13: Calls to Action

Some calls to action the Republican caucus is taking. First we demand an audit. We're going for a full performance and forensic audit of a roundhouse either by the auditor general or the office of internal audit and program integrity. Let me also be clear for decades there's been a non-partisan group between the house and the senate calling for an inspector general in the state of Ohio and this point frankly would be the perfect thing for that office to look at. Neither does it make the auditor general to answer directly to JCLS and to the speaker of the house who's made housing his number one policy priority for the past five years. The speaker can make this audit happen and I've asked him to do that. Also the governor in this year's broad budget proposal proposed that we enhance the office of internal audit and program integrity with subpoena power and we have. The legislature approved its law. Perhaps he overused that to get to the bottom of this. In fact if the governor wishes to remain consistent we just heard him the other day on the news talking about our collapsing health care system and he said we need to focus on the costs in the administrative area in health care and the Republicans agree with the governor on that and it applies here as well. If statutory barriers exist because Rhode Island housing is a quasi-public agency then let's remove them statutorily. We saw when Citizens Bank was going to leave we acted like this and we changed statutes and we kept them here. If we can act quickly to save banks we can act quickly to house Rhode Islanders who are living on the streets. Second we need to rethink our approach. Our Rhode Island affordable housing laws have been in place since 1991 and our approach has not changed at all. That's a failure of leadership for over three decades. Two weeks ago we were all asking what could have been done to keep Habsburg in Rhode Island. I don't want to be four, three, five years down the road asking that same question. What could have been done to create more housing in Rhode Island after all the money we bought is gone?