Big week coming
for candidate declarations
By
Will Collette
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| Filippi searches for ideas for new media stunts |
This
is the week where we find out who will run for election and re-election for
Charlestown municipal positions and for the one House seat and two state Senate
districts that cover Charlestown as all candidates must file their declarations
this week.
We’ve
heard there may be a number of changes in the town roster. Charlestown has been
so totally dominated by the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) that all
important decisions have already been made in secret, and official town
meetings are just a formality. That sucks the life out wanting to run, either
on the CCA Party ticket or in opposition.
The
likely lackluster municipal races will probably be overshadowed by livelier battles
for General Assembly seats.
We
also know that Charlestown’s one state Representative, our media whiz-kid Blake “Flip” Filippi, intends to run for re-election to represent District 36.
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| From the Charlestown Tax Assessor database |
The
big drama, I think, is seeing what town Flip gives as his home address and
whether it is in the 36th District. As we reported, Flip just bought a house in Charlestown which is listed on our tax
assessor’s database as owner occupied.
Flip
gave the Ethics Commission a post office box number on Block Island where he
has been registered to vote at one of his mother’s properties.
He has also
listed the family’s estate and cow farm in Lincoln as his residence on a broad
variety of official documents. CLICK HERE to see those documents
and CLICK HERE to see how Filippi accidentally
provided proof that dispute his claim
of being a life-long South County resident.
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| From Filippi's Ethics Commission filing this year. Last year, Filippi also gave it as 912 Champlin Road on Block Island |
Finally,
Filippi told Rhode Island’s Future editor Bob Plain that he was actually lives
in an apartment in Providence that is more convenient to his Providence law
office and the State House.
In
his first term as a state representative, the singular talent Filippi has
displayed is an uncanny ability to come up with positions guaranteed to get him
lots of media attention, such as his stunt to pull Rhode Island out of Eastern time zone and put us into the Atlantic time
zone along with Canada’s maritime provinces because Filippi thinks day-light
savings time is a problem.
Then
there was the stunt where he and his political mentor, Rep. Patricia Morgan,
held a news event to decry “fraud at the Department of Labor and Training.” But the
substance of their claim was that an auditor brought in by the Department had
found a security flaw that might have led to fraud, except the flaw was
detected.
Like lapdogs, the media reported the wild claim by Flip and Morgan,
but not that NO actual fraud had occurred, or that the problem had actually been
detected by DLT’s own initiative!
Here’s
another: if you think government and the courts aren’t hopelessly jammed, Flip
Filippi would have the state adopt yet another Constitutional amendment that would give each citizen the right to sue the state if that citizen thought the state was spending money unlawfully. This
is every wingnut’s dream!
Can
you just imagine how many lawsuits would be filed just in the first week if
such a hare-brained scheme were adopted? Of course, there’s nothing to fear
because this, like just about everything else Flip does was simply a media
stunt.
Like
most of Flip’s schemes, these stunts got Flip what he really wanted - lots of
coverage - but produced absolutely no results. Filippi is our own South
County-scale version of Donald Trump.
Filippi
is actually quite in demand for his ability to come up with media stunts. In
fact, he did training for his fellow Republicans (yeah, he claims to be
independent but caucuses Republican, donates to Republicans and was a
registered Republican) on how to come up with media “talking points!” (Click here and scroll down to item #8).
As you can see here, the Republicans treat him as
one of their own.
But
let’s take a look at his actual official announcement of his candidacy and give
it a dose of fact-checking.
Here
it is:
Block Island, R.I. – Independent (really?) State Representative Blake A. Filippi has announced that he will seek
re-election to the District 36 seat serving Block Island, Charlestown, South
Kingstown and Westerly. Now if only he actually lives in the district….
Filippi, an attorney, farmer and business-owner, currently
serves on the Committee on Judiciary, the Committee on Municipal Government,
the Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources, and as Vice-Chair of
the House Commission to Study Methods for Growing Tourism.
COMMENT: Wow, just wow, that Filippi can be a practicing
lawyer in Providence, a cattle rancher in Lincoln, a hotel/restaurant and real
estate tycoon on Block Island and a legislator on a bunch of committees and get
all of that done without tapping into a 55-gallon drum of methamphetamine.
On top of all that, he and his brother have plenty of time to
fight with his Block Island neighbors for licenses for late-night outdoor entertainment at their hotels.
How does he do it?
Here's the list of Filippi sources of income, real estate and businesses that Flip reported to the RI Ethics Commission:
Note that the above sworn statement does not include any income from the following:
Filippi declared that he “wants to continue to advocate for
South County values: an honest and strong business climate that rewards hard
work and not insider dealings, lean and clean government, environmental
preservation, local control of planning, and the protection of individual
liberty.”
COMMENT: South County values? How about how Flip decided that
the state salt-water fishing license was unconstitutional and sought to repeal
it even though every fisherman in South County told him they LIKE the state permits (cheaper than the federal ones)
and did NOT want him to try to repeal it. Flip said he was doing it to preserve
the state Constitutional guarantee to use of the beach.
However he and his brother flagrantly blocked a long-used public path to the beach next to one of their Block
Island hotels.
As for the protection of “personal liberty,” Filippi’s
activities include representing armed vigilantes like the Oath Keepers and opposing the state’s program to prevent cervical and other cancers though HPV vaccination.
But he did show up in Charlestown to wear a pink t-shirt for breast cancer awareness.
Said Filippi of this term’s highlights: “I advocated for the
successful passage and placement on the ballot of the proposed Constitutional
Amendment to reassert full Ethics Commission oversight of the General Assembly.
EXCEPT Filippi actually had NOTHING to do with its passage. It
was Sen. James Sheehan who was the acknowledged leader. Filippi’s legislative record
is practically devoid of actual achievement unless you count the several bills
he got enacted that allowed a non-clergy person to officiate at certain
weddings.
We also helped to protect our Westerly and Charlestown
neighbors by advancing landmark legislation to empower DEM to control fugitive
dust from Copar Quarry.
Who’s the “we”? Filippi’s bills failed so he took credit for
the bills that were actually sponsored and passed by Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy and Sen. Dennis Algiere. Filippi’s main “contribution” to the Copar fight was to
convince some of the Copar victims to hire him as their lawyer to wage yet another fruitless court battle.
Tax reductions for our seniors were realized in the last two
budgets.
And again, Filippi is taking credit for other legislators’
work. It was Rep. Bob Craven who won substantial reductions in state income tax for the
elderly.
I was a lead opposition voice to the RhodeWorks tolling
proposal and developed an alternative funding stream to fix our bridges with
tax dollars already in the budget. I stood for reduced costs to small business
and the elimination of the hated car tax.
No, Flip was not the leader of the failed opposition except
to show up at Republican Caucus news conferences.
His big “opposition” move was to introduce a Constitutional Amendment to ban car tolls that was nothing more than a
publicity stunt. If Filippi really cared, he would want to protect people's right to travel from one end of Rhode Island to the other on safe roads and
bridges?
I fought the abuse-ridden legislative grant program…
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| Filippi wanted to show his true colors at Charlestown's Memorial Day Parade. |
….and helped expose CommerceRI’s failed “Cooler and Warmer”
campaign
What, exactly did Flip do, other than show up for the cameras
at Rep. Pat Morgan’s news events? Well, maybe that's what he means by "helped."
We passed a critical bill to protect our privacy by requiring
law enforcement obtain a warrant before accessing our cell phone location data
-- with emergency exceptions.
Again, who is the “we?”
I also protected municipal sovereignty and opposed the
onslaught of bills to undermine local self-governance in zoning and planning
matters.”
He is referring to this year’s “Builder’s Bill” which passed.
He has been credited by the CCA for voting no. But last year, the first bill Filippi co-sponsored as a newbie legislator was another “Builder’s Bill” but on that subject, the CCA remained silent.
“I have always been just a cell phone call away – and hope to
continue working on behalf of our House District 36 for another two years,”
said Filippi in closing.
Yeah, he’s a regular Marvel superhero. Except
it’s really not a cell phone that lures him, but rather a TV camera, microphone or
reporter’s note pad, as Flip works on behalf of burnishing his credentials as a
politician in search of some higher office by stealing credit for someone else's work.