On Politics

A bill to extend binding arbitration to teacher contracts -- which last hit the House floor during the 2011 legislative session -- is coming back to the Statehouse.

Binding arbitration legislation sponsored by state Representative Anastasia Williams (D-Providence) is slated for a House Labor Committee hearing Tuesday (following the House session, or about 4:30/5 p.m.) in Room 201. A vote is not expected to take place following the hearing.

The neighborhood we call Rhode Island was clobbered by the giant n’oreaster that began as flurries Friday morning and cascaded into a blizzard with echoes of 1978, leaving our corner of  New England buried under two feet or more of fluffy, plump white drifts.

The storm mixed menace, beauty, inconvenience and biting chill. Thousands of us shivered through Friday and Saturday night in houses bereft of electricity as gusts whipped, thermostats plunged and down parkas were our pajamas. .

Another week passes with the usual palaver  from the Rhode Island political and business elite on economic development. RIPR political  analyst Scott MacKay says its time for some changes in the way Rhode Islanders view our state and ourselves.

State Senator Harold Metts joins us for our Bonus Q+A segment to talk about education policy, disproportionately high unemployment for minorities, and what it's like to be racially profiled while serving in the General Assembly.