Tom Sgouros, Democrat for Treasurer
Tent folded
The tent is folded, the crowds have gone home, and I have endorsed my (former) opponent, Gina Raimondo. Please read the essay, "What I Want in a Treasurer", below for the reasons, or refer to her web site.
I am incredibly grateful for all the support and kind words people have offered during the past six months. They have been the fuel that powered this ship. It's not right to say that the fuel wasn't enough, but... well read below.
What I Want In a Treasurer
One of the exasperating aspects of American politics is how often elections seem to be decided by something besides the issues at hand. A candidate is deemed to be a nice guy, or someone you'd like to have a beer with, and that seems enough for a lot of people. Scott Brown won election to the US Senate in Massachusetts in January, despite holding policy views at odds with the electorate that voted for him. But he is a more personable guy than the notoriously stiff Martha Coakley, and that and some shrewd marketing was apparently enough for the voters of that fair state.
The truth is that elections must be about more than personalities and ambition. They are how we decide what our government is to do -- for us and to us. When we choose badly, we get terrible results. Voters chose the avuncular and charming Don Carcieri over Myrth York eight years ago, and our state is a wreck because of it -- we have doubled the state debt, forced almost a thousand employees into an early retirement we're paying for now, devastated the budgets of our cities and towns, the economy is worse here than when he began, and he's not done yet.
Certainly the legislature played its part in these disasters, but the same dynamic is in play there. Do you vote for your state representative because he or she advocates policies you agree with, or just because you're neighbors or relatives? Or because he throws nice parties? The substance is what matters -- to all of our lives.
Gina Raimondo, my opponent in the race for General Treasurer is personable and charming, a pleasure to chat with. Though the hosts at city and town Democratic committee meetings over the past months have mostly tried to keep candidates apart, I have had a chance to observe her a couple of times, and heard several reports from my partisans at these events to support these impressions.
The Debt Shell Game
In a stage show I toured with several years ago, I did a version of the cups and balls magic trick. The object is to make the ball disappear from under one cup and reappear under another. But, I'm sorry to say there is no magic, and the way to do it is just to hide what you're doing and make the audience look somewhere else while you make the switch. This makes for great fun and intrigue as a magic trick. But when such a trick is beneath our state's fiscal crisis, it’s problematic.
WRNI coverage
WRNI's Scott Mackay writes about the state's rapidly spiraling bonded debt, which is mostly transportation debt, and adds:
The one canary in this coal mine over the years has been Tom Sgouros, whose web site, columns, and book, "Ten Things You Don't Know about Rhode Island" call for transparency and prudence in our bonded debt.
Sgouros, who is now running for general treasurer, says the state should own up to this spending. Rhode Island has even been borrowing the money needed to match federal dollars... akin to borrowing to pay down the interest on a credit card.
April 5, WRNI
Planning for a rainy day
Mark Twain wrote that everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. But that's not true.
The catastrophic floods last week have closed businesses and ruined many people's homes. We can be grateful there was no loss of life, but it was an epic tragedy in lost property, time, and wages.
This past week I heard a lot of people say the disaster was a "hundred-year" flood. We only hope that's correct. The rain was certainly intense, but we've been busy over the years, preparing the ground to make floods worse.
News coverage
Providence Journal: Ed Fitzpatrick (March 11): Eating Fire Might Come in Handy for Treasurer's Candidate.
Providence Phoenix: Phillipe and Jorge (March 10): Time for Tom.
[W]e know Tom a bit better, primarily through his Rhode Island Policy Reporter, a knowledgeable and thoughtful analysis of public policy issues that he has been publishing since 2003.
Tom also recently published a book, Ten Things You Don't Know About Rhode Island: A Skeptical Look at Government, Economics, and Recent History In One Lively Little State. In short, this is a quality candidate who counts among his core supporters an astonishing number of people P+J consider among the Biggest Little's best and brightest.
Providence Phoenix: David Scharfenberg (March 10): Down Ballot Drama.
The Opposite of Stimulus
