1992

A tree grows on Wickenden
January 30
With city planners whittling away at a downtown plan, many looked at the East Side's Wickenden Street as an ideal model. Bill Rodriguez analyzed the reasons for its success.

Little Wickenden Street is a microcosm of the kind of success that fills Chamber of Commerce boosters' dreams. But its style of success is distinctly different from the ambitions of multi-million-dollar projects, like the Convention Center and the Providence Place mega-mall. The latter approach, which has brought prosperity to many a city, may be called the Mushroom Model. Build it (after feasibility study and economic/ demographic analysis in triplicate) and they will come. The Wickenden Street style is more like a Blooming Pear Tree Model. Plant a small business here and there, and over time: Orchard City.

Sex sells!
February 6
Sometimes local media institutions can be relied on like Swiss watches, i.e., if it's sweeps week, you can count on WPRI Channel 12 to run "special reports" on things like phone sex and strip clubs. Rudy Cheeks proposed a promo for an investigative piece right up WPRI's alley.

Opening shot of yuppified white male in tie and blue blazer sitting at a non-descript office desk. Use steadicam to slowly close in on tight shot of man's head, which is slowly bobbing with a demented smile on his face. Announcer: "Does the television news you watch somehow seem shallow, sensational, maybeee . . . not even news? Could it be that some television executives have another agenda, a plot to keep you stupid and maybe even SUCK OUT YOUR BRAINS?"

A tale of two cities
March 26
When Governor Sundlun announced new funding formulas that would try to equalize state aid to local school districts, suburban schools raised an uproar. Johnette Rodriguez compared inner-city PVD's Central High School and suburban Barrington High, two schools which received about equal funding per student, but that service very different student populations.

State mandates, such as those for special education, bilingual education or specialized personnel, such as substance abuse counselors, apply to both schools. But Barrington High School has far fewer students who fall into those categories, and can thereby use its dollars for extra music or art classes, whereas Central High might have to add a class for learning-disabled students.

The poor get poorer
May 14
With the state now awash in RISDIC-inspired debt, Michael Iacobbo reported exactly whom Sundlun's new budget proposal asked to pay it off.

The governor's proposal for level-funded welfare for the second consecutive year and a $39 million proposed cut in human services will only sink Rhode Island's 50,000 children living below the federal poverty level deeper into poverty. Placing the burden for hard economic times on the backs of children is nothing new -- since children have no political clout, can't lobby or make campaign contributions, they end up low on the priority list. But this year, child advocates say, the neglect is all the more blatant, as the state has willingly hit up taxpayers to bail out well-to-do depositors with more than $100,000 in closed credit unions.

Doctor bills
July 30
As Rhode Island, and the US in general, struggled to raise itself out of economic recession, Steven Stycos noted that the suffering was not, particularly, equal, and that high salaries were not limited to those in typically capitalist corporations.

Health care reformers have pointed to high executive salaries as further proof that the nation's health-care system needs revamping. A NewPaper survey of hospital CEO salaries in Rhode Island shows that they are right up there with hospital salaries nationally -- all but four of the CEOs of the state's 14 nonprofit hospitals earn more than the $150,800 average base salary nationally. The annual compensation levels range from a high of $322,919 for Women & Infants Hospital president Thomas Parris, to a low of $110,822 for Westerly Hospital president Michael Lally.

Casino? No!
October 8
N.B. two things here, while reading Robert Keough's report on the city's new casino fever. One: that one of the reasons Bruce Sundlun wasn't reelected was that he kept going back on his word. And, two: nearing the end of his term in 1994, Sundlun went behind the legislature's back to sign a casino deal with Rhode Island Native Americans.

US Attorney for Rhode Island Lincoln Almond has warned that casinos in the capital city would undo all of his prosecutorial work against organized crime in the state. In an editorial, the Journal seconded Almond's complaints, echoing the prosecutor's call for Governor Bruce Sundlun to denounce the casino idea. In an address to the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, Sundlun did so, vowing to "do everything in my power to keep [casino gambling] out of Rhode Island."

A pressing matter
November 25
We love Rudy Cheeks because he pays attention. Note this coverage of the ongoing Journal v. Paperboys debate.

At the Warwick Public Library, the Journal Company's vice president for administration, Howard Sutton, introduced the kids to the newspaper owners' idea of a free press when he delivered this little ultimatum regarding the television cameras and reporters present: "I'm not going to deal with the press. Either the cameraman stays or I stay."

The cost of war
December 3
When the Cold War quickly came to an end under the Bush administration, so did one of the main ways Americans made money: military contracts. Lisa Prevost looked at how that affected the Biggest Little.

Bush's laissez-faire attitude toward economic hardship, and the slow workings of Congress on post-Cold War aid packages, have made peace a frightening prospect in communities where defense contracts cover the tab for everything from the family car to the neighborhood elementary school. A recent Rhode Island study, for example, concluded that at least 20 percent of those residents who filed for unemployment compensation in 1991 had been working for a defense-related employer.

Basket case
December 17
With Downcity development plans appearing to continue in as random a fashion as ever, Robert Keough got into the nuts and bolts of the city's third giant plan to bring life to downtown -- a large center for the Johnson & Wales campus.

Relying on Johnson & Wales as an anchor for Downcity development is, once again, putting a great many eggs in one basket. And with this particular basket being a private nonprofit institution that has its own imperatives and whose expansion represents, whatever its other contributions to urban life, the spread of tax-exempt property in the city's central core, the development dynamics could prove volatile.

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