Last night my car broken into Christmas gifts, my
briefcase, I-pad and my wallet. Really sucks! Family very understanding about
gifts. Rep. David Cicilline, via Twitter
From East Side of
Providence representative to Mayor to Congress, Rep. David Cicilline is
unremarkably “
The Prince of Providence”. GoLocal MINDSETTER™ Don Roach
uncharitably depicted the former mayor as an absentee landlord type, who blamed
unions, the economy, or anyone else rather than taking charge and enlarging
Providence’s fortunes. Roach then repeated the $110 million shortfall
reproach of Legacy Cicilline, which outgoing (or rather fleeing) Mayor Taveras
had announced (not so much addressed) on his first year
in office.
Despite his royal
status, Christmas 2013 was not so merry for Cicilline, who tweeted that someone
had broken into his car, a symbol of sorts for the city’s crime rates, which
continued upwards after his tenure as mayor.
City-data.org reported a sharp increase in murders from
2008-2009, along with robberies, assaults, and rapes. Violent crime was
roaring, even as property were crimes were going down. Then again, even auto
thefts rose toward the end of Cicilline’s mayoral tenure.
The former mayor’s
holiday tragedy represents another fallout: Providence’s dire financial
problems, which came to light after Cicilline’s 2010 Congressional win. Of
course, one could blame such bleak statistics (crime and money) on the 2008
Housing Crisis, followed by the Great Recession, but the larger car-jacking
remains in the drivers’ seat: the fiscal state of the city of Providence, which
Cicilline was responsible for from 2003-2011.
Still mayor of
Providence when he got elected to Congress with a bare 51% of the vote in 2010,
Cicilline had assured votes that his city would see a surplus. Despite
Republican National
Committee efforts in 2012 blasting the Providence pol as one of
the ten most corrupt representatives in Washington, he won again.
What role did Prince
David play in leaving Providence a negative legacy, a city which lawmakers
claim needs a massive dose of its namesake to stay fiscal solvent?
Shortly after the
disturbing revelations that Providence financial straits had increased from a
Category 3 Hurricane to a Category 5 (per fellow Dem Angel Taveras),
Congressman-elected
Cicilline refused to see reporters or discuss anything
about the matter. The hollow talking points followed: recession, state aid
cuts, end of Obama stimulus, and
failure to adequately fund the
city’s pension funds.
Right from
Cicilline’s lips, that last part was
de jure Prince
David’s responsibility, yet he duffed it off as just another item justifying
his silence on Providence’s improvident fortunes. About the pension issues,
however, and even more interesting,
Politifact reported that Cicilline adequately funded the
city’s pension, even though the early years never passed 90%.
What’s going on,
then? The pensions were adequately funded, but not really? And how does that
exonerate Cicilline?
Even during his 2010
campaign against John Loughlin, Cicilline turfed blame
to state aid cuts:
“With Governor Carcieri trying
to balance Rhode Island’s budget on the backs of our cities and towns, the City
of Providence faced deep cuts in state aid.”
 |
| GTA Cicilline |
Leadership includes
responding to crises, not lamenting the lack of leadership higher up.
Confirming this tenet
of executive authority, The Providence, Rhode Island Internal Auditor’s Report
from April 2011
issued a damning summation leveled at Cicilline, not
Carcieri’s administration:
[T]he prior Administration did
not recommend the necessary decisions to avert a fiscal crisis. . .
The report blasted
Cicilline for not having any long-term plan in place to preserve the city from
the incoming fiscal problems facing the city. Indicting the dysfunctional
relationship between the city council and the Administration, the report
outlined some disturbing and perhaps illegal trends which took place from
2009-2011, including the following:
1. The Cicilline
Administration transferred funds from the Undesignated Surplus without City
Council approval. Was David robbing Roger to keep the city books balanced?
2. Cicilline and
company frequently missed deadlines to provide information or respond to
requests from the Independent auditor about the city’s financial status. Was
Cicilline too busy running for Congress to make sure that his city was still
afloat?
3. The city council
did not receive outlined, scheduled monthly updates regarding whether the city
was headed toward surpluses or deficits the following year. Every working
family assesses current income to determine future sending on a weekly basis,
but the prior Cicilline Administration didn’t even bother?
4. While the former
mayor could blame the state government for cutting off funding in response to
the Housing Crisis, his administration insisted on projecting unrealistic
revenue streams, like $2.8 million from Interests-Investments, which in fact
brought in barely a tenth of the anticipated amount.
Then this statement
stood out in the preliminary report:
Financial reports submitted to
the State were inaccurate.
So, loose accounting
led to lost accountability, with scrubbed balanced sheets. The whole debacle
sounds like a fiscal Benghazi in New England. Later Bloomberg News reported in
2012 that Providence may seek
bankruptcy protection, i.e. no resting under the wings of the
Most High (not Buddy Cianci!)
Providence’s fiscal
mismanagement falls squarely on Cicilline, who for all his royal pretensions
and self-defense pleas, more likely played his city like a video game from
hell.
