In Rhode Island, House Minority Leader Bob Watson thinks focusing on the serious budget issues facing the state is long overdue. When he tried to raise that point of view on the House floor, however, Speaker Gordon Fox had his microphone shut off. Leader Watson commented later:

“I don’t like it when they turn my microphone off, and I also don’t like it when we keep secrets in that building,” Watson said of the Statehouse. “There’s no reason why we can’t discuss the travel and the tracking of the gay marriage bill. It is a distracting issue. It’s been a preoccupation throughout the course of the session, and I just hoped and expected when we came back off of April vacation we would be focused on the budget exclusively.”