Letter: What state really needs is a Constitutional Convention

Posted 2/14/17

To the editor:

As I’ve been known to say to my fellow democrats, it’s not only that there are too many democrats in our little, deep blue, city-state, but that we also have too few techniques …

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Letter: What state really needs is a Constitutional Convention

Posted

To the editor:

As I’ve been known to say to my fellow democrats, it’s not only that there are too many democrats in our little, deep blue, city-state, but that we also have too few techniques of direct democracy, such as the initiative and popular referendum processes - people power - that other states possess.

These matters, along with term limits and line-item-veto power for governors, that you declaimed in the February 9 editorial, could have been addressed by a State Constitutional Convention. The Sakonnet Times and other local newspapers, along with various political, social, labor, and business groups, did not champion this prolific method of direct democracy. Why?

One can understand why elected officials on the state level didn’t get behind the vote; they potentially could have had their world turned upside down. All politicians are conservative when it comes to their powers. Why didn’t mayors and town governments throughout the state, along with local democratic and republican town and city committees get behind the vote?Sadly, our next opportunity for this much needed event will come a few years after the 2020 Federal Census; an enumeration that will render us with only one U.S. representative.

Yet, wouldn’t it be nice to follow that reduction in our political power by putting a harness on the power of the speaker of the House, among other reforms. Look up not only the policies and reforms that were enacted through the last State Constitutional Convention, but also the ideas that were generated and debated on, in that exercise of democracy. Is it too far in the future to ponder, especially amid the fallout blowing in from Washington? Perhaps so, but until then, we must find ways to begin to change how way Smith Hill operates. Yet, without the grass roots power of a popular referendum, what scheme would you offer for establishing term limits? Dennis August Almeida

Little Compton

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