Politics as Usual by Jim Baron

 Put one hand on your wallet, property tax payers, Gov. Donald Carcieri is going to unveil his 2011 budget on Tuesday.
Governor “the people of Rhode Island are overtaxed already” Carcieri is likely do double down on the damage he proposes to do in the supplemental budget by eliminating half of the reimbursement to cities and towns for the phase out of the automobile excise tax by eliminating the whole thing next year.

For many people that is a new tax — a property tax on their vehicles they haven’t had to pay in years because they can’t afford a vehicle worth more than $6,000. For the rest of Rhode Islanders, this is going to mean a tax increase, because they are going to have to pay a tax on the first $6,000 of their expensive rides that has been exempt up until now.
Carcieri, of course, consistently denies this, as he did once again last week in his State of the State speech.
Dissembling with both the hands he always waves while he is talking, Carcieri shamelessly looked through the lens of the television camera and into Rhode Islanders’ living rooms and said: “I know property tax increases can be avoided.”
Really? Gee whiz, that would be great. How can we manage that with you cutting tens of millions of dollars that had already been counted on in municipal budgets?
Well, I’m sure you can guess the governor’s solution: put the burden on the backs of employees and bust the unions, or at least their contracts.  
Here is what he said on Tuesday night: “For example, if every city and town employee throughout our state — including all school department personnel — were to agree to a salary reduction plan this year and next, just as state workers have done, tens of millions of dollars could be saved.”
Well, isn’t that terrific? The way out of the financial mess the state finds itself in is for the firefighters who save lives and property, the police who maintain public safety and put their lives on the line to make our streets safe and the school teachers who impart knowledge on the next generation should take it in the neck (or at least the wallet) so that the governor and the speaker of the House and the Senate president can go before the media, bragging and bleating that “we have not raised broad based taxes.”
Bullfeathers!
They are that same ones who keep talking about Rhode Island being a tax hell when the biggest reason for this state’s having that designation is our overreliance on sky-high property taxes, which they cause by cutting aid to cities and towns rather than taking a realistic look at our overall tax structure.
Gushing lip service is always paid to the notion of helping small businesses, the proverbial “engine of our economy.” You want to be a big help to small business? Lower their property taxes, the taxes they have to pay, and that are inevitably hiked annually, whether they have a good sales year or a bad one, whether they make a profit or lose money.
You may sit back and think it is a great idea to take money away from those City Hall and school employees and their “greedy unions,” like some people cheered Carcieri when he did it to state workers, but what happens when the idea catches on? What happens when your boss comes up to you and says, “the company has to —or maybe we just want to — save some money so you are going to work 7-10 days this year without getting paid for them”? Or maybe he’ll say: “You know those pension benefits you thought you were going to get when you retired, well, maybe not so much.”? You aren’t going to think it’s such a Jim-Dandy idea then, are you?
Carcieri’s other remedy for avoiding property tax increases is probably unconstitutional.
“This legislature has the ability to prevent property tax increases by enacting sweeping authorizations that will allow our local leaders to reduce spending…Property tax increases are not inevitable --- they will not happen if this legislature enacts the changes that will allow cities and towns to control their spending.  It is within your power to do this.  I, as Governor, do not have the authority to make these changes, but you do.”
By this he apparently means his so-called “tools” to allow communities to absorb his Draconian cuts by abrogating contracts — dictating a minimum co-pay for health benefits; ripping up the minimum manning clauses in many police and fire contracts, and unilaterally changing negotiated pension benefits.
Fortunately, Article I, Section 12 of the Rhode Island Constitution has a provision that would prohibit that, or at least give the unions a good hook to hang their hats on if they challenged those steps in court. It says, rather plainly, that: No ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall be passed.
So this legislature may or may not have the ability that the governor grants to it.
Another of Carcieri’s solutions for ducking property tax increases as a response to his aid cuts perhaps deserves a closer look, but may not go far enough.
“For example,” he told the joint session of the General Assembly, “it is long past time to allow the city and town councils of every municipality to have control over their school budgets. School expenses represent nearly 70% of municipal budgets.  Those elected officials who set the tax rate – and therefore are accountable to the citizens – should and must have the authority to approve all school contracts and expenditures.”
Well, let’s take that a step further.
The R.I. Constitution — yeah, that pesky document again — gives the General Assembly, in other words, the state — the duty to “promote public schools.”
The General Assembly long ago, delegated that to the cities and towns. Perhaps now is the time for that duty to revert to the state.
There is no reason why the teaching of algebra should be any different in Woonsocket than it is in Westerly. The English language is the same in Cumberland as it is in Newport (you notice I didn’t use Woonsocket in that example me — just kidding).
Why not have one statewide school district?
That would save all the squabbling over one statewide teachers’ contract, because that is all there would be – a single contract for a statewide district, one that could allow for shifting of personnel, particularly substitutes, between communities when needs change, a contract that could reflect the new needs and realities of schools the 21st Century.
Hammering out a new contract with a new employer is not the same as unilaterally changing an ongoing, existing contract.
It would also allow us to nearly eliminate the property tax (the lion’s share of which now goes for schools) and fund education with the more broad-based statewide income and sales taxes.
That would change the way education is done in Rhode Island, giving us the new start that almost nobody disputes is sorely needed; it would virtually rid us of the most onerous of taxes, and it could be the start of the government consolidation that so many have been screaming for these last several years.
You want to talk about a game-changer. I submit that would be one.