The Week In Review

-Missing donations at the St. Marys/St. James Food Pantry continue to dog the diocese. We stand behind the food pantry on this one – all missing or misplaced money should be replaced immediately. And this never should have happened in the first place. We plan to have an update on this next week.

-What now in terms of a re-vote on the school bond? The Dec. 4 meeting was all well and good – much of this discussion probably should have taken place before now. But what now? What is the next step? I guess we will know more come the January Omnibus meeting.

-In the meantime, Charlestown is forming a committee to consider withdrawing from the district. They will also do an audit of the assets at the Chariho campus to determine their share.  

-On a seasonal note, by all accounts the Ashaway stroll was a great success. And yes, the pedestrian who was hit by a truck is doing well. By all accounts, the Richmond Senior Center Party last week was also a great success.

-The smell coming from Reynolds Farm seems to be gone as far as we can tell. A lesson for the future – spread the fertilizer sooner rather than later.

-At the state level, Governor Donald Carcieri certainly is taking a lot of heat for laying off state workers. And his comments about language interpreters caused some mild outrage a couple weeks ago.

What’s a governor to do? With a $500 million deficit looming and union contracts, it seems that cutting jobs is one of his only options.

We only wish the governor could cut the right people. In our time in state service and state higher education, we witnessed plenty of workers doing very little.

If Carcieri had the powers of a mythical Santa Claus and could determine who was naughty or nice or in everyday terms who was a slacker  -- he could make cuts without sacrificing service.  

We know this is not possible but we also know there is room to cut state workers because we’ve seen it.

The problem is the governor doesn’t have magic powers and can’t cut the least productive workers.

We are certain that many of those workers are protected by seniority and of course the unions.

We stand behind the governor’s job cuts – now is the time for hard decision. We only wish he could cut the right people.

Those people who do not deserve a paycheck.