The Rhode Island Fiscal Trainwreck

I've been working on an op-ed for the Providence Journal today in response to an article on the front page of this morning's ProJo: Labor leaders say the governor isn't working with them. My point is that the union leadership are the ones who helped get Rhode Island into a $150 million deficit this fiscal year, and a projected $450 million deficit for the fiscal year that starts later this year. That's well over a half a billion dollars worth of deficits, in a state with less than a million people. The unions, as always, have it backwards. It's they who should be reaching out to Governor Carcieri, not the other way around!

Here's the finished op-ed. We'll see if the Journal goes with it...

The Unions Are Annoyed, But What About Us?

So, George Nees, the head of the AFL-CIO in Rhode Island, is annoyed with Governor Carcieri, saying that his relationship with this particular Governor is the worst that he’s had with any governor in the past. Funny that, since the over half a billion dollar budget mess we currently find ourselves in took several decades to develop. Apparently Mr. Nees views anyone who isn’t on his or her knees in front of him as a problem.

Obviously, George Nees prefers his governors to be more supplicant. Bruce Sundlun groveled to the unions, in the manner to which Nees seems to be accustomed, not to find a permanent solution, but to beg for a solution that got his Administration out of the hot seat, the future financial state of Rhode Island be damned. And while it seems to have served both sectors well at the time, it didn’t do the same for the future financial health of the state. What is really bothering Nees is that this Governor, unlike the current General Assembly and some past governors, doesn’t work for the current union leadership – he’s not beholden to them for his elected position.

I have a suggestion for Mr. Nees, and the rest of the union leaders and their sycophants in the Ocean State. Instead of whining and complaining about how “mean” Governor Carcieri is, and how coverage by some in the media is “unfair” to unions, take the initiative for once. Prove to the taxpayers that you’re part of the solution, not the problem. Come out publicly with your own plan, involving those that you are responsible to, that permanently saves the state, say, $100 million per year for this and future budgets. No? Then how about a plan to permanently save $50 million? Not that either, huh. Well, how about a million? We’re waiting.

How about coupling that with a meaningful symbolic measure to the taxpayers of this state? Union leadership that serves on Rhode Island’s various boards, or in the General Assembly, certainly earn enough to live on in salary and benefits coming directly from the pockets of their union members. Now is the time for them to prove to the taxpayers where their priorities lie. Why don’t they, as a gesture of solidarity with all taxpayers, decline the salary and benefits that they receive for services performed on the various boards and in the General Assembly of the State of Rhode Island?  I assume that they’re serving in those state positions not first and foremost for their own benefit or the benefit of their unions, but for the benefit of the taxpayers of Rhode Island – the ones that pay the state’s bills. If so, then help us out a bit in our time of need.

To the surprise of the news department of the Providence Journal, from whence all local media storylines come, non-elite Rhode Islanders might be a bit slow on the uptake, but are not fools. They know that it isn’t the governor who runs Rhode Island, it’s run by the municipal unions, teachers unions, lawyers, and whatever leftover Democrats who don’t fit into those categories. The same ones who even control election turnouts, to make sure that their bidding continues to be done at the State House. And the stunts that the aforementioned pull during public meetings, where possible cuts that effect unions are discussed, are truly remarkable. If you’re a taxpayer in favor of those cuts you’ll be lucky to get out of one of those meetings alive, let alone have your voice heard. Governor Carcieri (or any future governor interested in real change) can call for reform or cuts until he is blue in the face, but the fact is that laws have been put in place by the special interests who run the state that handcuff any administration in what they can actually accomplish in controlling the budget. The Governor can’t even successfully veto anything, because the special interests own enough votes to override him each and every time.

The problem of having several hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly budget deficits is not new. We’ve been running them for years. It’s just that the General Assembly has been able to hide it by using gimmicks like the tobacco settlement funds to cover them. Attorney General Patrick Lynch must be saddened by the fact that he can’t deliver similar funds from a punitive asbestos settlement to his brother’s Democrats so that they could pull the scheme off again this year and next. But litigating in order to cover annual budget deficits created by the Democrats and their special interests looks like a game that’s pretty much over. Legislators might even have to start governing responsibly.

I don’t think anyone has problems with regular union members, who are just like the rest of us trying to make ends meet. In fact, I feel a bit sorry for them. They’ve been unrealistically promised the world at the expense of Rhode Island taxpayers for years, and now they’re going to have to give some of that up. Because of that reality, I think that everyone, including union members, will understand the problems with an intransient union leadership, since it is they who have put the members in the position they are now in. It’s the union leadership that’s promised their members benefits that cannot be sustained every year in a state whose budget has to be balanced; in a state that’s always the last to benefit from a nationwide economic expansion and the first to suffer from an economic contraction.

It would have been much better for us to have had all along a smaller state government and bureaucracy with better pay and benefits than what we have now - a bloated state government that inevitably has to layoff large numbers of hardworking people because of the false promises of their leadership and its cronies in state government. As much as voters are calling for the heads of the elected officials who have bankrupted the state, so should union members call for the heads of their leadership, even those not also currently employed by Rhode Island.