University of Rhode Island economist Leonard Lardaro last week was fired from his non-paid job as the Rhode Island forecaster for a regional economic forecasting agency, apparently as a result of Lardaro’s comments in support of URI President Robert L. Carothers. Lardaro said he was told by the New England Economic Project (NEEP), which publishes regional economic forecasts twice a year, that he was being “removed as Rhode Island forecast managerthere was never any due process. There was nothing I could say.” The position was unpaid.
Yolanda Kodrzycki, NEEP president and an assistant vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, confirmed that Lardaro is being replaced, although she refused comment on most questions, and was evasive on others.
Beyond Cash Donations: How New Forms of Giving Are Transforming Not-for-Profit Accounting
Evolving Funding Landscape for Not-for-Profits Not-for-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less,…
Learn More
“He hasn’t been replaced,” Kodrzycki said. “I don’t have much to say. I value Len as a professional colleague. I wish him well.”
Pressed further, she said “NEEP is making alternative arrangements for the Rhode Island forecast, but we haven’t come to any decision.” She said she expected a decision “sometime before the spring forecast.”
Asked if there was any pressure from state officials to replace Lardaro, she refused comment.
The dismissal came only a few days after Lardaro was quoted extensively in support of Dr. Carothers and after his resignation from involvement in two state agencies as a protest over that treatment.
Lardaro resigned from the labor marketing committee of the state’s Human Resource Investment Council. He also said he would no longer prepare a monthly Current Conditions Index, which measures the state’s economic activity, from housing starts to job growth and was among the factors used by the state’s revenue estimating council to measure projected tax revenues.
Neither the CCI nor the Human Resource Council involvement are connected to NEEP.
Lardaro, when he resigned the two positions and commented on what he felt was improper treatment of Dr. Carothers, was clear that he was speaking for himself as a professor at the University of Rhode Island, and in no way as a representative of NEEP. He has been Rhode Island’s forecast manager at NEEP since 1991.
“They were very concerned I had become the news,” Lardaro said, referring to a telephone call he said he received from Kodrzycki.
Lardaro said he would still make his economic forecasts and find other methods to disseminate the information.
