on 10-25-2008 03:16

By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE - Two Pawtucket legislators, Rep. Peter Kilmartin and Rep. Elaine Coderre, and two city officials, City Clerk Richard Goldstein and Building Official Ronald Travers, were honored Thursday by the Governor's Commission on Disabilities.

All four were bestowed with John E. Fogarty Memorial Awards for their work on legislation to "improve the quality of life of Rhode Islanders with disabilities."
On the 52nd anniversary of the founding of the commission, which started in 1956 as the Governor's Commission on the Employment of the Handicapped and Aging, another Pawtucket resident, John J. MacDonald Jr., was named chairman of the group by Gov. Donald Carcieri. MacDonald had been acting chairman of the group for 13 months.
Coderre won her award, along with Warwick Sen. William Walaska, for passing legislation that gives tax breaks for adapting taxicabs and other public motor carriers to accommodate wheelchairs.
Bob Cooper, executive director of the commission, said the lack of handicap accessible cabs "deterred tourists from coming to Rhode Island" because they often could not get around once they got here.
He said Airport Taxi had a wheelchair vehicle several years ago, but the regulations in force at the time prohibited the company from picking up fares outside Warwick. So they could deliver a traveler from the airport to a Providence hotel, but could not take them from there to anywhere else or even return them to the airport.
"This is what government is supposed to do," Coderre said upon receiving the award. "This is why I ran for public office. You identify a problem, somebody brings you a solution and you work together and craft it, and it becomes a way to help folks. That is certainly my vision of what government is meant to do."
She said the concentration of award winners from Pawtucket shows that "we care about all our citizens and want to make life easier for those with special challenges."
Kilmartin, Goldstein and Travers all cooperated - along with Portsmouth Sen. Charles Levesque - on legislation that allows a secondary dwelling unit in a single-family residence (sometimes called an in-law apartment) for family members with disabilities.
Cooper said it allows disabled individuals "to have their own kitchen and bathroom, but if they need help, it is on the other side of the door." The legislation does away with a lengthy zoning application that could result in a denial, he added.
It also dovetails, Cooper noted, with the state's efforts to de-institutionalize handicapped, ill and elderly individuals and allow them to stay at home.
"No piece of legislation, as much as it sounds reasonable and should be what we call a ‘no-brainer,' ever is," Kilmartin said. "There is a lot of hard work and dotting of  ‘i's' and crossing of ‘t's.'
"But its a wonderful thing when you look out and say ‘We do good things from people up here. We help people."
Travers and Goldstein were credited with working out solutions that overcame community opposition to the apartment idea.
"Primarily because they were going into a single-family dwelling zone, we wanted to make sure (the apartments) didn't detract from the character" of their respective neighborhoods, Travers said.
He also said they also worked out a provision whereby the dwellings would revert to single-family use once they were no longer needed for a disabled family member.
Cooper noted that Goldstein, who doubles as the city's lobbyist at the Statehouse, helped shepherd the bill through the legislative process. When it passed, Cooper joked, "I thought he was going to carry it to the governor's desk and get him to sign it."