Senator Hodgson Visits East Greenwich For 'Office Hours'

Dawson Hodgson has been East Greenwich’s state senator for a little more than a month now and he’s already a little discouraged with his new job.

“It’s a little frustrating how slowly things move,” he said one night last week at Town Hall. “There doesn’t seem to be a real sense of urgency up there.”

By “up there,” Hodgson meant the Rhode Island State House. By way of an example, he cited his second day as a state senator.

“The session lasted about six minutes,” he said. When it was over, he said he and the other freshman lawmakers “just kind of milled about for a half hour.”

So far, said Hodgson, the freshman lawmaker from North Kingstown, he hasn’t witnessed the veteran legislators working very hard to address the constituents’ concerns.

But he is.

He was at East Greenwich Town Hall recently to hold what he calls office hours — an opportunity for the people he represents in East Greenwich, North Kingstown and Potowomut to bring their concerns to him directly. This was his second session of office hours. The first he held at the North Kingstown Free Library.

While almost no constituents took advantage of the opportunity last week, Hodgson still used the evening as an opportunity to get some legislative work done.

He was working on a bill that he declined to talk about on the record, but one that he hopes can serve as a compromise measure on an issue that has the potential to divide the state.

This is not necessarily the only work he wants to do as a state legislator.

“I didn’t go up there just to pass a bunch of laws,” he said. “I wanted to serve so that I could be a sober assessor of what is being proposed. My goal is to help build an effective opposition.”

Hodgson has already found several areas to oppose fellow newbie at the State House, Governor Lincoln Chafee. He mentioned Chafee’s apparent reluctance to act on campaign promises to address the state pension program as well as his appointments to the state Board of Regents.

“I may have to speak out,” Hodgson said, about the Board of Regents appointments. He said he doesn’t know if George Carulo can be an effective chairman while also lobbying for Twin Rivers. “It would be great if I didn’t have to make an enemy of the governor, but I have concerns that I hope can be addressed.”

Hodgson, a former state prosecutor who resigned and opened his own law practice when he decided to run for the Senate, said he is already investing anywhere between 15 and 25 hours a week in being a state senator. He expects that, when budget season heats up, he’ll be putting in closer to 40 hours a week.

He has a law office in North Kingstown, and drives up the Providence most evenings for the legislative session. He tries to be home by 7, when his 20-month-old son goes to bed. But he’s also trying to get a handle on his new job.

“I’m going in early and staying late,” he said. “I’m learning where the conversations happen.”

One place he said they happen is in Senator Majority Leader Teresa Paiva-Weed’s office. He said he recently sat in her office with about 20 other state senators as they all held about five simultaneous conversations about everything from state politics to NFL football.