Scott MacKay Commentary 8:49 am Mon May 23, 2011  The biggest
little state of profusion   Rhode Island is the smallest state
in the union, a watery sliver of southeastern New England hardly
big enough to qualify as a county in most of America.  But when
it comes to government and quasi-government agencies our state
is the biggest little state of profusion.  Rhode Island has 155
separate pension systems, 77 fire departments, 36 school
superintendents, more than 100 water systems, 6 local tourism
and visitors bureaus and scores of other governmental relics of
the horse-and-buggy age.  Our state is well-prepared for the
19th Century, but not so much for the 21st.  Of course, ideas
and institutions never sprout from virgin soil.  Deeply embedded
in our state's psyche and colonial political heritage was a
healthy mistrust of central government, which hails to the
1780s, when Rhode Island rebelled against signing on to the new
federal Constitution.  What developed was what historian Patrick
Conley calls a legacy of