The Issues

Okay, here's my deal. I'm a straight-shooter who tries to understand all aspects of an issue, and then make a game-plan on how best to address it. This works well in medicine: a patient has a problem and together we determine how we are going to solve it. This also works well in business, and has led to the success of my companies. Will straight-shooting work in politics - probably not, but I believe it is worth the effort.

Like so many of you, I am tired of all the rhetoric and political volleying that hampers each decision and seems to slow, and in many cases stop, ultimate success. All too often, a unique, exciting, and good idea is turned into a mediocre compromise by the various politicians lobbying for what would be best for themselves. I don't play that. I’m not a democrat of committees and politics. I’m a democrat of individuals, people, that are hurt by a system that doesn’t hear their voice. I’m sick of politics-as-usual and back-room deals (and now that I’ve been thrown out of the back- room), I’m sitting on the front porch with a keyboard and a connection to the Internet (I guess that could be dangerous in a storm, but it sounded better than: I’m in the foyer with a computer).

You may not agree with what I'm saying, though I hope you would agree that I have a right to say it. I also know that getting an honest and straightforward answer to "how do you feel about that?" is a refreshing change from all the other political verbiage thrown at us this time of year. So let me give you my views on some issues we face. Some of these issues have nothing to do with North Kingstown, but I have opinions on them too, and thought it could help you decide if you want me representing you on the Town Council.

As you will see, most of my solutions involve letting capitalism and free markets do its thing. A fundamental concept of capitalism is that one must spend some money to make some money. We can't be trying to avoid taxes altogether while hoping to live in a better world. We need to find that happy ground between research, innovation, and how we fund it.

(The order of issues below is not necessarily arranged by importance.)

1. Town Governance
The most basic problem in our town is that we have an elected town council that has all of the power, and none of the responsibility, and an appointed town manager that has all of the responsibility and none of the power. It is a flawed system and should be changed. I propose we function more the way a $90 million dollar enterprise ought to run, with a CEO - a mayor, elected by the town-at-large, and a Board of Executives - a districally-elected town council, which oversees the school committee as well. This will insure the checks, and balances, and, most importantly, the accountability required to be successful.

2. Easier Access to Government & Reduced Red Tape
One of the major reasons so many of us have a hard time with government is that any government program or action, no matter how good in its intent, breeds a convoluted and frustrating bureaucratic red-tape nightmare. From going to the DMV, to getting a building permit, to paying one's taxes - negotiating our local and federal government requirements is anxiety-provoking and wastes a huge amount of our personal time and energy. It can, and must, be easier! Simple forms, Internet access, and other less onerous requirements should be a requirement. A government program should be designed like any good business product. Easy to lean about, easy to sign-up for, and easy to pay for. It is time to bring our town into the modern age with inexpensive and ubiquitous Internet access and a town web site where you will be able to get done most, if not all, of the bureaucratic nonsense we tend to require of our citizens.

3. Water Shortages
Umm, come on now. Water rationing each summer? It's not like we live in the Sahara. Let's figure out supply and demand and address it. If our demand in the summer is too high, okay - but then lets study how to increase our supply to help ameliorate the problem. If 3/4 of our Earth is water, I think it is fair to say there should be enough for everybody, and a bit more left over to save for a sunny day. Encouraging conservationism through capitalism is important (e.g., tax incentives for low-volume toilets, and increased pricing for water spent on luxury items such as swimming pools and decorative backyard fish ponds). Increasing available supply for our continually growing community is also important by understanding our aquifers and other potential sources, such as the huge body of water sitting just to our east. Desalination is a valid technology that has been around for years and just needs a bit more study to make it practical. Blindly allowing growth of our community will only worsen our difficulties, and as we share our water supply with other communities, if they too, blindly allow growth without evaluating the consequences, we could all end up seriously worse off. (For example, might the proposed casino end up worsening our summer water shortages?)

4. Taxes
I don't know about you, but my property taxes nearly doubled under our "tax-friendly" republican town council. I now pay four thousand dollars more than I did last year, over $11,000/year! How can this be right? At the same time, the town doesn't pay to pick up trash, we don't have a sewer system, our roads are a mess, and our water gets contaminated regularly. So, yes, I have a problem with paying such high taxes when there is so much that still isn't right. That said, taxes are a required responsibility of living in a healthy society. I am not opposed to paying my fair share of taxes to the community and country in which I live. Like jury duty, it is part of our civil responsibility. So lets make taxation a bit more fair and equitable. Let's be sure the rich are not paying less taxes through loopholes, and lets aggressively increase North Kingstown's tax role by encouraging responsible business growth. "If we build it, they will come," could be a good mantra in improving our community. We are lucky to have the Post Road Corridor Business area, yet have not invested the time or money to beautify it and encourage consumers to stop and smell the flowers. At the same time, we've made getting business permits and licenses more difficult and inhibited business growth through red-tape and bureaucratic hassles (see my comments about bringing this town into the modern age with a good web site and Internet access). Growing our tax base is crucial to lowering our taxes, but like all entrepreneurial things, it will take some investment before we will see the benefit. We need to make North Kingstown more inviting to tourists, while providing the infrastructure to be sure the increased traffic does not have a detrimental effect on our daily lives or environment. We can do this, but it takes leadership, stamina, and a belief in purpose that our republican town council has lacked for over a decade, and hence, our taxes just keep going up while our services get cut back.

5. Education
We are lucky to live in a community with high quality teachers and an education system that is on the brink of true excellence. But figuring out why 70% of our tax bill goes to our school system is critical if we hope to lower taxes while improving the education of our children. Despite the money pouring into the school department, many of our teachers feel demoralized and undervalued and many students report that "school sucks." Since our children are our future, and since having a bunch of uneducated leaders running the show in the future might result in wars, terrorism, and other horrors (hmm...), we need to make excellent education a priority. To do this, we need to hire and retain the brightest and most exciting teachers, and in our capitalistic society, that means competitive wages, good benefits, and secure jobs. That said, it is crazy that we are spending over half of our budget on a relatively small school system. Where is the money going? We need to cut out administrative flab, and focus dollars where they count, on education students. We need to encourage our teachers to continue their own education and provide them the independence to shine in the classroom and foster innovative teaching techniques. We must stop micro-managing the teacher's classroom and cease politicizing the curriculum. "No child left behind" may have started as a good concept, but now it is a euphemism for government testing of teachers and ridiculous bureaucracy. It is time to revisit both how we teach our students, and how we reward our teachers. North Kingstown could lead the way in this revolution and I'm looking forward to working with the School Committee on this crucial endeavor initially, but then getting rid of the school committee altogether as it is a flawed system of oversight. More on that above in my recommendations for change of our Town Governance section.

6. Our Healthcare System
For such a modern and technologically savvy country, we sure have a horrific healthcare system. There are a number of reasons healthcare costs so much and provides so little, but I think the biggest problem is the legal climate that encourages lawsuits. Physicians are not infallible. We make mistakes. The problem is that, like gambling, there is such a potentially large monetary award if one wins a lawsuit that suing doctors is like playing lotto - you're unlikely to win, but some try anyway. So docs tend to be lawsuit phobic, as being called negligent is bad for one's self-esteem and bad for one's business. Docs, therefore, do everything we can to avoid being sued - which usually means ordering a ton of tests that aren't really necessary. This costs the insurance company, the patient, and the system quite a bit of money, and it certainly negatively impacts the doctor-patient relationship. So, if you ask me, I think we need to de-incentivize suing doctors. If a doctor is negligent, he should pay. But capping awards, securing objective third-party opinions before allowing suits to move forward, and a few other small steps, would dramatically decrease frivolous lawsuits, and allow money to be spent where it is needed more: (1) on drug benefits for our older citizens on fixed incomes and (2) on research for our future treatments and cures. The other big problem is our health insurers. Medicare, a government insurance plan, is known throughout the country as being a poor payor. Yet in Rhode Island, Blue Cross pays docs less than Medicare. And they do this while giving their President over half a million dollars to divorce his wife and wining and dining their board members at posh Cape Code locations. Jeesh - no wonder everybody hates Blue Cross and why docs are leaving to practice elsewhere or go into other businesses. The vast majority of physicians went into medicine to help people, not be inundated with needless paperwork, poor reimbursements, and frivolous lawsuits. Our healthcare system really is in crisis, and short of tort reform and strict oversight of third-party insurers, it will get much worse. I believe we are rapidly approaching a new type of system where those wealthy enough to afford it, will hire their own doctors, and doctors will require arbitration in the event of a poor outcome. This, though, will mean a two-tiered system, where those that can afford get excellent care, and those who can't get mediocre care. Is that fair? I'm not sure, but it is coming soon...

7. The Environment
We must be vigilant in protecting our natural resources. Locally, this means that we need to spend the money to update our antiquated cesspools, which dump waste into our waters leading to closings of our coastal beaches due to, literally, human and animal waste in the water. I believe tax incentives to homeowners and businesses, interest-free loans, and other monetary incentives to allow upgrading old systems to modern technology that deals with waste better. Globally, we need to be vocal opponents of actions that harm our ecosystem. We need continuing scientific studies to understand the impact we have on our environment. Encouraging our state and federal representatives to spend millions of our tax dollars on environmental research is critical, and may allow us to remain on mother earth, instead of spending trillions of our tax dollars on finding a way to move the population to another planet after we destroy our current one.

8. Space Flight
A good idea to also continue funding, and also keep working on the science, just in case we screw up #7 above.

9. Contaminated Drinking Water
This goes back to replacing old systems with modern ones. Lots of folks have spent lots of money on figuring out how to process waste efficiently and responsibly, and keep drinking water safe for populations. Since the knowledge is there on how to do this, I don't know if ineptitude, poor Town Council management, or negligence, allows our water supply to get contaminated year after year, and the truth is, I don't really care - I just want it fixed right. If it can be done in third-world countries, I would expect we could have consistently safe water in North Kingstown.

10. National Defense
I'm not blind to the realities of our world. As a whole, we are a very lucky and prosperous country. There are many out there much less fortunate than we. And there are many people who remain desperate, or angry, or just don't cherish existence as we do. To most of us, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness could be defined as guiding principles. Others may believe that martyrdom and striving for eternal life is the ultimate goal. Unfortunately, our most precious personal beliefs are sometimes at odds with one another - and in the absence of universal tolerance, this leads to war. (And, statistically, we should assume our world population will always contain a number of downright crazy assholes.) With this in mind, we need to teach and learn tolerance of each other's beliefs, encourage peace locally and globally, yet maintain and support both a diplomatic and a military contingent - and support and encourage each with enough resources to insure we can continue teaching tolerance and peace.

11. Traffic
If you've ever made the mistake of trying to go for a nice drive on a summer weekend, you quickly realize that our tranquil and beautiful community is not setup to handle beach traffic. As citizens, we should be able to run out to the local store without spending an hour in traffic. We have to make damn sure that any increase in tourism that benefits our businesses and town as a whole, is planned and that our roads, timing of lights, and traffic flow is designed to handle this. Having cars zoom through our back streets is not the answer. Using technology to time our lights and analyzing traffic patterns is. And by the way, what is the deal with the intersection of Route 1A and 102 in Wickford? Shouldn't we fix that three-way intersection before somebody gets killed?

12. Proposed Casino
I've been watching the World Poker Tour on TV and can't wait to play Texas Hold-em the next time I go to Foxwoods. I also was recently in Las Vegas on business, and I found that gambling a bit of money there was fun and exciting. Of course, I seem know when to stop, and while I don't win very much, I don't lose very much either. The same can not be said for some of my friends and many of my patients. As a physician, I see many people addicted to gaming. I've seen folks lose their job, their house, and their family to a gambling addiction, and these statistics seem to have gotten worse since Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun opened nearby. So sure, it would be fun to have a casino closer and I know I'd go there a couple times a year. Unfortunately, in addition to the toll on those who get addicted, or those fixed-income folks who lose more than they can afford to lose, the nature of gambling is that we are going there to make a quick buck. And this environment seems to drawn in the con artists, criminals, and other, more seedy elements of our society. Therefore, I'd probably vote against a Casino in West Warwick, if given the chance. My view from the town perspective is that a nearby casino would likely have more of a detrimental effect than beneficial effect on our town. It is possible that we could have some business growth at the northwestern part of our town to cater to increased traffic to and from the casino, but the vast majority of tourists would be staying on-site, leaving us the ones who are looking for the cheap motel for the night. We also would likely experience an increase in traffic, something we haven't yet figured out and that gets crazy during the summer months. Finally, there is risk that a casino would use more of our natural resources. Since our town water is shared with our neighbors at times, if the casino sucks up much of the Kent watershed water, we're left giving them more, leaving less for us. To me, the proposed casino seems more of a bad bet.

13. Capital Punishment
If one innocent person gets put to death, is it one too many? I believe it is. There have been multiple instances where convicted criminals waiting to die on death row have been subsequently exonerated and shown through technology or subsequent witness retractions, that they were wrongly convicted. Clearly our judicial system isn't accurate enough to allow such a permanent and uncorrectable form of justice.

14. Abortion
While I personally would not be comfortable performing an abortion, and while I firmly believe we need to provide family planning services to be sure abortion is a last resort, and not used as a form of birth control, the bottom line is that terminating a pregnancy before a fetus is able to live outside of the mother's body (usually considered to be 20 to 24 weeks of gestation) is the mother's decision. I believe it is the right of the mother to make her own choice about her body after weighing all the pros and cons, and all the options available to her. It is most certainly not a decision to be made by politicians.

15. Business
We need to support our current businesses, and encourage new industries to come into North Kingstown. We are lucky to have the charm of Wickford village, the high traveled route of the Post Road corridor, and many small stores, shops, and restaurants in between - but we've been unable to consistently entice tourism and make navigating these areas a pleasant and desirable experience. In Wickford, we need to maintain the charm and history, and encourage tourism based on this - but we need to find a way to make driving through there, or parking to do some errands, not such a hassle. I've spoken to shop owners who note that some of the local customers have told them they would rather drive to Providence then fight traffic in Wickford. We need fresh ideas and businesses input on how best to solve this problem in the context of remaining a historic landmark. The Post Road corridor has its own issues. While there are excellent establishments up and down the corridor, traffic design does not encourage stopping, and the run-down appearance of much of the area detracts and deters visitors. Let's beautify that stretch of North Kingstown, lets encourage folks to slow down and shop. It should be a destination for our neighbors and our visitors, and not just a corridor to pass through. In addition to improving the traffic design, we might offer businesses tax incentives to improve their facade while making it easier to obtain the permits and licenses they need to do business in an environmentally-friendly way. Quonset is yet another unique area that has incredible potential to both increase our tax base and bring fresh industry to North Kingstown. Working as a partner with the state (instead of letting the state tell us how we are to proceed), we need to determine what industries we want to invite, and then offer the necessary incentives to get them here and functioning profitably. Due, in part, to the lack of affordable office and pleasant office space, I started my software business (AmazingCharts.com, inc.) out of my home. Lets see if we can encourage entrepreneurs to make North Kingstown the location for their business.

16. Container Port
Currently a dead issue and dropped from the plans for Quonset. Though, if it happens to get resurrected, I'll fight against it. While it would create some jobs and likely improve our tax base, having a container port on our waterfront has been studied and would cause significant environmental problems to our waterfront, traffic nightmares trucking in and out the items shipped to and from the port, and most of all, detract from the charm of our community. There are a lot of better ways to use that land.

So that is a summary of where I stand on some of the more interesting issues we face today. All that said, I am open to discussion, and truly like to hear other viewpoints and opinions. As your Town Councilman, I will listen to the various viewpoints, and then strive to make a reasonable decision that takes into account the various opinions on the issue. What I won't do is compromise to the point that the solution ends up being nothing more than a political side-step. If you want things to get done in North Kingstown, then I would encourage you to consider voting for a change this time around. Let's move past the republican town council that has been in power for 12 years and bring our amazing town towards the utopia I know it can be.

Finally, here are two important things to read once in awhile to remember who we are and from where we come. It really is amazing how much insight these guys had so long ago. What is even more amazing to me, is one can read these two incredibly important documents, and understand them easily. The fact that reading our town regulations is harder than these documents clearly demonstrates that today's government could be a lot more easy to understand and concise.