The House Finance Committee has proposed eliminating $55 million in revenue sharing for Rhode Island's cities and towns.  A prudent person would have crafted a budget which eliminated revenue sharing from their revenue projections.  This way, you wouldn't miss it if it were cut, but you would benefit if it was restored.  After all, the elimination of revenue sharing shouldn't be a surprise.

     One town that did act prudently is Cranston.  As Cranston's director of administration stated, “To have budgeted anything would have been completely imprudent.”   Providence City Councilman John Igliozzi echoed a similar sentiment, "I’ve always said assume the worst and hope for the best.  The legislature has given us every signal that they were going to start zeroing the local aid dollars so it should not have been a surprise to the administration."  

     Unfortunately, David Cicilline doesn't seem to realize that the state also has fiscal problems, so he once again crafted a budget which relies on optimistic predictions.  Here is a statement regarding the elimination of revenue sharing in the proposed budget: 

“We were hoping that the Assembly would continue to recognize the importance of communities by sharing revenue that generates resources that contribute to the state,” said Cicilline. “Last year we sustained an unprecedented cut of 50 percent in general revenue sharing and we had assumed that it would stay at those same levels. I think it’s bad public policy when you don’t give anything back to the communities.”


     That's strange.  I think bad public policy is repeatedly submitting budgets which hinge on overly optimistic revenue projections, or which rely on receiving revenue from legislation which probably won't be passed.  David Cicilline's budget didn't include a property tax increase, but I think we'll see one.  He'll just blame it on the General Assembly, rather than take responsibility for his poor decisions.  That's probably been his plan all along.