David Segal and Matt Jerzyk yesterday used a ProJo op-ed to outline a progressive vision for Rhode Island.

They focused on three important needs: efficiency through regionalization, and creating a predictable funding formula; building the Green economy; and delivering criminal-justice reform.

THERE’S LITTLE disagreement that Rhode Island’s budget needs savings, that our property taxes are too high, or that our economy could use a boost. Sadly, the conventional political wisdom offers only untenable answers: Cut taxes, precisely for those who are already doing best; slash public-school funding and block cities from raising these funds on their own; use tax breaks to swipe business from other states; de-fund social services, and so on.

Further, Governor Carcieri has chosen the “you’re with us or you’re against us” mentality that has governed policy-making in the Bush administration. In his world, Democrats, labor unions, immigrants, single mothers and the poor are enemies to be chastised through press releases and on talk radio.

Alternatively, we’d suggest that our problems can be solved by bringing people together and thinking broadly in ways that rely on our state’s strengths, maintain fairness and fill real needs. We write to offer a progressive vision for this legislative year.

The three focal points emphasized by the authors make a lot of sense. And while Governor Carcieri has been more vocal in citing a desire to turn Rhode Island into a leader in alternative-energy sources, the governor and the legislature, together, seem to have done little to advance the ball on the other two fronts.

On the contrary, given the potential to save money through criminal-justice reform, the state wastefully back-tracked last year with the misguided try-juveniles-as-adults-to-save-money thing.

As some others have suggested, the bright spot in the state's current budget crisis -- if we're lucky -- could be a sufficient degree of motivation to reinvent government in Rhode Island.

In the aftermath of the death last week of 17-year-old Patrick Murphy in Barrington, Bob Kerr this week had an insightful observation about Americans and alcohol:

“Our kids drink because we drink,” Father Glover said.

But that’s not the only reason. Sure, if Mom and Dad are knocking down pre-dinner cocktails — or maintaining a steady alcohol diet in the comfort of their home — the kids are going to wonder about the attraction. The underage drinking in Barrington is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on for decades, and taking lives for decades, just as it has in a bunch of other places.

But there are things at work here that parents have nothing to do with and little control over. From the time a kid can sit in front of a TV, he or she is being set up to become a puking, falling down drunk.

The commercial message is as clear as a beach bunny’s smile: If you start to view the world by the fractured light spilling through the bottom of a beer bottle, then you are on your way to the party where you’ll be surrounded by six-pack abs and firm breasts and have sex and then more sex.

It is booze peddling done up like a tease. Two healthy women mud wrestle over beer and we are left with only one healthy response — “I’ll have whatever they’re having.”

It is the big difference between my time of early indulgence 45 years ago and now. There was always, it seems, the friend whose parents left for the weekend and left behind a well stocked fridge and liquor cabinet and the opportunity to get really sick with friends.

It’s gotten stranger and crazier in the last few decades. There’s pop culture conditioning going on. The message is aimed straight at raging teenage hormones — life gets better with every gulp. And, oh yeah, by the way, remember to drink responsibly.

I was reminded of the cultural influence of how young Americans are brought up with alcohol -- they're (unrealistically) not supposed to drink a drop, until they're (legally) free to guzzle away at 21, as Justin Wolff once wrote in the Phoenix:

Alcohol, we should admit to kids, plays a crucial role in social customs around the world. What's more, most adults enjoy drinking and many of them do so responsibly. In this country, there is no better way to breed trouble than to deny to a teenager the existence of something they can clearly see. The cynicism that so many of us feel in our late teens emerges with our discovery of hypocrisy, whether it be parental or governmental. Though our distaste for hypocrisy abates with age, we'd do well to recall its flavor now and then. At the very least, we shouldn't lock the facts of drinking in the cabinet beside the Smirnoff. In Europe, where the drinking age is between 16 and 18, and where parents drink more naturally in front of their children, kids don't have to learn to drink surreptitiously. As a result, they tend not to binge.

As expected, the General Assembly has passed a measure to make medical marijuana legal on an ongoing basis in Rhode Island. The legislature is expected to override a gubernatorial veto.

Te-Ping Chen recently offered a look in the Phoenix at the surprisingly quiet fallout of implementing medical marijuana in RI.

This week, as the General Assembly votes to make permanent Rhode Island's medical marijuana law, Te-Ping Chen reports in the Phoenix that the measure's implementation has taken place with relatively few snags or problems:

In January 2006, the General Assembly resoundingly overrode Governor Donald L. Carcieri’s veto, thereby making medical marijuana legal in Rhode Island. The law — which allows patients suffering from “chronic and debilitating” medical conditions to use the drug, so long as they obtain a state-certified physician’s permission — is scheduled to expire June 30.
 
The sunset provision was included, notes Representative Thomas Slater (D-Providence), the prime sponsor of the House effort in 2005, “[Because] we wanted a trial period to prove there wouldn’t be problems with this kind of legislation.” Opponents, including Carcieri, had cited fears that illegal use of marijuana could proliferate, and that insufficient controls existed for the production and distribution of the drug for its intended purpose.
 
Yet since going into effect in April 2006, Rhode Island’s program has been conspicuous mostly for its lack of controversy. Charles Alexandre, the state Health Department’s chief of Health Professions Regulation, describes the law as having “worked well and been pretty uneventful.”
 
Even the police chief in North Kingstown, whose department made the arrest last fall of a registered medical marijuana user who was busted after soliciting underage girls on MySpace to smoke pot, calls that case an “aberration.”
 
. . . .
 
As it stands, the state’s medical marijuana law enjoys robust public approval — a Mason-Dixon poll last September found that 79 percent of Rhode Islanders support the current program. And perhaps that’s not surprising. In a small state like Rhode Island, where the traditional six degrees of separation quickly gets streamlined into relationships far more intimate and immediate, the issue can be understood quite simply. A coworker with cancer, an uncle with AIDS: push deeply enough, it seems, and everyone has a story.
 
. . . .
 
Yet on a national level, the science of the drug, and the social implications of its medical use, remain hotly contested political topics. As more than 20 states gear up to consider medical marijuana bills, it’s open season on the issue — potentially making the experience of states like Rhode Island more relevant in the ongoing debate.

WPRO-AM's Dan Yorke has been beating the drum this afternoon for additional prison construction as a way of responding to the all-time high population at the ACI.

One of his callers upped the ante, suggesting that the state take Central Falls by eminent domain, build a wall around it, "and then we'd have an Escape from New York scenario."

"That's a little tough," responded Yorke, who nonetheless went on to say that there are good citizens in Central Falls -- 12 to 15 at least. He then slapped himself with one of his own bad conduct penalties for what seemed like an unfortunate attempt at humor, and asserted that he was not engaging in a right-wing polemic.

Nonetheless, with repeated references to "the poverty pimps", aka advocates for social programs, and other elements of his conversation, Yorke seems to be bringing more heat than light to this subject. Perhaps it's the contrarian in him. But it doesn't help when callers perpetuate myths about the coddling of prisoners or, like the one referenced above, engage in what seems like thinly veiled racism. 

Yorke describes the prison issue as one of keeping the public safe and cutting spending on what he calls dubious social programs. The bigger question, IMHO, is whether the state can save money through a more effective criminal justice policy. Lots of other states have done so.

As we head into budget season, One Rhode Island has announced plans to hold a news conference this Thursday, February 22, at 11 am, at the Federal Hill House, 9 Courtland St., Providence, to outline its 2007 legislative priorities. "Coalition urges expansions, not cuts, to vital work support programs," is one of the subheadlines on a news release. Gaining legislative support for such efforts promises to be more difficult this year, though, because of the structural deficit facing the state.

In other General Assembly news,

-- Senator Rhoda Perry and Representative Thomas Slater have submitted a bill to make medical marijuana permanent in Rhode Island, something that Speaker William Murphy has already backed.

-- In a flip on the tort reform pushed in recent years by Governor Carcieri and medical groups, Senator Charles Levesque has filed a bill that "would require all hospitals in Rhode Island to participate in a comprehensive program to increase patient safety by reducing medical errors."

-- Freshman Representative Nick Mattiello has introduced a House resolution that would establish a commission to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of RI school districts.

The bill has come due for about a decade in which state spending has grown at more than twice the rate of inflation. While Governor Carcieri and the General Assembly have their work cut out in trying to make sense of Rhode Island's structural deficit, it's curious that the governor did not budget any more money for drug treatment. After all, raising the emphasis on treatment for non-violent drug offenders, rather than just incarcerating them, offers the promise of savings and enhanced public safety.

Steve Costantino, chairman of the House Finance Committee, and his deputy, Representative Paul Crowley, joined Steve Aveson and myself this morning for a taping of WPRI-WNAC's Newsmakers (the show airs Sunday at 5:30 am on Channel 12 and at 10 am on Fox 64). Although time did not allow for discussion of the treatment issue, Costantino told me off-camera that he will talk with House Majority Leader Gordon Fox about prospects for adding treatment money to the budget.

The lawmakers reacted cooly to the governor's proposal to save money through furloughs for state workers, although Crowley indicated receptivity to a statewide teachers' contract and similar efforts to cut costs.

Among other things, Crowley cited as "depressing" a federal prosecutor's statement earlier this week that seven other Rhode Island politicians are under investigation in the State House influence-peddling probe. The two lawmakers said they were not aware of the targets of the investigation, beyond what has been reported, and expressed concern that honest lawmakers could be unfairly besmirched in the court of public opinion.

Even with widespread recognition about the failings of the drug war, moving in a new direction remains difficult for states, in large part because of entrenched practices. I've got a look in this week's Phoenix at how the state deficit and crowding at the ACI are causing RI policymakers to consider a different approach. In related news, Brian C. Jones reviews US Representative Patrick J. Kennedy's efforts to promote parity for mental health coverage.