Now that the long election season is behind us, we felt it appropriate to let the public know that newly formed Transform RI is here for the long term to help the public understand and act on issues of critical importance to our state.

Our state is facing some very great challenges. As Governor Carcieri told the General Assembly last January, Rhode Island is at a “tipping point.” We need to see real reform in our state if we are going to rebound from the economic abyss we are experiencing.

In the past few weeks, we have seen national attention focused on Rhode Island, when it gained the dubious distinction of having the highest unemployment rate in the country at 8.8 percent in the month of September. This is a result of our state’s perpetual unfriendliness to small business. Our years of runaway government spending and high taxes, as well as overregulation of business, have served as a repellent to new businesses in our state. Established businesses are moving to states with better business climates.

Our workforce is a detriment to growth as our students continue to under-perform, even with education costs some of the highest in the country. Our social-service-spending increases continue to outpace our state’s revenue increases by several percentage points, thus digging us deeper and deeper into a hole every year.

On Nov. 6, Governor Carcieri convened a group of economists and government leaders for an economic forum to discuss this very dire situation. The ideas coming from this discussion may help lead us out of this. But there will be no quick fixes. It took us years to get into this situation. It will take a lot of hard work to get us out.

TransformRI will be watching the issues as they unfold. Governor Carcieri is our honorary chairman. We have a Web site, TransformRI.com, that contains information to help Rhode Islanders better understand the difficult situation we are in. This Web site also contains information on how to effect change — action steps that citizens can take to communicate with elected leaders.

We are not affiliated with any political party and do not support any political campaigns. We welcome all Rhode Islanders to visit our Web site and become members of TransformRI. We believe that Rhode Islanders working together can make a positive difference in the direction of our state.

SUSAN STORY

Barrington

The writer is spokeswoman of TransformRI.