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Utility bill revolt; Social Security anxiety; March Madness in RI: Top stories this week
Frank Tillinghast’s goal in 3rd overtime seals state title for Hendricken
Bishop Hendricken wins the RIIL Boys Hockey State Championship outlasting Prout in a three-overtime thriller at PC’s Schneider Arena on Sunday night.
Here are some of The Providence Journal’s most-read stories for the week of March 9, supported by your subscriptions.
Here are the week’s top reads on providencejournal.com:
A hearing Monday night in Warwick was supposed to be about proposals that would see a net decrease in energy bills for most Rhode Islanders, but it sure didn’t feel like it.
Beforehand, protesters rallied outside the offices of state utilities regulators to complain about Rhode Island Energy’s prices, and during the standing-room-only hearing, speaker after speaker aimed criticism at the state’s largest gas and electric utility.
Joyce Fiore was one of several customers who brought their bills up to the podium to read off the skyrocketing numbers. Her electric bill jumped from $164 in December to $580 in February, she said.
“I’ve lived in Cranston for close to 50 years now, and I’ve never seen bills like this,” she told the two members of the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission who were present at the hearing.
Read the full story to see what Rhode Island is proposing to bring relief from high utility bills
Local news: ‘I can’t afford it anymore.’ Rhode Islanders slam utility and high costs of energy
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, the ex-administrator of the Social Security Administration, said he knows why President Donald Trump is letting Elon Musk’s minions at the Department of Government Efficiency “break” Social Security from the inside out – and he hopes people “wake up, rise up” before it’s too late.
Appearing with U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse on a virtual “town hall” on Tuesday night, O’Malley ‒ who has predicted benefit interruptions within 90 days ‒ told the audience:
“They’re gutting it. They’re breaking it from the inside to make it incapable of serving the American people who paid for it and who paid for the customer service. I do believe they want to break it so they can liquidate it, because they want those trust fund dollars … the $2.7 trillion that is built up in that trust fund reserve, intentionally.”
The full story offers details about O’Malley’s prediction of benefit interruptions and Whitehouse’s proposed fix to indefinitely extend the solvency of Social Security.
Government: Martin O’Malley joined Sheldon Whitehouse to raise the alarm on Social Security.
Maybe Rhode Island’s state auditors should take a cue from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and start loudly crowing about all the government waste they’ve found.
It might get people to pay attention, or even just realize they exist.
Last year, the Office of Internal Audit saved the state $3.7 million by finding a coding error that the Department of Human Services had overlooked. But most Rhode Islanders probably never heard about that.
Or how about the fact that 1,640 people were still on Rhode Island’s Medicaid rolls a year or more after their deaths?
That’s just one of the eyebrow-raising items on the long list of problems that the Office of the Auditor General (yes, there are two separate offices dedicated to audits) highlighted in the most recent report summarizing its annual review of the state’s finances.
Political Scene explores what each of the auditor offices do, whom they report to, and whether either one is truly independent and immune from political pressures.
Political Scene: RI’s two state auditor offices routinely find waste and problems. But is anyone listening?
PROVIDENCE − Aiden Craft set the table. Mason Crain faked a shot and unselfishly surrendered the moment. And Frank Tillinghast graduates as a hero and a four-time hockey champion.
All three Hendricken skaters touched the puck in the game-winning sequence in triple overtime against Prout. Crain sliced the puck through the slot, to Tillinghast on the right wing, and the senior didn’t hesitate. Tillinghast guided the forehand shot and Hendricken, to its fourth straight boys hockey State Championship at Providence College’s Schneider Arena.
The, 3-2, triple overtime triumph is Hendricken’s 11th title overall. The Journal’s Jacob Rousseau breaks down the thrilling overtime win.
High school sports: In 3rd overtime, Hendricken wins RIIL Boys Hockey State Championship. Here’s how
PROVIDENCE – Cracked sidewalks are an ordinary part of city life, but one local artist sees them as an opportunity to start dialogues about environmental threats to the community.
Providence-based artist Linda Ford is an avid cyclist and walker who spends a lot of time outside. A few years ago, as she was learning more about pollution and contamination issues in Rhode Island, she started noticing how cracked sidewalks looked a bit like waterways and how relevant that felt to living in the Ocean State.
“New England is surrounded by water of all different kinds,” Ford said. “I started to fill them with blue cement and became interested in them as these miniature riverscapes.”
A grant allowed her to expand the project into a citywide public art installation that beautifies an eyesore while raising awareness of environmental issues.
Good news: ‘They might be a surprise’: Why a Providence artist is turning sidewalk cracks into art
To read the full stories, go to providencejournal.com. Find out how to subscribe here.
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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