The Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation’s communication skills — or
lack of them — are baffling.
To hold up, for example, the release of a white paper on the proposed container port at Quonset Point was ill advised. The public clearly had a right to that information — as was pointed out by Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse. Withholding it even temporarily only made for unnecessary suspicion as to its contents.
We would have thought the EDC might have learned from the white paper episode. Apparently, it did not.
Last week, there was a mercury spill at the Quonset Point power plant and five employees who work in the same building did not learn of it for a couple of days.
EDC officials apparently did not want to alarm the workers — who don’t usually
work on the same floor as the spill — unnecessarily. But the workers should have
been notified immediately and left to decide for themselves whether to be alarmed.
Now, North Kingstown officials — including the town manager and fire chief —
are upset about the lack of urgency of information they received regarding the
mercury spill.
House Majority Whip Suzanne Henseler, a North Kingstown Democrat, has called the agency’s approach “arrogant.” Henseler may file legislation that would take the “quasi” out of EDC and bring it under the control of the executive branch.
It’s an idea worth considering.
