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| Weekly Update For the week of July 31, 2009 |
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Dear William,
"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." ~ Milton Friedman
Happy Birthday Milton Friedman! The late Friedman, who is widely regarded to be one of the most brilliant and influential economists of our time, would have turned 97 years old today. Supporters of free-market capitalism owe a great deal to Mr. Friedman and his life's work.
This week OSPRI President Bill Felkner will be discussing in the President's Message the harvesting of data and the inequities between public sector and private sector employees.
The Providence Journal finally ran a letter to the editor from Mr. Felkner in which he corrected the misinformation about OSPRI that the Journal was so quick to put out upon the release of our RI Stimulus website. To read Mr. Felkner's letter, see below.
Save the Date! Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, will be visiting OSPRI on September 10th. We will have a reception that evening, so be sure to mark your calendars! More details will be released as soon as they are available.
This past spring, Steve Moses, President of the Center for Long-Term Care Reform, Inc., joined OSPRI as our Fellow for Health Care Policy. Earlier this month, he spent a week in Rhode Island conducting research for a study on how to fix the long-term care problem in our state. Mr. Moses now has the chance to be recognized by Long-Term Living magazine as the "Person Making a Difference in Long-Term Care." He needs your online vote to help him win! See below for details.
The Sunshine Review took notice of OSPRI's new RI Stimulus Watch website, and SR has posted a page for RI Stimulus Watch on their website. You can find more details about this below.
Once again, I am urging all of you to visit our new Rhode Island Stimulus Watch website (www.ristimulus.org) and cast your vote for the projects you feel are, or are not, critical at this time. This website was designed for you, the taxpayer, and we need your feedback!
This week, eleven new documents were added to the RI Data website, which can be found by going to the Transparency Train. The RI Votes database is fully updated for the current legislative session: about 2000 bills were introduced in the House and Senate, and you can find them all through the RI Votes section of the Transparency Train.
As always, OSPRI continues to traverse the state in order to spread the word about our organization and the Transparency Project. We have spoken before neighborhood organizations, taxpayer groups, college students, and local public officials. If you are interested in having Mr. Felkner or one of our scholars and/or associates address your group, please contact us via phone (401-228-6691) or email (info@oceanstatepolicy.org).
Finally, if you have any questions about OSPRI or are interested in getting involved, don't hesitate to contact me!
Best regards,
Parker Lacoste
Assistant to the President
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| President's Message |
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the dog day of summer. The term comes from the rising of the Dog Star, Sirius, but I always think of days so hot dogs lie about barely moving. And while things do seem to move slowly during the summer, at OSPRI it's just another season of harvesting data.
The legislative session requires a great deal of attention to stay current processing the data that goes into the RI Votes website, but when that's over contract harvesting begins. Most public sector contracts (and accompanying fiscal impact statements) should be finished by July so we are in the process of collecting and updating the RI Data website with that information right now.
As we compile this data, it becomes more and more apparent that there is a tremendous inequity between what the private sector and public sector receive in pay and benefits.
For those in the private labor market, or self-employed even more so, the concept of stockpiling sick, holiday and/or "personal" days like they were currency is unheard of. Workdays less than seven hours, stipends to clean your clothes, and compensation increases based on seniority and not performance, are all employment terms that are essentially non-existent in the private market. But one of the most egregious of these inequities is the difference between public sector and private sector pensions system.
Private sector employees (people that do not work for the state, or town) normally receive pensions that define how much money will be deposited into an account for the employee to draw from during retirement. These are called defined contribution plans.
Public sector employees (people that work for you) normally receive defined benefit plans which pay out more money for longer periods of time than defined contributions plans. These plans not only define how much yearly salary a retiree will receive, but they also define how much that benefit will rise each year regardless of the rise or fall of the actual cost of living.
There are many variations of these plans but the Rolls Royce is the 3% compound COLA (cost of living adjustment). As Einstein said, compound interest is "the most powerful force in the universe."
The difference between the liabilities of a defined contribution plan compared to this defined benefit plan is shocking.
As an example, an employee retiring after 20 years, with a $70,000 final year salary (including longevity and holiday pay), would receive $1.6 million over the next thirty years. The amount paid by the town could be even more as people continue to live longer.
In a defined contribution plan, using the same employee terms, the maximum amount the town would be responsible for is $80,830, half of the accumulated $161,660 retirement pool. I know we all appreciate our police and firefighters but giving them a pension that pays 10 times that of the private sector is too much. Why are we mortgaging our children's future for a select group of employees?
There was a day when these employees received low salaries so the pensions balanced the deal. Today, the average income for a police officer, teacher and firefighter are all above the average income in the private sector.
Town councils and school committees continue to nibble at the edges of contract reform, but drastic measures are needed. It is time to treat public sector employees the same as private sector employees - no better, no worse.
And speaking of how well we treat our public sector employees, our next season is the fall and that's when fiscal year data becomes available and we start harvesting the payrolls again.
Fall also marks the start of a new school year and this year we will also be announcing our RI Schools database where visitors can compare school districts on a variety of metrics such as number of employees, costs per student and test scores. We hope these tools empower you to take back control of your government. Happy harvesting.
Onward and upward,
Bill |
| Felkner's LTE in the Projo |
As stated above, the Providence Journal published Mr. Felkner's letter to the editor in which he points out the blatant misinformation in the Journal's coverage of OSPRI's new RI Stimulus website. In the Projo's article, they incorrectly labeled OSPRI, a non-profit non-partisan organization, as a "GOP think tank" and claimed that Mrs. Carcieri was a co-founder, when in fact she didn't join the Board of Directors until almost six months after OSPRI was founded. Here is an excerpt from Mr. Felkner's letter:
"Unfortunately, the paper's inaccurate reference to Ocean State Policy as a "GOP group" defeats the purpose of this bias-avoidance approach. We hope the paper's error will not skew the information collected.
The Ocean State Policy Research Institute (OSPRI) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank. If looking for a convenient generalization, may we suggest "center-right." This is not meant to alienate Republican friends of our effort, but to include the Democrats and independents in the ranks of our board, scholars and supporters, of which there are many."
To read the full letter, Click Here.
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| Save the Date for Grover! |
As noted above, Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, will be in Rhode Island on September 10th, so be sure to mark your calendar!
More details will be available soon. |
| Vote for Steve Moses! |
As you may recall, Steve Moses recently joined OSPRI as our Fellow for Health Care Policy. Now he needs your help:
*** VOTE FOR STEVE MOSES as Long-Term Living magazine's "Person Making a Difference in Long-Term Care" here. For the online system to accept your ballot, you must vote for one person in each of the five categories. Steve is listed in the fifth and last category, "Other," defined as "lobbyists, association personnel, consultants, friends of the industry." After you vote, be sure to retype the "validation code" in the appropriate box at the end of the ballot before you press "send." Thanks for your consideration. ***
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| OSPRI in Sunshine Review |
The Sunshine Review took notice of OSPRI's new RI Stimulus Watch website, posting a page about RI Stimulus Watch on the Sunshine Review website:
"The new site watches the stimulus funds coming into the state for a variety of projects and provides a forum for people to express support or opposition to the projects. The site is a "wiki," allowing users to contribute and edit to the descriptions of projects and forums and OSPRI called for taxpayer involvement."
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| RI Stimulus Watch Update |
WE NEED YOUR VOTE!
The RI Stimulus website is designed to provide a venue for Rhode Islanders to give feedback on proposed stimulus projects. The site allows visitors to place comments, add descriptions, write reasons for or against the projects, and cast a vote. We tally the results and rank the projects as "most critical" and "least critical" depending on how you vote.
So, please visit the site ( www.ristimulus.org or www.ristimuluswatch.org) and let us know what you think about the projects in your backyard.
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| RI Data update |
There have been 11 new monthly check registers and documents uploaded since the last Weekly Update:
Westerly June 2009 Check Register
Westerly May 2009 Check Register
Westerly April 2009 Check Register
Burrillville School Dept. June 2009 Check Register
Middletown June 2009 Check Register
Portsmouth June 2009 Check Register
North Smithfield School Dept. June 2009 Check Register
North Smithfield June 2009 Check Register
North Smithfield May 2009 Check Register
North Smithfield April 2009 Check Register
North Smithfield March 2009 Check Register
Click Here to find public documents.
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