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Constitutional convention’s benefits outweigh cost | Opinion
J.H. Snider is the editor of The Rhode Island State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse.
Many have correctly said that Donald Trump has weird obsessions with crowd sizes and other matters. Well, Rhode Island government has a weird obsession with constitutional convention costs, albeit one that merely mimics the talking points of convention opponents who oppose a “yes” vote on Rhode Island’s Nov. 5 referendum on whether to call a convention.
Experts who do serious public policy analysis usually try to explicitly balance the potential benefits and costs of a proposed policy. But that’s not how Rhode Island’s legislature, via its appointed and constitutionally mandated “preparatory commission,” has framed the problem. The same goes for the secretary of state, who is responsible for summarizing the convention referendum in a voter handbook mailed at taxpayer expense to all registered voters.
More: Should RI have a Constitutional Convention? The cases for and against
In their 2004 and 2014 reports to Rhode Island’s people, the last two preparatory commissions quantified the potential costs but not benefits of a convention. Rhode Island’s secretary of state then mimicked that type of biased analysis in his ballot summary mailed to all Rhode Island voters.
The government’s cost findings were then ubiquitously cited in the media and, most influentially, cited in the “no” side’s pervasive advertising in the weeks before the referendum. The message was: if a convention has only costs and risks, only a fool would vote for one.
I don’t object to the government’s attempt to quantify a convention’s potential costs if it makes a similar attempt to quantify its potential benefits. For example, the state’s budget for the 2025 fiscal year, excluding local government, is $14 billion, which translates to $140 billion over the 10-year budgeting cycle between convention calls. This should raise the question: what is a convention’s break-even point if it reduces government waste? For example, how much waste could a truly independent inspector general eliminate? (The legislature has repeatedly refused to create such an inspector general.)
More: Rhode Island is no stranger to calls for constitutional conventions | Opinion
Using the current preparatory commission’s heroic assumptions to arrive at a top $4.8 million cost for a convention, that would imply a convention break-even cost of just .000034%. Thus, if a convention’s efforts at improving democratic accountability reduced government waste by just .1%/year, that would result in a 292 times (29,200%) return on investment. And this, mind you, when the Gallup poll has found that Americans think their state governments waste 42% of every dollar spent.
So what’s the strategy used to justify discounting a convention’s potential benefits? The primary one is the claim that the legislature can do everything a convention can without those costs. But this is a bald-faced distortion of both the convention’s democratic design and purpose since Massachusetts pioneered the first convention in 1779. This convention featured independently elected convention delegates to propose constitutional changes followed by popular ratification because the people recognized their legislature would have a blatant conflict of interest designing its own powers and those of competing branches of government. This argument was so compelling that Congress soon mandated conventions for all new states.
Even in the current era of constitutional amendment rather than inauguration, the convention process remains, in most states, the legal gold standard for constitutional change-making. To take the extreme example, New Hampshire, which had 10 unlimited conventions during the 20th century, wouldn’t even allow the legislature to propose constitutional amendments until 1964. U.S. states have held 236 conventions.
More: RI lawmakers conclude final constitutional convention report
As evidenced by a 2023 University of Rhode Island poll that found only 10% of Rhode Islanders had a lot or great deal of trust in the state legislature, there remains a compelling reason for this institution, which, like the popular initiative available in 24 states, prevents the legislature from having monopoly power over constitutional change proposals. The preparatory commission’s just-released 2024 report has once again studiously ignored this legislature bypass purpose of a convention.
So the legislature’s taxpayer-funded obsession with a constitution’s cost should be called out as not only weird but biased to preserve its power at the people’s expense.
New East Bay Bike Path bridges are open and ready for bikes
What’s it like to ride over the new East Bay Bike Path bridges? We sent a reporter to try them out.
I’ve long thought bike paths are among Rhode Island’s premier attractions, up there with the beaches, the mansions and the bay.
We like to knock government, but credit where it’s due, the state has done an amazing job building out an incredible pedaling network.
It’s clearly a priority.
At least I thought it was.
But they’ve just dropped the ball on what should have been a beautiful new stretch.
The plan was to finish a mile-long connector from the East Providence end of the Henderson Bridge all the way to the East Bay Bike Path.
There was even $25 million set aside to get it done.
Except WPRI recently reported that it’s now been canceled.
The main fault lies with the Trump administration, which is no friend of bike paths, and moved to kill that $25 million.
But it gets complicated, as government funding always does.
To try to rescue that money, the state DOT reportedly worked with the administration to refunnel it into a road project. Specifically, the $25 million will now be spent helping upgrade the mile-long highway between the Henderson Bridge and North Broadway in East Providence, turning it into a more pleasant boulevard.
That totally sounds worthy.
But it’s insane to throw away the bike path plan.
Especially for a particular reason in this case.
They’d already put a ton of money into starting it.
When state planners designed the new Henderson Bridge between the East Side and East Providence, they included a bike path.
It’s a beauty – well protected from traffic by a barrier, a great asset for safely riding over the Seekonk River.
The plan was to continue it another mile or so along East Providence’s Waterfront Drive, ultimately connecting with the East Bay Bike Path, which runs all the way to Bristol. Which, by the way, is one of the nicest bike paths you’ll find anywhere.
But alas, that connector plan has been canceled.
So the expensive stretch over the Henderson Bridge to East Providence is now a bike path to nowhere. Once the bridge ends, the path on it continues a few hundred yards or so and then, just … ends.
Too bad.
We were so close.
Most of the stories on the issue have been about the complex negotiation to rescue the $25 million by rerouting it to that nearby highway-to-boulevard project. But I don’t want to get lost in the weeds of that bureaucratic process here because it loses sight of the heart of this story.
Which is that an amazing new addition to one of the nation’s best state bike path systems has just been scrapped.
You can knock the Rhode Island government for blowing a lot of things.
The PawSox.
The Washington Bridge.
But they’ve done great with bike paths.
And especially, linking many of them together.
Example: not too many years ago, Providence bikers had to risk dicey traffic on the East Side to get to the more pleasant paths in India Point Park and on the 195 bridge to the East Bay Path.
But the state fixed that by adding an amazing connector that starts behind the Salvation Army building and beautifully winds along the water of the Seekonk River for a mile or so.
That makes a huge difference – and no doubt has avoided some bike-car accidents.
We were close to a comparable stretch on the other side of the river – that’s what the $25 million would have done.
But it’s now apparently dead.
Online commenters aren’t happy about it.
On a Reddit string, “Toadscoper” accused the state of being “complicit” with the feds in rerouting the money from bikes to cars.
And there was this fascinating post from FineLobster 5322, who apparently is a disappointed planner who worked on the project: “Mind you money has already been spent on phase one so rejecting it at this point is wasting money and also against the public interest … but what do I know? I only worked on the project as an engineer … I didn’t get into this to build more highways. I do it … to give back to communities and give them more access to their environment.”
Wow. One can imagine the state planning team is devastated. That’s not a small consideration. Good people go into government to make life better in Rhode Island, and it’s a bad play to take the spirit out of the job by first assigning a great human-scale project and then, after a ton of work, trashing it.
A poster named Homosapiens simply said, “We just accept this?”
Hopefully not.
The first stretch of the path over the Henderson Bridge is done, money already sunk.
What a shame to leave that as a path to nowhere.
It doesn’t have to happen.
Between Governor McKee and our Washington delegation, there’s got to be a way to get this done.
There’s got to be.
mpatinki@providencejournal.com
WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) — Two people are dead and another person seriously hurt after a crash involving two vehicles on the highway in Warwick Saturday.
Rhode Island State Police said the crash happened around 1:34 p.m. on the ramp from Route 113 West to I-95 South.
According to police, a Hyundai SUV that was driving in the middle lane of the highway started to drift to the right, crossed the first lane, and then crossed onto the on-ramp lane. The car struck the guardrail twice before driving through the grass median.
The Hyundai then struck the driver’s side of a Mercedes SUV that was on the ramp, causing the Mercedes to roll over and come to a rest. The impact sent the Hyundai over the guardrail and down an embankment.
The driver of the Hyundai, a 73-year-old man, and his passenger, a 69-year-old woman, were both pronounced dead at the hospital.
A woman who was in the Mercedes was rushed to Rhode Island Hospital in critical condition.
State police said all lanes of traffic were reopened by 4:30 p.m.
The investigation remains ongoing.
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A federal judge on Friday tossed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit aiming to force Rhode Island to hand over its voter information as part of the Trump administration’s push to acquire voter data from several states.
Rhode Island U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy wrote that federal law does not allow the DOJ “to conduct the kind of fishing expedition it seeks here,” siding with Rhode Island election officials. She added that the DOJ did not provide evidence to suggest that Rhode Island violated election law.
McElroy, a Trump appointee, wrote that she sided with the similar decision in Oregon. That decision ruled that the DOJ was not entitled to unredacted voter registration lists.
“Absent from the demand are any factual allegations suggesting that Rhode Island may be violating the list maintenance requirements,” she said in her ruling.
Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore (D) praised McElroy’s decision. He said in a statement that the Trump administration “seems to have no problem taking actions that are clear Constitutional overreaches, regularly meddling in responsibilities that are the rights of the states.”
“Today’s decision affirms our position: the United States Department of Justice has no legal right to – or need for – the personally-identifiable information in our voter file,” he said. “Voter list maintenance is a responsibility entrusted to the states, and I remain confident in the steps we take here in Rhode Island to keep our list as accurate as possible.”
The Hill reached out to the DOJ for comment.
The DOJ called for the voter lists as it investigated Rhode Island’s compliance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which allowed Americans to register to vote when they apply for a driver’s license.
The DOJ sued at least 30 states, as well as Washington, D.C., in December demanding their respective voter data. This data includes birth dates, names and partial Social Security numbers.
At least 12 states have given or said they will give the DOJ their voter registration lists, according to a tracker operated by the Brennan Center for Justice.
The department stated after it lost a similar suit against Massachusetts earlier this month that it had “sweeping powers” to access the voter data and that, if states fail to comply, courts have a “limited, albeit vital, role” in directing election officers on behalf of the administration to produce the records. The DOJ cited the Civil Rights Act as being intended to unearth alleged election law violations.
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