Women and GOP governors

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

A recent poll showed that four of the 10 most unpopular governors are women, with Ms. Raimondo (who is very charming in person) the most disliked. How much of this is sexism, which played a role in Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, with its rhetoric of “that bitch,’’ etc.? Meanwhile, the two most popular governors are Massachusetts’s Charlie Baker and Maryland’s Larry Hogan, both Republicans in liberal states and known for their competence and integrity – all of which means that, unlike 50 years ago, they would not be qualified now to be GOP presidential candidates. Besides Mr. Baker, New England has two other very able GOP governors – Vermont’s Phil Scott (whom I’ve met) and New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu.

Many of the Republicans in Congress don’t actually do anything substantive (such as crafting legislation). They spend much of their time going on the likes of Fox “News’’ and denouncing such cooked up bogus ogres as the “Deep State’’ (meaning patriotic and often physically brave government officials, including diplomats, CIA officials and military officers, who might push back against the treason and other corruption of the Trump mob). And of course, as with most of their Democratic colleagues, they spend much of their time raising money from, and trying to please, their big donors – an activity that has intensified with the treasure trove of political money unleashed by the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, in 2010 – one of the greatest producers of political corruption in American history.

But governors, for their part, have to actually govern in a real, fact-based world. The Republican Party on Capitol Hill is a cesspool of corruption. If there is a future for thoughtful center-right Republicanism it must come from the governors.

The rich folks next door

Townhouses on Louisburg Square, on Beacon Hill, Boston. Some call the square the epicenter of Boston wealth.

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

‘Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo commendably wants the state to be a lot more like Massachusetts – a desire reflected in her State of the State address and her (too?) ambitious budget proposals. That’s especially true when it comes to her ideas on how to advance public education -- K-college/voke school -- the heart of her program, around which hovers the question of how tough her administration will be willing and able to be on standards, as measured by tests.

The legislature is casting a gimlet eye on how she would fund her proposals, which would hike some fees, broaden the currently rather narrow sales tax and “scoop’’ some money from some quasi-public agencies. And who knows what might happen if we get a recession in the next year or so? We’d like to see contingency plans.

By the way, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker also wants to raise taxes, in part to boost education aid to the localities. Among his proposals: putting a levy on opioid sales, broadening the excise tax to include vaping products, and boosting the tax that homeowners pay when they sell their house. The $150 million a year projected to come from this levy is supposed to go “resiliency-building’’ projects to address such effects of global warming as increased coastal flooding, flooding that’s already cutting property values in some places.

The biggest problem that all Rhode Island governors have in trying to implement programs like Massachusetts’s is simply that the Ocean State, while richer (in median household income, etc.) than the majority of states is much poorer than the Bay State, with its huge wealth-creating (and thus tax revenue) machine in Greater Boston based on technology, world-famed higher education, financial services and health care. (Consider that Massachusetts General Hospital alone has just announced a $1 billion building project).

Rhode Island, which has been much slower than Massachusetts to move away from its old mill culture, has nothing like this. But it does have proximity to Boston, which it must leverage with its own strengths, especially in such sectors as design and marine-related industries. The best thing that Rhode Island could do economically is make itself part of Greater Boston.

Tim Faulkner: Opposition mounts to seismic blasting off East Coast to find oil and gas

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and environmental groups intend to resist the recent announcement of plans to commence seismic blasting for offshore oil and gas drilling. But time may be running out to prevent it.

Seismic blasting uses underwater airguns to search for fossil fuels deep beneath the seafloor, a process that endangers marine mammals such as whales and dolphins.

On Nov. 30, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued what is known as incidental harassment authorizations (IHA) to five companies for conducting seismic testing in an area from Delaware to Florida, a region twice the size of California.

The companies are ION GeoVentures, based in Houston; Spectrum Geo Inc. of England; TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company of Norway; WesternGeco of England, and CGG, based in Paris.

Whitehouse called their approval “a statement” and “just an idea” that could be stalled by Congress. But according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the five authorizations are under final review and seismic surveys could begin as early as January.

The IHA allows the the companies to perform deep-penetration seismic surveys that search thousands of meters below the seafloor for oil, natural gas, and minerals. The federal “incidental take authorization” provision allows the activity to kill, harass, hunt, or capture marine mammals. Harassment is defined as “any act of pursuit, torment, or annoyance which has the potential to injure a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild; or has the potential to disturb a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild by causing disruption of behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.”

The federal National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says the potential to displace or harm marine life is minimal because of brief and limited exposure to survey noise.

According to the environmental advocacy group Oceana, the surveys deliver seismic blasts every 10 seconds, 24 hours a day over days or even weeks. Survey boats use dozens of airguns simultaneously to produce a constant blast that can travel thousand of miles.

The impact on sea life is significant. Airgun blasts cause temporary and permanent hearing loss, abandonment of habitat, disruption of mating and feeding, beach strandings and even death, according to Oceana. Airgun blasts also kill fish eggs and larvae.

“For whales and dolphins, which rely on their hearing to find food, communicate, and reproduce, being able to hear is a life or death matter,” according to Oceana.

According to a 2013 report, catch rates of Atlantic cod, haddock, rockfish, herring, sand eel and blue whiting declined by 40 percent to 80 percent because of seismic testing.

Seismic airgun testing in the Atlantic Ocean could injure 138,000 whales, according to BOEM. The noise is particularly threatening to the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

BOEM offers a list of protective measures to reduce harm to sea life, such as halting airgun use when animals get too close to vessels.

When a similar proposal was advanced under President Obama, more than 90 percent of the coastal communities in the Mid- and South Atlantic passed resolutions opposing the practice. The dissent was known as the Resolution Revolution, organized by Oceana. Shortly before Turmp took office in 2017, the Obama administration denied the applications for seismic testing in the Mid and South Atlantic, citing impacts on marine life. President Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reversed that decision in May 2017, with the America-First Offshore Energy Strategy.

In January, Zinke announced plans to open the entire East and West coasts to offshore fossil-fuel exploration, prompting broad public opposition and efforts by coastal governors to meet with Zinke to convince him to halt the initiative.

In February, Gov. Gina Raimondo and Rhode Island’s congressional delegation held a press conference to announce their opposition to offshore drilling. Block Island, Charlestown, Jamestown and Tiverton all passed resolutions opposing offshore drilling and seismic blasting.

During a 45-day comment period on the proposed seismic airgun testing, the National Marine Fisheries Service received 15 petitions with a total of 99,423 signatures. Only one petition, with 595 signatures, supported the seismic surveys. The 14 other petitions with nearly 99,000 signatures opposed seismic blasting, as well as oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.

After the recent news of forthcoming seismic testing, Whitehouse said South Atlantic Republicans “would do well to remember the job Oceana did with the Obama administration trying for offside drilling.”

Whitehouse intends to work with the Commerce Committee and Appropriations Committee “to align our folks” to halt the seismic surveys and offshore oil and gas extraction.

On Dec. 11, Whitehouse, Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-MA, and six other senators asked the Department of Commerce to rescind IHA’s and the Department of Interior to deny the seismic survey permits. In a letter, the senators cite environmental threats and economic harm to tourism and fishing. They also noted that the results of the surveys would be kept private by the survey companies and not available for government or public use.

BOEM, however, is already reviewing the survey applications and could approve them by January.

“If they try to move up to the Northeast, they’ll find that the opposition is bipartisan,“ Whitehouse said. “So, I think we have a real prospect of stopping it, but it’s hard to stop something that’s at this point is just an idea, a statement. Once it hits the administrative steps, we’ll figure out what the best way to counterattack is.”

The counterattack is also going through the courts, primarily in the South. On Dec. 11, Oceana and eight other environmental groups filed in U.S. District Court in South Carolina a lawsuit that claims that by issuing the IHA, the National Marine Fisheries Service ignored science and violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. The lawsuit wants the authorizations suspended until environmental assessments are performed.

If and when the seismic blasting get underway, Oceana will track the activity with a real-time map.

Tim Faulkner is a reporter and writer for ecoRI News.

Driving sober on bumpy roads

Driver undergoing sobriety test.

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

Happy news: Safewise.com, which studies community safety, shows that Rhode Island has the fourth-lowest driving-while-intoxicated fatality rate among the 50 states, despite its reputation for having bad drivers. Just three states – New Jersey, Utah and New York – had lower rates. Massachusetts was the sixth lowest, but Connecticut was only 15th best. Thank good public-education  campaigns on the perils of drunk driving, strong policing and in the case of Utah, the fact that Mormons aren’t supposed to drink!

xxx

Wall Street 24/7 reports that Rhode Island has the highest percentage of poor roads in the country, at 24.6 percent, and the highest percentage of states with deficient bridges, at 23.3 percent. And perhaps not coincidentally the 16th lowest percentage of state highway spending per driver a year: $408.

Years of state underfunding have led to this situation, exacerbated by the usually Republican-controlled Congress’s refusal to increase the federal gasoline tax since it was last raised, in 1993, to 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel. That money is supposed to go to build and repair transportation infrastructure.

This anti-tax mania has reduced federal money available to the states for transportation, as have better fuel efficiency and, in the past few years, the arrival of electric cars.

But anti-tax mania when it limits public-infrastructure building and repair ends up costing individuals and businesses a lot, in travel delays and broken equipment.

Gov. Gina Raimondo’s Rhode Works program, which includes new truck tolls – commercial trucks do the lion’s share of damage to roads and bridges -- to help pay for it, is much appreciated. Governors for decades have tried but failed – and then surrendered in efforts to address this serious threat to safety and the state’s economy.

Rhode Island bravely tries truck tolls

Toll gantrys.

Adapted from an item in Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

The legal fight over the new truck-toll system that recently went into effect in Rhode Island is very interesting -- indeed it might end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.  American Trucking Associations (sic) is suing to end the tolls, calling them unfair because the only class of vehicles whose owners must pay the tolls are large commercial tractor-trailers.

I hope that the state wins. These vehicles do the lion’s share of damage on Rhode Island’s roads and bridges.

The state says:

“The RhodeWorks bridge tolling program is a unique approach to repairing bridges by tolling only specific types of tractor trailers. The tolls collected at each location in Rhode Island will go to repair the bridge or bridge group associated with that toll location.’’

That the program is “unique’’ might be its legal Achilles heel. Singling out certain classes for taxation can be legally problematic. But I admire Governor Raimondo for being willing to take the heat in having Rhode Island finally  seriously address its terrible transportation infrastructure problems, with the economic woes that accompany them.

Federal gasoline taxes (which pay for some of our highways)  haven’t been raised since 1993, and America’s transportation infrastructure is falling apart. There seems to be little will in Washington to address this. Instead tax cuts tailored to please rich campaign contributors are prioritized. And so the states must come up with their own ways of  financing the  urgently needed repair of their roads, bridges and public transit.

A quaint table of tolls in pre-decimal currency in Dulwich, England.

James P. Freeman: R.I.'s moderate Democrat Gina Raimondo a very consequential governor

The Slatersville Stone Arch Bridge, in  the old Blackstone River Valley industrial zone.

For more than 200 years water has flowed underneath a bridge in North Smithfield, in the Blackstone Valley corridor of the smallest state in the Union, which helped usher in  the American Industrial Revolution. The Slatersville Stone Arch Bridge, the oldest masonry bridge in Rhode Island -- built in 1855 to replace the original wooden structure and subsequently listed on the National Register of Historic Places – was for decades neglected and structurally deficient. Now it’s undergoing a complete rehabilitation at a $13.5 million cost. The bridge is symbolic of the state’s rise and fall. And now its revival.

Much of that effort is being spearheaded by Gov. Gina Raimondo.

Amidst the partisan tempest -- The Great Political Uncentering -- Raimondo, 46, the state’s first female executive, stands in defiance of political trends. And recent history. She’s seeking re-election this year, after a record of public service that has been a series of calculated experiments. She is arguably the nation’s most consequential reform-minded, results-oriented politician. She is resuscitating a nearly extinct species -- Truman Democrats. She is a pro-growth moderate and has handled heavy turbulence.

For an insular and provincial state -- where coffee milk is the official drink, Catholic Mass is still televised on Sunday mornings and, unbelievably, New England Cable News is not offered for viewing by the largest telecommunications provider -- the last decade was particularly cruel. Nothing went as planned and many plans went for nothing.

In the wake of The Great Recession of 2008-2009, Rhode Island’s already corroded economy saw unemployment spike close to 12 percent while housing prices plunged 27 percent. In 2010, after luring it away from Massachusetts, the state financed Curt Schilling’s scandal-plagued video-game start-up, 38 Studios, with $75 million in bonds before the company went bankrupt, two years later. And in 2011, sparking national headlines, Central Falls, a city with a population of 19,376, covering an area a little over a square mile (more densely populated than Boston), filed for bankruptcy, raising concerns that other heavily encumbered municipalities (including the capital, Providence) might follow suit.  

Residents probably needed a professional psychologist to lead them out of their depressed state.

Instead, they chose a thoughtful capitalist. Raimondo -- a Rhode Island native with degrees in economics (Harvard), sociology (Oxford) and law (Yale), and co-founder of the state’s first venture-capital firm, Point Judith Capital -- was elected state treasurer in 2010. So began the secular resurrection.

Raimondo immediately understood a law of modern politics that most public officials refuse to acknowledge or act upon: Demographics is destiny.

Overly generous and ambitious, yet massively underfunded, pension assurances to Rhode Island’s aging population coupled with a rapidly hemorrhaging fiscal condition (exacerbated by the recession) were certain to wreak financial havoc. A series of cascading municipal failures would likely render the state itself technically insolvent. And that would be unchartered territory (a state declaring bankruptcy is not a contingency properly addressed under current bankruptcy laws). Raimondo foresaw that imminent horror.

So, the treasurer did something astounding. She conducted town-hall-style meetings exposing the severity of the crisis. And she told the unions and pensioners something that  few Democrats ever say to those loyal constituents: “No!”

She engineered an overhaul by suspending cost-of-living increases and raising the retirement age for retirees, pointing the system towards solvency. Raimondo also understood state law. While many state pension systems are determined by contract (making modifications more difficult under constitutional law), Rhode Island’s, by statute, lets the government, if so inclined, make changes via swift legislative maneuvering, not protracted judicial wrangling.

It worked.

Predictably, though, public-sector unions fulminated and sued. A September 2014 Washington Post editorial noted, “In the face of ferocious opposition from labor, she explained the plain budgetary impossibility of maintaining pensions at the levels promised by politicians in Providence.”

Still, she was able to win the governorship that year with 41 percent of the vote in a three-way race. Later, in 2015, she negotiated legal settlements that preserved the reforms in the face of continued legal opposition. Her efforts are proof that pension reforms can be administered and may prove to be a model for other states suffocating under mountains of indebtedness.  

Just after Raimondo was elected governor (the first Democrat in over 20 years to win the office despite Rhode Island being heavily Democratic) and after the national Republican congressional victory in 2014, The Daily Beast’s Joel Kotkin demanded that Democrats go back-to-the-future: “Time to Bring Back the Truman Democrats.”

“To regain their relevancy,” he hypothesized, “Democrats need to go back to their evolutionary roots. Their clear priorities: faster economic growth and promoting upward mobility for the middle and working classes. All other issues -- racial, feminine, even environmental -- need to fit around this central objective.”

Raimondo, perhaps instinctively, has embraced much of this sensible framework. Most of it via a back-to-basics moderate agenda. Actually, future-to-the-basics.

In February 2016, she launched Rhode Works, a comprehensive 10-year transportation improvement program to repair crumbling roads and bridges. Rhode Island ranked dead last (50 out of 50 states) in overall bridge condition and is one of the only states that did not charge user fees to large commercial trucks on its roadways, which do most of the damage to roads and bridges. Tolling on certain roads begins this winter. Unsurprisingly, she is facing more opposition. This time from trucking associations, leery of the legislation; claiming that they’re being  unfairly discriminated against, they are threatening lengthy lawsuits. But her infrastructure initiative might be a template for the anticipated trillion-dollar federal program.

Raimondo has also looked north for much of her inspiration. It’s home to another moderate.

In her fourth State of the State address she made this startling admission: “For decades, we just sat back and watched as Massachusetts rebuilt and thrived. Boston and its suburbs flourished, while the mill buildings along {Route} 95 and the Blackstone River stood vacant and crumbling. The resurgence in Massachusetts didn't just happen. It wasn't an accident. They had a strategy and a plan to create jobs and put cranes in the sky. They used job-training investments and incentives to create thousands of jobs in and around Boston.”

Why not study a success story?

Unlike many parochial powerbrokers of the past who were content to resist change, at the state’s peril, Raimondo recognizes that Rhode Island’s is  part of a regional economy. Indeed, in many ways it is dependent on Massachusetts’s economy. Two-thirds of Rhode Island’s population is within a 20-minute drive to any Massachusetts border. (Incidentally, she made the trip at least twice last year by appearing on WGBH’s Greater Boston program, marketing her ideas and progress.)

Massachusetts’s Charlie Baker is the most popular governor in the country, with a 69 percent approval rating. He too is a moderate (a Rockefeller Republican), a technocrat, and also up for re-election this year. While Raimondo’s most recent approval rating stands at only 41 percent, that figure may be distorted and artificially low. Baker’s reforms have centered on the inner workings of government, largely lost on everyday residents. Raimondo’s reforms, meanwhile, have been about the very public machinations and expressions of government. Her controversial actions have directly affected,  and been clear to, the entire electorate.

Today, the unemployment rate is 4.3 percent. Last March, The New York Times wrote, “Ms. Raimondo’s frenzy of economic and job development is striking because Rhode Island has long been in a slump. It was the last state to emerge from the recession that began in 2007. As recently as 2014, it bore the nation’s highest unemployment rate for seven months in a row.” At the same time, private-sector employment has reached its highest level ever.

Even with forward momentum, the governor may be more popular outside the state than within. Two years ago, Raimondo and then-Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, a Republican who is now the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., were cited by Fortune Magazine as two female governors being among the world’s 50 greatest leaders. And last month, she was named as new vice chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

Big challenges, however, still loom large locally. The Pawtucket Red Sox, Boston’s minor-league affiliate, are threatening to leave the state. (Will the public finance a nine-figure stadium for a rich, privately owned team?) Nearly a third, or $3.1 billion,  of the state budget is funded by the federal government. And opioids continue to consume lives.    

But due to Raimondo’s centrist leadership -- despite the occasional progressive flourish (tuition-free community college) -- she has largely validated Kotkin’s hypothesis by focusing primarily on economic matters. Rhode Island might finally be poised for a 21st Century renaissance.

As the Slatersville bridge undergoes its third iteration in its third century, Rhode Island voters are reminded of this possibility in 2018 -- the Year of the Woman.  Should Raimondo be re-elected and serve a full second four-year term, she would be just the third woman (all Democrats) in American history to do so (after Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm and Washington’s Christine Gregoire).

And with the Clintons out of the running,  serious Democrats must consider her fortitude and record of accomplishment  when they’re looking for vice-presidential timber for 2020.

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal, newenglanddiary.com and nationalreview.com.

A behemoth company and democracy

"Amazon preparing for a battle,'' by Pierre-Eugène-Emile Hébert, at the National Gallery of Art,  in Washington, D.C.

Adapted from "Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24com:

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo promised in her well-intentioned pitch to Amazon to build its “second headquarters’’ in the state that  “You’d {Amazon} have the access, influence and impact that comes from being a dominant employer in our state.’’

This (along with a bizarre rendering showing Amazon buildings taking over much of the area around the State House) is a tad chilling. Does a tiny state want to take orders from some huge company?

Of course it would be very nice to get some Amazon jobs. With Boston a leading (and perhaps the leading) candidate to get the company’s second headquarters, perhaps Greater Providence could get some spillover employees from  the behemoth online retailer, especially in  such specialties as design, in which Rhode Island has particular strengths. But it’s dangerous for democracy and long-term, steady economic growth to be at the beck and call of one huge company. Better 50 small and medium size companies than one huge quasi-monopoly.  Big company means big hiring but also eventually big layoffs.

Some Amazon executives are reportedly pushing hard for Boston to be the second headquarters. To learn more, please hit this link:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/12/amazon-execs-want-second-hq-in-boston-says-report.html

In R.I., successfully mixing liberal, conservative healthcare reform

David Leonhardt, writing in The New York Times, presents Rhode Island as a state that is successfully combining liberal and conservative ideas about healthcare reform.

He writes:

"Conservative health reform is not an oxymoron. Nor is bipartisan health reform. It’s possible to combine conservative and liberal ideas to cover more people while holding down costs.''

"You can find a real-world case study  in Rhode Island.''

Gov. Gina Raimondo's "strategy has been based on the most important — and, in a strange way, most promising — fact about American health care: Much of our spending doesn’t make us healthier.''

To read the article, please hit this link.

How much can governors really help their states' economies?

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary'' column in GoLocal24.com

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo was understandably pleased when the state’s unemployment rate fell below the national average in January, to 4.7 percent, for the first time in almost 12 years. Meanwhile, some high-profile companies have moved to the state or expanded there and there’s quite a lot of newconstruction underway. To me, the best news has been that the  big projects at the Route 195 relocation land are starting to get cooking and that rapidly growingUnited NaturalFoods Inc. is now based in Providence.

How much of this was due to Ms. Raimondo’s leadership? Economics has so many variables that it’s hard to say. For that matter, the Ocean State is so tiny it’s hard to say that there’s a “Rhode Island economy.’’ It’s part of the much bigger regional, national and international economies. And note that a shrinking  state work force explains at least some of the recent jobless-rate drops.

I would say, however, that Ms. Raimondo’s knowledge of business and national connections as a former venture capitalist, her willingness to implement long-overdue reforms and her calm and intelligence have indeed inspired confidence in firms that might be candidates for moving to or expanding in the state. That she’s willing to get very able people from outside the state with fresh perspectives to join her administration rather than  automatically pick well-connected Rhode Islanders (“I know aguy…’’) has also been good, although it has, along with her fancy education, gotten her labeled an “elitist,’’ which I don’t believe this daughter of middle-class Rhode Islanders considers herself. The more new people moving into Rhode Island the better, to dilute the parochialism that is at the root of many of its political and economic problems.

As in many states, her administration has had headaches with big computer systems (e.g., public benefits and the Division of Motor Vehicles). Could she have headed these headaches off by firing people faster who were charged with getting them going but didn’t succeed? Probably.

Hire Republican Ken Block, a brilliant systems guy, to oversee state computer systems?  That would be exciting.

Ms. Raimondo has gotten a lot of flak from some people about what former Gov. Lincoln Chafee calls the “candy store’’ approach of using tax incentives to lure businesses. I share a lot of this dislike. It can create a race to the bottom as states compete to get sexy companies. As I’ve written here before, for long-term economic success, jurisdictions must focus on broad improvements, especially in education and infrastructure. The governor says she is focusing on those things but the $130 million in tax incentives so far in her term understandably get a lot of attention. And how do you make these companies stay?

Pretty much every state and large city play the tax-incentive game in varying degrees.

Of course, the governor thinks that attracting such big companiesas General Electric to set up new operations in the state signals to other companies that it’s now a good place to do business and,  they find, a beautiful place to live for many.

She has had some success in changing the perception of out-of-staters about the Ocean State so that many  have come to believe that the Rhode Island is finally, if slowly, fixing its business climate. The deeply embedded tribalism, negativity and cynicism in the state militate against her but I believe she’s making progress – two steps ahead, one step back.

Meanwhile, I’m sure that Rhode Islanders would like to see a updated list of companies that have decided to stay and grow in the state as a result of Raimondo administration policies.

On two big issues she’s been embroiled in: the car tax, about which she is less enthusiastic about cutting than some other politicians, and “free college’’ for two years:

Cutting or eliminating the car tax, as hated as it is, will have little or no effect on the state’s economy.  And rather than “free college,’’ it might make far more sense to put some of the tax revenue to be spent on subsidizing students into creating a public-private vocational education system (including apprenticeships) like that which has been so successful in Germany.  And even more important is pushing asideRhode Island special interests in order to adopt a  K-12 public-education system with the rigor of Massachusetts’s, which has helped make the Bay State so prosperous in the past couple of decades.

Will these deals raise economic 'animal spirits'

“The Proposition,’’ by William-Adolphe Bougureau (1825-1905).

From Robert Whitcomb's Dec. 22 "Digital Diary'' column in GoLocal24.com.

I admire the very hard and patient labor of Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and her colleagues (presumably working with Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza’s administration) to bring some highly respected companies and quite a few jobs to Rhode Island.

The biggest recent employee hauls, all slated for Providence, will be hundreds of jobs (to start) coming to Wexford Science & Technology’s project in the 195 relocation area; 300 at Virgin Pulse (maybe in the Providence Journal Building); 100 at General Electric, and 75  at Johnson & Johnson. The hope is that those well-paid employees will be just the beginning of thousands of well-paying ones arriving over the next couple of years. (City and state official are apparently still working to bring in some Pay Pal operations, too.

We’ll see.

It was gratifying that J&J cited the presence of Brown and RISD as a reason for the project. The state hasn’t gotten nearly enough leverage from its higher-education establishments, or from its proximity to(and lower costs than) the brainiac center of Greater Boston.

A lovely change from  the 38 Studios approach.

Of course, the new arrivals will each get millions of dollars in “tax incentives’’ to come to Rhode Island -- incentives that everyone else must pay for. Such incentives are the rule in every state to varying degrees. Two big recent examples – Indiana (pressed by Donald Trump) bribing the Carrier Corp. to not send 800 jobs to Mexico and Massachusetts giving many millions of dollars in goodies to General Electric to move its headquarters to Boston’s waterfront.

Companies that have loyally stayed in their states and paid taxes there without special favors must be irritated. But life is indeed unfair – and probably getting more so. The rich get richer and the poor get…. Get used to it, especially over the next four years.

The idea behind the legal bribery is that not only will these big, rich companies bring in new jobs in themselves but they’ll give many  local vendors a lot of work and thus incentives to hire more people. That means not only vendors already in the area but also new ones coming in to serve the big shots.  The old “multiplier effect’’.

And just by having such prestigious enterprises in Rhode Island as the ones lured by the Raimondo administration, it is argued, will boost the “animal spirits’’ of  local and other business people and investors about Rhode Island.  The hope is that such optimism/local pride will then help create, or lead to the  import of, more enterprises, in a virtuous circle.

Will this work enough in all too cynical and negative Rhode Island to turn around the state for the long term? Who knows for sure, but I give a lot of credit to Ms. Raimondo and her staff for their labors while being denounced from all sides by those who provide few if any practical alternatives.

Tim Faulkner: Trump vs. the biosphere?

Via ecoRI News

The day after Donald Trump’s surprise election win, the mood among environmentalists was, as expected, glum.

During his campaign, Trump, a climate-change denier and fossil-fuel proponent, vowed to withdraw from global climate treaties and neuter the Environmental Protection Agency. All told, his candidacy was considered a colossal threat to the biosphere.

Now that he’s two months away from taking office, it’s mostly guesswork as to which of Trump’s grand proclamations of environmental ruin will become reality.

Nationally, environmentalists expect that, at least, the goal of limiting temperature rise to 2 degrees is a lost cause, as is limiting atmospheric carbon dioxide to less than 400 parts per million.

To deal with their anxiety, environmental groups such as 350.org are encouraging environmentalists to partake in peaceful protesting. The National Resources Defense Council hosted a conference call for the aggrieved Nov. 10 titled “Defending Our Environment from the Trump Presidency.”

The consensus response from local government officials is to embrace autonomy.

“(Trump's win) puts an even greater burden on states to take action and be creative,” Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo said during a Nov. 9 meeting of the Rhode Island climate council.

Raimondo received an update on Rhode Island’s long-term emissions-reduction plan. She and agency and department officials gave no indication of changing course on climate adaptation and mitigation efforts.

Raimondo said it's not known what Trump will do with President Obama’s Climate Action Plan. But Trump’s unexpected victory creates urgency to move forward with local initiatives, she added.

“Norms change in times of crisis, and I do believe we are facing a climate-change crisis, so we do have to get people to take action,” Raimondo said.

The governor confirmed that she isn't changing her neutral-to-favorable position on the proposed fossil-fuel power plant in Burrillville, a project that would be the state’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Janet Coit, director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, told ecoRI News that Trump’s victory was sobering. “It means we have to work all the harder.”

Fortunately, Rhode Island is surrounded by states with shared regional and local environmental goals, Coit said.

If federal support and guidance declines, she said, “Now we have to stop, regroup and guess that the leadership will have to come from the state level. I guess we have to look to ourselves more.”

Ken Payne, chair of state renewable energy committee, as well as food and farm programs, said the election means that progress on these issues will not only have to come from the state, but from communities and neighborhoods. Before the election, he and Brown University Prof. J. Timmons Roberts announced plans to launch a new, non-government affiliated group to advance green initiatives.

Roberts wasn't at the recent climate council meeting; he's in Morocco with students researching the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations.

In an article for Climate Home, he echoed the wait-and-see refrain put forth by environmental experts who wonder if the country and climate policy will be governed by Trump the negotiator or Trump the tyrant.

“So which Trump will govern? There is cause for both hope and fear,” Roberts wrote.

To others, fear caused by the election affirms reality. Morgan Victor of the Pawtucket-based environmental activist group The FANG Collective, said Trump’s win is evidence of American ongoing legacy of colonialism and slavery.

“It’s a reality that white supremacy runs in this country both overtly and covertly,” Victor said.

The Providence resident and member of the Wampanoag tribe participated in the ongoing Standing Rock Sioux pipeline protests taking place in North Dakota.

Having Trump in office will justify more attacks against indigenous groups and their land, Victor said.

“It’s scary. I hope it wakes people up, especially white people, to take care of the ones they love,” she said.

Tim Faulkner writes for ecoRI News.

Tim Faulkner: Nature is a lousy 'bridge fuel'

By TIM FAULKNER, for ecoRI News (ecori.org)

A new report concludes what has long been suspected about natural gas: Leaks of methane during the extraction and transportation process eliminate any climate benefits from the supposed low-carbon fuel.

“These findings should lead policymakers to reject natural gas as a ‘bridge fuel’ and instead to redouble America’s efforts to repower with truly clean energy from the sun, the wind and other sources of renewable energy,” according to the report “Natural Gas and Global Warming” compiled by the environmental advocacy groups Environment America and the Toxics Action Center.

Their research analyzed studies of both fracking and traditional extraction of natural gas from mining sites across the country. Aircraft-based sampling across Colorado's Front Range found a 4.1 percent leakage rate. Production sites in southwestern Pennsylvania had a 7 percent leakage rate, according to the report.

The report also questions previous studies of leakage by the Environmental Protection Agency and the University of Texas for underestimating natural-gas leakage. The 22-page report also calls into doubt the claim that natural gas is a “bridge fuel” to renewable energy, by producing less carbon than oil and coal. Both Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker support natural gas a bridge fuel.

Although natural gas emits less carbon dioxide when burned, it generates higher carbon emissions than traditional fossil fuels when the full life cycle of natural gas is considered. Leaks during extraction, storage and transportation of natural gas release greenhouse-gas emissions that equal some 250 new coal-fired power plants, according to the report.

Methane, the primary gas in natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas, and the report emphasizes the near-term impacts of methane leaks that can occur from 29 different activities and equipment that natural gas goes through during its life as a fuel.

“Temperature increases over the next few decades have the potential to push the climate past ‘tipping points’ — such as the release of methane deposits in the ocean or Arctic permafrost — that could further trigger warming,” according to the report.

Environment America suggests that the rapid growth of the wind and solar industries presents an opportunity for a rapid shift away from natural gas. The advocacy group points to the wave of new natural-gas infrastructure projects as a threat to a low-carbon energy future.

“New fracked gas infrastructure proposed across the region threatens our climate future, our health and our neighborhoods,” Ben Weilerstein, of the Toxics Action Center, said during a July 27 press conference outside the Rhode Island Statehouse.

The event was one of seven held recently across southern New England to protest natural-gas pipeline and infrastructure projects. At another press event on July 27, this one in Massachusetts at the New Bedford Harbor Walk, Sylvia Broude, executive director of Toxics Action Center, said, “For years, communities on the frontlines of proposed pipelines, power plants, compressor stations and LNG terminals have been told by the fossil-fuel lobby and politicians that gas is a low-carbon bridge to a clean energy future. Today, it’s clearer than ever that this is not the case. New fracked-gas infrastructure proposed across the region threatens our climate future, our health, and our neighborhoods. It’s time to double down on clean local renewable-energy sources right here in New England."

In Rhode Island, new fossil-fuel projects include a natural-gas power plant and the expansion of a pipeline compressor station, both in Burrillville, and a liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing facility on the Providence waterfront. Rehoboth, Mass., is being asked to host a new compressor station. A new LNG storage facility is proposed for Acushnet, Mass.

“These new fracked-gas proposals on the South Coast are nothing more than a money-making scheme for the fossil-fuel industry,” said Rachel Mulroy, an organizer with the Fall River, Mass.-based Coalition for Social Justice and a board member for South Coast Neighbors United, which formed out of concerns about Spectra Energy’s LNG proposal in Acushnet.

On Newbury show today

  New England Diary overseer Robert Whitcomb  chatted with Bruee Newbury on the latter's "Talk of the Town'' show on WADK-A.M. (1540) this morning.

On the show, which you can hear on wadk.com, they talked about the Providence International Arts Festival; the tendency of rich people to give money to already rich institutions such as Harvard so they can wrap themselves in institutional prestige; the gas tax and repairing the roads and bridges with truck toll money, and Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker lunching today at Angelo's Restaurant  on Providence's Federal Hill.

Robert Whitcomb: Rhode work; profits without prosperity

  Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo is focusing on long-term projects that would help most people in the state, rather than “government by deal’’ wherein powerful groups seek taxpayer help for their special projects.

Improve public education and physical infrastructure and good stuff will follow. After all, Rhode Island already has a highly strategic location, ports, some famed educational and cultural institutions and considerable natural and manmade beauty.

“Our infrastructure is intertwined with economic development,’’ notes Rhode Island Transportation Director Peter Alviti.

So the governor wants commercial truck tolls on many bridges to help pay to fix roads and bridges. The plan is to issue $700 million in state revenue bonds, to be repaid from tolls on big trucks using bridges on Interstate Highways 95, 195 and 295 and state Routes 146, 6 and 10.

That many of Rhode Island’s bridges and roads are falling apart is obvious. Bad roads and bridges of course damage the vehicles driven on them -- a far better reason to avoid the tiny state than new user fees would be. Such disrepair shouts out that the state has been badly run. Bad PR!

That the Ocean State, part of which is an archipelago, ranks last in the nation in overall bridge condition seems suicidal. Big trucks do most of the damage to the state’s bridges and roads, by one estimate 90 percent.

Meanwhile, vehicles are becoming much more energy-efficient, many young people now don’t drive nearly as much as young people did a couple of decades ago and the huge cohort of aging Baby Boomers won’t be driving as much either. This means lower gasoline-tax revenues to pay for infrastructure.

Rhode Island and Connecticut are the only states on the Northeast Corridor between Maryland and Maine with no broad-based commercial truck user fees! Rhode Island does have the Pell Bridge, whose truck tolls help maintain it and the Mt. Hope Bridge. That leaves hundreds of badly maintained bridges. (Connecticut is considering re-imposing tolls; it had them for years for all vehicles on Route 95.)

The governor also wants to boost rail and bus service, including an express bus lane for the Routes 6 and 10 interchange reconstruction, and seeks $400 million in federal funds for public transit. With the GOP Congress, that will be hard, but demographics are on her side.

xxx

Anger grows over many cash-rich companies’ paucity of long-term investment in research, job training and pay raises for employees below the senior-executive level. Rather, increasingly selfish execs and their boards take more and more corporate earnings to buy back company shares to boost their prices to enrich themselves at accelerating rates; much of their compensation is in stock.

Many senior execs are less embarrassed than their predecessors were 50 years ago about paying themselves so much at the expense of other employees and the communities where they do business. That’s one reason for the widening income gap. Some of the here-today-gone-tomorrow execs later repair their PR by creating foundations to give away a bit of the money they have taken. But that doesn’t help those they have blithely laid off and communities they have hollowed out.

Some call this stock-price “manipulation’’ and want to ban it. But this shouldn’t be illegal in a free market, however selfish it may be. Still, out-of-control greed and short-termism are eroding the long-term competitiveness of U.S. companies. Even some on Wall Street are speaking out against it. Lawrence Fink, chairman of BlackRock, the huge asset manager, told the chief executives of the 500 biggest U.S. public companies that this “discouraging underinvesting’’ undermines “long-term growth.’’

Economist William Lazonick calls buybacks "profits without prosperity.’’

xxx

I spend more time these days visiting old sick people, as I prepare to join them myself. I always learn something. Not only do these people tend to be more honest than younger folks because they have little to lose in telling the truth, but they have better stories. And visiting them tends to put one’s own life in clearer perspective, including its brevity.

Robert Whitcomb (rwhitcomb51@gmail.com) oversees New England Diary.

Robert Whitcomb: Oregon points to better Medicaid

  Unsurprisingly, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo is getting pushback from interest groups against her goal of “reinventing Medicaid’’ – the federal-state program for the poor. The Ocean State’s Medicaid costs are America’s second-highest per enrollee (Alaska is first) and 60 percent higher than the national average.

Many in the nursing-home and hospital industries will fight the governor’s effort to cut costs even if it can be shown that her plan can simultaneously improve care. After all, the current version of Medicaid has been very lucrative for many in those businesses. The Affordable Care Act has brought them even more money.

As we watch her plan unfold, let’s be very skeptical when we hear lobbyists for the healthcare industry and unions asserting that reform would hurt patients. Lobbyists are adept at getting the public to conflate the economic welfare of a sector’s executives, other employees and owners with its customers’. Ambrose Bierce called politics “a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.’’ Often true!

So “nonprofit’’ Lifespan, the state’s largest hospital system, has just hired eight lobbyists to work the General Assembly to defend its interests. (And beware healthcare executives’ citing their businesses’ “nonprofit’’ status. Many of these enterprises take their profit in huge executive compensation.) Some unions are also on the warpath. They worry that reform to reduce the overcharging, waste and duplication pervasive in U.S. health care might reduce the number of jobs.

But economic and demographic reality (including an aging population, widening income inequality and employers’ eliminating their workers’ group insurance) make Medicaid “reinvention’’ mandatory as more patients flood in.

Oregon provides a model of how to do it.

There, in an initiative led by former Gov. John Kitzhaber,  M.D., an emergency-room physician, the state has both improved care and controlled costs. It did so by creating 16 regional coordinated-care organizations (CCO’s). The state doesn’t pay for each service performed but gives each CCO a “global budget’’ of Medicaid funds to spend. The emphasis is on having a range of providers work with each other to create holistic treatment plans for patients that include the social determinants of health (such as access to transportation and housing quality) as well as patients’ presenting symptoms.

Oregon’s “fee for value’’ approach rewards providers for meeting performance metrics for quality and efficiency and punishes them for poor outcomes and increased costs.

Oregon CCO’s have great flexibility in spending Medicaid money. For example, they could use it to buy patients air conditioners, which may make it less likely that they’ll show up in the E.R. And Oregon CCO’s pay much attention to how behavioral and mental problems can lead to the more obviously physical manifestations of illness. After all, many in our health-care “system’’ “self-medicate’’ through smoking, drinking, drugs, eating unhealthy food and lack of exercise. You see many of these people again and again in the E.R. –wheezing from smoking and obese.

In Rhode Island, 7 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries account for two-thirds of the spending; many of these “frequent fliers’’ have mental and behavioral health problems best addressed through Oregon-style coordinated care.

Unlike the Oregon approach, the “fee for service’’ system that’s still dominant in U.S. health care encourages hospitals and clinicians to order as many expensive procedures as possible, prescribe the most expensive pills and do other things to maximize profit – and send the bills to the taxpayers, the private insurers and the patients.

But “evidence-based medicine’’ -- as opposed to “reputation-based medicine’’’ -- has helped to show that doing more procedures does not necessarily translate into better outcomes; indeed overtreatment can be lethal. I recommend Dr. H. Gilbert Welch’s book “Less Medicine/More Health’’.

Meanwhile, Oregon points the way:

Among the Oregon Medicaid reform’s achievements: a 5.7 percent drop in inpatient costs; a 21 percent drop in E.R. use (which is always very expensive), and an 11.1 percent drop in maternity costs, largely because of hospitals not performing elective early deliveries before 39 weeks of pregnancy. Thus Oregon officials assert that the state can reach its goal of saving $11 billion in Medicaid costs over 10 years.

Rhode Island can achieve similar successes.

Robert Whitcomb (rwhitcomb51@gmail.com), overseer of New England Diary, is a Providence-based editor and writer and a partner  in Cambridge Management Group (cmg625.com), a national healthcare-sector consultancy. He's also a Fellow of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy.

Robert Whitcomb: Boondoggle baseball stadium or jobs?

“The political condition of Rhode Island is notorious, acknowledged and it is shameful. Rhode Island is a state for sale, and cheap.” -- Lincoln Steffens, in 1904

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo is right to focus a lot on job training. You repeatedly hear from business executives that there aren’t enough people in the state with adequate literacy and numeracy. That’s a major reason why Massachusetts is so much richer than the Ocean State.

What’s needed are not just college graduates but high-school graduates with some post-secondary-school vocational training who can prosper in work environments using high technology, such as assembly-line robotics, and who can understand, and explain to each other and the outside world, an enterprise’s needs.

Greater Boston has many thousands of such people. We can lure more of them, but the Ocean State desperately needs to start producing more of its own.

The governor’s $1.3 million grant program via the state Workforce Board will help. It will provide grants of up to $25,000 to help partnerships convene, determine employers’ needs and create plans to meet those needs. The remaining money would fund the approved training partnerships.

Ms. Raimondo announced the program at the Cranston facility of Yushin America Inc., a global robotics maker. Yushin wants to expand and has 14 open positions but is having trouble finding trained workers in Rhode Island to fill even that small number of jobs.

The governor’s plan is too modest.

Contrast it with the plan to help some rich guys build a baseball stadium in downtown Providence to host a successor to the Pawtucket Red Sox with the aid of state and city government subsidies of $4 million a year. The stadium would employ a few people mostly paid near minimum wage – in season. Off-season, I suppose they’d go on state-funded unemployment insurance. And what happens to the stadium when the team decamps to another venue offering more public money? Then it might be empty 12 months a year instead of 5.

Note that Terry Murray, one of the rich guys in the stadium plan, moved Fleet Financial Group from Providence to Boston, taking many hundreds of jobs with him.

The stadium  would be on land where otherwise facilities could be built with hundreds of well-paying jobs, many connected with the medical, design and academic complexes in the very same neighborhood. Of course, that might require importing trained people from outside Rhode Island. (See above.)

But the stadium will probably get built because of the powers behind it and such short-term allures as short-term construction jobs, for which organized labor pines. While only a minority of the population cares a lot about baseball teams, those who do include powerful people in business and government who see themselves hyper-validated by association with the government-protected, heavily tax-subsidized macho monopolies known as professional sports teams.

A few consultants will say how wonderful (at least psychologically) stadiums can be for their localities. Then you discover that they have earned buckets of money as consultants for teams.

These teams are welfare for the rich and opium for them and the dwindling percentage of the masses who can afford $11 hot dogs. Still, the teams aren’t boring, unlike job training and fixing roads.

xxx

A line (probably erroneously) attributed to Harry Truman goes: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.’’

Recent research shows us more about how humans and dogs evolved together. As spinoffs of wolves or wolf-like canids, dogs developed over millennia as pack animals whose packs came to include people. We selected them to help us hunt and generally favored those who were the least aggressive. They hung around for free meals from carnivores even better at killing than they were (us).

In doing so, they developed social skills for dealing with humans – e.g., reading our gazes – that no other animals have. Indeed, they read us better than do such close human relatives as chimpanzees.

And, no, dogs don’t just pretend to like us to get free room and board. Scientific studies of such factors as the hormone oxytocin show true affection on both sides of the human-dog duet.

Even their diets are changing, with more dogs (like us) mostly eating vegetable-based food. Now on what might be my last dog, I wish I had known all this with my first, in the Truman administration. I would have been nicer to him.

Robert Whitcomb (rwhitcomb51@gmail.com), overseer of New England Diary, is a former Providence Journal editorial-page editor,  a partner in a healthcare-sector consultancy and a Fellow of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy.

Shrink the R.I. skills gap

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo is quite right to focus on training to shrink the state's skills gap -- the biggest reason for its economic woes. If  low taxes were so important, then Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas would be rich and Connecticut poor. It's not so much how high taxes are as how well they are spent. Rhode Island,  as opposed, say, to Minnesota, Vermont and Virginia is not very good at spending tax money well.

-- Robert Whitcomb

More reforms for Gina Raimondo

I used to see Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo (and her communications chief, Joy Fox)  a bit when Ms. Raimondo was the state treasurer, after her highly successful run as a venture capitalist. She got elected governor as a person willing to take on the challenges of structural reform  after having displayed this courageous willingness when she  embraced, as treasurer, the brutally difficult chore of pensi0n reform.  Runaway public pensions have threatened to effectively bankrupt Rhode Island and some of its cities and towns. (Some of the cities are still on the edge.) Now many of us hope very much that she'll join with Common Good and other reform organizations to push to eliminate obsolete laws and to review the  inefficient and costly "system'' of federal mandates on the states. The National Governors Association has a project along those lines.

Changes in these areas would make state governments more effective and cost-efficient and citizens' lives easier and more productive.

To get a sense of what I'm talking about, read Philip K. Howard's The Rule of Nobody. He runs Common Good and is an admirer of Governor Raimondo's work as treasurer.

Brighter days for Ocean State

Things are looking up in Rhode Island. Its economy is improving. A  tough, realistic, very smart and rather charismatic former venture capitalist, Gina Raimondo, will be the new governor and Providence will get a new mayor, Jorge Elorza, who seems honest and earnest and to have  new ideas for improving New England's second-largest city. Further, T.F. Green Airport's main runway will finally be extended, so as to bring in many more direct flights, including to Europe and the West Coast, and we have hopes that the under-used port at Quonset will get a boost.

A better business climate and a more upbeat (and thus more productive) citizenry in the Ocean State seem likely in 2015.

John O. Harney/Carolyn Morwick: Taking stock of N.E. mid-terms

  This comes courtesy of our friends at the New England Board of Higher Education.

BOSTON

The recent midterm elections brought New England two new governors. Rhode Island elected its first woman chief exec in Gina Raimondo (D). Massachusetts elected Charlie Baker (R), a former Harvard Pilgrim CEO and official in the Weld and Cellucci administrations. Otherwise, the New England corner offices cautiously welcomed back incumbents: Democrats Dannel Malloy in Connecticut, Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire and Peter Shumlin in Vermont, and Republican Paul LePage in Maine.

In higher education, a national pickup in Republican governorships and legislative chambers “will result in lawmakers placing an enhanced focus on state-provided inputs (funding) and the institutionally generated outcomes of public colleges and universities (degree production, graduation rates, etc.),” according to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). “Fiscally conservative lawmakers will ask what the state is receiving back from its investment in higher education, and how students, graduates and employers are benefitting in the process. Performance-based funding and other metric-driven accountability systems will receive continued attention.”

The national newspaper Education Week offered a poppier rundown of the midterms and education policy, noting for example, that "the teacher unions had a really tough night," and "Arne Duncan and the Obama team at the U.S. Department of Education are in for a rough ride."

Ultimately, New England's winners may envy their vanquished opponents who will be spared the tasks of governing in an age of sneaky budget gaps, job market mismatches, an aging population and growing uncertainty in the region’s once-untouchable industries: the so-called “eds and meds.”

Connecticut. Connecticut voters re-elected Malloy over Republican Tom Foley in a rerun of the 2010 election. Nancy Wyman (D) was re-elected lieutenant governor. Before becoming governor, Malloy was mayor of Stamford for 14 years—the longest serving mayor in the city’s history. Before that, he was assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, New York.

In the Connecticut General Assembly, the House and Senate stayed Democratic, although Republicans picked up 10 seats in the House. Senate President Don Williams retired and joined Connecticut’s largest teachers union. Current Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney is expected to succeed Williams as Senate president. In the House, Speaker Brendan Sharkey was re-elected for another term, For the first time, GOP lawmakers chose a woman to be minority leader with Rep. Themis Klarides replacing former Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, who did not seek re-election.

Following his reelection, Malloy ordered nearly $48 million in emergency budget cuts, including about $7 million to public colleges and universities to help close a projected $100 million deficit.

In his first term as governor, Malloy reorganized the public higher-education system, making massive cuts to the system. He subsequently restored most of the cuts to the system’s state universities and community colleges by funding Transform CSCU for more than $125 million, which was later cut.

Malloy also succeeded in passing additional initiatives in his first term, including "Go Back to Get Ahead,'' a program designed to help students who left college without finishing their degree, to return to the classroom. In an effort to make higher education accessible to all Connecticut residents, the state was among the first to pass a version of the DREAM Act, which provides that undocumented students will have access to an affordable higher education.

Malloy also secured $1.5 billion to expand educational opportunities, research and innovation in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines over the next decade at the University of Connecticut. He received the support of state lawmakers to subsidize a genomic medical research institute on the campus of the UConn’s Health Center. The institute, which recently opened, will be operated by the Bar Harbor, Maine-based Jackson Laboratory to transform medicine by improving healthcare, lowering costs and increasing lifespans. The partnership between Jackson Laboratory and UConn’s Health Center and the research institute is the basis for a statewide plan to build a bioscience industry cluster. Malloy has predicted that the bioscience cluster will create some 4,000 bioscience jobs alone while spinning off 2,000 more jobs in related fields.

Malloy has been a strong supporter of precision manufacturing vocational programs at three community colleges to better equip workers and businesses for success in the manufacturing industry.

To reduce student debt, he has proposed creating a student loan tax credit to allow residents to take up to a $2,500 tax credit on student loan interest, allowing students to refinance student loans at lower rates and increasing the Governor’s Scholarship Program to give high-achieving students additional student aid.

Voters made no changes in Connecticut’s congressional delegation.

Maine. Maine voters reelected LePage to a second term. LePage, the former mayor of Waterville, Maine, and a former member of the Waterville City Council, also worked as general manager of a discount store, Marden’s Surplus and Salvage.

Asked at a debate about deep cuts at the University of Southern Maine, LePage said the University of Maine System “needs to reinvent itself.” He suggested looking at the University of Maine at Fort Kent for its outreach to high-school students as a model. He also said he thinks the state’s community colleges should focus on trades as opposed to liberal arts.

On student debt, LePage has expressed interest in the “Pay it Forward” model which originated in the state of Oregon. However, the plan has never been implemented in Oregon due to a lack of funding. On remedial education, LePage noted that 55 percent of students who enter community colleges need remedial education in math and English. He supports a proficiency-based diploma.

LePage’s midterm challenger, U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud (D), proposed “Maine Made” which would build Maine’s economy partly by making the sophomore year at any school in the University of Maine system tuition-free. It would cost $15 million a year, which Michaud suggested, would help address the college debt issue. He also proposed lowering in-state tuition by 25 percent.

Challenger Eliot Cutler, an Independent candidate for governor, proposed a “Pay it Forward, Pay it Back” plan. Students would attend a public two-year or four-year college tuition-free and pay a small portion of their income for approximately 20 years into a state fund. The state would have to borrow money initially but eventually, the plan would become self-sustaining.

Democrats maintain control of the Maine House of Representatives while Republicans control the Senate. Maine is the only state where the Legislature elects the constitutional officers of attorney general, secretary of state and the treasurer (though a rejected 2013 bill called for the statewide election of the secretary of state and treasurer every two years and the attorney general every four years). Legislators elected former state Rep. Terry Hayes, a Democrat-turned independent, state treasurer. Democrats re-elected Secretary of State Matt Dunlap and Atty. Gen. Janet Mills.

Michaud’s old Maine 2nd district congressional seat will now be held by Bruce Poliquin (R), who defeated New England Board of Higher Education chairwoman, and former state  senator,  Emily Cain (D). Poliquin will serve on the House Financial Services Committee.

Massachusetts. Bay State voters elected Baker (R) to be governor over Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley (D) in the narrowest race for Massachusetts governor in the past half century.

Baker appointed Steven Kadish to be his chief of staff. Kadish was senior vice president and chief operating officer of Northeastern University and executive vice president and chief financial officer at Dartmouth College.

Karyn Polito (R) was elected lieutenant governor and ran Baker’s transition team. Baker also appointed education reformer and charter school advocate Jim Peyser to lead his transition team. Peyser is managing director of New Schools City Funds in Boston and former chair of the state Board of Education. Baker appointed University of Massachusetts Lowell Chancellor Marty Meehan and Phoenix Charter Academy Network founder Beth Anderson to chair the transition committee on schools.

Baker wants to pursue more online learning, three-year degree programs and expanded co-op programs as part of a larger plan to reduce the cost of higher education while increasing access for students. He said he would direct the state Board of Higher Education to establish a competitive grant program for public colleges and high schools to set up or expand co-op programs where students can earn academic credits through courses and work experiences with local employers which he says would produce a cost savings of 25 percent.

Less than a month after the election, The Boston Globe called on Baker to “not only protect the Commonwealth’s competitive advantage in tech, but address regulatory roadblocks and cultural issues that could limit the sector’s future job-creation potential.”

Baker will succeed two-term Gov. Deval Patrick, who did not run, and according to reports in the Globe, is considering an offer to be a scholar at MIT. (The path from New England governors'  offices to academia is well-worn by Michael Dukakis (Mass.), Walter Peterson (N.H.), Bruce Sundlun (R.I.)  and others.)

In another highlight of the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, Evan Falchuk, who ran as the United Independent Party candidate, earned nearly 72,000 votes—more than the 3 percent needed to be recognized as an official party in terms of election and fundraising laws.

In the Massachusetts legislature, Democrats continue to control the House and Senate. Republicans added seven new lawmakers in the House, increasing the number of Republicans to 34. The Massachusetts Senate added two Republicans, increasing their ranks to six. Senators will elect a new chamber president to replace Sen. Therese Murray (D) who did not seek re-election. The favorite is Sen. Stan Rosenberg (D), whose district includes the college-rich Pioneer Valley.

Massachusetts 6th congressional District will now be represented by Seth Moulton (D), replacing fellow Democrat John Tierney who served for 18 years, including a stretch as New England’s only member of the House Education and Workforce Committee.

New Hampshire. Granite State voters re-elected Hassan for a second term. Hassan’s late father, Robert C. Wood, was a president of UMass and U.S. secretary of housing and urban development. Her husband is the principal of Phillips Exeter Academy. She will face the challenge of working with a legislature controlled by Republicans. The House elected Shawn Jasper as speaker. A coalition of Democrats and Republicans came together to reject the choice of the Republican caucus, former speaker Will O’Brien after a series of votes.

When the legislative session gets underway in January, Hassan will face an uphill climb in funding public higher education. Funding for the University System of New Hampshire was cut by 50 percent in fiscal years 2012 and 2013. In September 2014, University System Trustees voted unanimously to submit a funding request to the governor and state legislators that restores state support to 2009 levels. In exchange, the System would freeze tuition for two more years. The system is requesting $100 million in 2016 and $105 million in 2017.

Hassan also restored funding to the New Hampshire Community Colleges, which allowed tuition to be cut by 5 percent. Hassan said the state needs to focus on keeping New Hampshire students in the state in the face of students opting for less expensive higher education options out-of-state.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen defeated challenger Scott Brown, who had earlier beat Coakley to represent Massachusetts in the Senate, but then lost to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D). New Hampshire’s 1st congressional district will be represented by Frank Guinta (R), who defeated incumbent Carol Shea-Porter (D).

Rhode Island. Former State Treasurer Raimondo was elected to be the state’s first woman governor. A Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Raimondo clerked for U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood and served as senior vice president of fund development at Village Ventures before co-founding Point Judith Capita. In 2010, she was elected general treasurer of Rhode Island, where she implemented comprehensive pension reform.

During the campaign, Raimondo proposed:

• Creating a new scholarship fund for any academically qualified student who lacks financial resources and wants to pursue a post-secondary degree at one of Rhode Island’s public colleges. To be eligible, a student must have a grade point average of 3.0 or higher. The scholarship would cover all tuition and fee expenses after all other financial aid is applied. The scholarship fund is based on The Tennessee Promise, which offers “last dollar” scholarships that are intended to bridge the gap after all financial resources are exhausted. The cost is estimated to be between $10 million and $15 million a year. The new funds would come from the Rhode Island Higher Education Assistance Authority’s reserves.
• Creating a loan-forgiveness program for Rhode Island students who have graduated from one of the state’s colleges or universities with student debt and continue to live in the state. Business will have access to a talent pool in exchange for paying off some of the students' debt. The program is based on New Hampshire’s “Stay Work Play” initiative.
• Opening an office at the Community College of Rhode (CCRI) dedicated to bringing businesses to the table to identify the needs of employers and design curricula that reflect those needs, while equipping the college with programs, equipment and facilities needed to put students on a pathway to a job in a high-demand industry.
• Doubling the graduation rate at CCRI by working with administrators, counselors and educators to identify why the school’s graduation rate is so low. A model initiative to accomplish the latter is the Accelerated Study in Associates Programs (ASAP) at the City University of New York (CUNY).

Raimondo has also proposed establishing an innovation institute that would translate ideas from Rhode Island colleges and universities into products manufactured in the state.

Daniel McKee (D) was elected lieutenant governor, succeeding  Elizabeth Roberts (D), who was term-limited. In the Rhode Island General Assembly, Democrats maintain control of the House and Senate. Republicans picked up six seats in the House, while the Senate remained unchanged.

Vermont. While Shumlin won the governor's race over Republican Scott Milne, he did not receive 50 percent of the vote. The Vermont constitution provides that in such instances where no candidate achieves 50 percent the election is decided by the Vermont General Assembly, which is overwhelmingly Democratic. The formal election of governor will be the first order of business as lawmakers begin a new session.

Lawmakers and the governor will have to tackle an unanticipated shortfall of $17 million. This follows a previous shortfall during the past summer of $31 million. State agencies will have to reduce their budgets by an additional $15.5 million. Revenues are off by approximately $12 million, according to Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding, who coincidentally was tapped to become the next chancellor of Vermont State Colleges (VSC).

There is little doubt that Shumlin will have to rework his agenda for the coming year. In higher education, the governor initially proposed a $2.5 million increase in the allocation to the University of Vermont, VSC and the Vermont Student Assistance Corp—a move which would have kept tuition rates at Vermont public institutions frozen for the current academic year and expanded of dual-enrollment and early-college programs. However, in August of this year, the funding increase was eliminated due to a budget shortfall, and appropriations for VSC and UVM will be level-funded.

Plans to address student debt are likely to be put on hold. Previously, Shumlin suggested the possibility of students getting two tuition free years of college. The savings would come from two areas: college dual enrollment and a scholars program that provides for reimbursement of tuition for students going into STEM fields.

Ballot questions. Among New England ballot questions, Massachusetts voters chose not to repeal the casino law. They also approved guaranteed paid sick days for workers, echoing national election trends that saw large Republican wins coupled awkwardly with victories for populist causes such as minimum wage hikes.

Rhode Island voters OK’d bond issues for a new engineering building at URI, while Maine voters OK’d $50 million in state borrowing included in six bond questions—one to build a research facility devoted to research on genetic solutions to cancer and age-related diseases. LePage, however, has delayed release of voter-approved bonds in the past.

In D.C.: Nationally, Republicans won a majority in the U.S. Senate. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a former governor of Tennessee and U.S. secretary of education in the George H. W. Bush administration, is expected to chair the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Rep. John Kline (R-MN) is expected to continue chairing the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. He has proposed reducing the number of questions on the FAFSA to two and prioritizing deregulation of higher education. Republicans are likely to fight the administration’s plans to create a “college ratings system” and use a “gainful employment rule” to target the for-profit sector.

The Education Dive newsletter recently posted a piece on "10 ways a Republican-led Congress could impact higher ed in 2015."

The National Association of State Boards of Education offered a state-by-state analysis of changes in membership of state boards of education, noting, among other things, Connecticut Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor’s August announcement that he wouldn’t seek a second term.

The messaging and spinning is partly done. The fat lady has sung. Now it's time to govern.

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education. Carolyn Morwick handles government and community relations at the New England Board of Higher Education and is former director of the Caucus of New England State Legislatures.