Providence Mayor David Cicilline and Democratic state chairman Bill Lynch have answered the call of ambition and public service and started campaigns for the Kennedy seat. They are the first but not the last of
the political hopefuls who crave a spot in Congress. From the State House, Burrillville Rep. Ed Pacheo will run and Woonsocket State Rep. Jon Brien is considering it. The grandson of the late Sen. Claiborne Pell, Nick Pell, is interested. And there must be a place somewhere for a strong woman candidate, such as Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts, who doesn’t live in the district, or Rhode Island Senate president Teresa Paiva Weed, who does.

The race for 1st District Congress ramped up Saturday morning as veteran Democratic State Chairman William Lynch and Providence Mayor David Cicilline formally announced they would be candidates. Both candidates sent news releases announcing their candidacy and Cicilline did his first interview as a candidate with WRNI.

The seat is open due to incumbent Patrick Kennedy's decision to leave the House after 8 terms.

UPDATE: Not much of an answer?

The City's plan seems unlikely to mollify critics, as I should have noted in my initial post. That's because its Waterfront Protection Zone is well south of the Allens Avenue businesses that critics say are being endangered by the Cicilline administration's plans thereabout for mixed-use development.

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Adriene Southgate, the current Providence deputy city solicitor, will move up to the head the city's law department, Mayor David Cicilline announced today.

Southgate joined the Cicilline Administration in 2003 and has been the main legal counsel for city boards and commissions.  Previous to working for the city, Southgate was general counsel to the R.I. Public Utilities Commission and chief legal counsel for the R.I. Department of Environmental Management.

Providence Mayor David Cicilline today unveiled a revised city budget that will increase taxes by about 2 percent and represents a cut in expenditures of about 4 percent.

The $616 million budget includes a $25 million cut from last year's outlays. To balance the budget Cicilline has proposed an across-the-board cut in department budgets, a wage freeze for all union and non-union employees, a 20 percent health insurance co-pay for all non-union management employees and the elimination of 30 full-time city positions.

Neil Peirce, whose credits include being a former political editor of Congressional Quarterly, has followed the lead of some Providence residents in sharply criticizing the Obama administration's skipping of the recent US Conference of Mayors' annual meeting in Providence.

Miami Police Chief John Timoney, one of the officials who rose to Dean Esserman's post-no confidence defense during an impromptu news conference yesterday, was a central player during a Republican National Convention clash in 2000 that highlighted cities' growing attempts to curtail mass protests.

The Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 3, the union representing more than 400 Providence police officers has voted overwhemlingly to express "no confidence" in city Police Chief Dean Esserman. The vote tally was 303 supporting the no confidence resolution and 134 opposed, according to union president Ken Cohen, a retired police lieutenant.

A number of mayors from across the country flanked David Cicilline this afternoon during the opening news conference for the US Conference of Mayors' gathering in Providence. With Obama adminstration officials having scrapped their plans to attend, and with local firefighters demonstrating across the street from the Rhode Island Convention Center, the seeming intent was to convey a sense of unity and solidarity.

Some of the liberals around Providence who backed President Obama during his campaign last year are disappointed by how, in their view, the administration has cut and run in response to local firefighters' plans to protest their contract dispute with Mayor Cicilline this weekend.

In particular, some note that the protests are just that -- protests -- and not the pickets typical of an actual strike.