Post-9/11 Rhode Island has only one state Emergency Management board, while a 1995 statutory commission to examine workplace sexual harassment (including at the State House) remains inactive.
The Clearinghouse for North Cape Scandia Oil Spill Claims is supposed to have nine members, according to a 1996 executive order, but all the slots are vacant.
Meanwhile, former Governor Edward DiPrete and former Speaker John Harwood are listed among the nine members of the Minority Groups Advisory Commission.
Welcome to Rhode Island, where no one in state government seems to have a list distinguishing paid boards from the volunteer ones, or even clarifying the distinction between what separates boards or commissions from task forces and/or advisory committees.
The secretary of state’s Web site lists some 700 boards and commissions for which Rhode Islanders are asked to serve.
These do not include the larger paid boards, such as the Board of Elections ($7000 per year, per member, in annual compensation) or even the Bridge and Turnpike Authority (supposedly $40 a day). Appointees whose terms expire serve, in theory at least, until they are replaced, and the entities upon which they serve exist until disbanded by statute or executive order.
State House regulars agree that 700 total groups, with about 200 actually functioning, is about right. The 500 or so dead zones simply take up space and time to be tracked and listed until they are officially declared dead.
These groups overlap quite a bit. For example:
• Education Accountability, House Resolution Creating a Permanent Standing House Committee on;
• Education Assistance Authority, Higher;
• Education Commission, Adult;
• Education Commission, Civic;
• Education Compact, New England Higher;
• Education Equity and Property Tax Relief, Joint Commission to Study;
• Education for Visually Impaired Children, Special House Commission to Promote and Develop A Comprehensive System of;
• Education Foundation Aid Formula for Rhode Island, Joint Legislative Committee to Establish a Permanent;
• Education Funding Study Commission, Rhode Island;
• Education of Gifted and Talented Children, Advisory Board for;
• Education of the Limited English Proficient Students, Advisory Council on.
My personal obscure-but-technically viable favorite is, the Commission to Provide for the Determination and Settlement of the Boundary Between the State of Connecticut and the State of RI and Providence Plantations from the Mouth of the Ashaway River North to the Massachusetts Border.
All this would be amusing if these some¬times absurd, usually outdated, often patronizing listings did not also represent wasted state resources. At the very least, staffers in the secretary of state’s office take some time to list these inactive bodies.
It’s even more troubling that finding details about the larger boards and commission with paid members is so difficult.
Jeff Neal, a spokesman for Governor Don¬ald L. Carcieri, says the governor’s top priority is the Separation of Powers mandate barring lawmaker membership, “especially on the larger Coastal Resources Man¬agement Council and Narragansett Bay Com¬mission, for example,” but he says Carcieri would be open to a future list re¬view. Spokesman Larry Berman says House Speaker William J. Murphy, once made aware of this issue, was interested in “look¬ing into” a review and possible cleanup.
