they were not educated but they had different languages where the guys in lower east side new york did not have that. >> vincent buddy, jr. talks about his tenure as mayor ..

>> politics and pasta, how i prosecuted mobsters, rebuilt a dying city, dined with sinatra, spent five years in a federally-funded gated community and lived to tell the tale. [laughter] ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to present mayor vincent "buddy" cianci. [applause] mr. mayor. >> thank you, andrea. thank you very much. thank you. [applause] thank you all very much for coming. andrea, i've been -- you left an awful lot out in that introduction, i'll tell you. [laughter] okay, thank you. i've actually been introduced many different ways. the thing about introductions, i

remember being introduced one time. you know, i used to be mayor, and i stopped being mayor, and then i became mayor again, to be euphemistic about all of that. in 1990 i got reelected, and i'll never forget, before the inauguration but after the election, i was invite today go to a dinner, a lot of people were there. and i'll never forget walking in, and the person at the podium was excited to see me there. and he got on the microphone, and he said, oh, ladies and gentlemen, i want everyone to welcome the two-timing mayor of the city of providence, right? [laughter] i remember that one. and then i remember another time when, another time when i was mayor, i got a call from the white house. it was 1981, right after president reagan had won. and, um, and the call was about mr. william casey, bill casey, who was the head of the cia. and they said he was coming to brown university, and they wanted to know if i could pick

him up at the airport with a dean from brown, and if i could escort him through the city and take him to do his speaking and then drive him back to the airport. and so i said, yeah, i would do that. i didn't know -- i mean, i knew who he was, but i'd never met him before. so i dutifully got in the car, we used to have those big, long understood taker cars then. [laughter] looked like they were from a funeral home. so we dutifully went to the airport, we put the car on the tarmac, and we did that. about ten minutes later, the plane came in, and it was a white plane with no numbers on it, typical cia. the plane landed, and speaking about introductions, the gate came down, or the steps came down, and this guy had just had a skiing accident or something, and it was bill casey. and he was on a crutch, and he came down the stairs slowly. he got on the tarmac, and he looked at me and said, who are you? [laughter] and i said, and you're supposed to be the head of the cia.

[laughter] another time in 1980 i was running for governor, the only election i ever lost. i had a party, a birthday party at my house, it was a fundraiser. and henry kissinger was in town. so we made arrangements for him to come to the birthday party. and he came, and i was horned to have the -- honored to have the secretary of state in my home. so he came in the, and i introduced him. we had, i don't know, about a couple hundred people, and we had a tent in the backyard. i said, i'm honor today introduce a great peacemaker, unless, of course, you were a north vietnamese peasant. i'd like to introduce a great acad me decision, on and on. and then he got up to the microphone, and he said in his own voice, you know, no one can imitate him, i'll try.

he said, mayor, i don't know why you stopped, you were just getting in stride, you know? [laughter] and then there was some other embarrassing introductions. we used to share -- whoever the governor is, and i've been through a few of those, we would alternate the welcoming to the city of different conventions. and i'll never forget when i was far back, maybe '78 or '79, it was about 9:30 at night, it was probably my last stop. the at the marriott hotel. and we used to have these small conventions that would come in town like the basket weavers from idaho, whoever we could get to come in the. and they doesn't know who i was, but the mayor would come. so i'll never forget, i walked into the marriott, one of the smaller -- about 100 people, 150 people. i walked in, and they had a head table up on a riser. and i walked in, and they had -- the table was all set, you know, with all kinds of candle lab

rah, wine, everything. and when i put my foot up on the riser, the whole head table fell right down on the floor in front of me with all the dishes and food and everything. so i went up to the microphone, and i said, ladies and gentlemen -- they were all from, like, idaho or some place. i said, ladies and gentlemen, the mayor asked me to tell you he'll be 15 minutes late. [laughter] so those are some of the funny things that happened to me when i was mayor. and then the not so funny things happened. but i remember when i first got elected back in 1974, it was a democratic primary that really there were democrats fighting, and i was, i was a republican. and that was not, that was not a good word in those days. it's probably, some people don't think it's a good word now. but i was a republican in those days, eventually changed parties. but there was a fight going on, and i decided to run for office. and i did. and i won. and there was a -- before that,

i was a prosecutor. i was assistant attorney general, and we prosecuted raymond and all that whole crowd that was running a lot of the criminal activity in the city at that time. but i used to run the wiretaps for the state police, and i'll never forget, that was a lot of fun. and judge wise berger was the presiding judge in those days. and i remember i had to go, and every so often we'd have to secure the tapes. and we'd have to go to the hospital trust bank, and we had to unlock -- we had two keys, the safety deposit box, and we put tapes in there. i'll give you a flavor of up with of them. we were doing a bookmaking operation, and there was two girlfriends of two bookmakers on the phone, and they were talking because the wire was tapped. so one says, you know, my boyfriend says these wires might be tapped, they may be listening to us. and the other one says, oh, my boyfriend said don't worry about it because i know exactly what to do if they're listening.

what's that? she said, my boyfriend said when they come to see me, i'm supposed to tell 'em that i'm taking the fifth commandment which was -- [laughter] which i thought was kind of humorous. [laughter] then there was the, you know, there was -- i look at my may i don't recallties as three different types. the first time i was mayor, it was like being a social worker. we all know the story of the american city back in the 'ooh 50s and '60s, and the roads were built and veterans came home, and the federal government picked up every kind of mortgage, and who was left in the city, but elderly and increasing minorities. the downtown was dying, was in tough shape, so we wanted to rebuild it. first, in those days we were going through voluntary desegregation, that was tough, and also what was tough was the fact that the city was dead. you could take a bowling ball

and through it down westminster street, you wouldn't hurt a soul. that's tough when they want to sell bibles somewhere else. [laughter] and the first day that i was in office, i'll never forget getting a call from the parks department saying that the monkeys had escaped from the zoo. [laughter] and that was a trip. they're all monkeys running around the eighth ward down at washington's park. they said, what do you do when the monkeys escape? i said, i have no idea. they never taught me that in mayor school. do what you normally do. [laughter] we built a whole network of social delivery systems with all these different community centers that we built whether it was the da vinci center or federal hill house, we wanted to deliver those services. and then on top of that we also thought that we, also, the next part of the mayoralty was being a risk taker. and risk takers, we decided to invest a lot of money in the

infrastructure of tearing those railroad tracks down. and that wasn't original with me. they talked about tearing those railroad tracks down for years, a lot of years. but we tried to have the fortitude and get the political will by everybody concerned to get it done. and we did, and we were tearing those tracks down. we realized there was other money because waterways were transportation and that we could relocate the three rivers. of course, my friend solomon who was governor at the time, but he became governor later. when he became governor, we kind of dedicated water place park, but he thought the rivers were closed credit unions, you know? is. [laughter] and so we did that, and we were kind of, kind of risk takers. and then the third part of my mayoralty was being entrepreneurial because we decided that we would invest in the mall and the whole thing. but we used things like historic

preservation as an economic tool and the arts community because we created the first arts district in america that really, truly was an arts district because artists don't have to pay taxes if they live in that district. not on their income or anything they create. and that's in that whole district downtown. and that was replicated all over the country later. so those are the kinds of things we tried to do, build skating rinks. but mostly the challenge was trying to bridge the gap between being a mayor for everybody. and, you know, i'll never forget the very first appointment i had as mayor was, you know, the mayor's office in providence is a pretty nice place. of it's got a dining room, it has high ceilings, it has a fireplace, oriental rugs, gorgeous place. and even better after we restored it. the fact is, let me tell you something, in 1974 if i knew what it was really like to be mayor at that time, i probably

wouldn't have voted for myself because, because i didn't know enough to be mayor in 1974. i was a prosecutor. but i, you know, ran on all these wonderful promises, and i was going to be the most transparent, open mayor you could possibly find. and i was in this great office. and the first appointment was, i thought i was going to meet some, you know, philosopher or some great urban planner. and my first appointment was some guy named arthur rossi from silver lake. now, those of you not familiar with silver lake, there's no yacht club or lake, it's a teeming tenement, more or less. so he walks in, and the days of the -- 1975, this was. he walked in this beautiful office, and he sat down. and i knew he was there. i was naive, but not that naive to not know that he was coming there to get something. so he sat down on the chair, and he said, did i help you? i said, yes, you did. but following him in the office

was a little guy, a dwarf, a midget. he was about that big. he climbed up on the chair, folded his knees under him. and i said, yes, what can i do for you? he said, well, did i help you? i said, yes, you did. he said, well, without me, you wouldn't have carried the seventh ward. i said, probably not. he said, well, see him. i said, barely because in those days you could do that. there was no such thing as political correctness. taking care of the people that helped you, that was political correctness. [laughter] so he said, see him? i said, barely. he said, he's got to make a buck and a half a week. that was a lot of money in those days. i said, to do what? he said, i don't care, make him an inkwell on your desk. so i gave him a job, and fast forward the tape 25 years. 25 years later i'm sitting in the same office never expecting to be there, and the little person now -- by this time he'd become a little person -- comes

into the office, climbs up on the same chair, folds his legs, and he says to me, they're really screwing me, mayor. i said, who is? he said, the retirement board. i said, how? he said, i want my pension. i want my disability pension. i said, bobby, that's why we hired you, because you were disabled. why are you expecting a disability pension when you didn't get disabled on the job? but that's the mentality of everybody who works in the city. [laughter] so, so i don't know if you got it, i don't think you got it. but anyway, as time went on, we had a lot of fun. you know, we, you know, political parties by my definition are nothing more than a group of people organized for one purpose, to take over the government by nonviolent means. that's a political party. and i, you know, didn't have the support of the city council when i first ran, but i had enough

for veto, to veto anything they wanted to do. so i tried to use all the methods i had to try to go above that, go above the fray, and that's why they said go to the opening of an envelope. i attended more events than you could possibly imagine to gain public support because we had to get things passed, doing the zoo and doing the casino and all that. and then there was the wonderful trip we had with gambling in the city. i don't know if you remember this or not. there was a guy walked in my office one day, his name was roger stone, i guess his name was. he was a lawyer. it was like he represented one client. one client, and that was at the time. and he came in, and he said, we're interested -- i represent someone in the gaming community. >> and i said who would that be? >> >> he said stephen wynn. nice, well, he's well known in the gambling community, so i said, really? and so he, he said he'd like to

meet with you. i said, well, i'll have to check him out. i said, who can i call to check him out? call anybody. can i call the bishop? i said, how about the president of brown university? well, call 'em. so i called him, and get goer yang says, oh, wonderful man, philanthropist. so i met with him. and be he came to my house, we had dinner, and, you know, looked pretty good. and this guy looked the mirage hotel and all this stuff. as it turned out, we got along, and i said to him, well, you know, we need money, and i don't know if i'm for gambling or against it. why don't we do a poll, you pay for it, and i'll pick the pollster. and that's exactly what happened. so the poll came back not bad, you know? people kind of said, okay, maybe. but i always maintained that we would get in the gambling business when it lost money, and that's about probably what we're doing now. but anyway -- [laughter] but now, so anyway, we had the poll done, it looked good. and as it turned out, he came

back a second time, and the people who ran the highlight or the place down in newport spotted us having dinner. and the next thing we know, it was in the providence journal. i ended up vetoing gambling, but before i did, i went down to see the native americans down there in foxwood. made an appointment to see the tribal council. and i said, we can't let this opportunity go by. we've got to get some money out of this if we can. so i met with them, 11 members of the tribal could council, ani said, you know, if we build a casino in the city of providence, you guys are doing $800 million a year, and i said if we make mistakes, we'll take 3, 400 million from you. so i said why don't you pay us not to build a casino. and they looked around, they looked at me, and they said, how much? i said, well, you know $50 million a year is a good investment for you, a million a

week which would be good. they said, how long will we not have gamble anything casinos? take a million bucks on a pony and send it up to city hall every friday, and they voted 6-5 not to do it. imagine if they had voted the other way, we would have had $52 million a year all those years. but anyway -- without building a casino. it was not in the press for a while. and then i was on i miss one day -- imus one day, and i guess one of the journalists picked up on it, and it got to be a celebrated thing. we almost did it. and then, of course, there were other interesting stories concerning the performing arts center. i tried to be a big supporter for the arts community. in 1937, maybe '76 i got a call from some business people in the city who said do you know mr. dario? and i had never met him. his real name was dario

bakiyaki. they said, he wants to tear the place down. i said, god, that's terrible. they said, do you know him? i said, no. they said, could you call him and convince him not to tear it down? they said, why do you think i can do that? because you're italian. i said, oh, that's real sensitive. [laughter] so i did call him. i made an appointment, i went and see him at his house up in lincoln, and i'll never forget going up in that big car. and when i got out of the car, these two german shepards came lunging at me. i said to the cop, why don't you go ring the doorbell. he said, what are you nuts, mayor? [laughter] so he finally came out, and he put the dogs down, he they were heeling. so i went in the house, he invited the dogs in the house. [laughter] so we started talking, then we went out to dinner, and i gave him the soliloquy about why he shouldn't tear the theater down.

he said, do me a favor and give me a demolition permit. i said, you wouldn't turn that down. i said, have you ever heard of the -- [inaudible] i tore that one down. i said, oh, you mean business. his lawyer has since passed away, and i said, we can't put dario in the same room with bill miller and all these people because they hated each other. and so he said, okay. so he went over and negotiated the deal. the city ended up putting a lot of money in it, but still we didn't know we were going to do that much at time. and he finally agreed. dario was sitting in my office, finally they all said yes. and then dario said to me after we had agreed on the price and the deal was going to be done, dario said what about my other $40,000? he talked in broken english. i said, what $40,000? he said, well, they promised me a thousand a day to negotiate.

it's been 40 days. i picked up the phone and called miller. never heard him swear in my life. i said, forget about it, the deal's off, i'll handle it. so i said to dario, they don't know anything about that. oh, that's why i can't trust them, forget the deal, the whole thing. i said, what if i can give you some of it? what do you mean? i said, i'll give you $20,000? he said, how can i do that? i said, i'll make you the city consultant on the arts. i'm going to hire a race track owner to be the city consultant on the arts. [laughter] he said, you can do that? i said, yeah. he said, make it 25. so that's one of the reasons we've got the performing arts theater down there. those are some stories that you probably never read about in the providence journal or any place else, as a matter of fact, but you can read about it in the book. the other funny things that happened was when we did the mall. the providence place mall. you know, we relocated the rivers, and we needed to be

entrepreneurial. and the whole thick about the mall depend -- thing about the mall depended on whether we got nordstrom to be an anchor tenant. and they were the class a, number one retailer in the country and all that stuff. so the guy who was at the time the developer, and he eventually sold his interests, but the guy who wanted us to be very much involved with him owned a lot of malls around the country. so we had to go, myself and the governor, we had to go to seattle, washington, to meet with the nordstrom family. and so we walked into the four seasons hotel, i think it was, and we register. the desk clerk says, governor sunland, mayor cianci. sunland thought he was a world figure that they knew him. [laughter] and the guy went back to get room keys, and i said, bruce, don't get all impressed, the kid probably went to johnson and wales, you know? [laughter] so the kid came back, and i said, by the way, where did you go to school? he said, johnson and wales.

[laughter] really, right? so the next morning we end up going to meet with the nordstrom family in their audiences, and the governor goes first, and he says, well, you know, you must have heard we're having some budget props, but he -- problems, but he said, don't worry, i'm going to broaden the tax base on the sales taxes. we're going to start taxing clothes, shoes. that's all that nordstrom sells, right? >> [laughter] so the nordstroms are looking at bruce, they've got their head tilted like a st. bernard that's confused, you know? so i kicked him under the table, and i stopped him, and i said doesn't our governor have a wonderful sense of humor? he knows how to get your attention. [laughter] and we ended up coming, we ended up coming back, and then we had to go see, we had to go meet with the developer at his headquarters. and so we, we went up to his headquarters, and it was independence day.

not 4th of july, may 1st. rhode island independence day. and we flew up there and went to this guy's office. and he had an office that was an old post office. he pressed a button, shades came down, screens came down to show us how rich he was and all the malls he had built. we were putting money in, he put money in, we had to make sure we were doing the due diligence thing. so this guys shows us his tremendous operation, and meanwhile, there are a couple of kids coming out. not kids, 25, 26, 28 years old. and they're, apparently, the developer's kids. and so the presentation stops, and someone now says, ask questions. and i have to ask questions. so sunland is the first, and he says, you know, he said, you've got a wonderful operation, and you're like a one-man show here though. but i see, like, you've got a lot of people working for you, but you're the boss. you're one person, and it all depends on you. and i see you've got a couple of kids coming in and out, and i

have kids of my own. only at that time bruce didn't know how many he really had at that point, right? [laughter] so he says, he says i've got kids of my own. i know how that works, you know? so he looks at him, and he says what happens if you die? sunland asks him. and this guy, without skipping a beat, looks at sunland, and he says, governor, we practice dying here once a month. [laughter] i thought that was pretty good. then he asked me what -- any questions, mayor? i said, yeah, i like your daughter, how do i meet her and take her to lunch? that's my due diligence. [laughter] anyway, we ended up getting nordstroms, and it's been a great project. the other thing i guess i could talk about is other things that you read about in the book is the garbage strike back in 1981, i guess. i guess i had -- the city had some fiscal problems then. and so we had to reduce expenditures. one of the ways we could do it was by cutting -- because the

rule is if you're going to raise taxes, you better cut by twice as much as the new revenue that you're going to get. so if you're going to raise taxes and get a dollar of revenue, you better cut two bucks out of the budget. so that's what we tried to do. and we did that. it required us to get rid of a person on the garbage truck. and here's the point. you can put, you know, they had four men on a garbage truck. you can put two men on a spaceship and send it to the moon, why do you need four men on the garbage truck from so we reduced it down to three. so they started throwing garbage all over the place. i had to go and fire them all. i had pictures people taking of them throwing garbage. so what happened was they finally said give us our jobs back, and we'll clean it all up, and i did. but i put them on probation. then i went to the sewer treatment plant where they had a six-day guaranteed overtime, and

i took that away. those guys went on strike, so these guys in the garbage department joined them, and so i had to fire them. we did put a fourth man on the garbage truck, it was a cop with a shotgun. [laughter] that lasted for a good period of time. this was before the air traffic controllers. for some crazy reason, all i did was fire some garbagemen, and i got invited to wind sor castle to speak to the government about privatization. i didn't know anything about it, i just fired some garbagemen. so i ended up spending a week, and i stayed at st. georges chapel, and it was great. and then came back, of course, and i had to run for re-election. and i had to go get the union endorsement t. [laughter] and i did end up getting it, though, and i got it because of, interesting.

i walked into the, i walked into the union meeting there, there was a big crowd. and i got polite applause. i knew they weren't going to endorse me. what happened was i was coming out of the meeting, and that morning there was the longest strike ever. i always had to send policemen to move pickets away from the bank because hospital trust bank had a lot of the same members of the board of directors as they were on the same board as brown and shop. brown and shop and hospital bank were kind of interlocked, so the union was trying to get people to take money out of hospital trust bank. so i had to send the horses there. i love the horses. don't you like the horses? you never saw anybody pet a police car, did ya? [laughter] they don't use gas, they don't talk back to you, they don't belong to unions. so i told the union lawyer, i said, you know what? you guys are, you guys are crazy trying to get people not to put money in the bank.

that's not how to do it. i said, you're going to stop someone from putting $100 in the bank, i said if you want to move some real money, i said if i don't go to a meeting thursday night, i said you guys have $300 million you could move. they said, really? i said, yeah, that's the way they move the pension system. i said, i'll go bowling that night. they came back and said, you know what? we're going to -- thursday night, you don't go to the meeting, we're going to endorse you friday morning. i said, nah, it doesn't work like that. you endorse me tonight. so they did. so the journal could never figure out why i got endorsed. that's why. because they moved the pension money around. anyway, we didn't like that bank anyway because they weren't giving us a great return, so we moved it someplace else. we were going to move it anyway, to be honest with you. anyway, the book takes me on a journey from providence to a lot of interesting places. the next part of the book talks about what happened during

plunderdome, what happened during trial, and what happened in prisoner and when i came out of prison. but a lot of it has to do with the redevelopment of the city. you know, i got indicted on 27 charges, i was found guilty of one which was conspiracy to fit rico, and i was found not guilty of the rico. so it was really conspiracy to commit a crime i was found not guiltk of. go figure. there was great dissenting opinion, but that doesn't reverse cases. it was 2-1. i always will maintain my innocence. i never took a dime from any developer or anybody, anything like that. and got caught up in a whole situation. and by the way, in politics today in the city of providence and in the state of rhode island and in the city of philadelphia, i don't care where you go, where you've got 6, 8, 9,000 people who are working for you, you're going to find people who are doing things, and you're not going to stop that because it's human nature. i can tell you when i went to

prison, i had a lot of funny things too. anticipating prison is the big thing. getting there is bad too, but you can't let the time do you. you can't keep saying to yourself, well, what am i going to do? what would i be doing if i were out? is you can't think that way. you have to think positively, live in that environment in which you are living in the space that you have. if you're older, you get along better in prison than if you're younger. and in addition to that, you know, i used to love to -- i worked in the kitchen when i was there the first six months because i was very visible. i was a high profile guy, and they wanted to make sure that i was doing work. so in the kitchen everybody eats, so they saw me doing pots and pans and things. it was kind of like a change in life, let me tell you. but some of it was pleasant. i read 400 books when i was in prison, and i work inside the library the last four years i was there. and i can tell you there's a lot of funny stories too. there's a lot of people who belong in prison who are there, a lot of people who don't belong

there, and a lot of people who should be there a lot longer than what they've been sentenced to. but in prison, as an example, you don't watch television by turning the volume up and listening to it. everybody has a radio, and you put it on the frequency that's on the television. that -- and everybody's got earphones. and you can tell how long a guy's been there by how big his earphones are. if he's got little earphones, he hasn't sieved enough finish -- saved enough money to buy big earphones. now, the guy with big earphones, he's been there a while. so one day, and a lot of the kids -- i i like to watch the young kids, minority kids, they sit and watch b.e. te., black entertainment network. so one day a guy said, see him? he just got sentenced to 20 years. he said, i'd kill myself. i said, what would you do that for? well, i couldn't stand it. i said, ah, yes, you could. there's a lot easier ways to do

it than jumping off a building. what are you talking about? i said, it's easy. go into the tv room saturday morning when they're watching the b.e. te., you know, and they're all going like that -- it's funny to watch, there's no sound, they're going like this. i said, when they're watching the tv, go and change the channel to the golf match; you know? [laughter] they'll kill ya. so at any rate, a lot of interesting things. a lot of interesting things. i came home, and i decided i would do some radio and television, and the book tour's been going real well. every night we've had big crowds and big signing parties, and it's doing well. i enjoyed writing the book. there's a lot of interesting, funny things. running the city is -- i've got to tell you, there was, i was also some nice stories about president ford in the book who i got friendly with when i won the election in '74. and i was asked to go down and see him, meet him. and i did. and then in 1976 he asked me to

run for the u.s. senate, and i wanted to run for the u.s. senate, but i decided not to. and john chafee ran. and there's a story in the book about that whole issue. and chafee in those days, he was not the john chafee we know and love today. he had lost the governorship, he had lost the senatorship. he had the misfortune of being secretary of the navy in rhode island when they closed all the bases. and at that time i was man of the year, and we had control of the republican party, so i could have had the nomination very easily. but after the 1980 election, there's a funny story in there. i had met, gone out to meet with ronald reagan out in california, and then i met, when i met with him, the fellow who took me to meet him was john sears. but they got rid of him after they lost the iowa caucuses. but reagan was sitting there with mike dever in wilshire boulevard office. and reagan looked old, he looked

older then than he did when he became president. i'll never forget because he was a conservative kind of guy, and i wasn't. so he was talking, and he said, well, what you see is what you get. and then i went left and i said to john sears, what happens if a guy like me wins or loses? what do i expect? oh, you could get this and that. he mentioned something about an ambassadorship. so i lost the election. so i went down in january to see him, lynn was a guy who was very, very -- i walked in the his office, his office had a sign, director of political operations. so i said, i'm in the right place, right? so you don't go to those meetings without an agenda. so he said to me, why do you want to be an ambassador? i looked at him, and i said, well, because i want to learn a second language, lynn, you know? [laughter] so i went upstairs, and a lady

pulled a map down. everything yellow's taken. i said, oh, terrific. they said costa rica sounds goodings, right? so i went down to costa rica, came back, didn't like that. then went to the dominican republic, liked that. came back, and there's a chapter -- not a chapter burke a part in the book -- but a part in the book where they wanted $100,000, and that's when i left the party and became independent. i never thought i'd win the next election, but i did. the book is about 370 pages or so, and it's one that i think you'll find funny, i think you'll find fascinating. and it's not, it's not an autobiography. i was born on this day and, you know, went to this place and that place. i talk a little bit about my young life, a little bit about being in the army, a little bit about the attorney general's department, a little bit about brown university and interacting

with the different presidents of brown and also running for office. it's, it's, i think you'll find if you're providence, you'll like it. but if you're not providence, you'll like it even more because you'll be reintroduced to people you never thought existed. you know, people say what's the best thing you ever did for providence, i get that question all the time. was it building skating rinks or doing the zoo or redoing the rivers? it's up in of those things. what it is, i think, in 1974 the self-esteem of the city of providence was really low. and i think one of the thicks, one of the most important things that my administration did was bring the self-esteem of the people of the city of providence up to levels they never thought they could achieve. and i think that people were proud of the city back in 2002, 2003, 2001. they really felt that the city had come alive with the arts. you know, we have great restaurants. you know, we have great restaurants because the city

supported them. the city loaned them money to build them. you go to mill's tavern, café novo, all those places. because the last person a banker wants to see is a restauranteur, right? so we loaned them money, like, at 1%, and sometimes 0%. and why? because they occupied buildings. those buildings paid real estate taxes. we got part of the sales tax eventually, returning people got jobs. those are the things. five things to be -- if you don't get off the ball, five things you've got to do to be a mayor. number one is the city's got to be safe, and people have to feel safe. number two, you have to have a good school system. i don't think we've achieved that yet under my or anybody else's administration, but it's getting better, i hope. number three, you've got to provide affordable house for somebody. and number four, you have to have a job for somebody. and the fifth thing you have to have is a great recreational and cultural opportunity so people really and truly love the city. you know, with trinity which we

saved like three times, aide ri yen hall, anybody remember her? i need a million dollars until monday. i said, why? he said, well, the ford foundation gave me money, a million dollars, and if i -- i spent it. i wasn't supposed to spend it. what'd you spend it on? well, shows. i was supposed to build an endowment. he said, can i borrow the money? i said, no, because we'll end up not going to a nice place if i do that. but he was funny. but they were always -- trinity was always in trouble financially. as a matter of fact, i'll tell you one of the things if you enjoy trinity, one of the reasons you enjoy it is because when the fleet, you know the old fleet senate which is now bank of america, it's the big building that was built? there was an interesting story there. there was nortech had come in and wanted to build a big nortech wanted to build a build

anything the city. and i tried to peddle them the old shepherd's building before we put uri there. and they said, no, i want to build a big building. when we did the biltmore hotel, we made a deal that we lease that land for $5,000 to the conglomerate who had the hotel so this case they ever wanted to expand the hotel. so i called bill led better, and i said, you know, bill, are you going to be using that land? because you've had the hotel for a few years -- no, we're not going to expand it. i said, oh, really? so i said maybe nortech would like it. oh, i'll meet with them. so i set up a meeting for the next saturday or monday, they never showed up. so finally, i called them and said, how come you never showed up to the meeting? we have a moral obligation. i said, really? to do what? to sell it to our law firm. i said, you're not the redevelopment agency for the city.

so when that didn't happen, i was looking across at that parking lot, and i said, well, look, we've got a ten in a minute, and fleet bank always wanted to build a building there, but they didn't have a tenant. so we married together those three people. we ended up getting urban development enactment grants. didn't even know what they were for. those were the days when the government was spending a lot of money. so we applied for the grant, and we got it. and that meant we could get the money as a grant. we never had to pay it back, but we could loan it out. and the building could be built, but what stopped it unless we could get this money that we could loan to them was the fact that they needed to build a garage. and that garage was built by the money that we got from washington that we kept. and we loaned to that conglomerate that built that building which was nortech and fleet bank at the time. and don't forget, interest rates were like 15, 18% in those days,

16%, if you remember. so we loaned it to them for, like, zero interest for a couple of years. eventually, when they paid it back, it had to be washed through the economy twice. so it was loaned out to crooks in america. and then that was -- when i came back in office, i said, look, crooks in america shouldn't have this money. you guys can refinance somewhere else. you don't need city money. and i was going to put it back in the budget, but trinity came to see me. and i think it was a couple million bucks. we said, you know what? we'll replenish trinity's endowment with that money, and that's how they got their endowment, from the building of the building the garage at fleet center. that's how that happened. and there's so many other things that happened with financing. for instance, carlos landing is the first time financing was used where you take all the money from taxes and dedicate it to a bond or borrowing money so that you can fix a certain area.

money doesn't go in the general fund. all that money where all the boardwalk is and the park, that was all done with tax incremental financing as was the providence place mall. and i believe in brand anything the city too. when we put seven, eight million bucks in the performing arts center to make that happen, we went to a meeting. i said, you know, you keep calling this thing the ocean state theater. the state didn't give you a dime. so i was given the last 3 or 400,000 bucks, and i said, you've got to change the name of the theater before you get anymore money. they said, what do you want it changed to? i said, anything with providence on it. and that's how it became providence performing arts center. if they change the name of the theater, they have to give all that money back, so you'll never see that name change. [laughter] and then, and then that's why we brought, you know, even things like horses in the city and gondolas, water fire, all those things are branded items. and it makes the city. providence, when the festival of

ballet wanted to move to providence, we said you've got to call it providence. so i believe in that. the hockey team, we brought the hockey team here. we wanted to name it the providence bruins. they said, no, no providence, no bruins. and they wanted to call it the providence jewelers. some crap. i could just see the headlines, jews lose, you know? [laughter] i said, no, we're not going to do that. so we waited until the night before -- we almost didn't have that. the night before, it was 5:00 that night that we, that we ended up signing that deal because we were going to cancel the press conference and not do the deal. but we ended up -- and they were lucky they did it because the national hockey league went on strike that next year, and we filled the place. the only place you could get hockey was with us in the american hockey league. so those were interesting things that happened while i was mayor. um, the other things that i could probably talk about is

about other funny things that happened. but i'll tell you what, i've been talking too long. i understand i'm supposed to take some questions. people might ask, what's the best quality? i've done this about every night for the past week or two, and we had a signing party in washington, and we've got one in new york next week, but the week's been doing pretty well, by the way. but i always like to end the story by saying, you know, who -- they ask, what did you read in prison? i said, a lot of stuff about winston churchill because he had a lot of perseverance. and i always say that i'd like to keep going and persevering no matter how many times they knock you down, you've got to get up. you can't look at your shoes all the time. i always think the windshield's a lot blighter and bigger than the rearview mirror in many ways. and, you know, winston churchill once said -- he didn't say, but it's reported that after world war ii they had him, i guess at

oxford, and they had him give a big speech about how he won world war ii. and he walked in the hall, and he sat at the dais or on the platform and they introduced him. thunderous applause. and he was giving a speech on how he won world war ii. he walked up to the podium, took his hat off, put it down, took the stogie out of his mouth, put it down. he looks at the audience, and he said: never, never, never give up. he put his hat on, put the stogie in his mouth, took the umbrella, sat down to a great deal of applause. that was winston churchill. i tried to live like that. thank you very, very much, and i hope you enjoy the book. [applause] um, does anybody want to ask a question or two? i understand that's part of the rigamarole here, the routine. [laughter] yes. yes, sir. >> sorry. i'd stand up, but my son fell asleep on my lap.

>> oh, i'm sorry. >> i'm just here because we moved here from california about a year ago, and we love -- we just walked here, and we love providence. my son's almost in kindergarten, and we're going to move because of the school. i mean, it's bad because we love living here. what -- you know -- >> well, schools, there are some good schools in the city of providence, and, you know, you've got to understand that there's a big challenge in education in the city today as there was when i was mayor. you know, i was thinking the other day they've got this big stuff about closing four schools in the city because of population. i remember when i was mayor, i closed nine schools in one year and didn't get -- nobody made a peep. nobody said anything. that's because the population was different. and the population has been shifting now. there are something like, i don't know, 90 languages spoken in the providence school system. different languages. and that's the same, like, in bridgeport and other cities that are adjacent to us. there are some improvements going on in the school. i like to think positively, you know? there are a lot of good

teachers, and they experience that magic of the classroom. classical is the top high school in the state, probably including private schools according to the latest numbers that you see by ivy league admissions and all that kind of stuff. but there are some spotty performances by some of the elementary schools. on my radio show people call me and say, you know, how can my kid learn because this teacher doesn't even speak english? so i can't give you the answer, i'm not the mayor. i haven't been there for nine years. when i was mayor, we con fronted similar, same problems. you know, it's just, you've got such a deficit in the city of providence today. you've got $180 million structural deficit. how that happened, there's a big investigation going on now. but how that happened was that the internal auditor -- and this relates to schools -- the

internal auditor was screaming down there for six months. and they had, that they had -- can you imagine, the internal auditor last year had to go get a freedom of information act request to get money, to get the accounts. and he had to go to court almost to get it. and he's the auditor. and then when the independent auditor outside -- those audits are done by august. fiscal year's over june 30th, those audit reports are done by august 20th, august 30th, something like that. the independent auditor was not allowed in city hall until after the last election. and so we knew that something was happening. when i left office, there was in the reserve fund there was $19.3 million in there, and this was an operating surplus. um, now they sold the civic center and added $22 million to that number, so they had 40-something million, you know, just stashed. and i guess when the economy

hit, they didn't make the kind of cuts that they should have made like other cities do who are surviving like warwick and others, cranston. they didn't do it. they just kept everything, and they actually gave raises. the other day, i couldn't believe it, they gave 2% retroactive raises to last june to personnel. anyway, that's what's happening. while you have -- where do you live? >> that's the big thing. >> we live right across the street. >> you live right here? east side school, you know, nathan bishop was just redone. that's a heck of a school. i wouldn't give up on the providence schools. you know, you see a lot of stuff in the newspaper, they're working on race to the top. the big thing is teacher evaluation. now, the mayor just fired 1934 teachers. by march 1st you're supposed to tell teachers if you're going to lay them off because you don't know how many teachers you're going to have next year because

you don't know what the demographics are going to be, and you don't know what the class size is going to be, if there's a union contract coming up, whatever. so they have to let them know they're going to be laid off. and the union wants it that way. now i think maybe they want to change it now, but the mayor, he changed it. and some people say to his credit he fired 1934 teachers. and this is all the while -- at the same time while the new superintendent, he's not so new anymore, but the superintendent and the head of the union have this great collaboration going. they were in denver, and they were cited by the secretary of education as being this great example of collaboration. they came back from denver, it was march 1st, and i don't know if they got off the plane, and the firing notices went out. and you can't find, you can't find the superintendent of the schools to comment on this. he's, he's like in the witness protection program, you know? [laughter] and so, so the reason they're doing it is so when they bring people back, they don't have to bring teachers back at the high steps because they're not going

to take -- because the new rule is you don't have to bring teachers back on seniority alone. you can bring them back with seniority, yeah, but competency, they have to interview, it's this criteria-based bringing back. some people say that's good. they'll bring back young kids. but then again, how do you attract young kids to be good teachers in your school system and you're going to bring them back and say, well, come back and work for us because every march 1st we're going to fire you, you know? which then we'll -- and then we'll rehire you maybe. that's not good job security. but i think they're working it out. i think the commissioner of education, the new one, i think she's a spark plug. i think she's going to do well. if they keep her. i don't know if chafee's going to keep her. it doesn't look like he's agreeing with much of what she does, and she kind of has to bend to him. so it's a whole political thing. >> do you consider it a big problem? >> big problem? [laughter] i don't like to look at him as a

problem, i like to look at him as a challenge. i think that, you know, they were on the right track, i really believe that steve smith who's a great guy, the head of the teachers' union, he was on the collaboration track. and it all revolves around how do you evaluate teachers. and he said, and you've -- and the union says, look, i didn't hire these people, you did. if they don't speak english, you hired them, and i have to defend them because that's what i do. you'll find certain schools in providence that are not performing well, and you're going to find certain schools that are performing well. i would, i would -- where would you move to? i mean, barrington? >> east greenwich. >> east greenwich, that's a nice place. there's no calculator clatter of high heels down there, there's no italian food down there. [laughter] right. any other -- and i understand what you're going through. i know it well. my grandkids go to public schools.

and the classical. and we're well satisfyied with that. um, anybody else? yes, sir. >> i came back to providence about the time you started your second administration in -- >> '91. >> and i remember you on the radio program explaining rather well how two of providence's big problems were the huge proportion of the property is either government or tax-exempt charities, churches, schools, hospitals. and the other problem was that there was, like, unfunded pension liabilities. a contract had been signed, but future benefits that weren't getting currently funded. so what happened -- i mean, that was, like, when you were starting. what's happened since? >> on the first, i'll answer the pension question second, the first question was tax-exempted institutions. tax-exempted institutions have been a part of the vibrancy of the city of providence in many

ways. brown university, you wouldn't have the health care that we have in the state now if it weren't for brown university medical school and all the industries that surround it. miriam hospital, all of that. and you also, you know, think of the schools we have. providence college, i like to call it our lady of the hoop, but not lately. of they haven't been doing that well. providence college, johnson and wales, i mean, probably the largest population of students is johnson and wales in the city. where are you going to find a better designed school than that? nowhere in the country, probably, they're in the top one or two. what can i say about brown? we all know what that is. it's a great place, and it adds a tremendous cultural dimension to the city. when i was mayor, we put something in called -- overlap. we called in payment in lieu of taxes. and that meant that if it weren't for the fact that these institutions were in the city, if they were not in the city, the state of rhode island would not get the benefit of the income taxes that the doctors

pay, the nurses pay, the professors pay, the sales taxes they spend. so that money is all to the benefit of the state. the city doesn't collect those income sales taxes. so we devised a formula so the state would reimburse us our portion of what those tax revenues were so that we could provide the fire apparatus, we had 15 engine companies, special hazards, all that stuff. they don't pay a dime for that stuff, so we got reimbursed for that. we had to plow the snow, clean the streets, pick up the garbage, all those kinds of things. so we did the payment in lieu of taxes. so in decision to that we -- in addition to that we also created the providence plan which all the universities were part of. the providence plan, you've heard of that. the reason that that thing got funded -- and brown never liked to pay the city directly. you see? because they didn't trust us with the money, i guess. but get goer yang used to always

say i give you money for library, but we don't own the library. we fund the library, but it's private. so he would send me letters all the time, i'm sending 15,000 to the library. so i wrote him back, i said, no, i went over there, they don't have a fire truck i can take a picture with at the library, right? [laughter] so anyway, we funded the whole providence plan not with the universities, with the manchester street plant, do you know the manchester street power plant that's right across from the heart club? maybe you know that. in 1991 they came here, and they wanted to redo that whole plant. and they came to see us, and they wanted to expand, they wanted to know what their taxes were going to be. and they told us what they thought they were going to pay, and i said, no, i don't think that's the right number. so they paid us a lot of money every year, and we had separate appraisers that came in and told

us what that was worth: the reason why we were able to do community police stations, do rehabilitation of house, do all kinds of things to preserve historic buildings is because we took that money every year, and i forgot what the number was, maybe 8 or 10 million bucks a year, and we used that. we didn't put the money in the general fund. we used that to finance what is known as the providence plan. the cleanup of the what river and -- of the river, all that was done, all the stuff up in westminster landing, all that was done can with providence plan money. and that's still got money left in it. and it was to be used -- and we had a private/nonprofit board of directors. that's how that money was spent. but nonprofits are very, very important to the city. the only people who have got money now to invest in the city are the nonprofits. rhode island hospital, women and infants' hospital, brown

university. that's about this knowledge district. i hate that name, the knowledge district. that means i live in the stupid district. [laughter] we created that land when we relocated route 95. that's how that land got there. and that was the whole intelligent, was to capture it and -- intent, was to capture it and build an area that could create a new industry. and it's the biotech, it's the brown medical school, it's all that. and they're the only ones with money. and they're the only ones -- and so, you know, take a look at cities in europe. universities are all over it. they're scattered all over the place. and, you know, you've got a real challenge now in the city. there's a million and a half square feet of office space vacant downtown. i'm talking about the city. you see the big superman building? that lease is up. they sold that, and that lease is going to be up, probably who knows? another year or so. if i were, if i were mayor, i'd

get on a plane, and i'd go right down to see the guy at bank of america who, by the way, used to work here in providence. he's the chairman. he's the president. and the chairman is, used to be dean at brown university, the chairman of bank of america, walter massey. i'd get on a plane, i'd go right down there, and i'd bring jack reeves -- he's on the banking committee -- i'd bring him down, i'd just let him sit there and see what's going to happen with that building because when that thing empties out, what have you got left in that part of the city? million and a half -- there's not a building that isn't getting affected. yeah, it's the economy, but it's more than the economy because they didn't pay attention to preserving those assets down there. they didn't pay attention to that in the last eight to ten years. i paid attention, they didn't pay attention. they thought it just happens. it doesn't just happen. and you have to nurse it and cuddle it and make sure that you pay attention. and, frankly, it went to hell. ..

>> i think you find them cooperative. i always did. the second part about pensions. people used to work for the city of providence because they work for cities because they didn't pay much money but they had good benefits. in the pension system was put in

its all to get policemen and firemen, they don't get social security. they don't get that. they get only their pension. the pension system is abused by the retirement board was made up of people, it still is, people who are elected by unions. when i came back to office in 1990, i'll never forget going to the retirement board meeting because the mayor sits on. i saw all these people in the audience and i did not what they were doing there. i said who are these people? there was like a woman in the front. he went to the convention on bond so he brought this grow back. she says i'm a bond consultant. really? who's this one? there was no organized attempt to put a strategy together. they had a football player who was there advisor, okay? and i said this has got to end. they could control who gets on, who gets pensions. firefighters, i love him to death but everyone of them would get a disability pension. everything to one of them because if they get a disability pension they don't pay taxes on

it. they get hurt on the job after three years they get 66 and two-thirds% of the pay and pay no taxes. now, the money -- the same people who are given the benefit, i a preview for disability and all this stuff, they also control the money. and so i said this has got to stop. and so it's in the book, i think, yeah. so i ended up going to court. all the way to the supreme court, and we said these guys can't control this. this is got to go to the board of commissioners which is a nondescript board and city that used to invest money that was left to us by harvard university or some trust that we had. and it was very little money but these were people who were supposed to do. people appointed by the mayor. so i had good people. a lot of good people were on that board who had nothing to do. so we went to court and we got

the money shifted. i'll never forget when the head of the fire union called, they'd use that system, they would get all the bond work to their friends. there were no investment strategy, no asset allocation as such because they're such a cash drain on that system, they were assuming you got 8.5% return. then you did. so what you could do is you could invest it. and take but every you needed out of it and pay the pensions of the widows and all that kind of stuff and it would get decent returns if we had the right investments. so i went to court and won. i will never forget the head of the fire union called me that night. he said, because we took control of the money. so he said, oh, mayor, the new board you got, he said, you know, he said, you know, you can appoint some citizens. i said i know that. outside the city all. i said i know that. he said can we recommend somebody? i said stephen, no.

let's look at like this. we just got a divorce in the pension. teddy is our baby. i got custody of him right now. [laughter] and the judge doesn't want you anywhere near that new baby. right quick so he says well, he said in six months can i call you, maybe we will reconsider qwest he called in about six months. can you can you apply one of ours to the board? i said to become a talk to little teddy, he gets all -- psychiatrist says he goes crazy. [laughter] you didn't clean his diapers, you know. he goes into -- he shakes and everything when here's your name. [laughter] that's in the book. that's the day, head of the union. we got along, but -- so another thing in 1990 what they had gotten 6% i guess compounded. i took them to court. and we hired -- the same retirement board i talked about,

they thought they had plenary powers to give themselves any kind of cold increase, cost of living. they give himself 6% compounded cola's. we reduced it down to three. we went to court and we had a change so that no one gets those cola's after 1991. so anybody who hired after 1990 what doesn't get the 3% cola's. those people have retired now, it's been 20 years but i remember that. so everybody, you know, there's a lot of myth. john kennedy was giving a speech at you want time, and i'm paraphrasing, he said you know the lies i can handle, because i can always refute them. but the myth goes on. so that's what you got to do is destroy the myth. one of the reasons i wrote the book. so the 19 -- we won that case and there's no compounding cola's for anybody after 1991.

and on the nonprofits, you know, i'm not saying they shouldn't pay somebody. i think they should and they do but i think you have to take a good hard look at what they contribute to the city before you go after them. yes, sir. >> what would you like to see done with -- >> open government is dissolving the public in the process. basically, that really should have an economic value. it should get taxes but it should have a tremendous public openness to it where it should be, where public should be allowed to have access to the waterfront and all that. that's a wonderful piece of property, and it's deteriorated. that had to be used as a staging area when we relocated 195. that money had to be paid back, that money had to be paid -- that was to be sold and paid back to the federal government with the money we got to sell

it, but thank god that was a bond issue that the people put together so that we could, at the state, bonded and keep it for the city of providence. so that's why that happened. and i had a great waterfront plan for down there, called the three cities. we got denied our waterfront by the daschle is in who eluded that plays over the years. we should recapture that whole waterfront. that was the next thing. if i hadn't had a, i had, that was going to be the next effort. i thought brown could use that as a campus is what i thought could be the. i thought that would be great. take it from the eastside right over there. i thought that would be terrific. we proposed that. and the other parts of the downtown, the downtown is a real problem. i'm talking down city part where

all those buildings are, deserted. that's where the mayor was going to earn his, fill those buildings with all kind of tax incentives, whatever because no one will go there. anybody else? yes, ma'am. [inaudible] has anybody ever approached you for your advice, first of all? now like being where you are now. and if you could give one relevant advice what would you say to him? >> get three envelopes. you know that story? you know, blamed her predecessor. no. actually, he's got some good people around him. and i think he's going to learn by trial under. and learn that you've -- when you surprise people like labor unions, they will never be with you. not that you want them with you but you don't want them against you. and i think he's got to assess the full financial -- the big problem, to problems.

financial because that's where the closer, it's financial, and a tax capacity, attacks ethic, that's the problem. and as result of that you can't raise taxes. so you have to do cuts. and you do cuts, no one wants to cut personnel and jobs and all that. but you take, you know, when you have directors of protocol on payroll, you know what i'm saying, that's a little much and he doesn't have that, but i need the last administration. had directors of protocol. i mean, i was, you know, not an angel but the fact is either spent $6000 a year on show business. that was a lot of money. and so i think that you have to do cuts, number one. and assessment for vision. how can i put this? all vision, vision without action is in danger. and action without vision is a nightmare.

and i think that's what we've had for the past years. action without a lot of vision. it's become a nightmare. good judgment, good judgment comes from experience. remember, all experienced comes from bad judgment. i think we've had some of that, too. and so what's been the bad judgment with the bad judgment was not making cuts when it was necessary. you could run the city -- taken%, if i were mayor, if i was planning on running again, you could take 10% out of that budget, in an afternoon, and you wouldn't feel a difference if you really wanted to take it out. that's about 60, 70 million bucks you could take right out of it. and also you've got to just restructure the pension system. i don't want to scare you, but the pension system right now in providence has an $880 million unfunded liability. they make you separate now the health benefits because that's

got to be separate. that's 1.2 or $3 billion. so, i don't know how you dig out of that. and it happened -- i'll give you an example. when i left the office, i'm not campaigning, but i left over $660 million in the pension, in the pension fund. there's less than 229 and it now, 230 million. so it drained 400 million in a few years. all you can do is get rid of the unfunded liabilities is re- amortized it, but that's just chasing good money after bad money. there was a time you could do when the libor rate was -- you would borrow the money, pledged what you had, bar it and you could have over the course of 15

years paid back. you have no unfunded liability but i tried to do that, and they were against it in the state assembly. when he came in office he tried to do the same thing and they wouldn't let him do it either. but anyway, that's where we are at. but listen, good times. we had lot of good times coming. it's a great city. great artistic venues. we have great universities and colleges. we will rebound. it's just financial. and also it's also the fact we haven't unemployment situation here that is terrible. we have foreclosures, terrible thing to we have a great city and i'm proud of it and i'm proud of a lot of things in the city. but all cities are going to this. we go through a little more of it because we didn't have the kind of thought that should've gone into it the last few years. anymore questions? yes.

[inaudible] >> know, that is a myth. that use the a long time ago but now brown university make somebody who's a professor sign a document that they don't take advantage of if they want to work there. that's a myth. there's one guy when i was mayor, there was one guy who took it. he was grandfathered. i think he's maybe -- not with us in more but it was a long time ago. there was one guy in the whole state. that doesn't happen anymore. i'll tell you what. they say churches don't pay taxes. yes, they do. to have an extension of like 300 or 4,050,000 bucks whatever it was. they pay taxes on the rest of the. there's a lot of things out there that could be taxed. i was surprised to see the latest poll that came back that people -- they say it's okay to tax soda, one being an ounce. so if you buy a 36-ounce bottle of soda and its 36 and.

another sugar tax. i couldn't believe the poll came back and said people would not object strongly to people to bring a tax on entertainment that would ruin those places. and events like concerts, baseball games, football games, all that stuff. an interesting show today on tax credits for the movies. and we used to do the movies, we did the movie theater when we started the film commission. we did the providence play here. and i played the story about baltimore? i tell you about in the book. we started the movie by starting a film commission and then we would have a party in los angeles every year where all the people who did the films from providence where there. we ended up getting people to do movies here. we did the fairly brothers did something about mary and a bunch of other movies. and we did into the film tax

credits. that was passed after i left but as our initiative that did it. we recommended. i'll never forget had this providence movie that goes on for five years, nbc did and and always show the city beautiful, in the fall films and everything. i'll never forget one time they want to film and they said the water was too little. they were getting the right shot. i so what you want me to do? they said we want you to raise the river. [laughter] who the hell do you think i am, right? they said you can do. we have the hurricane barrier and hurricane very was built to take millions of gallons of water out of the sea so it takes water out of the city from all the tributaries and it pushes the water out into the bay. and those pounds were reversed so the want to reverse the pumps and bring the water industry. so go ahead, do it. i did and they said okay, director said okay, a little

more, little more. if i stopped it and had the beautiful water level so they could ride the boat and do a scene. but we had -- the mayor of baltimore, sort of amazing he said i liked that show you have on friday night, how did you get that? he said i have a show, too. i said what is a? he said homicide. [laughter] no, i don't want that. he said homicide. that's a bad one. anyone else? >> beside yourself who was your favorite american politician? >> certainly not me. that's a hard question. it does i really like jerry ford because they got to know him very well. i thought he was a decent man. i'm not saying he was a great politician, that he was a good friend and i always admired him. i'll tell you a funny story about them. he came to campaign for president in 76. he came here a lot, but even

after he lost he would come back and we would campaign together. we were going down to a fund raiser. we went to the airport and i got in the car with him and we drove down to newport. we got down to newport and had to stop at the hotel. what was the name of that hotel there on the island? hyatt i think your kid to do a press thing for one of the chapter so i stayed outside. is a big crowd, and so we stayed about half are doing this and he got back in the car. there was a third guy in the car. so i knew who he was. he sat in the car in the jump seat and it was only a five minute ride to go to the south we're going to to go to this party. and so, this guy saying, mr. president, this is 1976. i'm going to go here, i'm going to go there. i'm going to campaign here, i'm going to go to alaska, this and that. we got to the house and a guy get out of the car and i was moving to get out and present grabbed my arm he said, buddy, he said who's that guy?

i cities the secretary of the navy, he said he did know who he was. [laughter] a lot of those funny stories happened with ford and so he is a favorite of mine because with that i'm biased or and very biased. i thought kennedy didn't have enough time in office but i think he was very charismatic, and a lot of people of my generation got a lot of inspiration from him. i think that there are so many who you can look to have different qualities and different areas that you try to emulate or try to respect or at least even fall in love with. there are many people of the local level who are heroes to me who have done jobs you've probably never even heard of. people who made decisions and who are very honorable. i also have people -- i will never forget one time, i know this is on c-span, in 1979 i was

a very interested in passing an anti-discrimination ordinance that would bar discrimination against gays, minorities. we didn't have one on the books i wanted to push it through. to show you political correctness. so i got everybody on board to do it. how could you be against it, right? but there were some people who were against gays. we have started the first -- i had the first gay liaison am a office and we did all kinds of things with that community to make them feel wanted and concluded. i'll never forget. this was 1976, there was a councilman from the sixth ward and he was head of the ordinance committee. he used have like a gold chain around his neck and he smoked a cigar. it was about this big. he was head of the ordinance committee. i was so. it was 11:00. i turn the news on and it was one. they had a reporter called beverly. shows like the roaming reporter.

she would be live, and from inside city hall. they bring him out. smoking his cigar, and he says well, we've been in there having this long hearing about the mayor's antidiscrimination ordinance. he says yes, he says i talk to the mayor about it. he said it's going to happen? i might even vote for it. maybe. he said but i retold the mayor i don't want no facts on the police department of. [laughter] in front of a live audience, right? just turn the tv off it goes away -- it's the mentality, you know? i mean, those things happen. talk about being embarrassed, but anyway, he was a one my heroes. [laughter] but anyways, anybody else have any questions? >> are you still tap dancing? >> i still do that. my mother forced me to do that.

[inaudible] >> is that right? i used to sing and i loved -- i think that helped me, but when i became older ipods could a lot of cases and the thing sitting on the radio helped a lot. i was not afraid to face the crowd. [inaudible] >> the fast tapper? i don't remember that. they've called me a lot of things in my life. any other questions? yes. [inaudible] >> that was an interesting trip. my friend comes to office in 1994 and said -- he said nothingis happening down the. he said i want to like the rivers on fire. i said are you nuts? so i let the first one on new year's eve 1994. and who knew it would go this far? it cost about $115,000 of fire

if you have a full one. it's a real wonderful thing because it really celebrates the arts in our community but it really and truly is a combination of fire, smoke, and all these people are anti-smoking. they are the ones down the first. [laughter] it's smoke and its the sense of place. those buildings are the sculptures out of the brown, and the lights and the waters, a lot of that is original music. but he's replicated that in other cities but unlike for one performance or today's or something like that. i think he did in houston and i think it's going to go to italy with it. but this is the home of water far. it's a wonderful implementation of an idea. and it's kind of secular. i don't know what it is but its a sense of place. it's amazing. [inaudible]

>> well, yeah, i think it does. the hotels fill up in the restaurant makes a money. we did get some tax revenue back but we made the deal. he gets all the licensing money. as he should. he's got to buy all the would and do all that kind of stuff. but one year the governor try to stop it. and that was an election year but i did have an opponent so i didn't care. because i guess somebody complained about the smoke and they said it violated epa and all that stuff. so i said, i called them back and i said your office or my office? your the one going to announce it, not me. so they decided that discretion was the better part and they didn't stop it. anybody else? i had a law school professor one time, sometimes it's better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. [laughter] >> thank you, mayor. >> thank you.

[applause] >> buddy cianci on his time campaigning for and serving as mayor of providence, rhode island. to find out more visit buddycianci.com. >> we are in south tampa in florida where we're celebrate our 20th anniversary this year and we're on the corner of plaque in south tampa. in an old house that is over 100 years old i think. i on the bookstore with my business partner, and we decided we wanted to start a bookstore together.

we looked at buying an existing store and decided not to. we decide we want to own the building. this building became available, so in 1991 we decide to go ahead and jump in with both feet and purchase the building and turned it into a really great bookstore. >> i spent 11 years practicing law for the university of south florida here in south tampa. but i was with the bookstores when i traveled. i always loved books. i was raised in a reading family. and when it's i wanted to leave that job and some business where i was my own boss and something small that didn't involve food because i knew that was not going to work out. i decided to look into going into the book business. then i met my business partner and she worked for a store that was closing that was for so. so we started talking and developed our own idea and came up with inkwood books. spent a person would to prospective bookseller school over three a four day period in atlanta and was taught by

booksellers from all over the country. some of people from the best on bookstores in the whole country who came to teach people who are considering going into the business and need to know everything about it. and so we had meetings over every meal and late tonight talk of everything from how deranged -- arrange an author event, how decided what to order, how do you value it when you're ordering the right things. how do you set up a counter? idd returns? all of it. and i learned a lot. but the avatar, the opening inventory can you can go to a wholesaler and say we want to spend this many dollars. this is our budget. these other categories we want to follow. we want to carry in our store. and they will give you a printout of the bestsellers in children's board books and self-help books and local history. and then you can go through -- back then it was these thick printouts and we went to the print out and said let's take this book. we don't need that were.

let's get five of this. it's a tedious but fun process if you love books. we can look like some quaint old-fashioned bookstore, and we like the look and we like the feel, but we sorely are neither quick nor old-fashioned. from day one can't in good part because of the mega- booksellers association, we have been able to be competitive with whatever the latest technology is. and for example, now we sell through inkwood books.com we sell e-books which is the largest e-book selection. the prices are the same as anywhere else so on almost every the reader in the country you can buy e-books from us, even though we are are a very small store in our physical inventory is not that large. we also, our physical inventory, we order two or three times a week from distributors that can resell books when you are spelled -- cell special orders in a day and a half. if we don't have what you need today, we can have a very, very

quickly, or even better, we can show you something else you might love. these are really, really challenging times. i rented a bookseller today called dark ages, and i won't say that. i don't think that's true but we are, we are anytime with industry is under a big flocks and publishers and authors, and certain booksellers, all are not sure what our business will look like or how we're going to make money in the next few months. but that being said we're finding a lot of nude young customers all most on a daily basis. people are still just discovering as maybe in part because their big box retailer is no longer available, or because the localism movement has caught on as best with younger people are so we do get new customers all the time and the customers we have for longtime are very, very loyal but some of the reading habits have changed. we have customers who used by many, many what we call tree books from us who now may be buying e-books from our website. it has changed the nature of business has