Chris Fierro

My weekly video update–a short but important one. I’m itching to get outside on this 70 degree Spring day, so that is it for now!

Press Releases

I can’t help but feel terrible for Mayor Menard, who lost her daughter yesterday.  As a parent, I can imagine that she is devastated–but I can’t even fathom it. As I look at my little kids, my stomach turns just thinking of it. The Mayor, and her family, particularly her two and four-year old grand kids, will certainly be in my thoughts.

From today’s Woonsocket Call:

In a devastating personal blow to Mayor Susan D. Menard and her family, the mayor’s 31-year-old daughter was found deceased at her residence in Massachusetts yesterday.

Press Releases

Last night, Senator Roger Picard graciously opened his house for a joint open-house / constituent night. We had about a dozen people show up, which I was pleased with. The concerns that were voiced last night are the same that I hear through the district—fixing our state’s economic mess, bringing jobs to RI, and ensuring that the pension reforms that everyone sees as inevitable aren’t too draconian.

The best question of the night though, was “what else are you working on?” A fair question to say the least. Here is a link to the section of the General Assembly’s website that lists bills by sponsor. You can click on my name and see all of the bills on which I appear as a sponsor.

While we’ve made progress with online disclosure, I’d like to see this general listing of bills include a more generic and “user friendly” description of what the bills intend to do. Additionally, that description should be on the main page, rather than buried at the end of a PDF file for each bill.

That’s great, now you know what bills I’ve put my name on as a sponsor. But how have I voted on a given issue? Unfortunately, that is not available from the general assembly. I am proud to have co-sponsored Rep. Ed Pacheco’s bill to publish individual votes on the assembly web site. Hopefully that will be just a step on the voyage to better disclosure.

In the meantime, you can look at the Rhode Island Votes website to see how I, or any other member of the General Assembly, have voted on a given issue. (It is not entirely up-to date, which is a good argument for automatically linking the voting machines to the GA website and self-disclosing.)

You can search by legislator’s name or by bill.  It will also tell you how many votes a given legislator has missed. Go ahead, take a peek.

On The Issues

Just a quick reminder, tomorrow, Monday, is the joint open house with Senator Picard and me.

Read the press release here.

Sen. Roger A. Picard and Rep. Chris Fierro will host a joint open house for their constituents Monday, April 13, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 pm. at Senator Picard’s home, 764 Mendon Road, Woonsocket.

All constituents in their districts – House District 51 in Woonsocket and Senate District 20 in Cumberland and Woonsocket – are invited, along with anyone else who would like to speak with them. To find your House or Senate district, visit http://www.sec.state.ri.us/vic/

The event will be an opportunity for local residents to talk face-to-face in an informal setting to their legislators about any issue or concern, question or idea. In a year when the state is facing a massive budget deficit as well as determining the use of federal stimulus funds, both legislators said they are eager to hear what’s on their constituents’ minds.

Press Releases

It was a short but hectic week in the legislature. A few things to note from the video:

• H5986 is a bill that will amend the State’s building code to comply with some parts of the stimulus act–basically requiring that new home construction, starting in 2017, would be done with 2×6″ lumber rather than 2×4″s. This allows for more insulation in the walls and will result in higher energy efficiency. The trade off is that a higher up-front cost of building your home will quickly be recouped by savings in your energy bill.  I have a hard time with something that we currently do in construction–that is to build quick and cheap. Your house that was 10% cheaper to build could wind up costing you those savings over and over again in repair, upkeep, and in your energy bills. Sometimes we’re too eager to save now and it comes with a cost down the line. This bill should go part of the way to solving that issue, at least when it comes to residences.  And having it phase in over the next years should give more than enough time for everyone to prepare.
• The big event next week, for me at least, is an open house with Senator Roger Picard.  Here are the details:

  Sen. Roger A. Picard and Rep. Chris Fierro will host a joint open house for their constituents Monday, April 13, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 pm. at Senator Picard’s home, 764 Mendon Road, Woonsocket.

  All constituents in their districts – House District 51 in Woonsocket and Senate District 20 in Cumberland and Woonsocket – are invited, along with anyone else who would like to speak with them. To find your House or Senate district, visit http://www.sec.state.ri.us/vic/

  The event will be an opportunity for local residents to talk face-to-face in an informal setting to their legislators about any issue or concern, question or idea. In a year when the state is facing a massive budget deficit as well as determining the use of federal stimulus funds, both legislators said they are eager to hear what’s on their constituents’ minds.

• The full press release can be found here. I am looking forward to this event, and hope to get some good feedback.
• I hope everyone has a restful holiday weekend.

video blog

I have mixed feelings about the Governor’s cost saving measure as proposed in his version of the FY2010 budget–he’d save roughly $55k by forcing Woonsocket (along with two other communities that do municipal elections in the odd-years) to hold all elections in even years or pay the expense of odd-year elections.

I like the idea of having everything on one ballot in the even years. The feedback that I’ve heard from friends on the municipal side are that too many names on the ballot in the even years would be a detriment to those on the low end of the ballot, specifically the large fields for City Council and School Committee. So the tradeoff, as described to me, is that while voter turnout may be lower in the odd years, the people that show up to vote are able to be better informed about the individuals running for Mayor, City Council, and School Committee.  I think that it would pay dividends in the form of increased turnout to do it all in one fell swoop.

That being said, I’d like the City of Woonsocket to come to their own conclusion (voters through a ballot referendum, or City Council) as to how we run our elections. Needless to say, I do not support the idea of this being forced upon us. I guess that puts me in a unique position of potentially having to vote against something that I agree with in principle due to my disagreement with the process.

Jim Baron has a good article on this issue in today’s Woonsocket Call.

“This should never see the light of day,” an angry James Allam, chairman of the Woonsocket Board of Canvassers, said. “Reasonable people would not pursue that.”
“It wouldn’t affect the Board of Canvassers, it would affect the finances of the city,” Allam continued. “We don’t have money in the budget to pay the (state) anything for our elections. This is just a way of passing the buck onto communities, indirectly increasing local tax rates.”
He said the state should have asked communities to explore the idea of even-year elections instead of simply moving to pass on the costs.

I’d love some feedback on this issue.

From a more esoteric position, Real Clear Politics is a political site that does a phenomenal job of covering national politics from all different perspectives–basically they just link to the major political pieces of the day. Today they have a fantastic synopsis of some of the structural excuses as to why Democrats tend to fail in pushing an agenda when they have a lopsided control of the Congress:

The Democrats’ problems aren’t limited to Carter and Clinton. They have historically had a less ideologically unified coalition than the Republicans. This is why the agenda of the Democratic party has largely remained both unchanged and unfulfilled since Roosevelt’s 1941 Message to Congress, notwithstanding the general Democratic dominance of the period.

The whole article is worth reading. Sometime, I’d like to see a similar analysis applied to Rhode Island, particularly the General Assembly.

On The Issues

Busy agenda on the House floor today, as well as in Corporations Cmte and Municipal Gov’t Cmte. It is hard when my committees double book.

Twitter Twitter

After last week’s budget battle, it is good to see some positive coverage. Jim Baron, who many forget writes not just for the Pawtucket Times, but also for the Woonsocket Call, has a wrap up:

I, and, I believe, many supporters of good and open government would call it a good start.

Rank and file House members, many of them Democrats and a significant number of freshmen stood up and said “No” to the supplemental budget as proposed, and made the leadership change it to allocate more money for cities and towns. For that they should be congratulated and rewarded.

The dissidents not only did something that isn’t done very often — challenging a budget once it has left House Finance — they did something even rarer: they won.

Scott MacKay, former political writer for the Providence Journal, also dishes it in his blog for WRNI Radio:

Just when you thought nothing much ever changes at the Rhode Island State House, along comes a group of Democratic legislators flexing their muscles and defying the House leadership. This group of pragmatic liberals may have more influence as the state struggles to fashion a spending and taxing plan for then next year.

I’ll be the first to admit that my role in the budget debate was a minor one, but I am proud to have weighed in and helped to shift the agenda away from cutting aid to the City of Woonsocket, as well as nursing homes and Landmark Medical Center.

And finally, for those of you following the potential gutting of the RI Ethics Board, I am happy that today’s ProJo Political Scene blog covers the work that is going on towards bolstering the ethics board:

In the interim, Representatives David Segal and Edith Ajello, both Providence Democrats; and Rodney Driver, D-Richmond, Christopher Fierro, D-Woonsocket, and Brian Newberry, R-North Smithfield, have introduced a bill to give voters a chance to amend the state Constitution to remove any doubt the state Ethics Code applies to “all elected and appointed officials and employees of state and local government.”

That’s it for now. I’m a little disappointed in the weather and the delay of opening day, but am happy to report that my son, Vincenzo, is ready:

Vincenzo, Ready for Opening Day

On The Issues, Photos

I campaigned, in part, on the fact that the State of Rhode Island needs to adopt a fair funding formula for eduction. For someone from Woonsocket, this is a no-brainer. We are a poor community that tends be face tough choices when it comes to our education system, and that is in the best of economic times. Facing an economic crisis like the one we’re up against now, well, we wind up looking seriously at a Caruolo action (where the School Committee would sue the City Council for more money).

In today’s ProJo, Ed Fitzpatrick covers, in good detail, our State’s need for a more equitable funding solution:

Over the past year, Rhode Island has received some unwanted national distinctions regarding its unemployment rate and budget deficit. But the lack of a current school aid formula is one distinction we can ditch quickly — preferably during this legislative session.

Aside from more unwanted notoriety for our state, there is a practical problem:

In the 1990s, the state stopped using an updated formula to distribute new school aid. Since then, lawmakers have simply reviewed how much districts received the prior year and made adjustments. In good years, districts receive 3-percent increases from the state. In bad years, districts are “level funded.” In brutal years, such as this year, districts brace for cuts.

I’ve signed on as a co-sponsor to the current Fair Funding bill. I am happy to be able to report that over half of the Reps, the majority needed to pass such a bill, have signed on as co-sponsors to this legislation. That doesn’t mean that it’ll pass, but I see this as a good sign for the future of our state and the prospect of an education funding system that factors in student population as well as need, and gives school committees a meaningful way to project their off-year budgets.

On The Issues

It has been far too long since I updated the blog on this website. Rather than try to catch up on the last few months, I am going to hit the ground running. One of my goals is to be open and accessible as an elected official. With that in mind, I am going to start out with a weekly video blog update. Just a few minutes on the week that passed in the legislature, maybe what is coming up, and what is going on in the district.

I have collected a couple of video clips as well as the first two installments of my video update on my YouTube channel, which can be found at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/FierroforWoonsocket

And here is this week’s video:

video blog vlog