Sounds like a defense of Lincoln Chafee.

Also sounds like you believe that a local mayor agreeing to increase property taxes to fund local projects for the residents of his city is worse than supporting massive federal tax increases and a spending record that tries to put Ted Kennedy to shame.

I don't think that Lincoln Chafee or his supporters have much ground to stand on when they try to throw around the "tax hiker" label.

He is still better than Chaffee, but Rhode Island is a Lost Cause for sane Republicans anyway.

It appears that Lincoln Chafee is considering running as an independent, though he will remain a registered republican. This, of course, would be completely unnecessary if Steve "property tax hike" Laffey hadn't entered the race and caused the NRSC to waste money there.

By: Ed Torres
Published: June 22, 2006 08:34 PM | | (1) | (0)| Filed under:

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Steve "property tax hike" Laffey

Cranston has a mayor/city council form of municipal government. Does the mayor have the authority to raise tax rates without approval of the city council? Does the mayor have veto power over the city council? In the event of a veto, does the city council have some veto over-ride mechanism? Was the tax hike approved in a referendum?

That's a pretty broad swipe; it would be nice to have specific facts to support the assertion.

(There's also a silver lining in higher property taxes: It can get property owners pissed off enough to actually go to town meetings, budget hearings, etc. and actually directly communicate with their local elected officials. It can also get them to actually show up and vote in their local elections and referenda.)

Posted by: C-141 Crew Dog at June 25, 2006 08:17 AM

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Ed,

You didn't respond to this previous comment. I'm not a resident of Rhode Island, so maybe I don't have as much of a personal interest in the outcome, beyond retaining a Republican majority.

You keep tagging this "property tax hike" epithet to Laffey, without explaining how he, as the mayor of Cranston, is directly responsible for the situation.

I looked at Cranston's official web site, and it seems like the mayor doesn't have a lot of authority. Most of the power is concentrated in the city council.

So how about answering my June 25th post?