a libel/slander suit is that this is an informal discussion and that your comments are of such generally low quality that they are without any meaningful credibiity.

This means that your attorney's defense would be that no one would ever take your accusations against me seriously so I am not damaged by it.

It is a case of "consider the source".

So far.. every single effort made here to slander me has only resulted in still more evidence that my self-description is absolutely honest in every way.

And.. it also has the added amusement value of illustrating perfectly the mentality that causes people of ability to wash their hands of the state.

There are far too many petty nasty little doofi in the way.

Caroline,
Your a liar. Now sue me. I dare you.

J Lane...

Do you or do you not feel like a fool yet?
"You are a liar sue me I dare you" to quote you.

What is the point of making such a moronic post?
And downright moronic is what it is.

It is below the level of middle school in maturity.. for starters.
It shows you cannot even read the a rough description of libel/slander as it appees of this kind of forum and understand it.

It demonstrates perfectly the too typical RI reflex to be petty nasty and unspeakably infantile when the poor silly nitwit goobers get their tiny little feelings hurt.

Understand J Lane.... you and this tiny collective of nitwits are a perfect cross section of RI.

We have a proposal by someone who almost knows what he is doing... but not quite.

We have one commentator who is actually qualified to understand and criticize the proposal.and who takes the time to do so.

And we have a few other driveby people who rightly dismiss the proposal as unworkable and then move along instead of spending time explaining why.. probably because they can see somebody is already doing so.

And this is typical, standard RI way of doing things.
Almost-qualified people dreaming things up..whose tiny feelings get hurt when somebody qualified tells them their idea won't work... a too large peanut gallery of nasty petty nitwits supporting the idea-that-will-not-work.... and a fair supply of people who don't want to be bothered because they know the nitwits will wail away no matter what.

Jim.. the USCG has arrest powers wherever its jurisdiction extends and for any law that it is tasked with enforcing. And you would be surprised just how far reaching is that authority. This is especially true of pollution incidents that end up in the water.

The USCG often has overlapping and senior authority in areas of law enforcement.. they concede to junior agencies the duty to take care of things that they, too, are legally empowered to pursue as it is a duplication of effort.

Understand that every time a police boat gets underway... the USCG knows it... and the police boat is ultimately answerable to the USCG if the USCG chooses to exercise their authority over them.

That the USCG is not power hungry is a good thing as they have long been delegated powers that other agencies were only granted recently under the Patriot Act.

A USCG people are cross trained in all areas of emergency service.. from first aid to law enforcement to firefighting. People in turn are trained as specialists in those skills and the specialists are assigned primary duties in their area of expertise.

Thus .. every USCG person can assist the specialists if need be. It is what comes of being a too small agency with gigantic level of responsibility. They have long ago learned how make extremely effectibe use of limited resources.

In civiian, union-dominated emergency services you see the same desire to featherbed and over-speciaiize you see in unionized industry.

No small number of the civilian "requirements and regulations" to which you refer have little to do with providing good, efficient emergency services and a lot to do with unions looking out for their own interests.

It is not too hard to send a cop to firefighting school.... so he has some idea what is going on in firefighting... and let him be a cop almost all of the time.. but when some giant plane crash happens.... or some 9/11 type event happens.. or even a 1938 hurricane.... you have cross trained people ready to go.

The way that I see it, all communities involved would benefit, broke communities will be a bit less broke, well off communities will be a bit more well off, there's no way that the savings would just be funnelled to the urban municipalities or those that are poorly managed. The bills and example of regionalizing police and fire is exactly why I left them out of this proposal and why I've been arguing with Caroline that it won't work. As for local taxpayers not wanting to relinquish control, I doubt many wake up thinking "boy I'm sure glad with have our own HR department here in X town" I can see maybe some opposition to refuse and water as those are services that actually interface with the public, I still think that water/sewer is too much of a drain on towns/cities individually however. Obviously some local kingpins may not like that he can't get Joe Schmo a cushy job in the town's HR department, but I think that's the only opposition you will find to stuff like that.

I happen to have some (more than 5 yrs) experience in the fire/ems service.
Believe it or not there are people other than yourself that have knowledge of certain subjects. Knowing first aid and being a EMT-Cardiac who administers dozens of drugs intraveneously are 2 different things. Last time I checked the state Dept. of Health makes the laws, not the unions.
As far as firefighting goes it's not something that's learned in a couple of weeks. And shipboard firefighting is COMPLETELY different than structural firefighting.
Everyone cannot be everything- well most of can't.
Just because I don't pat myself on the back and act like Horatio Hornblower doesn't mean I have no knowledge of fire/ems ops.

If you read the Wikipedia entry on the Center For Public Integrity you will see a lot of suggestions it has some integrity problems itself, internally.

You will also note it is investigative journalists who seem to be drawn heavily from the word of Democratic Party sympathizers and apologists... and so it is hardly a rolicking recommendation when people who are probably Democrat-leaners still only grade RI with a C.

And.... again.. the gigantic leak is that they can only go by prosecutions and perhaps by news stories. As I stated above.. in ME they have a meltdown and prosecution for theft of $1,000... in RI a $1,000 missing from the till would be written off as just a typical bookkeeping screwup on the part of low-quality govt workers.. and it might well be that... no money missing at all.

You so want to disbeleive that you have people cutting holes in the bottom of a Titanic to let out the water... yet that is what you see in RI.... the state is sinking and you have people with blowtorches working to cut holes in the hull to let out the water.

And tell us... who on earth is the "Center For Public Integrity"?????????

And tell us how they measure integrity? Prosecutions would be the only truly measurable event, right?

So a state the never prosecutes corruption gets a good mark.. and one that does gets a bad one.

The state is bankrupt as are a good many of its major towns and cities....and RI is one of the poster children nationwide for being on the way down the chute and with no way whatsoever to save itself. People are watching to see how it sinks so they can predict how failures elsewhere may go.

And why is RI giant failure? Because no business that can site itself elsewhere will bother with a state that is so crazy to deal with.... a palced that can be counted upon to have a combo of incompetents and crooks "in charge" .

People in RI do not seem to recognize that taking a paycheck for a job you cannot or do not do is fraud.... and it matters not if it meets the specs for prosecution of not. We are awash in Peter Principle case who are in way, way, way over their heads. And who will not step away from the jobs they cannot handle as they see so many others who likewise are not able and who are still in place Why should they sacrifice for the state's good if no one else will? So they don't.

And so.. we see a typical fraudulent defense of RI.. a shaky, doubtful "non-profit" is quoted... and it is some meaningless letter grade offered with no explanation whatsoever of where it came from.

A probable mouthpiece for Democratic Party interests can do no better than a C and D+ in grading RI.... and it is a certainty that the only measure of corruption they can objectively tally is prosecutions. And a lack of prosecutions would be due to a lack of interest in prosecuting the corrupt.

The state is not bankrupt because qualified people are diligently doing their jobs, now is it? Yet insolvency threatens every aspect of RI political life even where people are dancing around trying to avoid the inevitable so they don't get examined by federal bankruptcy trustees who will have a duty to turn people in if wrongdoing is noted.

How do you account for RIs status if it is such an upstanding squared away operation? After all this is what the apologists would have you believe.

"Don't worry about that water pouring into the Titanic" they would say " it is just the pool boy filing the indoor pool"

Oh.. and if you take the time to research the CPI study of state corruption it is mostly a measure of how closely the state adheres to the CPIs own partisan notions of what laws and so forth ought to be on the books.

What a typical and sad joke... a lot of Engish Lit majors with journalism backgrounds from the left end of the political spectrum... postulate up their own idea of how the world ought to be run.... and then trot out a "neutral" scorecard based upon their own partisan leftist ideas of how things ought to be.

For crying out loud ... it is not a collective of auditors and attorneys who might have strong background to know if things are done well.... it is a lot of interested amateurs who offer their politically influenced views on who meets their specifications best.

Robert. .the maddening thing is there is no rescue to be had.... and what little rescue might be arranged.. to make the inevitable disaster a little less tragic.. is not going to be done.

The Titanic is a good analogy.... the lifeboats were not even filled to capacity.. so there were not only too few lifeboats.... but the ones that got lowered away were not used to the best effect.

In RI you have people who, like some Titanic passengers... cannot sort out the ship is sinking.. and keep out of the lifeboats, and keep their kids out too.. so they could stay aboard the nice big safe ship. Who knows how many kids were not put in the lifeboats while their ever-so-clever parents "saved" them by keeping them aboard.

Robert.... my bitterness toward RI comes from having made some personal sacrifices to try to do good in the town I lived in for 25 years.... and saw those things flushed down the chute by a combo of blatant corruption... and arrogant stupidity.

I would like to share these giant tales here.. but there is no space and no one cares. But the point is I also saw, as a mere close-by spectator, plenty of other things flushed away needlessly by a combo of money grubbing corruptos taking feees for jobs they were not competent to do.. and loud and proud fools supporting the cons.

I saw poor goofy gulibles who bought the con-artists' lines and only after the fact came to me and said "Gee, you were right, can you help us fix the mess now?"

Well it was too late there was no fixing what got wasted and conned and stolen. It was as if someone fed their baby Drano to "fix their constipation" and then asked the ER to fix them up and bring them back to life the next day.

It is heartbreaking and maddening to read the kind of stuff we see in this thread.. as it is the same kind of stuporous goofballs as destroyed things where I used to live.. and who still ruin the place (I follow the news there).. and it is the same mentality that is endemic in a too large swath of RI.

As to what went down the chute in my former hometown. It is now about a decade later.. and the same project that was corrupty bamboozled all to hell is STILL not done and see efforts still underway to try to re-fund the project to clean up the mess that was made when between a quarter and half-million dollars were allocated to a project that got pilage by "well respected" people who are the principals in a "well repsected" non-profit.... except the people involved were not even close qualiifed to perform the duties they took huge fees for performing.

Between their corrupt taking of fees for service they were not legally allowed to perform.... and buddying up with others who pillaged the grant funds for their own benefit.... they would have done better if they had just taken the heap of grants and just had a bonfire with the money.. at least the crooks would not have been emboldened and rewarded for being crooked.

The crooked incompetent non-profit is still at it.. and is in the middle of robbing another non-profit organization of fees for services they are not qualified to provide in the same town.

There is nothing so low as a phony non-proft that offers services to other non-profits and just takes their money from them. The tiny few people who "wortkk" the phony non-profit take their profits in the form of paychecks for doing less than nothing since they are not licensed or trained to provide those services. They make messes others have to clean up.