Hooking foul

The Pawtucket Red Sox opened their season under a cloud. Fans of Pawtucket know that this is likely the second-to-last home opener at McCoy and all Rhode Islanders are hearing the clock ticking on this beloved franchise remaining in state.

When the new owners of the minor league franchise that will soon-be-formerly-known as the Pawtucket Red Sox revealed their “ask” a collective groan was heard from one end of the state to another. In exchange for locating the team in Providence and financing the stadium and a parking garage where the team will play, the team asked the state for $4 million each year for 30 years. This state lease allows the owners to get financing for construction of the project, estimated to cost $85 million. The new ownership group also released an economic development study that showed new park would generate approximately $2 million each year in new tax revenue. If the study is accurate this would make the net cost to taxpayers about $2 million each year. The General Assembly and Governor Raimondo would need to approve any deal and the new ownership made it clear that they have between now and the end of the legislative session to get it done.

In the immortal words of Swift (Taylor, not Jonathan) “haters gonna hate” so even before the specifics were revealed, naysayers were pledging to oppose any taxpayer investment in the new stadium, arguing that the 195 land was too valuable to use for a venue that will host less than 80 games a year. While discussion of alternative sites and the promise of a multi-use facility, capable of hosting Brown football and baseball games have quelled some of that debate, other concerns continue. Let’s face it, asking Rhode Island’s fragile tax base to cough up any money to support a private business owned by multimillionaires seems a bit “out of left field” for many.

I will admit I am torn: the PawSox are part of Rhode Island’s identity and a source of pride and happiness. I’ve seen great games and watched players at McCoy — and even got Jon Lester’s autograph one day when he was hanging out in the parking lot after practice. I understand why the new owners want a new park in a new city. McCoy is only vaguely charming when you are staring at the green grass — otherwise it’s like sitting in a giant cinderblock bandshell. And Pawtucket, oh Pawtucket. “Let’s grab dinner at that great restaurant next to McCoy,” said no one ever. Having a new stadium built in our capital city would make Providence and more vibrant and would add some cache to the Red Sox’ farm team too.

The bottom line is that there will be a cost to keeping the team in Rhode Island. As Rhode Islanders, we are used to making trade offs — we live here because we love the state and what it means to be from here. For some of us that means summers on the water, family close by, baseball hats filled with ice cream, a certain parade and readily available clam cakes. The price we pay: cold winters, higher taxes and a lot of potholes. While it’s unlikely that the cost of keeping the team here will be low enough to make every taxpayer happy, I am hoping that a agreement can be made that doesn’t violate our collective sense of fairness. Right now, the plan is hooking foul.

Tossing us a screwball

While I know that baseball can be slow — and I admit to sometimes dozing off during late innings —baseball is exciting because that you never know where or when the action might happen. Whether it’s an unlikely hero with a walk-off home run or a surprise no-hitter, baseball can offer surprises every game.

While it was hardly a thrill, followers of Rhode Island politics got a bit of a surprise last week when former Governor-Senator-Mayor Lincoln Chafee announced that he was launching an exploratory bid for president. That’s right, president, of the United States of America. Because his announcement arrived just a week after April Fool’s Day, it took a few hours for the news to sink in as real and for the discussion to turn from utter amazement to a discussion about what a Lincoln Chafee campaign for president might look like.

It’s clear from his announcement and the quick media tour he has taken since that his primary reason to enter the race is to take aim at Hillary Clinton. He has no real message of his own, just a few talking points saying that as a man of principle and one who voted against the Iraq war, he is a better candidate for president than Clinton who voted in favor of the Iraq resolution (along with 76 of 100 other U.S. Senators). While we can debate whether a single vote taken in the U.S. Senate 13 years ago should have any bearing on the president we choose in 2016, I can say with some certainty that Chafee is could be a dream opponent for most candidates in the right situation. If a candidate wants to look smooth, smart, outgoing and quick-witted, Chafee is the perfect opponent to be compared to since he is awkward, speaks poorly and his gestures are either robotic or erratic. Having said that, he could be an effective “truth-teller” during the Democratic primary season, working only as an attack dog and ripping Clinton down at every turn. While this could be a nightmare for Clinton, it is a gift for another candidate poised to enter the race (perhaps Martin O’Malley) but who might struggle against the Clinton machine in a head-to-head matchup.

What a Chafee candidacy means for Rhode Island could be a bit of a headache for the rest of us. A few gaffes and awkward comebacks into the campaign and the national media will be wondering aloud how he managed to get elected (and re-elected) to various offices in Rhode Island. They will quickly learn that his only term as governor was a bit of a disaster and that while the state suffered with the worst economy in the country, Chafee chose instead to try and change the name of the evergreen that graces many homes over the holidays. Instead of growing jobs, he changed the state license plate and instead of trying to attract businesses to move to Rhode Island, he changed the name of the Economic Development Corporation to CommerceRI. While all of this attention might be exciting to at first, it may also be a painful reminder of a bad four years with a bit of screwball.

The migration begins

With snow lingering in our yards, it’s hard to believe the baseball season begins this weekend. As the team returns to Boston next week, they are among the first “locals” to return from the winter spent down south. Other migrating types include Ruby Throated Hummingbirds and American Gold Finches — lovely little birds that spend their winters in warmer climates to avoid our chilly temperatures. The larger Snowbird used to be easily spotted driving its giant yellow Cadillac with Florida plates and a bar across the backseat for hanging clothes migrating north on route 95 every May. With cheaper flights and Rhode Island-plated cars this species has been less easy to spot in recent years but Governor Raimondo’s budget might make them squawk and flush themselves out.

One of the many bad raps on Rhode Island’s tax policy is that we’ve incentivized wealthy Rhode Islanders to move to Florida. They might keep a beautiful house here, buy a condo there and spend six months plus a day in the sweltering Florida sun so they can avoid paying income tax to Rhode Island while enjoying six months less a day here. Florida very cleverly took advantage of our bad policy and gives legal Florida residents a sizeable homestead exemption to encourage more people to make the residency change. In this competition, Governor Raimondo just made a clever move, proposing a tax on second homes valued at over a million dollars. Some have called it a “Taylor Swift” tax but I think about it more as a Yellow Cadillac fee.

While I think Rhode Islanders are taxed enough — and certainly don’t love the idea of the state being able to levy a tax on property — this Yellow Cadillac fee seems fair to me. After all, it’s aimed at non-Rhode Islanders who’ve got a second home here valued at more than million dollars. They might be tucked away in a condo in Naples until that 181^st day passes and they can liberate themselves to rush north and watch a sunset on Narragansett Bay. They might be from New York and spend their weeks toiling on Wall Street and their summer weekends on Watch Hill. Regardless, they use our roads, enjoy our beaches and pay their income tax (if any) somewhere else. We’re happy to see them when they arrive and are glad they love Rhode Island so much. Despite what opponents say, don’t think this fee will drive them away since for most it will amount to less than renting a cottage on the Vineyard for a week.

The bottom line is this: we’ve complained for decades that wealthy Rhode Islanders are motivated to move to Florida. While this policy change won’t stop most of that migration since it only impacts those with a million dollar vacation home, the Yellow Cadillac fee ensures that it’s no longer a free ride for the wealthiest of them. Someday perhaps our tax policies will allow us to compete with states like Florida and New Hampshire for the tax-savviest residents, but for now at least the Yellow Cadillac fee will add another figure into their calculations.

Keeping up with the times

You don't need to be an avid baseball fan to know about Pete Rose. An incredibly talented (most hits all time at 4,256), durable (played in 3,562 games ‑ the most for any MLB player) and versatile player (appeared in 17 all-star games at five different positions) with a gambling problem, Rose was given a lifetime ban by MLB baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti in 1989. While betting on baseball is against league rules, it has never been insinuated that Rose cheated or did anything to “throw” a game. Through today's post-steroid lens, Pete Rose's "crimes" against baseball seem minor. As Alex Rodriguez comes back from his year-long suspension and takes the field in Yankee pinstripes, making more than $21 million, Pete Rose remains in limbo, serving a life sentence for an infraction that pales in comparison to some of the offenses of today.

Thinking about Rose and how he would fit into today's game - and perhaps the Hall of Fame ballot this year - made me think a bit about the lens we are looking through as we educate our children and the recent controversy over the PARCC test. When I hear groans about “what was wrong with the NECAP?” I want to reply that nothing was wrong with it, but maybe, just maybe we’ve learned something in the ten years since the NECAP was first used and PARCC represents that progression. If education continues to move forward, ten years from now parents will surely be complaining about moving away from PARCC testing and onto the next kind of assessment. Times have changed - and will continue to change - and we need to adapt our standards to today's norms — or get left in the dust. What was cutting edge in education just a few years ago may no longer be relevant just a few years from now and because this is about preparing the next generation to be the next leaders of our country, we should be thinking ahead, not looking backward.

While I certainly have my own beefs with standardized testing and would prefer that students are focused more on understanding the material than learning to take the test, the reality is that we need to be able to set a bar for performance and measure to it. And truthfully, those of us who are parenting — not educating — don’t even really know what they bar looks like. I learned through a conversation with a very local teen that (sigh… eyeroll) “80% of the careers that will be open to me haven’t event been invented yet.” While serving its purpose of making me feel alarmingly old and uncool, her statement also made me realize how quickly things do change in a generation. It is so easy to leave kids behind with small minded and parochial thoughts like, “when I was in school we didn’t learn that way” and “we never took those tests and I turned out just fine.”

So maybe the answer is this: we have to continue to innovate in testing and in teaching, and we have to continue to challenge the next generation more than we were challenged. After all, the world we leave them to run hasn’t even invented the issues that they will need to face and address.

And for what it’s worth, we also should forgive Pete Rose. If A-Roid is off the hook, then surely Pete Rose deserves a break.

Opening day on another field of play

Opening Day is just around the corner and for rabid baseball fans, it’s like Christmas and the 4^th of July rolled into one. Opening Day represents the start of the 162 game season that gives many of us something to look forward to and plan around every day. It’s also the only day in the season where every team is a winner and every player can realistically be batting a thousand.

There was another Opening Day at the State House last week when Governor Gina Raimondo released her administration’s budget. It’s a widely held political fact that one need not look further than a governor’s budget to understand what his or her priorities are and this governor is no different. Her budget invests heavily in education, workforce development and economic development programs. She followed through on her pledge during the campaign to lift the moratorium on school construction, providing a lift to the construction industry as well as the children and teachers who are spending their days in our crumbling schools. Whether or not you agree with consolidating the state’s tourism spend, she followed through on that pledge too, and in her first budget centralizes our tourism dollars to give our efforts more “oomph” statewide.

While the glow of the governor’s budget address doesn’t last much beyond the evening — the media’s near-instantaneous critique ensures that —  the event itself truly constitutes another Opening Day for the General Assembly. Almost everything in the state revolves around the budget and over the next few months many agreements will be made and disagreements will take place around the lines in that bill. A governor’s priorities are in the budget along with the source of the Speaker’s power since the “sausage making” of the budget process is done through the House Finance Committee.

For what it’s worth, this year is unlike any since 1994, the last year a Democratic governor in Rhode Island presented a budget to the overwhelmingly Democratic General Assembly. In the 21 years since, the governor and the General Assembly were often at odds ideologically and budget time did not bring them together since the Assembly often rewrote the governor’s budget with very little input from his office. It remains to be seen whether the governor will need to use her power of the bully pulpit to keep her priorities in the budget or if she can persuade legislators to follow her lead, but a new season has begun and we’ve got front row seats to the session.