McMansion to come

 

"Partial Demolition'' (collage on paper, mounted on panel), by BARBARA MOODY, at Kingston Gallery, Boston.

Suzanne M. Bump: The myth of privatization as a panacea

BOSTON When it comes to regulating the privatization of government services, it seems that one person's mindless bureaucratic obstacle is another's essential accountability mechanism. Thus it is in Massachusetts, where an exemption from a state law governing privatization is being sought in the name of fixing Boston's troubled mass-transit system.

The policy debate over privatization in Massachusetts, which raged during the 1990s and 2000s, calmed down during the past two terms of a Democratic governor but returned to war-cry mode when the new Republican governor, Charlie Baker, proposed repealing the law as it pertains to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).

As the state official charged with enforcement of what is known as the "Pacheco law," and from that perch rather than from the legislative battlefield, I offer these thoughts in contrast to those

While it is true that the intent of the law was to slow down outsourcing, it is not the blunt instrument depicted by its opponents. As I have noted elsewhere in response to other critics of the Pacheco law, it prevents agencies from basing outsourcing decisions on political philosophy by forcing them to explore alternatives to their current models and then base their choices on costs, desired outcomes, competitive bidding and value. A privatization plan can be approved when an agency is able to demonstrate that a private company can perform a government function at a lower cost without compromising quality, safety or effectiveness.

And contrary to the assertions of critics, the law has not made privatization all but impossible. Since its passage in 1993, 12 of the 15 privatization plans reviewed by the state auditor holding the office at the time have been approved, and of the three that weren't approved two had been advanced by the MBTA.

The law's critics say that the standard for calculating the public-private comparison is at fault, but that was not at issue with the MBTA's proposals. Privatization of bus-shelter maintenance was rejected because of the MBTA's inability to say how many shelters would be covered by the contract, making it impossible to determine a fair price for the work. Proposals to privatize two bus operations and maintenance facilities were also turned down because the MBTA could not demonstrate that privatization would actually save money or improve quality, since its plan also called for shifting some work to other MBTA facilities. The MBTA could have sharpened its thinking and its pencils and re-submitted plans that could have passed muster, but it chose not to.

While my review of these proposals does not weigh this factor, I hope that policy-makers also would consider how effective the MBTA's oversight of any new privatization contracts is likely to be. Its recent record is one unlikely to inspire confidence. Audits subsequent to the 1996 privatization of the MBTA's real-estate-management operations, for example, questioned millions of dollars of payments to the private company performing the work that were either improperly billed or went to projects that were never completed.

The list goes on. Other audits have uncovered huge cost over-runs and delays in MBTA station-modernization projects; $15 million worth of undocumented fuel payments to the private operators of the MBTA's RIDE paratransit program; and a $94 million automated fare-collection system that for five years could not accurately count the day's receipts.

That kind of performance should give those who reflexively advocate privatization a lot to think about. It's important to keep in mind that nothing is free: When a government operation or service is outsourced, the taxpayers will still be paying the bills. They deserve the kind of accountability that laws like Massachusetts's are designed to provide.

Suzanne M. Bump is the state auditor of Massachusetts.

Just do it

"Leave Your Troubles Behind 2015'' (intaglio, screen print), by ALLISON BIANCO, in her show "A Curious Tide'' at Cade Tompkins Projects, Providence, through July 31.

Chris Powell: Blacks' amazing loyalty to America

MANCHESTER, Conn. At least the racist massacre at the church in Charleston seems likely to rid respectable society of the Confederate flag, the banner embraced by the perpetrator, who has reminded the country of what the flag really stood and still stands for -- not just defiance, independence and Southern heritage, but use of those things in support of evil oppression, first slavery and then nullification of federal civil rights law.

Just as telling, the perpetrator burned the American flag, the flag of the universal nation.

The rest of the political controversy arising from Charleston, what to do about gun violence, will go nowhere, because the problem is far larger than guns themselves and too large for the public mind to comprehend.

Yes, investigation of potential gun purchasers should be required everywhere in all circumstances and criminals and mental defectives should be disqualified. That would slow the proliferation of guns. But with an estimated 300 million guns already in private possession in the United States, an average of one for every man, woman and child, even if manufacture was stopped criminals and psychotics would not have much trouble obtaining a gun. Talk of outlawing the manufacture of ammunition only spurs the private accumulation of inventories. And the right of the people to keep and bear arms, as recognized by the national and state constitutions, is there for good reason and will never be repealed.

Besides, as with the massacre at the school in Newtown in 2012, neither background-check legislation nor any other conceivable gun-related legislation would have had much effect in Charleston. The rifle used in the Newtown massacre was legally obtained and the perpetrator gained access to it in his own home -- indeed, it was thrust on him by a parent. It was the same with the pistol used in Charleston. There's no outlawing stupidity.

The big problem of violence remains the culture -- racism, yes, a little bit, but, far more than that, drug criminalization, the poverty and social disintegration caused by welfare policy, and the normalizing and commercializing of violence as entertainment, which induce psychosis. The Oklahoma newspaper editor Jenkin Lloyd Jones noted it decades ago: "We are drowning our youngsters in violence, cynicism and sadism piped into the living room and even the nursery. The grandchildren of the kids who used to weep because the Little Match Girl froze to death now feel cheated if she isn't slugged, raped, and thrown into a Bessemer converter."

Nothing will be done about any of that while the country keeps raging at itself over gun laws.

The country would do better to marvel at the miracle revealed by the Charleston massacre -- not the treacly forgiveness conferred on the perpetrator by the relatives of the murdered, a religious delusion contrary to justice and even national survival, but the continued loyalty of black people to their country despite an oppression that, while lifting faster lately, continues both officially, through the abuse of police power, and unofficially in many ways.

Black separatism has never attracted many adherents and there has been no vengeful black terrorism. Instead most black people have put their faith in the country's principles, in their white fellow citizens, and in God, and thereby, as William Faulkner wrote, became "a people who had learned humility through suffering and learned pride through the endurance that survived the suffering."

On the whole that faith has been justified lately, at least when people's attention could be commanded.

There was no bigger spur to the civil-rights movement than the Ku Klux Klan's bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963, which murdered four black girls. The shootings at the church in Charleston, apparently intended to start a race war, instead have just appalled people and evoked their compassion again, and at least compassion isn't too big to understand.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Death-penalty fine arts

 

"Execution Miniatures,'' by PAULINE LIM, in the "Small, Smaller, Smallest'' show at Brickbottom Gallery, Somerville, Mass., July 9-Aug. 15.

Don Pesci: Of Republican and Democratic yachts

A few weeks ago, Democrats and their sounding boards in the increasingly irrelevant news media fired a shot across Republican presidential candidate Mario Rubio’s “yacht,” hoping to sink his candidacy. It turned out the yacht was a fishing boat; but, no matter, Democrats had made a point.

Republicans are rich – therefore insensitive to the vast yachtless middle class.

Republican candidate for governor Tom Foley suffered the same scrutiny last year -- with this difference: Foley really was rich, and his yacht did not resemble the creaky boats used by Mr. Rubio’s Cuban forebearers to escape the remorseless tyranny of the Castro brothers, both communists who long ago had declared war on yacht owners and political opponents and gays and others who opposed their brutal autocratic regime. Fidel Castro had a yacht. Mr. Weicker, former maverick U.S. senator and governor of Connecticut, also had a yacht.

The Castro regime is now being given a leg-up by President Obama, who, consulting his Ouija board, has willy-nilly decided to end a blockade against communist oppression supported by all his presidential predecessors, some of whom were Democrats.

Now, it so happens that Democrats in Connecticut who wish to tar Republicans as redundantly rich have a problem, because two members of Connecticut’s all-Democrat congressional delegation are redundantly rich.  U.S. Sen. Dick Blumenthal is among the four or five richest members in Congress. And Rep. Rosa DeLauro – Whether she will retire her seat to progressive heartthrob state Sen. Ted Kennedy Jr. is yet unknown – is also “comfortable,” largely owing to the money grubbing efforts of her husband Stanley Greenberg, pollster and political consultant to Democratic stars. Ms. DeLauro has a multimillion-dollar mansion in Washington, D.C.,  where the lights of the national Democratic Party gather from time to time in a salon-like setting to discuss how their might improve their good fortune.

Few know whether Ms. DeLauro or Mr. Blumenthal keep yachts, but both can well afford boats larger than Mr. Rubio’s “Old Man In The Sea” fishing boat.

Themis Klarides, the state House Republican minority leader,  did  arrive in the General Assembly from the middle class; and, oh yes, she is a woman. Her father owned a restaurant; her forbearers were Greek proletarians. Perhaps some of them were fishermen. She is not conspicuously rich, unlike Mr. Weicker, whose grandfather founded Squibb, the pharmaceutical company that recently decided to bolt Connecticut for more promising opportunities in other states. Like Mr. Castro’s boat people, businessmen across Connecticut – from Aetna, Travelers, General Electric, Stanley Works, Sikorsky,  just to mention a few -- are threatening to leave the state, perhaps in their yachts.

Ms. Klarites recently stumbled into the politically-correct tar pit when she said of Connecticut prickly governor and his relationship with Democrats in the General Assembly, “Every Democrat up there distanced himself from the governor the whole session. And then the governor tried to distance himself from the legislature. It's like a battered spouse support group."

This “story,” first reported by Neil Vigdor in the Danbury News Times, has produced a backlash from offended groups such as the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, whose chief executive officer Karen Jarmoc remarked, “To compare a political body that is divisively debating a budget to a domestic violence support group completely negates the effectiveness of this element of service, which helps thousands of victims in shelters and communities across the state.”

Actually, no.

Here is Mrs. Smith, my ninth grade English teacher in Windsor Locks presiding over the proper understanding of metaphors: “The word 'like' does not signify identity but similarity, and similarity, like love, is in the eye of the beholder."

Surely the too easily offended among us owe Ms. Klarides an apology for suggesting, however tenuously, that she favors domestic violence, a slur one might expect from Malloy the porcupine – but not from groups that have yet to protest that Mike Lawlor’s Get-Out-Of-Jail-Early program does NOT exempt from early release  convicted rapists and arsonists.

Along with most other Republicans in the General Assembly, Ms. Klarites --   a volunteer with The Umbrella Domestic Violence Group, working to assist victims of domestic violence and providing volunteer legal assistance to women and children at the shelter for victims of domestic violence -- has strenuously opposed including convicted rapists among prisoners awarded early release for having participated in Mr. Lawlor’s seriously flawed program.

It is still not too late for women across the state to add their voices to that of Ms. Klarites and other Republicans who are courageous enough to  identify rape and domestic abuse.

Don Pesci (donpesci@att.net) is a political writer who lives in Vernon, Conn.

FeteMusic, Providence

From FeteMusic, in Providence:

There is a little something for everyone at Fete Music Hall! We are a genre-defying, eclectic, multi-faceted live music and events venue (with all the latest Supreme Court goodness, we hope some weddings will also come our way). We think our ballroom is pretty neat too (check out fetemusic.com for images!).... And now we are serving pizza and more! We've got big, exciting plans, and we'd love you to be part of, and experience it! Reach out to us for your venue rental inquiries, check out fetemusic.com for our lineup, and keep in touch. We can't wait to show you what's coming #fetemusic #fetemusichall #fete#livemusic #venue #providence#olneyville #rhodeisland #ri#summer2015 #artspace #music

David Warsh: Generations of economists

Economics, at least in its dominant narrative tradition, is a story of human lifetimes. Its most vital concerns in the present day span no more than four or five generations: the lives of our parents and grandparents backwards in time, our own lives in the present, the lives of our children and grandchildren going forward – perhaps a hundred and twenty-five  years altogether.  That each of us has (or deserves to have) first-hand knowledge of five generations may be a basic fact of human existence. Perspectives shift with the passing of each succeeding generation. In due course, each new generation writes history anew.

When I started covering economics, in 1975, Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman were pre-eminent. They had been born about the same time — Friedman in 1912, Samuelson in 1915.  They led powerful university departments,  at the University of Chicago, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to which the brightest students flocked.  They advised presidential candidates – Samuelson, John F. Kennedy; Friedman, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

For nearly 20  years, they argued with one another, each writing a column every two weeks about public policy in the pages of Newsweek.   They were among the first winners of the new Nobel Prize for economic sciences funded by the Bank of Sweden and established in 1969.

The premise of the Nobel was that important lessons had been learned from the Depression, sufficient to constitute a phase change in what previously had been a nascent science.  Those lessons were persuasive to most of those who took an active interest in the subject, not just the economists themselves, but the physicists, chemists, earth scientists, social scientists and others of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences who agreed to give the prize. They were useful, probably, for purposes of managing industrial economies.

This achievement was ascribed to the generation of scholars who had been called upon in the 1930s to parse the Great Depression as it unfolded. John Maynard Keynes is the best remembered of this community, along with Friedrich von Hayek, Joseph Schumpeter, and Irving Fisher.  Edward Chamberlin, Joan Robinson and Wesley Clair Mitchell are remembered for different reasons. Only Hayek lived long enough to share a Nobel Prize.

The Nobel Prize made it easier to follow the narrative. Samuelson received the second prize, in 1970 (the pioneering European econometricians Ragnar Frisch and Jan Tinbergen were first); Friedman, in its eighth year, in 1976. In between, a third major figure was recognized, and, at least within the profession, gradually came to be understood as being of importance comparable to Friedman and Samuelson.  Kenneth Arrow (b. 1921) was cited in 1972, with Sir John Hicks (b. 1904), for work that at the time seemed abstruse: a mathematical proof of the existence and stability of general equilibrium in a system of market prices. It turned out to be the foundation of what we call microeconomics.

The decision to split the award was confusing:  the two economists had worked on some of the same problems, but in different eras, with different tools. Hicks had done his important work in the 1930s; Arrow in the ’50s. But even then, Arrow’s accomplishments were much wider-ranging. They included his analysis of different voting systems, sufficient to establish a new sub-discipline called social choice; the tools he devised to incorporate uncertainty into economic analysis, imagining complete markets of options and futures for all manner of things in all conceivable states of the world; and his contributions to the theory of growth. Starting in the early 1960s, Arrow began a whole new skein of work, on the economics of information.

He added to his Nobel autobiography in 2005 that, even before 1972, his  research  was moving in directions beyond those cited for the prize. Hicks died in 1989; Arrow, a Stanford University professor, is still active, editing, with his colleague Timothy Bresnahan,  the Annual Review of Economics.

Slowly the narrative filled in. Prizes wet to theorists, and to refiners of theory; to practitioners of measurement: and measurement’s close cousin,  the statistically-oriented field of econometrics; to economists who specialized in finance; and economists influenced by game theory, though the first ones weren’t given until 1994. Some economists of comparable achievement were mentioned only in citation for awards to others, some not cited at all; and those who had concerned themselves mainly with policy were left out altogether.

For the first 20 years of the Nobel survey, the dominant theme was macro-economics. This was unsurprising, since macro was the essence of what was thought to have been learned from the experience of the ‘30s: that here was a way to characterize the behavior of the economy as a whole, using a handful of measurable aggregates, chief among them consumption, investment, and government purchases.  It was easy, too, to divide the macro awards into camps, if not to reach conclusions about the fundamental differences between among them.

Keynesian laureates, led by Samuelson, included Wassily Leontief, Lawrence Klein, James Tobin, Franco Modigliani, Rober Solow, George Akerlof, Joseph Stiglitz, Edmund Phelps, Paul Krugman, Peter Diamond, and Robert Shiller. Monetarists, led by Friedman, included George Stigler, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott,  Thomas Sargent, and Eugene Fama.

Woven through the prizes was recognition of a different skein loosely related to work by Arrow and his intellectual collaborators, Gerard Debreu and Leo Hurwicz, in particular. Taken together, that new work added up to a working out of microeconomics to include strategic behavior:  incentives, information, and human capability. Nobel laureates in this category included Herbert Simon, Michael Spence, William Vickery, James Mirrlees, Eric Maskin, Roger Myerson, and Alvin Roth. Lucas and Robert Merton used the tools of complete competitive markets that Arrow had contributed; Ronald Coase and Gary Becker lent support, relying less on formal methods.

For half a century then, all the time I’d been reporting on it, economics seemed to be thestory of three generations: of Keynes and others, those who were called upon during the emergency; of their students, Samuelson, Friedman, and Arrow,  who entered grad school in ’30s and ’40s; and their students, who went to school in the ’50s and ’60s, during the of the Cold War.  A fourth generation could be discerned, economists who entered graduate school in the ’70s and ’80s, in an age of innovation, restructuring and globalization.

The crisis of 2008 seemed to overturn all that.  At its heart was a long global boom, punctuated by a panic, controlled by emergency leading by the world’s central banks.  There seemed to be little in the panic, at least, that could not be understood in the new economics of information and incentives.  The broad macroeconomic questions seemed to resolve decisively in favor of Friedman, who  however warily, had put central banking at the center of his analysis.  But the whole only made sense when placed in a grammar pioneered by Samuelson: models, measurement and operability.

Only slowly did it dawn on me that Samuelson, Friedman and Arrow,  having long been economics’ own greatest generation, had themselves become so much History, superseded by events.   Several members of that fourth generation played prominent roles in the crisis: Ben Bernanke, Austan Goolsbee, Lawrence Summers, Paul Krugman, in particular; economists of the third generation, John Taylor. Martin Feldstein and Stanley Fischer were active, too, mostly behind the scenes: but all these were policymakers and advocates, not originators of profound new insights.

So I  set out to tell the story of the collaboration of Gary Gorton, of Yale University’s School of Management, and Bengt Holmström, of MIT, as described in one way by Gorton, in Misunderstanding Financial Crises: Why We Don’t See Them Coming (Oxford 2012), and, in another, by Holmstrom in “Understanding the Role of Debt in the Financial System.”  These two did a better job of analyzing and interpreting the crisis than any others I had seen. They have opened the door to a new financial macro-economics. A growing coterie of monetary theorists; economic historians; and international economists are taking the next steps. Only the connections between finance and growth are so far missing.

It clearly wouldn’t be enough to trumpet the new results.  The controversy between the Keynesians and Monetarists would have to be unscrambled, at least for those who remembered the history of economics in the 20th Century as I did — for one friend in particular. To do that I devised an account that went beyond the bounds of memory.  I set out to tell a story with two threads: the accomplishments of practitioners, mostly bankers in this case, on the one hand; of economists on the other.

I started with Sir James Steuart, the all-but-forgotten Scottish rival to Adam Smith, whose verbose but coherent system of economics of 1767 — today we would call it a model— made an important place for the governmental institution of central banking.  I showed  how Smith eclipsed Steuart completely with the exciting research program of The Wealth of Nations, which contained not one but three promising lines of inquiry, and how Smith’s rich vision was itself  eclipsed when subsequent economists chose to pursue the most promising of the three, the existence of an interdependent price system, symbolized by the metaphor of an Invisible Hand.

I then showed bankers coping with the situation on their own for 150 years, creating central banks and instruction manuals for their safe operation, until Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz placed them at the top of the research agenda of macroeconomics — and then only on terms so old-fashioned that they had to be translated into the language devised by Samuelson and the economics devised by Arrow and his students before they could be properly understood.  But here I get ahead of the story.

David Warsh, a longtime financial journalist and economic historian, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com, where this piece originated.

Frank Carini: Protect N.E. economy by protecting environment

A 117,000-square-foot Lowe’s superstore opened in mid-January 2009 on Davisville Road in North Kingstown, R.I. It was out of business by late 2011, costing some 100 people their jobs and leaving behind an enormous impervious footprint that exacerbates the pollution problem caused by stormwater runoff. This development monstrosity in the Quonset Business Park has been vacant for nearly twice as long as it was open.

Leading up to last year’s midterm elections, the two-word phrase “economic growth” flowed freely from the mouths of incumbents and candidates alike. Talk of job creation easily trumped all other issues combined.

Now, some six months since Nov. 4, those words continue to echo in the hallways and chambers of southern New England’s three statehouses. To deliver on their campaign promises to create more jobs, lawmakers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island have inevitably focused on building more of the same.

In February, when Gov. Gina Raimondo announced her six nominees to the I-195 Redevelopment Commission, she said it was the first step in advancing efforts to revitalize vacant land in Providence. “We’re focused on expanding opportunity and creating jobs for Rhode Island families, and the 195 land can be a key lever to attract businesses and boost economic growth,” Raimondo said.

Not surprisingly, the combined experience of Raimondo’s six nominees was real-estate rich. Pleased that Rhode Island’s new governor made these commission appointments a priority, Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, said, “The redevelopment of the former I-195 land is a major opportunity to help reinvigorate Rhode Island’s economy.”

House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, D-Cranston, added, “This valuable land has the potential for great job growth and economic development activity, and we must work collaboratively to turn these opportunities into reality in the near future.”

“We need to catalyze Rhode Island’s economy by capitalizing upon resources such as the developable land where I-195 once stood,” Commerce Secretary Stefan Pryor said.

It seems that the nearly 20 acres unlocked by the relocation of a section of Interstate 195 is being viewed by lawmakers as the panacea to Rhode Island’s economic woes. This chunk of freed-up land separated by the Providence River certainly presents the city and the state with opportunity. In fact, many people and interests, in state and out, are eager to see how this newfound space will be used.

Will those in power continue to drive us down the well-traveled, bumpy road of economic development that delivered us the 38 Studios debacle, a $35 million budget deficit and a long run of double-digit unemployment rates, or will we change lanes and embrace an economic shift that accounts for sustainability and environmental health?

One of the development ideas for the I-195 land is from a Dallas-based developer seeking to build privatized student housing. Not exactly a job sustainer once built, and certainly not a fresh economic idea.

Another old-school idea has the new Pawtucket Red Sox ownership group moving the team to Providence and reportedly asking the state for $120 million to build a new stadium on I-195 land, some 7 miles from historic and well-attended McCoy Stadium. The average attendance at PawSox games during the past five seasons was 7,872 fans a game, and it was only a decade ago that, with a paid attendance of 688,421, the 2005 PawSox ranked fourth among all minor-league teams in any sport in North America.

How Rhode Island decides to use the I-195 land will go a long way in shaping the future of the state, and perhaps even the region. Instead of continuing to bank on exaggerated economic promises — i.e., Curt Schilling’s short-lived video-game company that falsely promised to create 450 local jobs — and the lure of endless development, perhaps these 20 acres will help change Rhode Island and southern New England’s economic paradigm.

Some of nature’s perfect pollinators, honeybees, bumble bees and sweat bees, at work on wingstem. (Nancy Adamson/for The Xerces Society)

Natural value The worldwide economic model and national accounting have long ignored the benefits that nature provides. The popular economic development model, at least to those in many boardrooms, that overuses and misuses natural resources is unsustainable and ignores the inherent value of a healthy environment.

There’s a debate going on in Rhode Island now about sacrificing some of the land that helps protect the state’s 71,000 acres of freshwater and coastal wetlands to development wants.

The illusion that we can continue to build our way out of an economic downturn at the expense of the environment persists. Timothy Stasiunas of the Rhode Island Builders Association testified before a Senate committee in late March that new development standards would allow the construction industry to lead the state out of recession.

The hearing was for a bill that would create a new statewide standard for building closer to wetlands. Developers basically told the Senate Committee on the Environment and Agriculture that it takes too long to get approval, and there is too much paperwork.

“This type of scenario has contributed to the lost decade ... that has plagued our economy for years, if not decades,” Stasiunas said.

In Rhode Island, since the early 1980s, development has sharply outpaced population growth.

Nature, at no charge, provides drinkable water (wetlands purify it), breathable air (ocean microbes produce half the oxygen we breathe), healthy food (pollinators deliver us fruits, nuts and vegetables) and natural waste treatment (worms turn waste into soil). Environmental regulations designed to protect these ecosystem services, which are substantially more valuable to society than, say, subprime mortgages and derivatives, are often viewed as an impediment to economic development.

Plenty of research, however, suggests placing sustainability ahead of profitability won’t stymie the economy or kill jobs. In fact, protecting the environment and investing in healthy ecosystems has the duel benefit of sustaining the economy and protecting public health.

“Without full valuation of less-tangible natural benefits from ecosystems, use will remain unsustainable and degradation inevitable, leading to the potential collapse of important ecosystem functions and services. It is increasingly evident that there is a need to develop an economic model that accurately reflects benefits to people from the environment and the costs associated with ecosystem degradation,” according to a 2010 United Nations Environment Programme policy brief. “Getting this right will help move us toward sustainability.”

But a powerful cabal of politicians and special interests continues to argue that environmental regulations are too expensive and hinder the economy. For years, many mainstream economists have dismissed the claims of “limits to growth," arguing that regulation can impact workers by, for example, forcing businesses to close or relocate to places with weaker regulations.

Justin Katz, research director for the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity, which has a mission to “return government to the people by opposing special interest public policy and advancing proven free-market solutions,” said restrictions, such as environmental regulations, minimum-wage mandates and the Affordable Care Act, represent huge costs and place burdens on businesses, especially small-business owners.

He said Rhode Island’s renewable-energy mandates are particularly egregious. Katz also said the state should implement a moratorium on all new environmental regulations and purge the system of unnecessary restrictions that put an undue burden on economic development.

“People want to live in a nice place,” said Katz, noting that environmental regulations can cause abuses of the free-market system.

The Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity has been one of most vocal opponents of the RhodeMap RI initiative, which was established to create long-term objectives for housing, land use, transportation and economic development.

The idea is to make the nation’s second-most densely populated state more walkable, bikeable, and less centered on cars and sprawl. In rural areas, the concept aims to preserve local character and open space. Zoning changes would allow for combined development and would help protect land for recreation and agriculture.

Basically, the idea is to stop construction that stresses natural resources and consumes swaths of open space.

Opponents, such as Rep. Brian Newberry, R-North Smithfield, are concerned the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development could forcibly require municipalities and/or property owners to forfeit their property rights. It's a great example of the type of baseless fear-mongering that now dominates political leadership.

However, the very real possibility of actual land-taking, by a non-federal government entity, has elicited barely a whisper from the Statehouse. Houston-based Spectra Energy has said it might have to take some land in Tiverton, Little Compton and/or Burrillville temporarily or perhaps permanently during the construction and expansion of a natural-gas pipeline.

There has been little to no outcry from the General Assembly about an out-of-state, for-profit company taking local land to, in essence, increase climate-changing greenhouse-gas emissions. The energy company is granted the power of eminent domain through a 77-year-old law, the Natural Gas Act of 1938. Spectra has since scrapped plans to take land in Tiverton and Little Compton, but the possibility still exists in Burrillville.

Mike Stenhouse, founder of the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity, has called the RhodeMap RI initiative another affordable-housing mandate. Mike Puyana of the Rhode Island Tea Party has claimed there is deep concern, particularly among those living in rural areas, that this proposed template for state planning and economic development will strip away municipal authority in those communities.

In 2013, opponents — mostly rural municipalities and environmentalists — of Rhode Island’s controversial “slopes” bill made essentially the same argument. The General Assembly passed and then-Gov. Lincoln Chafee signed the development-friendly bill into law.

A related bill that would make Rhode Island more accommodating to development by allowing building closer to wetlands has the support of the construction industry. The proposed zoning change would allow construction closer to wetlands in six Rhode Island communities and shift much of the jurisdiction over granting exemptions to the state.

Concern about striping away municipal authority hasn’t been broached regarding this bill. The hypocrisy would be laughable if it wasn't so shortsighted and damaging.

Unchecked and under-regulated economic growth does a poor job of protecting the environment and public health. If it had, taxpayers wouldn’t be helping to fund the remediation of brownfields — Rhode Island alone has some 1,800 — and nonprofits wouldn’t be helping to restore waterways polluted by the likes of General Electric.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the state of Massachusetts wouldn’t have had to reach a settlement with four of the parties largely responsible for the contamination of New Bedford Harbor, which has some of highest concentrations of PCBs in a Superfund marine environment.

Society wouldn’t still be paying for the health impacts of lead poisoning. In the early 1920s, the dangers of leaded gasoline were already known, but major oil companies were allowed to use the technology anyway. Five decades later, only after environmental hazards became overwhelmingly apparent, the EPA announced a scheduled phase-out.

DuPont made a huge profit selling lead paint before it was eventually banned, and the multinational has since been accused of misleading consumers about the dangers of lead-based paint. In 2010, DuPont was named a top-20 polluter, dumping 5.3 million pounds of toxic chemicals into waterways.

“Humans don’t always take very good care of natural resources,” Sara N. da Silva Quintal, restoration ecologist for the Buzzards Bay Coalition, said during a late-March forum held at the New Bedford Whaling Museum entitled “Restoring Rivers and Estuaries, Native Fish and Shellfish.”

She spoke specifically about the coalition's Acushnet River restoration project, and how, through dam removal, riverbank restoration and invasive plant management, the river's herring population has increased dramatically. She also detailed how a derelict lumber yard and abandoned industrial complex have been transformed into a 19-acre park that will open to the public this summer.

Evaluating the economic cost of regulation can be tricky, though, as there have been few studies that have examined the issue in depth after regulations have been imposed. Some economists have claimed that various regulations designed to protect the environment, such as the federal Clean Air Act, have resulted in far lower costs and job losses than initially feared.

Reams of research, however, show that environmental regulations reduce infant mortality, decrease hospitalizations and increase real-estate values.

Healthy ecosystems, and the biodiversity that thrives within them, protect water, soil and air quality, ensure food security and provide flood protection. The pressures of economic growth since the Industrial Revolution, however, have stressed the health of vital ecosystems and cost U.S. taxpayers plenty, in the form of Superfund cleanups, flood damage, and health-care costs associated with lead poisoning and rising asthma rates.

Southern New England, however, continues to view the economy and the environment as separate issues. In her fiscal 2016 budget announced in March, Gov. Raimondo said it was developed around three guiding principles: build, attract, innovate.

Twin River Casino in Lincoln, R.I., has some 12 acres of parking. The casino paved over more than 2 acres of a field at the edge of a wetland without town or state approval. No punishment was levied.

Protection of the environment and economic development are largely viewed as competing aims, as if they are mutually exclusive and operate in a vacuum. Through that dull prism, it’s easy to see why economic growth has been upstaging environmental protection and public health for centuries.

Jesse Rye, co-executive director of Farm Fresh Rhode Island, calls this the “extractive economy.” “The take, take, taking of natural resources,” he said.

The Roman Empire clear-cut forests for fuel and housing, which eventually forced it to build its cities to take advantage of passive solar energy. In fact, this pattern of woodland obliteration to fuel economic development left much of England, France and Germany barren of forest by the early 1600s.

The switch to coal and other fossil fuels began the pattern of profits over protection. Chemical processing helped advance economic growth, but it also negatively impacted public health.

Hydraulic fracturing and tar-sands oil are now helping to fuel economic growth, while their environmental and public-health impacts are largely ignored or dismissed. It’s an-all-to-familiar pattern: shareholders profit, the environment suffers, and the public pays.

Powering our way of life comes with consequences — public-health concerns, social injustices and environmental damages. But that doesn't mean we should frack first and let others, after those who profited from the damage walk away, deal with the fallout. It doesn't mean we should continue mountaintop-removal mining at the expense of vital waterways and public health, especially when other energy alternatives are available.

An energy portfolio that actually encourages and supports the use of renewables and a power grid that can better harness this energy would help lessen the impact of mankind’s voracious appetite for power. But we continue to allow those who profit from fossil fuels to have most of the power.

Despite significant scientific evidence about the threats posed by increased greenhouse-gas emissions and the impacts of a changing climate, such as sea-level rise, many business groups and lawmakers continue to clamor for the dismantling of laws designed to protect the environment and call for the neutering of the EPA and state regulatory agencies.

The energy industry fights to reclassify mine waste as “fill” so contaminated material can be legally dumped into rivers and streams. Developers regularly call for less restrictions on where they can build.

Driving these efforts is the claim that four-plus decades of environmental regulations have strangled the U.S. economy and undermined economic competitiveness. Countless sets of facts and figures, however, tell a different story. In fact, the political machine, special interests and the wealthy "job creators" doing most of the current complaining have gained plenty since Richard Nixon made protecting the environment a priority.

For example, average compensation for the chief executive officers of the top 350 U.S. firms was $15.2 million in 2013, up 2.8 percent since 2012 and up 21.7 percent since 2010, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

Also, according to EPI, from 1978 to 2013, CEO compensation, adjusted for inflation, increased 937 percent — more than double stock-market growth and substantially greater than the 10.2 percent growth in a typical worker’s compensation over the same 35 years.

In 1965, five years before Nixon created the EPA, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 20 to 1, and by 1978 it was 29.9 to 1. In 2013, the ratio was 295.9 to 1, according to EPI.

Also, according to the nonpartisan think tank, the number of U.S. congressional districts in which trade with China has produced more jobs than it has cost is one, out of 435.

At the close of 1970, the year the EPA was created, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 838.92. Today, that key indicator of economic growth has grown more than 20-fold despite increased measures to better protect the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soil that grows our food.

In the 1970s, the decade the EPA was created, the top 0.1 percent of the wealthiest Americans held 7 percent of the nation’s wealth. Today, nearly five decades after environmental protections were made a priority, the 100 wealthiest U.S. families have as much wealth as the 80 million families who make up the bottom 50 percent in wealth, according to a story in the March 29 Boston Sunday Globe.

In fact, since the United States began better protecting the environment and public health, largely through regulation, corporate profits have soared.

In a March 2014 Gallup Poll Social Series survey on the environment, Americans said the environment is a priority over economic growth by a 50-percent-to-41-percent margin. In the 30 years that Gallup has asked this question, Americans have almost always chosen the environment over economic growth as a priority.

It's time the health of the planet and its many interconnected inhabitants take precedence over greed and fabricated fear. But how do we deconstruct a broken, centuries-old economic model? By thinking differently and embracing change.

Southern New England’s wildlife populations, such as this great egret, generate millions annually in local revenue from birdwatchers and sportsmen. (Ed Hughes/for the Audubon Society of R.I.)

Sustainable approach The escalating demand being placed on the planet’s natural resources by 7 billion and counting people — a million more are added every four and a half days — has made it imperative that we manage nature’s generosity better.

Sustainable economic development turns the model of short-term profits over long-term public and environmental health upside down. Protection of natural resources and human health are the priority, with economic development approved as long as it doesn’t degrade either of those preferences. If it does, the business and/or industry is substantially taxed or fined.

Healthy ecosystems are immensely valuable, because they are inextricably tied to human survival. Healthy habitats also provide recreation, tourism and business opportunities, such as bicycling, fishing, hiking, swimming, surfing, birding and boating.

Rhode Island’s wildlife populations generate about $130 million annually from sportsmen (hunting), birdwatchers and other wildlife observers. The director of the state Department of Environmental Management (DEM), Janet Coit, told those who attended the Southern New England Recreational Fishing Symposium in late March that the recreational fishing industry alone brings Rhode Island $200 million in revenue annually.

"This industry is a real economic driver, and is growing its importance economically," Coit said. "We need to be innovative and smart when it comes to this ecosystem. We want our children and grandchildren to be able to go fishing in the future."

Southern New England's fisheries, however, are feeling the pressures of a changing climate, global overfishing, and pollution from stormwater runoff, wastewater discharges and the overuse of nitrogen-rich fertilizers.

Rhode Island’s lobster fishery could disappear by the end of the next decade, according to some projections. Overfishing alone doesn’t account for the local decline in winter flounder; warming waters also have played a big part.

So what is a protected environment worth? Many would likely argue that it’s priceless, but in reality that question is rarely given much thought. In the quest for economic growth, most accounting practices leave the environment shortchanged.

Property rights enable owners — and those who lease public land from state or federal government — to produce goods (subsidized crops, oil, natural gas) and services (cattle grazing) to sell, often for a considerable profit.

There are, however, few property rights for natural resources such as water and air, so they have been used — and often abused — for free as receptacles of the waste created by economic growth. And since there is no market for maintaining biodiversity, economic development decisions regarding, say, land use are unlikely to account for the considerable public health and environmental benefits that vibrant ecosystems provide.

Environmental regulations are typically designed to prevent, reduce or at least better manage abuses against the environment and public health.

The management of pollution and waste from economic development has improved significantly in the past century, thanks in large part to regulations that require compliance and spur innovation. A century of regulations also has improved working conditions and public health.

Gina McCarthy, the nation’s top environmental official, has said environmental protection is good for the economy and creates jobs. The EPA administrator has repeatedly dismissed the claim that environmental regulations restrain economic growth.

The Boston native and former commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection has cited stricter fuel-economy standards set in 2011 for auto manufacturers as an example, noting car makers responded by increasing miles-per-gallon averages, which lowered carbon emissions and made their products more attractive to consumers still dealing with the economic fallout of 2007-08.

McCarthy has cited statistics dating back to the early years of the EPA that demonstrate environmental regulations and economic development can be achieved simultaneously. Emissions of harmful air pollutants have dropped nearly 70 percent since 1970, according to McCarthy. In that time, national economic growth has exceeded 200 percent.

This flipped-upside-down economic model would feature policies that call for sustainable practices, reduced energy use, the efficient use of resources and a fairer distribution of wealth, according to its advocates. They say a sustainable economy focuses on eradicating poverty, educational empowerment and environmental protection

Four of southern New England’s greatest economic assets are Narragansett Bay, Cape Cod Bay, Buzzards Bay and Long Island Sound. Many industries, from fishing, both commercial and recreational, to tourism, would suffer greatly if these vital ecosystems were damaged.Several estimates suggest that the total value of the natural resources of the Narragansett Bay watershed — about 60 percent of which is in Massachusetts —  exceeds several billion dollars annually, according to a 2003 University of Rhode Island study.

Some 12 million people visit Narragansett Bay annually to fish, swim, surf and sun. Many of those visitors also shop and dine locally. In the late 1990s, the Ocean State’s tourism industry was second only to health services in terms of total wages, and 30 percent of that tourism was associated with amenity-based uses of Narragansett Bay, according to a 2008 study funded by the EPA.

Narragansett Bay also is commercially important for the shellfish industry. An estimated 15 percent of Rhode Island’s total lobster landings are caught in the bay, according to that 2008 report. In addition, the state’s quahog fishery is contained mostly within Narragansett Bay, with an average value of about $7.5 million annually.

But the environmental degradation of Narragansett Bay caused by the pursuit of economic growth has lessened the economic value of this natural resource. For example, eelgrass beds are a critical habitat for bay scallops, and Narragansett Bay once supported a large bay scallop fishery. In 1880, more than 300,000 bushels of bay scallops were harvested from Narragansett Bay, a quantity that would be worth some $33 million today, according to the EPA study.

By 2003, however, bay scallop landings in Narragansett Bay were largely nonexistent. The loss of this fishery can be traced to the loss of eelgrass beds — wiped out by disease, pollution and coastal development. Recovery has been slow.

In fact, thanks in large part to the byproducts of economic growth, the Rhode Island commercial fishery has been forced to move offshore. With the exception of the quahog and small lobster fisheries, Narragansett Bay no longer supports a major commercial fishery.

Recreational fishing attracts some 300,000 anglers annually to the Ocean State and is a major part of the state’s tourism industry. The historical abuse of the bay’s watershed, though, now requires fish consumption advisories, which are issued based on the level of contaminants detected in fish tissue. PCB advisories have been in effect since the early 1990s; mercury advisories were first issued a decade later.

The natural resources within the Long Island Sound basin are worth billions. (Earth Economics)

“From the far western end of Long Island Sound east to Narragansett Bay, twin scourges plague our region’s waters: bacterial pollution and nitrogen poisoning,” Curt Johnson, executive director of Save the Sound, said earlier this year when his organization and Providence-based Save The Bay submitted comments to the EPA regarding polluted stormwater runoff from Massachusetts. “The coastal waters where we swim, fish and boat provide huge environmental and economic benefits for our region, and we must join together to protect them.”

The natural capital provided annually by the Long Island Sound basin, which stretches to the northern tip of New Hampshire, is between $17 billion and $37 billion, according to a study released this year.

There are some 135 industries, such as shellfish farming, wind power and nature parks, that depend directly on the basin’s natural capital. The 84-page study entitled “The Trillion Dollar Asset: Economic Valuation of the Long Island Sound Basin” found that about $5.2 billion in direct wages and some 190,000 jobs depend on the natural resources of Long Island Sound and its basin.

Cape Cod Bay contributes a minimum of $1.5 billion a year to the region’s economy, according to a 2012 study. The tourism and fishing industries supported by the bay — designated as a state ocean sanctuary in 1970 — are dependent on good water quality and the protection of coastal and marine habitats.

In surveys of tourists in coastal areas, 65 percent identified clean water and clean beaches as the most important factors for an enjoyable vacation, according to the 52-page report.

At least 20 percent of visitors to Massachusetts visit Cape Cod and the Islands, the second-most visited destination after Boston, according to a 2011 report by the Cape Cod Commission. The report notes that the Cape’s myriad coastal ecosystems, especially its beaches and water quality, are the foundation of the region’s tourism industry.

In 2009 alone, domestic tourists generated about $65 million in local tax receipts for Barnstable and Plymouth counties, according to the U.S. Travel Association.

Besides protecting these four natural and cultural assets from the byproducts of economic development, environmental regulations also protect countless businesses and jobs in southern New England.

In fact, environmental protection is no less an industry than, say, the manufacturing of costume jewelry. That industry dominated the 25-block Jewelry District in Providence well into the 1980s, creating jobs — some 32,500 at its peak in 1976 — and also polluting the Providence River with heavy metals and toxins. Most of those jobs are long gone, and much of the pollution remains.

The wetlands, forests, open space and estuaries within the Narragansett Bay, Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay watersheds and the Long Island Sound basin aren’t fleeting investments, and they don’t depreciate in value like costume jewelry and video games. Strategic and diversified investment in natural capital is a sound risk-management strategy against climatic, social and economic volatility, according to the authors of the Long Island Sound study.

To create a sustainable economy in southern New England will require better use of the region’s strengths — natural resources, aquaculture, intellectual capital, innovation and locally sourced food. It certainly isn’t about quick fixes, gambling on casinos, endless development and tax breaks for corporations that hide their profits in overseas tax havens.

Providence was named a top food city in 2012 by Travel + Leisure, and last year Boston was named one of the 10 best foodie cities by Livability.com. There are more than 50 aquaculture farms, with nearly 180 acres, in Rhode Island alone. In 2013, the value of Rhode Island aquaculture products for consumption was $4.2 million, an increase of 49 percent from the previous year, according to a Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) study.

A sustainable economy invests in maintaining its existing stock of natural and human-built capital — not, in say, building a second minor-league baseball stadium, complete with plenty of parking, that will create more stormwater runoff within the Narragansett Bay watershed. Stormwater runoff is the largest single source of pollution of U.S. bays and freshwater ecosystems.

The Compost Plant, a Providence-based business created by Leo Pollock, left, and Nat Harris, picks up commercial food scrap from restaurants and schools. (Joanna Detz/ecoRI News)

Building a better economy Building a sustainable economy for southern New England means accounting for climate-change impacts, investing in communities, and building local partnerships and regional networks.

It means making better use of the waterfronts in Fall River, New Bedford and Providence. It means enforcing environmental regulations, and not allowing, for example, a Providence scrap-metals recycler, which began operating without proper permits in 2009, to pollute upper Narragansett Bay for five years. The mess this illegal operation could potentially leave behind could cost taxpayers millions to clean.

It means making the funding of public transportation a priority. It means better maintaining public infrastructure. It means embracing ideas that better connect the region’s many strengths, such as local food, the technology sector and the outdoors.

In fact, there are those who believe a more vibrant local food scene would make the region more attractive to business professionals, students and tourists.

“People want a high quality of life and food is s big part of that,” said Leo Pollock, network coordinator for the Rhode Island Food Policy Council. “We already have a strong food culture here, and there is momentum to build on.”

The Providence resident also said jobs associated with greater production and distribution of local food could be the region’s new “manufacturing” workforce.

“There’s a lot of high-paying tech and medical jobs here, and they are important, but local food could help support low- to middle-wage jobs — the base Rhode Island lost when manufacturing left,” Pollock said. “That’s still an important job base.”

In the past few years, Wholesome Wave, a Bridgeport, Conn.-based organization, has helped strengthen this sector by coordinating some $4 million in investment in local food infrastructure.

The organization worked with Farm Fresh Rhode Island to secure a $100,000 loan with a philanthropic guaranty in order to expand cooler space and support working capital. With this additional space and money, Farm Fresh has increased sales of local and regional foods, supporting farmer incomes and spurring local job creation.

Wholesome Wave helped Red’s Best, a Massachusetts-based “fish hub” that buys catch from small New England boats, secure and structure a multimillion-dollar line of credit that allowed the business to expand its capacity, serve new markets and create new jobs.

The organization also worked with the Dorchester Bay Development Corporation to secure public-private financing for redeveloping an old factory into a food enterprise hub. The building is being converted into a commercial kitchen and food-processing facility managed by Crop Circle Kitchen, a nonprofit that provides business development services and food-safe rental space to Boston-based food businesses.

Lisa Raiola, the founder and visionary behind Rhode Island’s new culinary incubator, Hope & Main, has offered the idea using some of Providence’s reclaimed I-195 land to build a vertical farm.

“It would be model for all of New England,” she has said. “It would be an urban living space with agriculture. It would attract funding and tourism. Everyone would see it from the highway — a living-learning experiment that could be the future of local food.”

David Dadekian, founder of EatDrink RI and the recipient of a $300,000 Rhode Island Foundation Innovation Fellowship last year, wants to create a year-round marketplace in Providence that would be similar to Quincy Market in Boston, Pike Place Market in Seattle or Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia.

Simply encouraging and supporting the use of what already exists — like using the region’s rooftops to grow more food, house aquaponic systems and capture more rays — would make southern New England’s economy more sustainable.

“There’s this mindset that we have to attract new things,” said Rye of Farm Fresh. “Why can’t we focus on what we have here and make that stronger?"

A 117,000-square-foot Lowe’s superstore opened in mid-January 2009 on Davisville Road in North Kingstown, R.I. It was out of business by late 2011, costing some 100 people their jobs and leaving behind an enormous impervious footprint that exacerbates the pollution problem caused by stormwater runoff. This development monstrosity in the Quonset Business Park has been vacant for nearly twice as long as it was open.

Leading up to last year’s midterm elections, the two-word phrase “economic growth” flowed freely from the mouths of incumbents and candidates alike. Talk of job creation easily trumped all other issues combined.

Now, some six months since Nov. 4, those words continue to echo in the hallways and chambers of southern New England’s three statehouses. To deliver on their campaign promises to create more jobs, lawmakers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island have inevitably focused on building more of the same.

In February, when Gov. Gina Raimondo announced her six nominees to the I-195 Redevelopment Commission, she said it was the first step in advancing efforts to revitalize vacant land in Providence. “We’re focused on expanding opportunity and creating jobs for Rhode Island families, and the 195 land can be a key lever to attract businesses and boost economic growth,” Raimondo said.

Not surprisingly, the combined experience of Raimondo’s six nominees was real-estate rich. Pleased that Rhode Island’s new governor made these commission appointments a priority, Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, said, “The redevelopment of the former I-195 land is a major opportunity to help reinvigorate Rhode Island’s economy.”

House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, D-Cranston, added, “This valuable land has the potential for great job growth and economic development activity, and we must work collaboratively to turn these opportunities into reality in the near future.”

“We need to catalyze Rhode Island’s economy by capitalizing upon resources such as the developable land where I-195 once stood,” Commerce Secretary Stefan Pryor said.

It seems that the nearly 20 acres unlocked by the relocation of a section of Interstate 195 is being viewed by lawmakers as the panacea to Rhode Island’s economic woes. This chunk of freed-up land separated by the Providence River certainly presents the city and the state with opportunity. In fact, many people and interests, in state and out, are eager to see how this newfound space will be used.

Will those in power continue to drive us down the well-traveled, bumpy road of economic development that delivered us the 38 Studios debacle, a $35 million budget deficit and a long run of double-digit unemployment rates, or will we change lanes and embrace an economic shift that accounts for sustainability and environmental health?

One of the development ideas for the I-195 land is from a Dallas-based developer seeking to build privatized student housing. Not exactly a job sustainer once built, and certainly not a fresh economic idea.

Another old-school idea has the new Pawtucket Red Sox ownership group moving the team to Providence and reportedly asking the state for $120 million to build a new stadium on I-195 land, some 7 miles from historic and well-attended McCoy Stadium. The average attendance at PawSox games during the past five seasons was 7,872 fans a game, and it was only a decade ago that, with a paid attendance of 688,421, the 2005 PawSox ranked fourth among all minor-league teams in any sport in North America.

How Rhode Island decides to use the I-195 land will go a long way in shaping the future of the state, and perhaps even the region. Instead of continuing to bank on exaggerated economic promises — i.e., Curt Schilling’s short-lived video-game company that falsely promised to create 450 local jobs — and the lure of endless development, perhaps these 20 acres will help change Rhode Island and southern New England’s economic paradigm.

Some of nature’s perfect pollinators, honeybees, bumble bees and sweat bees, at work on wingstem. (Nancy Adamson/for The Xerces Society)

Natural value The worldwide economic model and national accounting have long ignored the benefits that nature provides. The popular economic development model, at least to those in many boardrooms, that overuses and misuses natural resources is unsustainable and ignores the inherent value of a healthy environment.

There’s a debate going on in Rhode Island now about sacrificing some of the land that helps protect the state’s 71,000 acres of freshwater and coastal wetlands to development wants.

The illusion that we can continue to build our way out of an economic downturn at the expense of the environment persists. Timothy Stasiunas of the Rhode Island Builders Association testified before a Senate committee in late March that new development standards would allow the construction industry to lead the state out of recession.

The hearing was for a bill that would create a new statewide standard for building closer to wetlands. Developers basically told the Senate Committee on the Environment and Agriculture that it takes too long to get approval, and there is too much paperwork.

“This type of scenario has contributed to the lost decade ... that has plagued our economy for years, if not decades,” Stasiunas said.

In Rhode Island, since the early 1980s, development has sharply outpaced population growth.

Nature, at no charge, provides drinkable water (wetlands purify it), breathable air (ocean microbes produce half the oxygen we breathe), healthy food (pollinators deliver us fruits, nuts and vegetables) and natural waste treatment (worms turn waste into soil). Environmental regulations designed to protect these ecosystem services, which are substantially more valuable to society than, say, subprime mortgages and derivatives, are often viewed as an impediment to economic development.

Plenty of research, however, suggests placing sustainability ahead of profitability won’t stymie the economy or kill jobs. In fact, protecting the environment and investing in healthy ecosystems has the duel benefit of sustaining the economy and protecting public health.

“Without full valuation of less-tangible natural benefits from ecosystems, use will remain unsustainable and degradation inevitable, leading to the potential collapse of important ecosystem functions and services. It is increasingly evident that there is a need to develop an economic model that accurately reflects benefits to people from the environment and the costs associated with ecosystem degradation,” according to a 2010 United Nations Environment Programme policy brief. “Getting this right will help move us toward sustainability.”

But a powerful cabal of politicians and special interests continues to argue that environmental regulations are too expensive and hinder the economy. For years, many mainstream economists have dismissed the claims of “limits to growth," arguing that regulation can impact workers by, for example, forcing businesses to close or relocate to places with weaker regulations.

Justin Katz, research director for the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity, which has a mission to “return government to the people by opposing special interest public policy and advancing proven free-market solutions,” said restrictions, such as environmental regulations, minimum-wage mandates and the Affordable Care Act, represent huge costs and place burdens on businesses, especially small-business owners.

He said Rhode Island’s renewable-energy mandates are particularly egregious. Katz also said the state should implement a moratorium on all new environmental regulations and purge the system of unnecessary restrictions that put an undue burden on economic development.

“People want to live in a nice place,” said Katz, noting that environmental regulations can cause abuses of the free-market system.

The Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity has been one of most vocal opponents of the RhodeMap RI initiative, which was established to create long-term objectives for housing, land use, transportation and economic development.

The idea is to make the nation’s second-most densely populated state more walkable, bikeable, and less centered on cars and sprawl. In rural areas, the concept aims to preserve local character and open space. Zoning changes would allow for combined development and would help protect land for recreation and agriculture.

Basically, the idea is to stop construction that stresses natural resources and consumes swaths of open space.

Opponents, such as Rep. Brian Newberry, R-North Smithfield, are concerned the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development could forcibly require municipalities and/or property owners to forfeit their property rights. It's a great example of the type of baseless fear-mongering that now dominates political leadership.

However, the very real possibility of actual land-taking, by a non-federal government entity, has elicited barely a whisper from the Statehouse. Houston-based Spectra Energy has said it might have to take some land in Tiverton, Little Compton and/or Burrillville temporarily or perhaps permanently during the construction and expansion of a natural-gas pipeline.

There has been little to no outcry from the General Assembly about an out-of-state, for-profit company taking local land to, in essence, increase climate-changing greenhouse-gas emissions. The energy company is granted the power of eminent domain through a 77-year-old law, the Natural Gas Act of 1938. Spectra has since scrapped plans to take land in Tiverton and Little Compton, but the possibility still exists in Burrillville.

Mike Stenhouse, founder of the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity, has called the RhodeMap RI initiative another affordable-housing mandate. Mike Puyana of the Rhode Island Tea Party has claimed there is deep concern, particularly among those living in rural areas, that this proposed template for state planning and economic development will strip away municipal authority in those communities.

In 2013, opponents — mostly rural municipalities and environmentalists — of Rhode Island’s controversial “slopes” bill made essentially the same argument. The General Assembly passed and then-Gov. Lincoln Chafee signed the development-friendly bill into law.

A related bill that would make Rhode Island more accommodating to development by allowing building closer to wetlands has the support of the construction industry. The proposed zoning change would allow construction closer to wetlands in six Rhode Island communities and shift much of the jurisdiction over granting exemptions to the state.

Concern about striping away municipal authority hasn’t been broached regarding this bill. The hypocrisy would be laughable if it wasn't so shortsighted and damaging.

Unchecked and under-regulated economic growth does a poor job of protecting the environment and public health. If it had, taxpayers wouldn’t be helping to fund the remediation of brownfields — Rhode Island alone has some 1,800 — and nonprofits wouldn’t be helping to restore waterways polluted by the likes of General Electric.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the state of Massachusetts wouldn’t have had to reach a settlement with four of the parties largely responsible for the contamination of New Bedford Harbor, which has some of highest concentrations of PCBs in a Superfund marine environment.

Society wouldn’t still be paying for the health impacts of lead poisoning. In the early 1920s, the dangers of leaded gasoline were already known, but major oil companies were allowed to use the technology anyway. Five decades later, only after environmental hazards became overwhelmingly apparent, the EPA announced a scheduled phase-out.

DuPont made a huge profit selling lead paint before it was eventually banned, and the multinational has since been accused of misleading consumers about the dangers of lead-based paint. In 2010, DuPont was named a top-20 polluter, dumping 5.3 million pounds of toxic chemicals into waterways.

“Humans don’t always take very good care of natural resources,” Sara N. da Silva Quintal, restoration ecologist for the Buzzards Bay Coalition, said during a late-March forum held at the New Bedford Whaling Museum entitled “Restoring Rivers and Estuaries, Native Fish and Shellfish.”

She spoke specifically about the coalition's Acushnet River restoration project, and how, through dam removal, riverbank restoration and invasive plant management, the river's herring population has increased dramatically. She also detailed how a derelict lumber yard and abandoned industrial complex have been transformed into a 19-acre park that will open to the public this summer.

Evaluating the economic cost of regulation can be tricky, though, as there have been few studies that have examined the issue in depth after regulations have been imposed. Some economists have claimed that various regulations designed to protect the environment, such as the federal Clean Air Act, have resulted in far lower costs and job losses than initially feared.

Reams of research, however, show that environmental regulations reduce infant mortality, decrease hospitalizations and increase real-estate values.

Healthy ecosystems, and the biodiversity that thrives within them, protect water, soil and air quality, ensure food security and provide flood protection. The pressures of economic growth since the Industrial Revolution, however, have stressed the health of vital ecosystems and cost U.S. taxpayers plenty, in the form of Superfund cleanups, flood damage, and health-care costs associated with lead poisoning and rising asthma rates.

Southern New England, however, continues to view the economy and the environment as separate issues. In her fiscal 2016 budget announced in March, Gov. Raimondo said it was developed around three guiding principles: build, attract, innovate.

Twin River Casino in Lincoln, R.I., has some 12 acres of parking. The casino paved over more than 2 acres of a field at the edge of a wetland without town or state approval. No punishment was levied.

Protection of the environment and economic development are largely viewed as competing aims, as if they are mutually exclusive and operate in a vacuum. Through that dull prism, it’s easy to see why economic growth has been upstaging environmental protection and public health for centuries.

Jesse Rye, co-executive director of Farm Fresh Rhode Island, calls this the “extractive economy.” “The take, take, taking of natural resources,” he said.

The Roman Empire clear-cut forests for fuel and housing, which eventually forced it to build its cities to take advantage of passive solar energy. In fact, this pattern of woodland obliteration to fuel economic development left much of England, France and Germany barren of forest by the early 1600s.

The switch to coal and other fossil fuels began the pattern of profits over protection. Chemical processing helped advance economic growth, but it also negatively impacted public health.

Hydraulic fracturing and tar-sands oil are now helping to fuel economic growth, while their environmental and public-health impacts are largely ignored or dismissed. It’s an-all-to-familiar pattern: shareholders profit, the environment suffers, and the public pays.

Powering our way of life comes with consequences — public-health concerns, social injustices and environmental damages. But that doesn't mean we should frack first and let others, after those who profited from the damage walk away, deal with the fallout. It doesn't mean we should continue mountaintop-removal mining at the expense of vital waterways and public health, especially when other energy alternatives are available.

An energy portfolio that actually encourages and supports the use of renewables and a power grid that can better harness this energy would help lessen the impact of mankind’s voracious appetite for power. But we continue to allow those who profit from fossil fuels to have most of the power.

Despite significant scientific evidence about the threats posed by increased greenhouse-gas emissions and the impacts of a changing climate, such as sea-level rise, many business groups and lawmakers continue to clamor for the dismantling of laws designed to protect the environment and call for the neutering of the EPA and state regulatory agencies.

The energy industry fights to reclassify mine waste as “fill” so contaminated material can be legally dumped into rivers and streams. Developers regularly call for less restrictions on where they can build.

Driving these efforts is the claim that four-plus decades of environmental regulations have strangled the U.S. economy and undermined economic competitiveness. Countless sets of facts and figures, however, tell a different story. In fact, the political machine, special interests and the wealthy "job creators" doing most of the current complaining have gained plenty since Richard Nixon made protecting the environment a priority.

For example, average compensation for the chief executive officers of the top 350 U.S. firms was $15.2 million in 2013, up 2.8 percent since 2012 and up 21.7 percent since 2010, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

Also, according to EPI, from 1978 to 2013, CEO compensation, adjusted for inflation, increased 937 percent — more than double stock-market growth and substantially greater than the 10.2 percent growth in a typical worker’s compensation over the same 35 years.

In 1965, five years before Nixon created the EPA, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 20 to 1, and by 1978 it was 29.9 to 1. In 2013, the ratio was 295.9 to 1, according to EPI.

Also, according to the nonpartisan think tank, the number of U.S. congressional districts in which trade with China has produced more jobs than it has cost is one, out of 435.

At the close of 1970, the year the EPA was created, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 838.92. Today, that key indicator of economic growth has grown more than 20-fold despite increased measures to better protect the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soil that grows our food.

In the 1970s, the decade the EPA was created, the top 0.1 percent of the wealthiest Americans held 7 percent of the nation’s wealth. Today, nearly five decades after environmental protections were made a priority, the 100 wealthiest U.S. families have as much wealth as the 80 million families who make up the bottom 50 percent in wealth, according to a story in the March 29 Boston Sunday Globe.

In fact, since the United States began better protecting the environment and public health, largely through regulation, corporate profits have soared.

In a March 2014 Gallup Poll Social Series survey on the environment, Americans said the environment is a priority over economic growth by a 50-percent-to-41-percent margin. In the 30 years that Gallup has asked this question, Americans have almost always chosen the environment over economic growth as a priority.

It's time the health of the planet and its many interconnected inhabitants take precedence over greed and fabricated fear. But how do we deconstruct a broken, centuries-old economic model? By thinking differently and embracing change.

Southern New England’s wildlife populations, such as this great egret, generate millions annually in local revenue from birdwatchers and sportsmen. (Ed Hughes/for the Audubon Society of R.I.)

Sustainable approach The escalating demand being placed on the planet’s natural resources by 7 billion and counting people — a million more are added every four and a half days — has made it imperative that we manage nature’s generosity better.

Sustainable economic development turns the model of short-term profits over long-term public and environmental health upside down. Protection of natural resources and human health are the priority, with economic development approved as long as it doesn’t degrade either of those preferences. If it does, the business and/or industry is substantially taxed or fined.

Healthy ecosystems are immensely valuable, because they are inextricably tied to human survival. Healthy habitats also provide recreation, tourism and business opportunities, such as bicycling, fishing, hiking, swimming, surfing, birding and boating.

Rhode Island’s wildlife populations generate about $130 million annually from sportsmen (hunting), birdwatchers and other wildlife observers. The director of the state Department of Environmental Management (DEM), Janet Coit, told those who attended the Southern New England Recreational Fishing Symposium in late March that the recreational fishing industry alone brings Rhode Island $200 million in revenue annually.

"This industry is a real economic driver, and is growing its importance economically," Coit said. "We need to be innovative and smart when it comes to this ecosystem. We want our children and grandchildren to be able to go fishing in the future."

Southern New England's fisheries, however, are feeling the pressures of a changing climate, global overfishing, and pollution from stormwater runoff, wastewater discharges and the overuse of nitrogen-rich fertilizers.

Rhode Island’s lobster fishery could disappear by the end of the next decade, according to some projections. Overfishing alone doesn’t account for the local decline in winter flounder; warming waters also have played a big part.

So what is a protected environment worth? Many would likely argue that it’s priceless, but in reality that question is rarely given much thought. In the quest for economic growth, most accounting practices leave the environment shortchanged.

Property rights enable owners — and those who lease public land from state or federal government — to produce goods (subsidized crops, oil, natural gas) and services (cattle grazing) to sell, often for a considerable profit.

There are, however, few property rights for natural resources such as water and air, so they have been used — and often abused — for free as receptacles of the waste created by economic growth. And since there is no market for maintaining biodiversity, economic development decisions regarding, say, land use are unlikely to account for the considerable public health and environmental benefits that vibrant ecosystems provide.

Environmental regulations are typically designed to prevent, reduce or at least better manage abuses against the environment and public health.

The management of pollution and waste from economic development has improved significantly in the past century, thanks in large part to regulations that require compliance and spur innovation. A century of regulations also has improved working conditions and public health.

Gina McCarthy, the nation’s top environmental official, has said environmental protection is good for the economy and creates jobs. The EPA administrator has repeatedly dismissed the claim that environmental regulations restrain economic growth.

The Boston native and former commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection has cited stricter fuel-economy standards set in 2011 for auto manufacturers as an example, noting car makers responded by increasing miles-per-gallon averages, which lowered carbon emissions and made their products more attractive to consumers still dealing with the economic fallout of 2007-08.

McCarthy has cited statistics dating back to the early years of the EPA that demonstrate environmental regulations and economic development can be achieved simultaneously. Emissions of harmful air pollutants have dropped nearly 70 percent since 1970, according to McCarthy. In that time, national economic growth has exceeded 200 percent.

This flipped-upside-down economic model would feature policies that call for sustainable practices, reduced energy use, the efficient use of resources and a fairer distribution of wealth, according to its advocates. They say a sustainable economy focuses on eradicating poverty, educational empowerment and environmental protection

Four of southern New England’s greatest economic assets are Narragansett Bay, Cape Cod Bay, Buzzards Bay and Long Island Sound. Many industries, from fishing, both commercial and recreational, to tourism, would suffer greatly if these vital ecosystems were damaged.Several estimates suggest that the total value of the natural resources of the Narragansett Bay watershed — about 60 percent of which is in Massachusetts —  exceeds several billion dollars annually, according to a 2003 University of Rhode Island study.

Some 12 million people visit Narragansett Bay annually to fish, swim, surf and sun. Many of those visitors also shop and dine locally. In the late 1990s, the Ocean State’s tourism industry was second only to health services in terms of total wages, and 30 percent of that tourism was associated with amenity-based uses of Narragansett Bay, according to a 2008 study funded by the EPA.

Narragansett Bay also is commercially important for the shellfish industry. An estimated 15 percent of Rhode Island’s total lobster landings are caught in the bay, according to that 2008 report. In addition, the state’s quahog fishery is contained mostly within Narragansett Bay, with an average value of about $7.5 million annually.

But the environmental degradation of Narragansett Bay caused by the pursuit of economic growth has lessened the economic value of this natural resource. For example, eelgrass beds are a critical habitat for bay scallops, and Narragansett Bay once supported a large bay scallop fishery. In 1880, more than 300,000 bushels of bay scallops were harvested from Narragansett Bay, a quantity that would be worth some $33 million today, according to the EPA study.

By 2003, however, bay scallop landings in Narragansett Bay were largely nonexistent. The loss of this fishery can be traced to the loss of eelgrass beds — wiped out by disease, pollution and coastal development. Recovery has been slow.

In fact, thanks in large part to the byproducts of economic growth, the Rhode Island commercial fishery has been forced to move offshore. With the exception of the quahog and small lobster fisheries, Narragansett Bay no longer supports a major commercial fishery.

Recreational fishing attracts some 300,000 anglers annually to the Ocean State and is a major part of the state’s tourism industry. The historical abuse of the bay’s watershed, though, now requires fish consumption advisories, which are issued based on the level of contaminants detected in fish tissue. PCB advisories have been in effect since the early 1990s; mercury advisories were first issued a decade later.

The natural resources within the Long Island Sound basin are worth billions. (Earth Economics)

“From the far western end of Long Island Sound east to Narragansett Bay, twin scourges plague our region’s waters: bacterial pollution and nitrogen poisoning,” Curt Johnson, executive director of Save the Sound, said earlier this year when his organization and Providence-based Save The Bay submitted comments to the EPA regarding polluted stormwater runoff from Massachusetts. “The coastal waters where we swim, fish and boat provide huge environmental and economic benefits for our region, and we must join together to protect them.”

The natural capital provided annually by the Long Island Sound basin, which stretches to the northern tip of New Hampshire, is between $17 billion and $37 billion, according to a study released this year.

There are some 135 industries, such as shellfish farming, wind power and nature parks, that depend directly on the basin’s natural capital. The 84-page study entitled “The Trillion Dollar Asset: Economic Valuation of the Long Island Sound Basin” found that about $5.2 billion in direct wages and some 190,000 jobs depend on the natural resources of Long Island Sound and its basin.

Cape Cod Bay contributes a minimum of $1.5 billion a year to the region’s economy, according to a 2012 study. The tourism and fishing industries supported by the bay — designated as a state ocean sanctuary in 1970 — are dependent on good water quality and the protection of coastal and marine habitats.

In surveys of tourists in coastal areas, 65 percent identified clean water and clean beaches as the most important factors for an enjoyable vacation, according to the 52-page report.

At least 20 percent of visitors to Massachusetts visit Cape Cod and the Islands, the second-most visited destination after Boston, according to a 2011 report by the Cape Cod Commission. The report notes that the Cape’s myriad coastal ecosystems, especially its beaches and water quality, are the foundation of the region’s tourism industry.

In 2009 alone, domestic tourists generated about $65 million in local tax receipts for Barnstable and Plymouth counties, according to the U.S. Travel Association.

Besides protecting these four natural and cultural assets from the byproducts of economic development, environmental regulations also protect countless businesses and jobs in southern New England.

In fact, environmental protection is no less an industry than, say, the manufacturing of costume jewelry. That industry dominated the 25-block Jewelry District in Providence well into the 1980s, creating jobs — some 32,500 at its peak in 1976 — and also polluting the Providence River with heavy metals and toxins. Most of those jobs are long gone, and much of the pollution remains.

The wetlands, forests, open space and estuaries within the Narragansett Bay, Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay watersheds and the Long Island Sound basin aren’t fleeting investments, and they don’t depreciate in value like costume jewelry and video games. Strategic and diversified investment in natural capital is a sound risk-management strategy against climatic, social and economic volatility, according to the authors of the Long Island Sound study.

To create a sustainable economy in southern New England will require better use of the region’s strengths — natural resources, aquaculture, intellectual capital, innovation and locally sourced food. It certainly isn’t about quick fixes, gambling on casinos, endless development and tax breaks for corporations that hide their profits in overseas tax havens.

Providence was named a top food city in 2012 by Travel + Leisure, and last year Boston was named one of the 10 best foodie cities by Livability.com. There are more than 50 aquaculture farms, with nearly 180 acres, in Rhode Island alone. In 2013, the value of Rhode Island aquaculture products for consumption was $4.2 million, an increase of 49 percent from the previous year, according to a Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) study.

A sustainable economy invests in maintaining its existing stock of natural and human-built capital — not, in say, building a second minor-league baseball stadium, complete with plenty of parking, that will create more stormwater runoff within the Narragansett Bay watershed. Stormwater runoff is the largest single source of pollution of U.S. bays and freshwater ecosystems.

The Compost Plant, a Providence-based business created by Leo Pollock, left, and Nat Harris, picks up commercial food scrap from restaurants and schools. (Joanna Detz/ecoRI News)

Building a better economy Building a sustainable economy for southern New England means accounting for climate-change impacts, investing in communities, and building local partnerships and regional networks.

It means making better use of the waterfronts in Fall River, New Bedford and Providence. It means enforcing environmental regulations, and not allowing, for example, a Providence scrap-metals recycler, which began operating without proper permits in 2009, to pollute upper Narragansett Bay for five years. The mess this illegal operation could potentially leave behind could cost taxpayers millions to clean.

It means making the funding of public transportation a priority. It means better maintaining public infrastructure. It means embracing ideas that better connect the region’s many strengths, such as local food, the technology sector and the outdoors.

In fact, there are those who believe a more vibrant local food scene would make the region more attractive to business professionals, students and tourists.

“People want a high quality of life and food is s big part of that,” said Leo Pollock, network coordinator for the Rhode Island Food Policy Council. “We already have a strong food culture here, and there is momentum to build on.”

The Providence resident also said jobs associated with greater production and distribution of local food could be the region’s new “manufacturing” workforce.

“There’s a lot of high-paying tech and medical jobs here, and they are important, but local food could help support low- to middle-wage jobs — the base Rhode Island lost when manufacturing left,” Pollock said. “That’s still an important job base.”

In the past few years, Wholesome Wave, a Bridgeport, Conn.-based organization, has helped strengthen this sector by coordinating some $4 million in investment in local food infrastructure.

The organization worked with Farm Fresh Rhode Island to secure a $100,000 loan with a philanthropic guaranty in order to expand cooler space and support working capital. With this additional space and money, Farm Fresh has increased sales of local and regional foods, supporting farmer incomes and spurring local job creation.

Wholesome Wave helped Red’s Best, a Massachusetts-based “fish hub” that buys catch from small New England boats, secure and structure a multimillion-dollar line of credit that allowed the business to expand its capacity, serve new markets and create new jobs.

The organization also worked with the Dorchester Bay Development Corporation to secure public-private financing for redeveloping an old factory into a food enterprise hub. The building is being converted into a commercial kitchen and food-processing facility managed by Crop Circle Kitchen, a nonprofit that provides business development services and food-safe rental space to Boston-based food businesses.

Lisa Raiola, the founder and visionary behind Rhode Island’s new culinary incubator, Hope & Main, has offered the idea using some of Providence’s reclaimed I-195 land to build a vertical farm.

“It would be model for all of New England,” she has said. “It would be an urban living space with agriculture. It would attract funding and tourism. Everyone would see it from the highway — a living-learning experiment that could be the future of local food.”

David Dadekian, founder of EatDrink RI and the recipient of a $300,000 Rhode Island Foundation Innovation Fellowship last year, wants to create a year-round marketplace in Providence that would be similar to Quincy Market in Boston, Pike Place Market in Seattle or Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia.

Simply encouraging and supporting the use of what already exists — like using the region’s rooftops to grow more food, house aquaponic systems and capture more rays — would make southern New England’s economy more sustainable.

“There’s this mindset that we have to attract new things,” said Rye of Farm Fresh. “Why can’t we focus on what we have here and make that stronger?"

Frank Carini: Protect the environment and boost economy

All of us would like to live in a world where people always do the right thing — without anybody looking over their shoulder. But that world doesn’t exist and never will. So every society on our planet has penalties. You break the rules, you pay a price.

But penalties only work if the wrongdoer feels that price. A ridiculously tiny penalty amounts to no penalty at all.

Take traffic fines, for instance.

Most of us obey our traffic laws. We know these laws help keep our roads — and communities — safe. We also know that if we slip up and speed, we could end upstaring at a $150 ticket. If we slip up again, we could be talking really serious pain.

But not really serious pain for everyone. In today’s deeply unequal United States, some people — extremely rich people — have no reason to worry about traffic citations. If you’re pulling down $1 million a month, a couple hundred dollars for a traffic ticket won’t even register.

Billionaire Apple CEO Steve Jobs, his biographer Walter Isaacson relates, used to brazenly park in handicapped spaces and motor around without license plates. He “acted as if he were not subject” to the rules the rest of us face.

And why should any of our billionaires think different? If they break the rules, they face no real penalty. The rest of us can only hope they choose to do the right thing.

But what if traffic fines varied by income? In Finland — and a host of other nations, from Denmark to Switzerland — they actually do. “Sliding fee” fines in these nations give people with deep pockets reason to think twice before they speed or otherwise trample on community safety norms.

One Finnish businessman recently had to pay a 54,000-euro fine — the equivalent of over $58,000 — after police caught him going 65 in a 50 zone. That speeder’s income? Just over $7 million a year. Tickets in Finland have on occasion even topped $100,000.

Might the time be ripe for similar sliding-scale fees in the United States? Some of our localities have actually experimented along that line, and one person involved in those experiments back in the 1980s — Judith Greene of the nonprofit Justice Strategies — thinks we should try again.

Why? Greene points to the protests that followed last year’s deadly police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.

In addition to police violence, those protests have helped to spotlight how local governments all across the United States are routinely gouging poor people for minor offenses. In jurisdictions like Ferguson, municipal officials have been squeezing the poor to fill their city coffers.

This squeezing, a U.S. Justice Department report earlier this year revealed, can become incredibly oppressive. The authorities in Ferguson hit one local woman with a $151 fine for two parking tickets. She couldn’t afford to pay the fine immediately. That triggered more penalties. The woman eventually paid $550 in fines and still owed — seven years later — another $541.

For cities, that’s easy — and irresistible — money. In 2011, Ferguson officials collected $1.38 million of the city’s $11.07 million in general revenue from fines and additional penalty fees. By last year, the city was budgeting to collect nearly twice that amount, $2.63 million, from municipal court fines and fees.

Ambitious revenue targets have local officials going after drivers and pedestrians alike. In Ferguson, U.S. Justice Department investigators found, a “manner of walking” violation can bring a $302 fine.

This constant preying on the poor breeds an intense and understandable community frustration. At some point, as we saw last summer in Ferguson, the frustration combusts into tragedy.

So what can we do? One small step: Instead of gouging the poor, let’s make like the Finns. Let’s make our penalties proportionate to economic circumstance. Let’s make sure our penalties amount to penalties for everyone, even if they’re rich.

OtherWords columnist Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, edits the inequality monthly Too Much. His latest book is The Rich Don’t Always Win.OtherWords.org.

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Summer and water

"Blue Portal'' (painting), by ERIC ZENER, in his show at Lanoue Gallery, Boston.

Unwanted visitor

 

"A Shrine for You'' (oil on canvas), by LIZ GARGAS,  via New Art Center, Newton, Mass.

This picture was incorrectly captioned/attributed in its first posting. This is the corrected caption.

Peter Baker: Fish council ignores habitat needs

The New England Fishery Management Council recently dealt a serious blow to the region’s ocean health with a vote to sharply reduce the amount of seafloor set aside to protect marine habitat for fish.

If approved, the measure would remove protections for more than 5,400 square miles — an area the size of Connecticut — and open the habitat to damaging forms of bottom-trawl fishing and scallop dredging. The final decision rests with the National Marine Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA Fisheries), whose officials should reject this risky action.

Over a decade in the making, the council’s Omnibus Habitat Amendment was meant to identify and protect essential fish habitat for all species managed by the council, in accordance with the law. Like all animals, fish need places where they can find food and shelter and reproduce. As I like to say, habitat is where fish make more fish, and New England needs more fish.

The region’s cod population has crashed to a historic low because of decades of overfishing and, more recently, the effects of warming waters stemming from a changing climate. New England is home to more overfished species than any other fishing region in the nation, largely as a result of risky management decisions that have undermined sustainability. The situation became so dire that New England’s fishery for cod and other bottom-dwelling fish was declared a federal disaster in 2012, and taxpayers have funded hundreds of millions of dollars in relief aid for fishermen.

Last December, some 140 noted marine scientists wrote to the council urging more habitat protection, to help recover depleted populations and make those fish more resilient to the stress brought by climate change. When the council’s omnibus amendment was open for public comment, more than 150,000 people spoke up for habitat protection. Unfortunately, the council rejected both scientific advice and public opinion in favor of short- term economic gains for the fishing and seafood-processing industries.

The numbers are striking. The council has voted to slash currently protected areas by about 60 percent throughout the region. East of Cape Cod on Georges Bank, the historically rich fishing grounds where cod and other fish are known to spawn and seek shelter, 81 percent of the areas closed to damaging fishing gear would be reopened.

Some of these closed areas have been in place for more than 20 years, and a large body of science documents their value as fish habitat. Closed areas in the Gulf of Maine are known to shelter some of the last remaining old female cod, which are crucial to the reproductive capacity of the population and the species’ ability to rebound in numbers. But the council’s vote would cut protections in the Gulf of Maine by nearly 15 percent.

The council’s habitat amendment also fails to adequately address the spawning areas where fish aggregate seasonally. The council ignored many of the spawning “hot spots” scientists had mapped out for a variety of species. Even the small closures the council left in place still allow many kinds of destructive fishing, including clam dredges, gill nets and giant mid-water trawl vessels. In addition to killing fish, these types of gear disrupt spawning behavior, dispersing aggregations of fish.

Further, the council did little to ensure an adequate supply of the prey animals that fish need for food. For example, it entirely ignored Atlantic herring in the decisions on spawning and habitat protection. These forage fish, which play a vital role in the ecosystem, are another essential element of healthy habitat as defined by both scientists and the law.

The  Northeast regional administrator  for  NOAA Fisheries,  John Bullard, took note of these many inadequacies as the habitat plan was nearing completion. In a sharply worded letter in April, Bullard warned that the council had “not made use of the best available scientific information” and might “reverse 20 years of habitat protection and recovery.” He concluded that the habitat amendment would probably not meet legal requirements without some major improvements.

The council didn’t heed his warning. As the members prepared for the final roll call vote on June 16, the person who had worked most closely on the habitat amendment throughout its long development, Rhode Island council member Dave Preble, offered a telling comment.

“This council has purposely ignored the science and produced an amendment that is indefensible,” he said. “If you want to have big fish, you have to feed and protect the small fish.”

The amendment will now go to NOAA Fisheries for consideration. I hope that the agency will reject it and send it back to the council demanding a habitat plan guided by science and the public interest. New England’s fish and fishing communities deserve better than what the council is offering.

Peter Baker directs ocean conservation in the Northeast for The Pew Charitable Trusts.

A matter of definition

 

And dinner at eight

"Ruby and the Fox,'' by KOLLABS, at Lanoue Gallery, Boston.

Sarah Browning: Crime against humanity sent me to Harvard

When I say publicly that I’m descended from slave owners, I almost always hear a gasp. I let the tension hang a moment and then I break it: “Well, someone has to be, right?”

This usually gets a laugh, or at least a humph of recognition. Because many of us white Americans are desperate to disassociate ourselves from one of the founding horrors of our nation’s history: slavery.

“My family didn’t arrive until after the Civil War,” some say. Or, “We were dirt poor.” Or Northerners. And who can blame them? It’s a profoundly shameful history.

But if we don’t face that history squarely — and acknowledge the ways it still distorts the structure of our society today — we’ll be incapable of undoing its legacy. White people will continue to believe that the extreme race-based wealth gap in this country has other causes — that they somehow deserve advantages denied to others based on their skin color.

So let me say it plainly: The unpaid labor of black people sent me to Harvard.

My great-grandfather was born into a slave-owning family in Virginia’s Rappahannock County during the Civil War. Like most Americans who enslaved people, his family held onto their land and barely compensated the freed black workers who stayed on after the war ended.

By the time my grandfather turned 25 or so, around 1915, his father was able to buy him a farm in Culpeper, in central Virginia’s fertile Piedmont region.

In the 1940s, my granddaddy started a real estate business. He bought up land surrounding Culpeper and put it into a trust for his grandchildren’s education. When it was my turn to go to college, my land was sold for a bowling alley and a Baptist church, covering most of my tuition.

My grandfather worked incredibly hard all his life, but he had an enormous leg up compared to his black neighbors and employees — land he’d been given by his father. And I inherited that advantage when I got a top-notch education at private schools and then attended an Ivy League university.

My story illustrates how the concentration of wealth in the hands of some folks and not others is perpetuated.

Of course, all white Americans benefit from the privileges accorded to us solely by dint of our skin color.

Even if your family came long after the Civil War, you can walk into a store and not be followed on suspicion of shoplifting. People won’t choose to move away if you buy a house in their neighborhood. You don’t worry every day that your son could be gunned down by the police.

It’s grown harder to ignore how our black sisters and brothers are denied basic rights we whites take for granted every day. We witnessed the murders of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner. We saw a white police officer violently subdue black teenagers at a McKinney, Texas, pool party.

And, motivated by an ideology of hate, a white man in Charleston, S.C., murdered nine black churchgoers in a horrific terrorist attack — in a state that still flies the flag of slavery in its capital.

How do we begin to dismantle this oppressive system? Part of this process must be a reckoning, a truth-telling about how we arrived at this state of radical inequality. During this 150^th anniversary of the Civil War’s end, let’s examine our history since that time. Let’s set ourselves on a new path, one that begins to make amends.

At the very least, let’s be honest with one another: My great-great grandparents may have taken your ancestors and held them as their property. It was a crime against humanity.

Sarah Browning is executive director of Split This Rock (splitthisrock.org) and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. This piece originated on otherwords.org.

Curtail Chinese studying here?

With the relentless cyber-war against the U.S. being waged by China, we may have to sharply restrict the number of Chinese students allowed to come to U.S. universities to study science and engineering. They then  take back to their police state God knows what information, contacts and technology to be used against us. --- Robert Whitcomb

Chris Powell: State taxes illness

  Get sick enough to go to the hospital in Connecticut and you inevitably fall into a web of political deception and corruption.

It's not just the cost-shifting and concealment that government long has imposed by requiring hospitals to treat the indigent for free, recovering those costs by charging more to paying patients and their insurers, a policy that taxes serious illness and converts hospitals into tax collectors.

In recent years the scheme has grown. Lately state government has been taxing hospitals directly. At first this taxation of hospitals was undertaken in the name of obtaining higher medical reimbursements from the federal government, reimbursements that were to be passed along to the hospitals themselves.

But then state government started keeping the reimbursements for itself, spending the money on other things. Thus the hidden state tax on serious illness grew and, with it, the function of hospitals as tax collectors.

So the public blames rising medical costs on hospitals and insurance companies, not the sneaky elected officials also responsible. State government long has used a similarly dishonest system with electric utilities, requiring them to provide service to the indigent for free and to recover the expense by charging paying customers extra. This policy drives up electricity bills and turns utilities into tax collectors as well, but again elected officials escape the blame; instead it falls on the utilities.

Some state legislators seem to have noticed such policy only recently, but at a General Assembly hearing in February, Gov. Dan Malloy's budget director, Ben Barnes, was remarkably candid about it. Asked why state government is taxing hospitals, Barnes replied by quoting the career criminal Willie Sutton. When Sutton was asked why he robbed bank, he replied: “That's where the money is."

It's funny that Democrats who purport to sympathize with working people countenance secret sales taxes on the necessities of life. At least these taxes should be shown plainly on hospital and electric bills just as sales taxes are shown on other bills.

Of course, the Democrats' expressions of concern for working people are just for show. Their main concern is only to feed the machine of government, particularly to sustain the compensation of government's employees, their party’s base.

Hence Connecticut has not only gotten these secret taxes on serious illness and electricity but soon will have more gambling, on account of provisions in the state budget just passed by the Democratic majorities in the General Assembly - "satellite" casinos to divert the state's gamblers from new casinos out of state, and the casino game keno, to be installed on computer terminals in bars, more mechanisms for taxing the working class and poor.

Still, state government isn't the only one exploiting hospitals. They also are being exploited by their own executives, who claim salaries in the hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars.

While Hartford Hospital has begun laying off hundreds of employees at its facilities around the state, Journal Inquirer Staff Writer Don Michak reports that the hospital recently paid bonuses ranging from $45,000 to $498,000 to 16 executives who were already earning between $300,000 and $2.1 million a year.

Defending such salaries, hospitals say they need to compete for top talent in the market. But just as it is the biggest purchaser of higher education, government makes the market in medical care, too, and government could control excessive salaries in both college and hospital administration any time it wanted to by conditioning its purchases on salary restraint.

While the Malloy administration has injected itself into a hundred trivial things without ever managing to stop the collapse of state government's finances, it still hasn't gotten around to the excessive college and hospital executive salaries that state government pays for.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

John O. Harney: Scary times for small colleges

 

BOSTON It’s an especially bruising time for New England colleges and universities, which we now call higher education institutions (HEIs)—to cover all the new varieties and hybrids.

NEBHE has noted that the HEIs face threats based on shifts in academic content and delivery (increasingly online), student demography (diversifying but shrinking) and institutional finances (challenged). Plus, consider the parallel but contradictory forces of rising expectations and eroding public perceptions of higher education.

The news bulletins from the week of June 15 seemed to confirm a pattern of vulnerability that NEBHE has been tracking.

First, we learned of Marian Court College’s decision to close its Swampscott, Mass. campus. Some colleagues guessed the Catholic college’s seaside property would be reinvented as condos (maybe like Bradford College after it closed its Haverhill, Mass., campus in 2000). That would put the property on the tax rolls at least. Though perhaps better, it could be taken by eminent domain to help house needy people in the next community down the coast, Lynn. Swampscott, by the way, is the home of the Massachusetts governor, but eminent domain is a risky bet in New England (especially since New London, Conn., took homes to build an office park that never materialized).

Around the same time as the Marian Court news, The Boston Globe reported that Wheelock College wasfacing financial and faculty challenges. Vermont Public Radio noted Vermont Technical College’s deficit was shrinking “But It’s Still In The Red.”

To top it off, Maine’s Salt Institute for Documentary Studies announced it would close.

NEBHE had observed in the past that the HEIs best-positioned to survive would be the ones with “differentiated” missions. Like Salt’s.

These June announcements come on top a of a year’s worth of sky-is-falling reports about theUniversity of Southern Maine and Burlington College.

In light of the challenges, NEBHE and partners have posted a set of tools and resource dubbed theHigher Education Innovation Challenge (HEIC). Their goal is to transform higher education’s business model and pass the savings on to students. One aspect they have been vigilant about is so-called “tuition discounting.” When it’s based on need, it can help students afford college. But too much discounting, reason the partners, will violate the business model, sap the bottom line and, in the worst case, lead to more closings.

The HEIC includes an Institutional Indicators tool to help college and university presidents, CFOs, CAOs, faculty members and trustees assess key challenges facing their institution’s long-term financial sustainability.

The recent spate of bad news for HEIs suggest there is no time to waste.

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education, where this piece first ran and which is part of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org).

Shore art

"Lobster With Clams'' (oil), by VINCENT GIARRANO, in the "Realistically Speaking'' show at Susan Powell Fine Art, Madison, Conn., through July 6.