Will Moderation save Rhode Island?

Speaking of Chafee, he has declined to sign on with the Moderate Party of Rhode Island, main Moderate Ken Block tells me, but Block has enlisted the backing of former attorney general Arlene Violet, my regular co-panelist on Newsmakers.

In hindsight, I was a bit too quick to dismiss Block's effort when I wrote last November about why RI Republicans fail. As he explains it, drawing people to the center, and away from the ideological extremes, could help to focus energy on the state's top problems. It's worth a shot, and if he encourages more people to run for office, that's good, too.

I offer a short look at Block's ongoing efforts in this week's Phoenix:

Block, a Barrington resident who owns a Warwick software company, says he’s long been frustrated by the shortcomings of the local status quo, in which Republicans don’t offer a viable alternative and legislative Democrats operate with a lack of accountability. As a businessman with elderly parents and school-age children, Block, a self-described centrist, says neither party adequately addresses his various concerns.
 
If his nascent Moderate Party could pull enough people into the center, he reasons, it could have an impact, helping to put some pressure on the ruling Democrats.
 
While efforts to develop third parties have had little success amid America’s two-party duopoly, a poll recently commissioned by Block, among other results, found that 78 percent of the respondents felt that neither major political party represents their views on the way state government should be run.
 
Seventy-four percent of the respondents said they would be supportive of a new moderate political party that was “not beholden to the state’s labor unions and special interest of the left or in lock step support of Republicans on the right.”
 
The Moderate Party of Rhode Island (moderate-ri.org) advocates the immediate adoption of five core principles:

• Toughen ethics laws and employment agreements to make our elected, appointed and employed state officials far more accountable for their actions.

• Stop spending money that is not well spent.

• Induce businesses to locate to Rhode Island by bringing RI's business taxes in line with Massachusetts’ business taxes.

• Bring the total compensation packages (including wages, benefits, pension amounts and pension eligibility) for state employees in line with what private sector workers earn.

• Produce a balanced budget by reducing spending and waste and by not relying on one-time gimmicks like selling tobacco settlement funds or revenue anticipation bonds.
 
Block says he is focused on raising awareness about the Moderate Party, attracting support from such individuals as former attorney general Arlene Violet, and starting a related political action committee. In time, he hopes to establish the Mods as a state-sanctioned political party, an effort that would require the gathering of a number of signatures equal to five percent of the voting in the last gubernatorial election.

The bit about compensation packages may be more complicated than some believe, as Brian J. Jones wrote about here. But Block seems motivated by a sincere call to public-minded civic action -- and you can't knock that.