East Greenwich News

Rhode Island employers forced to lay off workers temporarily as a direct result of last weekend's flooding may be able to help their employees connect to unemployment insurance benefits sooner if the employers apply for a waiver with the Department of Labor and Training.

Rhode Island Law 28-44-14 waives the usual one-week waiting period for unemployment insurance if a worker's unemployment is caused by a natural disaster or state of emergency.

Also, employers whose storm-related property damage resulted in worker layoffs may be granted relief from related unemployment benefit charges if their businesses are deemed eligible under another weather related law, § 28-43-3. Under ordinary circumstances, employers are charged against their unemployment insurance account every time one of their employees draws on unemployment insurance.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Providence police say they are investigating as suspicious the death of a young man from Massachusetts whose body was pulled from a river this week.

Gregory Hart, a recent graduate of the University of

Massachusetts at Amherst, was last seen early Sunday morning in Providence, where he and friends had visited a nightclub.

A body preliminarily identified as Hart's was removed Tuesday from the Woonasquatucket  River. The state
medical examiner's office said Wednesday that it was performing an autopsy, and it did not yet know his cause of death.

His mother, Maryann Hart, tells The Providence Journal she can't function without her son and that nothing else seems important. She says she suspects foul play, though police are still investigating.

Hart was 23 and from Dedham, Mass.
      
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)
   

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A special Rhode Island legislative commission has endorsed a proposal to decriminalize the possession of one ounce or less of marijuana.

The commission voted on Tuesday to endorse a report recommending a more lax approach to having small quantities of the drug. The report said the state would save money and avoid unnecessary arrests through the law change.

Though few people are jailed for marijuana possession alone, current state law makes it a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum $500 fine and up to a year behind bars.

Senate spokesman Greg Pare said the commission voted 11-2 to approve the report.

The issue now goes to the full Senate.

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Revenue collections are outpacing estimates in Rhode Island so far in the current fiscal year.

Fiscal advisers for the House of Representatives released data this week showing that total tax revenues are nearly 18 percent ahead of estimates. Sales tax revenues, typically seen as an indicator of economic activity, are $16.3 million ahead of projections.

The figures could offer a glimmer of hope for the economy, along with last week's news that the unemployment rate in January had held steady rather than decline further.

Leonard Lardaro, a University of Rhode Island economist, says the numbers are not surprising since the economy could not stay in a "free fall" forever.

The figures are being presented to the House Finance Committee,
which can rewrite the governor's budget proposals.

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)