Projo Politics Blog

No sooner had one delegation of state lawmakers returned from the National Conference of State Legislatures’ annual meeting, in Boston, than another group was off to the Council of State Governments’ Eastern Regional Conference, in Quebec City.
The annual meeting brought together government officials from “the U.S. Northeast from Maine to Delaware, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as the legislative assemblies of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec,” according to the council’s Web site.
It included sessions on climate change implications for the Northeast; an update on the federal farm bill; sex offenders and public safety; gangs and violent crime; labor shortages in the health-care workforce; rail transportation in the Northeast; and U.S.-Canada relations, among other topics.
Four state senators — Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport; Rhoda E. Perry, D-Providence; Maryellen Goodwin, D-Providence; and Hanna M. Gallo, D-Cranston — and two state representatives — Peter F. Kilmartin, D-Pawtucket, and Robert B. Jacquard, D-Cranston — attended. The cost to the state was $1,800 per senator and $2,000 per representative, spokesmen for the respective chambers said. That amount includes the cost of car travel and a hotel stay for the four nights of the conference, which ran from Saturday to Wednesday last week.
Besides the legislative contingent, two other state officials attended. A.T. Wall, director of the Department of Corrections, attended the meeting on last Sunday and Monday of last week on his own time, at no cost to the state, said Jeff Neal, spokesman for the governor’s office. And Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch’s travel and hotel costs were covered by CSG because Lynch chaired a professional development session on ethics that Sunday.
-- By Elizabeth Gudrais, Journal State House bureau

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