Listen Now

Iftikhar Ahmad. Mr. Ahmad is president and CEO of the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, a position he has held since late 2016. He oversees T.F. Green International Airport. Before that, Mr. Ahmad was director of aviation at Louis Armstrong International Airport since 2010. He previously worked for Houston’s Department of Aviation, the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority, the City of Dayton’s Department of Aviation and the New Orleans Aviation Board. He has master’s and bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering from Oklahoma State University. He was born in Peshawar Pakistan.

Sanzi talks about school choice, the damage done by teachers unions, Elizabeth Warren's hypocrisy, and her high hopes for Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green.

Blake Filippi talks taxes, doing business in Rhode Island, and the no-bid contract to IGT. 

Blake Filippi, Rhode Island’s House Minority Leader and perhaps the leading voice of the Republican Party in the state. Mr. Filippi was chosen by the House Republican Caucus as the Minority Leader in November 2018. First elected in November 2014, he has served three terms in office representing House District 36, which includes all of Block Island and Charlestown, and portions of Westerly and South Kingstown. A graduate of Lincoln High School, he received his Bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Arizona in 2003 and obtained his law degree in 2007 from the Rutgers University Camden School of Law.   He talked about why the House should not approve a no-bid, $1 billion, 20-year contract for IGT, about why Republicans do so poorly in Rhode Island, blasted the "evergreen" contract bill, and knocked Rhode Island economic development efforts.

The continued success of the Quonset Business Park is a testament to the broad range of businesses that call Quonset home, the support of the community and of our elected officials at the local, state and federal levels. The continued success of the Quonset Business Park in 2018 is a testament to the broad range of businesses that call Quonset home, the support of the community and of our elected officials at the local, state and federal levels. Steven King is the man tasked by the State of Rhode Island to oversee the whole thing. 

Our guest today is Marc Crisafulli, an executive vice president of Twin River Worldwide Holdings and president of Twin River’s Rhode Island operations. Before joining Twin River, he served as a global executive, a law firm managing partner and a public company general counsel. He was raised in Pawtucket and Providence. Twin River has been in a contentious battle with IGT over the governor’s deal for a no-bid, $1 billion, 20-year contract with IGT. Twin River is exceedingly important to Rhode Island government because its third greatest source of revenue is from gambling.

Robert Vincent is the chair of IGT Global Solutions Corporation and senior counsel to IGT Chief Executive Officer Marco Sala.Mr. Vincent is spearheading the attempt to secure no-bid, $1 billion contract, negotiated with Gov. Gina Raimondo, to provide Rhode Island's lottery services until 2043.

State Police Col. James Manni sat down with Editorial Pages editor, Edward Achorn, to discuss his recent appointment. In this wide-ranging interview, the head of the state police discusses everything from the department's relationship with I.C.E., whether standards have slipped in the department, and the recently released video of a state policeman assaulting a prisoner in a holding cell. 

State Rep. Patricia Serpa, D-West Warwick, has served in the House since 2006, most prominently as the chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight. From that post, she has looked into serious failures in the administration of state government, including the UHIP computer program, the failures of a company called MTM to transport patients, and most recently, the horrifying death of a child under the oversight of the state Department of Children, Youth and Families. Before becoming a state representative she served six years on the West Warwick School Committee and is a former public school teacher and administrator.

Angelica Infanté-Green, 48, is Rhode Island's new education commissioner. The daughter of Dominican immigrants, she grew up on public assistance, then became the first in her family to go to college. She started working as a teacher and rose to deputy commissioner in the New York state Department of Education. She speaks English and Spanish, and is raising her children to be bilingual. As the mother of a child with autism, she understands the challenges of special needs education.

Nicholas Mattiello, a Democrat from Cranston, has been House speaker since March 2014. In recent days he has been in the news as the state’s representatives weigh a nearly $10 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins on July 1.

Norman Birenbaum, 31, is the principal architect of Gov. Gina Raimondo’s proposal to legalize recreational marijuana use. He plays a leading role in coordinating the administration’s approach to cannabis policy, overseeing the regulation, administration and enforcement of the state’s medical marijuana and industrial hemp programs within the state Department of Business Regulation. His background is in Massachusetts Democratic politics. A native of Newton, Massachusetts, he was regional director of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s 2010 re-election and also served as regional director for U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Suzanne Cienki, of East Greenwich, was elected in a contentious battle this month to be Rhode Island’s new Republican Party chairman. She is a lawyer and a mother of five. She served on the town's School Committee from 2004 to 2008 and on its Town Council from 2014 to 2018.

Stefan Pryor, 47, is Rhode Island’s commerce secretary. A Yale-educated lawyer, he has served since 2015. Before that he was state education commissioner in Connecticut. He is the former deputy mayor and director of Economic and Housing Development in Newark, New Jersey, and the former president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

Michael Cerullo, of Exeter, is a licensed psychotherapist and a co-founder and registered lobbyist for the group What’s the Rush, Rhode Island?, which discusses issues associated with legalized marijuana. With Rhode Island weighing the legalization of recreational marijuana, he discusses some problematic areas the state should consider.

Timothy Babineau has been president and CEO of Lifespan for the six last years. A board-certified general surgeon, Dr. Babineau was president of Rhode Island Hospital before that. With nearly 15,000 employees, Lifespan is the largest private employer in Rhode Island. It includes three teaching hospitals of Brown University: Rhode Island Hospital with its Hasbro Children’s Hospital; the Miriam Hospital; and Bradley Hospital, which is the nation’s first psychiatric hospital for children. It also includes Newport Hospital and Gateway Healthcare.

Rhode Island’s miserable performance on standardized tests ought to wake up even the state’s fat and moribund education establishment. Results from Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System tests, released last week, showed that if Rhode Island were a single school district in Massachusetts, it would fall among the bottom 10 percent of its districts. Rich communities in Massachusetts far outperformed rich communities in Rhode Island. Poor communities in Massachusetts far outperformed poor communities in Rhode Island. But there were some interesting anomalies. They showed that Rhode Island’s poor performance is not a matter of indomitable fate. It is a question of caring. Blackstone Valley Prep Middle School, for example, which serves some of the poorest neighborhoods in the state along with suburban students, achieved the highest sixth-grade scores in math. The Learning Community in Central Falls also did well. Cumberland schools far outperformed Lincoln next door, while spending about $4,000 less per pupil. But the gem of the state — the greatest outlier — was Achievement First in Providence, a public charter school that serves many poor, minority and immigrant children, a huge percentage of them eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, a measure of poverty. Its Iluminar Mayoral Academy Elementary School, 70 percent of whose students are Hispanic, ranked as the top performer in the state — number one in English language arts (80 percent proficient) and number one in math (76 percent proficient). That’s right. It beat the suburban schools. The fourth-graders at the Achievement First Providence Mayoral Academy Elementary School topped the state by 5 percentage points in English and an astounding 34 percentage points in math.

Trista Piccola is the director of the Rhode Island Department of Children Youth and Families (DCYF). Ms. Piccola came here in 2017. Before that she had 20 years of experience as a protective services case manager in Ohio and was head of child welfare services in Cleveland.

Developer Jason Fane is seeking to build the Hope Point Tower in downtown Providence. It would be the tallest building in Rhode Island. Mr. Fane, 76, began his development career in Ithaca, New York, acquiring and operating student housing adjacent to Cornell University. More recently he has developed more than 300 apartments there from the ground up. Mr. Fane also developed a 47-story high-rise luxury condo building in Toronto. Development of the Chaz was completed in 2016 and created 526 brand-new housing units. In addition, he owns and operates multiple properties in New York City, predominantly in Upper Manhattan, and has begun development work in East Harlem, helping to transform vacant lots into modern residences.

Dan McKee, a Democrat, is the lieutenant governor of Rhode Island. He was elected to a second term in November. Before that, he was mayor of Cumberland and instrumental in creating the state's first mayoral academy.