Now hiring: Speaker of Rhode Island House of Representatives Beginning immediately, the Rhode Island House of Representatives is accepting applicants for the job of Speaker of the House. This job is an incredibly powerful political position - often called the most powerful political position in the state.

Potential candidates must already hold elected office as a Rhode Island Representative.

The ideal candidate would work to make this office a bit less powerful - and make the RI House of Representatives operate in a more democratic manner than it does now.

During the interview process, potential candidates should be prepared to provide specifics on how they would address the following issues:

• How would the candidate guide the legislature - via the annual budget process - through one of RI's worst economic crises in history?


• What is the candidate's position on creating budgets that look forward 3 years - as opposed to the current simplistic one year process which has yielded continual structural deficits for decades?


• How will the candidate change the following process: The House passes almost all bills of importance in the final few days of the legislative session. This 'system' of operation permits leadership to exert tremendous control over the legislative process, but yields awful lawmaking. Bleary eyed legislators are asked to vote on literally hundreds of bills over the course of just a few hours.


• What is the candidate's position on the Ethics Commission? The Rhode Island Supreme Court has ruled that the State's Ethics Commission has no jurisdiction over Rhode Island's legislators. Given the ethics violations committed by many members of the legislative leadership over the last decade, what mechanisms does the candidate propose be put in place to ensure the ethical conduct of our legislators?


• Will the potential candidate do away with Legislative Grants? Legislative grants are a multi-million dollar pool of funds distributed by legislative leadership to projects identified by legislators. These funds are distributed at the sole discretion of leadership - a powerful tool to keep legislators in line (vote my way or say good bye to the $500 for your favorite senior center). In these days of massive budget deficits, how can our legislative leaders continue to indulge in this totally political form of spending?


• How would the candidate address the following process-related situation?
  The current legislative processes in place for the Rhode Island House of Representatives cloak leaders and Committee chairmen from accountability. As a case in point, when the Moderate Party looked to the legislature to correct Rhode Island's ballot access laws - which were later determined by the U.S. District Court to be unconstitutional - we asked the Speaker about the bill's chances to come out of the House Judiciary Committee. The Speaker responded that the Speaker's office had no ability to control House Committees. When we spoke with the House Judiciary Committee Chairman about the bill's chances to come out of his committee, the Chairman answered that he had no answers to my question, since 'leadership' (i.e. the Speaker) controlled which bills moved out of his committee.


• How would the candidate improve the legislative operating rules for committees to make public input to committees more important? Here is a specific example:
  The House Judiciary Committee meets intermittently to take public input on bills before the committee. During some meetings, as many as 30 bills may be heard. At the beginning of the committee meeting, the Chairman asks the committee to 'vote to hold' every single bill - ensuring that no meaningful vote is taken on any bill during the course of the meeting. When a bill is 'held for further study' - under current legislative rules - that bill can only be brought back to the committee for further consideration by legislative leadership - completely rendering the committee impotent and unimportant. What's more, the public's testimony on any of these bills is rendered fairly meaningless, since the committee has already disposed of the bill PRIOR to testimony.


• Lastly - and most importantly - how will the potential candidate's term in the Speaker's office be materially different than past Speakers? Rhode Island cannot continue with our existing political status quo! We need leaders - whether elected by the population or elected by our sitting Representatives - who are committed to doing things differently and far better than we have before.