News & Commentary

A number of local non-profit organizations and community groups are urging the Providence City Council to reject amendments to the city’s lobbying ordinance that would require unpaid volunteers to register as lobbyists – and subject them to potentially severe penalties for violations – if they spend just ten hours a year engaged in broadly defined “lobbying” activities with the City. The proposal is scheduled to be introduced at the City Council’s meeting Thursday.

An audit of the 2012 amendments to the state’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA) shows that a number of state agencies and municipal departments, in particular the police, apparently are in violation of the changes to the law. In addition, enforcement of parts of the law appears to be weak or nonexistent.

Despite official reports that there were few voting problems during this week’s primary election, the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island related today that it had received reports of voters being given incorrect information about their right to vote during Tuesday’s primary election, raising nagging concerns about the implementation of the state’s new photo ID law.

Cranston residents and the ACLU of Rhode Island won a significant victory today in their fight for equal voting power in City elections when Judge Lagueux of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island denied a motion to dismiss their one person, one vote lawsuit, allowing their case to move forward.

The primary election is still a day away, but the ACLU has already received its first complaint about poll workers unlawfully preventing people from voting under the state’s Voter ID law.

As the result of a ruling issued earlier this year by Commissioner Deborah Gist, the R.I. Department of Education is on the verge next week of undermining 150 years of precedent that guarantee the availability of a free public education in the state. That is the essence of an alert that the ACLU of Rhode Island and Mental Health Association of Rhode Island sent out to groups that advocate for the rights of students and their families.

Calling it “a new low” in the state’s enforcement of the Access to Public Records Act (APRA), five open government groups today blasted an opinion issued by the Attorney General’s office which held that public bodies can charge members of the public for the time it takes to compose a letter denying an open records request.

Nine local organizations have asked police departments across the state to formally adopt policies codifying the public’s right to record, without interference, the actions of police. The request, contained in a letter sent to all municipal police departments and the State Police, was made in the backdrop of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, where police have impeded individuals’ and credentialed journalists’ efforts to document the ongoing protests there.

Six organizations that have fought to end the use of high stakes testing in Rhode Island today commended lawmakers on the significant impact of a new law imposing a three-year delay on the use of such testing as a graduation requirement. The organizations’ response was prompted by recent comments from some Rhode Island Board of Education officials who suggested the moratorium was unnecessary.