Filippi makes belated pitch for shoreline access bill
By
Will Collette
 |
| This fence across the beach is from the Block Island Times. The photo was taken by the Block Island Land Trust. Who put up this fence? It was BLAKE FILIPPI! |
The Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) published an open letter from Rep. Blake “Flip” Filippi where he makes the pitch to every reader to contact their state senator to ask them to save House Bill 8055. Flip is a co-sponsor for this bill which is about to die in the Senate after passing the House unanimously last week.
This letter is, as usual for Flip, too little, too late. Serious efforts to actually get legislation passed usually means you line up a sponsor in the other House – in this case the Senate – to expedite passage and you do that at the beginning of the process, not the very end.
Flip skipped that step and
having only a few days left in this General Assembly virtually dooms passage,
regardless of the merits of the bill.
Why
he didn’t ask Sen. Dennis Algiere (R-Westerly) or Sen. Sue Sosnowski (D-SK) to
co-sponsor a Senate bill?
As
for the merits, even the CCA understands that this bill only addresses “lateral
passage,” which is walking along the beach. It does nothing to resolve such
barriers to beach access as parking, lack of public access to the beach and
rigid enforcement by fake fire districts such as Shady Harbor and Central
Quonnie.
 |
| Here's Blake Filippi's Ballards blocking the access route to the beach using a dumpster and a car. The Block Island FD said that if they needed access they would take their equipment through Ballard's dining room unless Filippi removed this obstacle. Source: Block Island Times using photos from the Block Island Land Trust. Read the story HERE. |
These
abuses were documented in the Block Island Times HERE. The photos in this
article are from the Block Island Times.
Filippi
has been able to count on the CCA’s unqualified support even though he has
failed the town time and again. In fact, Flip’s entire tenure in the House has
been a monument to failure.
And
now the CCA gives Flip a platform to try to preserve his tattered reputation by
blaming the Senate when it is his own special brand of sloppy legislating that
is to blame for yet another betrayal of the public trust.
Here’s
what the CCA ran on its website:
Blake Filippi: “Act Now to Preserve Shoreline Access Rights”
Outside Source/Charlestown Rhode Island, Mailbox0 Comments
We
received the following message from Charlestown’s State Representative Blake
Filippi. Lateral access is guaranteed in the Rhode Island Constitution and
recent legislation to define where that access takes place unanimously passed
the RI House, but it is currently stalled in the RI Senate. The message below
explains how to contact your RI Senator.
Dear
Neighbors,
Our
legislative session is about to end and the Senate has not voted on House Bill
8055, a bill to preserve our constitutional shoreline access rights for future
generations.
The
current legal boundary separating the private upland beach from the public
waterside beach is the “mean high tide line” – which is the average of all
high-tides over an 18+ year period.
This
is an impossible standard that has led to much confusion and conflict, and in
many places, has rendered the public beach non-existent.
H8055
demarcates the new boundary between public and private beaches as the
recognizable high tide line, plus 6 feet. H8055 can be found by clicking
here: H8055.
The
House passed H8055 on June 2nd in a 65-0 vote. Now it is time for the Senate to
ACT!
Please
contact your Senator now and tell them it is time for an up or down vote! FIND YOUR SENATOR HERE.
Together
we can get H8055 across the finish line!
Thank
you,
Blake Filippi
