Photo licensed under Creative Commons. Courtesy Mr. Chris Yunker.

Mayor David N. Cicilline signed an executive order, effective Friday, prohibiting the city Board of Licenses from issuing adult entertainment licenses to establishments that employ minors. The announcement came Monday afternoon, shortly before the City Council was set to consider two proposed city ordinances prohibiting persons under the age of 18 from working in adult entertainment establishments, which include strip clubs and adult video stores.

The General Assembly is debating banning text messaging while driving in Rhode Island. House Speaker William J. Murphy said Tuesday he hopes that the General Assembly will take this up when it returns to Smith Hill this fall. In Rhode Island, the chatter over cell phones is hardly new. For years, lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully to prohibit handheld phones while driving.

According to Rhode Island’s new Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, the state Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education plans to issue a draft set of teacher evaluations next week. The drafts, which will be open for public comment, will represent possible ways to evaluate schoolteachers in Rhode Island.

The East Greenwich Town Council unanimously passed an emergency ordinance Monday night allowing the police to pull over and levy fines on bikers if the noise-rating data stamped into the chrome of the exhaust doesn’t match the label on the bike frame. Modified exhaust systems have also been outlawed.

Governor Carcieri gave legislative leaders a notice that the state was almost out of money, and would need to once again borrow money – up to $50 million – from the $90.4 short-term disability fund financed by mandatory payroll contributions by private sector workers across the state.

The global recession has cut so deep, and lasted so long, that thousands of Rhode Islanders have exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits, or will do so soon. In response, the state Department of Labor and Training, the agency which administers unemployment benefits, began mailing notices on Friday that offer people tips on where they can turn for help when their benefits run out, said agency director Sandra M. Powell. The initial mailing is going to about 3,200 people and hereafter, the agency plans to mail the notices to about 150 people a week.

Governor Carcieri vetoed a bill that required Twin River to hold a full 200-day racing season, which would have stopped the facility from their planned suspension of racing on August 8th. Lawmakers are expected to override the veto when they reconvene September 2nd. Before that occurs, Twin River’s owners are expected to file a motion in bankruptcy court seeking relief from a nine-million-dollar annual subsidy they must pay to the track’s dog owners.

President Obama announced his intention to nominate Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha to be the next U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island, U.S. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse confirmed Friday.

The pay package announced on July 1 forced state lawmakers to take a pay cut, while the vast majority of state employees received a 2.5 percent raise. At the city and town level, where communities are wrestling with tens of millions of dollars in state-aid cuts, the news has centered on wage and benefit concessions. In Cranston, the City Council this past Monday approved a package aimed at saving $300,000 over the next two years by delaying the 2.9-percent increase that laborers were to receive on July 1 until July 1, 2010, and a 3-percent raise due July 2010 until 2011.

Ernest Carlucci, director of administration under former Cranston Mayor Michael Napolitano, is now Providence’s Parking Administrator, a new job title under the city Department of Public Works. He coordinates the city’s residential permit parking program in Washington Square and another to be launched soon in parts of Federal Hill and the West End. He’s also in charge of maintenance of the city’s approximately 1,500 parking meters, and has a staff of two public works employees.

Reports suggest that John Louglin intends to challenge U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy for the 1st Congressional District for the Congress 2010 elections.

The state health director is seeking to reopen the investigation of a 2007 pharmacy error that resulted in a Pawtucket woman receiving 10 times the recommended amount of morphine. Olive Connors, already gravely ill, died two days later. The pharmacy, Pawtuxet Valley Infusion Care, acknowledged a dosage mistake but its insurer denies that the morphine the pharmacy supplied Mrs. Connors caused her death.