- [Jim] This week on "A Lively Experiment," the timeline for building the new Washington Bridge gets pushed back again.

And the friction continues between the city and the state over the Providence School District.

- [Narrator] "A Lively Experiment" is generously underwritten by... - Hi, I'm John Hazen White Jr. For over 30 years, "A Lively Experiment" has provided insight and analysis of the political issues that face Rhode Islanders.

I'm a proud supporter of this great program in Rhode Island PBS.

- Joining us on the panel, attorney and former Cranston mayor, Allan Fung, Nancy Lavin, senior reporter for the Rhode Island Current, and former Rhode Island Democratic Party Chairman, Bill Lynch.

Well, welcome to "Lively."

I'm Jim Hummel and it's great to be back with you again this week.

Governor McKee and DOT Director, Peter Alviti, held a wide ranging news conference Tuesday, apologizing for a botched community meeting, then outlining a revised timetable for demolition and construction of the westbound lanes of the Washington Bridge.

Bottom line, don't get your hopes up for a fix by next year, as originally forecasted.

Nancy, you've been all over this story, both earlier this week, and then you covered the revised community meeting.

Just set the table.

They admitted that the initial one didn't go as well.

Last night, it went on for a lot.

- Two and a half hours was last night.

- [Jim] Two and a half hours of your life you'll never get back.

- Well, it's true, but compared to the prior nine minute meeting, I think they did a decent job in my vantage point covering it, of answering questions.

A lot of people had similar questions and they could have said, "Oh, we already answered that."

They didn't, they kind of said, "Oh, we answered that, but we'll answer it again."

So some questions, they didn't answer anything about the lawsuit, anything about final cost and timelines, said, "We don't know that yet," but they were pretty willing to engage with people.

McKee was trying to get offline people's phone numbers and addresses to come out to the homes of residents who are complaining about dust and vibration and noise pollution.

So at least in terms of the gesture, they're putting in the effort now, that was clearly not there a week ago.

Is it too late though?

- Yeah, well, a lot of damage control, but I think that was a good effort, a good first step towards saying, "We're listening to what you have to say."

- No, absolutely.

But let's be clear too, the big key for everyone that's on everyone's mind, is the timelines, because let's rewind six months ago when I was sitting in this chair, and remember Lou Pulner was here too, and we were joking about that original timeline.

Well, it's probably gonna be more in line with what Lou and I were talking about, anywhere between three to five years, because the construction timeframe, now, the impacts on many of the residents, not only just those driving over the bridge, but living in the surrounding areas.

There are a lot of questions, but from Governor McKee's perspective, let's face it, he's got an election coming up.

He wants this done as quickly as possible, or at least some progress being made before that primary that's gonna be likely to happen.

- Well, the two and a half hours is about as long as it's taken me to get over the bridge a few times.

(everyone laughing) Look, there's no good news, I don't think even about the bridge situation.

I think they're doing their best with a bad situation.

The second meeting was much better than the first one, which seemed rushed and not really put together well.

I think the only good news I've seen is that our federal delegation in Washington with Senator Reed in White House and Gabe Amo and Seth is that they've been able to deliver 100s of millions of dollars that's available.

When we get to the point of actually starting construction of the new bridge, I think Allan's right, it's gonna...

I mean, it's gonna take longer than the initial representations that were made, but I think everybody knew that.

I mean, that didn't strike me as being a huge surprise.

And politics being what it is, obviously the people who were there now want to see this thing moving, but it's not an easy thing to fix obviously.

It was decades of decay and decline and now we're paying the price.

- Yeah, and you've also seen... What surprised me the most was that they're gonna pay people to bid.

I've never heard of that before.

- So Alviti, RIDOT director, Peter Alviti, addressed this at the press conference on Tuesday, 'cause we were all asking.

So the way it works is they're issuing a two-part solicitation request for qualifications, which is just show us that you're qualified to do this work.

However many companies submit, they don't get paid anything, 'cause they're just kind of submitting their resumes.

And then the top two advance to a formal proposal where they lay out a design, a cost, a schedule.

And because that takes work on their end, the state has agreed to pay 1.75 million to the losing bidder.

According to director, Peter Alviti, this is not unusual, RIDOT has done this on highway and construction projects before.

Federal Highway Administration recommends this as a practice, because if you want a company to invest the time to do a good proposal, you have to give them some sort of level of return.

But obviously with cost being a huge factor in all of this, the dollars are just adding up right and left.

- Yeah, what's another million?

Or a million or two.

Did that surprise you?

- No, it didn't surprise, because I do a lot of infrastructure type work, so that does happen, not just in Rhode Island, but in a lot of states and federal project, state projects, local project, not as much, but with some of these bigger projects...

It's also coming into, you have a limited group of individuals that do this type of work, and in order to incentivize them, because right now, it's a timing issue too, many of these individuals already have projects, because there's so much infrastructure work, not just in Rhode Island, but across the country.

- From the bill coming out of Washington.

- Exactly.

So in order to get people, sometimes you have to come up with different creative solutions in that process to attract them even bid, because people don't understand how much companies have to put in in order to bid.

It's a lot of time, a lot of work, a lot of outside consultants, sometimes they have to bring in to really analyze and see what's needed to put in a proper number to what their costs are gonna be.

- Bill, we've discussed this.

You guys are both attorneys.

And we've discussed this ad nauseum about I get the feeling that a lot of people would like, whatever we can recover in the lawsuit is not... To a lot of people is not as important as finding out what happened.

And now there seems to be this, whenever you try to ask questions, Nancy and all the other reporters have been doing this, whenever you try to get to the bottom of people getting suspended or who's responsible, "Well, we can't talk about that because of the lawsuit."

Is that a public relations problem for the state?

- Well, it's a public relations problem for some of the government people, clearly, because their job, first and foremost, is to keep the public and their constituents informed as to what's happening.

It's incredibly frustrating for people when there are lawsuits involved and lawyers.

And let's be candid, I think that's one of the reasons that you see some reticence about some of these same companies who think that they may be a target of a lawsuit, now being asked, are they interested in bidding or doing more work on the bridge?

It's kind of a catch 22.

And candidly speaking, Max Wistau is probably the best lawyer I've ever been seeing in action.

And so it's clear that with Max leading the charge, that there is gonna be some fallout with some of these companies.

- So is that a chilling effect for some people?

- I think to an extent, I think it might be to some of these companies.

You know, on the one hand you're asking them, "Do you want to continue to do work?"

On the other hand, you're saying, "But by the way, you may be a target, you may be involved in a lawsuit."

So I think that's certainly not the best way to go into a new project, I don't think.

So I think that probably, I haven't had anybody tell me that, but wouldn't surprise me in the least if that's some of the reservations that these companies have.

- And I think from a sort of public perspective, I would say at least a third of the questions asked last night were about the lawsuit.

And all of those were... Well, that's part of the attorney general, is representing the state on that, were deferring to them.

It was to me maybe a miss that the state did not have someone from the Attorney General's office on the call, even to say, "We can't answer that right now because it's in litigation."

- And this is why, yeah.

- If we have this whole team of RIDOT staffers there and Governor McKee, and this is the second time we're doing a public meeting, let's have a face from the attorney general's office, or one of the private attorneys who's helping with this case, to at least respond and show that they're part of this.

- Just briefly, you were at the press conference also earlier in the week, and that went on for... That was more than an hour.

There wasn't as managed as much.

It used to be only question, I heard a lot of follow ups, which was nice.

What did you take out of that?

It seemed like there was a... And I thought the governor got a little defensive on some of the questions at the end.

We were talking off camera.

You thought it was pretty open and that you got some information out of it.

- Yeah, I think that the governor has finally heard the feedback, both about community frustration, lack of transparency, and also, let's not forget when this first happened in December of last year, he nailed an NBC10 reporter for asking if there might possibly be consequences for an employee.

So I think he's sort of learned from the outrage over his demeanor and his availability.

But we're now 10 months later and I think the bigger question to me is, is it too late?

- Finally, election cycle next year.

Does it help?

So look, we think that the pilings are gonna be going up and whatever, it's clearly not gonna get done.

Does that help the governor if people are driving over... Now, eastbound is tough, westbound is is relatively smooth these days.

As they're driving over and they're seeing work actually happening, do you think that helps them, or does that remind people, why are we still going through this?

- It's a catch 22.

If it's a two hour delay and you're sitting there seeing the work because you can't move, obviously that's gonna have a negative impact, but if you're driving through and the times aren't as lengthy as it was before and you're seeing some progress, sometimes those visuals help.

That's why there's always these ribbon cuttings, these groundbreaking type ceremonies.

- [Jim] Signs on the project.

- Signs on the project.

That lends to that credence that...

Especially if you're constantly going through it, it's that repetition.

Oh, I'm seeing work done, progress is being made.

But if it doesn't get done in a timely fashion, people will have a lasting impact, especially if you're going over that bridge every single day.

- How does it affect the governor's race?

- It's interesting to hear you say that, 'cause one of the things I think will happen as the governor's race unfolds, is that the campaigns will actually begin.

And I'm sure that Governor McKee is gonna spend a lot of time and a lot of money, reminding people that the problems with the Washington Bridge didn't just happen in the last two years.

And I think as the lawsuit unfolds, one of the problems people have is that lawsuits, as you know, Allan, take forever.

But there will be a discovery process that will begin.

And I think eventually there will be at least a trickle of information from that process as to who may have, if anyone did anything wrong, who was it and when was it.

One of the things that's taken these lawyers so long is that they're looking back decades to see what took place.

So I think Governor McKee will make a strong argument that, "Look, this didn't happen on my watch, but I'm fixing it on my watch and I'm doing the best I can, but this not is not a problem that I can be held responsible for having created.

We are trying to fix what everybody ignored for decades."

- But remember, talking about politics, back in that gubernatorial, we had that phrase, "Gina Jam," because of the traffic it was going- - In 2018.

- 2018.

- And they halted the repairs because of that.

- [Allan] Blame me!

Come on, Max.

- I remember coming in on the Washington Bridge and somebody told her, Look, of course, Remundel is in Providence, Alviti's in Coventry and the lieutenant governor at the time, McKee's in Cumberland, they weren't in it every day.

They wound up suspending all repairs and they wound up repaving two lanes of the Washington Bridge to reopen it.

- I've already started telling a lot of people that it's Allan's fault.

- Allan's fault.

- That's right, it's my fault, - Well, because he didn't become governor, see, it might have been a lot different if you'd taken Gina.

- That's right.

- Max would've probably named me as a defendant in the lawsuit if that were the case.

- There we go.

All right, the friction continues between the city of Providence and the state, which is overtaken it's schools.

Mayor Brett Smiley got a call the other day from the superintendent and said, "By the way, we need a couple of million dollars more to balance our budget and I need an answer by tomorrow."

Allan, we were talking off air about this.

While this is a Providence issue, there's also...

There's gonna be more economic pressure as the federal funds begin to run out.

But what about Providence specifically?

- Providence specific, you're hearing even more dire circumstances.

Just came out that they have been late, consistently late, on their pension payments.

After all those reforms that happened, one of the promises that cities and towns and schools had made is that we're gonna make those payments, because if you don't, they're gonna withhold your state aid.

And that's what we're seeing going on right now.

These battles, and I do a lot of work in this, as you know, representing a lot of communities that have issues with schools, this is the canary coal mine, because a lot of those federal Covid funds are drying up, those funds on the school side.

You're seeing not the progress that a lot of the leaders wanna see out of that educational system, where the reading, math schoolsm are still way behind the pre-Covid pandemic levels.

So it's gotta be the right balance.

You're gonna see a lot more fights like Providence is.

And you're seeing it have an impact on the total finances of many cities and towns, because look, cities and towns are the funding source for the schools as well, it's a question of how much is the right balance of funds that the local taxpayers should foot versus what the state is.

But what's interesting about this circumstance is Providence is still under that state control.

And I've never seen a commissioner of education come, and I saw on the news this morning, stand by the side of the superintendent and say, "We need more money from the city of Providence."

That's rare.

I'm not sure that's the right move.

But it is different circumstances.

And some solution has to be brought forward where it keeps the kid's educational standards in mind without fighting it out in court.

- And the larger question is, when does the control go back?

- So this has been such a longstanding issue, and Allan knows better than anybody, having served as the mayor, but I can remember, and I'm sure it precedes this, when my dad was the mayor of Pawtucket back in the 70s, it was an issue back then, because you always have this dynamic between school committees and municipalities and the...

If you are the mayor, and you know better than anybody, you get the responsibility of setting a budget.

And if taxes go up in a city, the mayor sort of has to take responsibility.

And there's constantly this tug of war, because school committees, and you're seeing it again in Providence, where money gets spent, and yet the mayor or the administration takes the responsibility of the constituents in terms of what your taxes are in order to fund that.

So that's why this has been decades and probably longer with mayors saying, "We need more control over school department spending."

And the school department comes back and says, "No this has gotta be separate and apart from what you do as a city."

And it's never been resolved and it's still not resolved.

- And you know who's been trumpeting that for years?

Charlie Lombardi, north Providence Mayor, says the school committee should send out the tax bills then, have their name on it.

- That's right.

- [Jim] Because they don't have to stand reelection.

- And one of the changes they've made, I know I've seen it in some communities, including where I live, is when they send out a tax bill now, they actually break down- - Break it out, yeah.

- Schools.

- Used to be used to be you'd get one tax bill, here are your taxes, now they break it down, here's the city side.

And by the way, here's what the school department spending is causing.

- [Jim] A lot more.

- Yeah, i think it's also, from covering the state government, obviously state aid to schools is a hot topic.

The much maligned education funding formula, which determines how much state aid goes to every school district.

There were some improvements made, according to most lawmakers in this most recent legislative session, but it's still not enough.

And I think the school districts are being squeezed from the state, potentially also from the municipalities.

So it's kind of a tough situation for everyone.

I think in Providence, probably the most worrying thing, is just that we know that the students' performances, the staff turnover and retention rates are not good.

- And vacancies with teachers, yeah.

- And so if we're also having these fights between the city council and the superintendent, where the superintendent is almost holding the city hostage for money and putting out social media videos, it doesn't seem like that's the way to solve any of the systemic issues with education in Providence.

- Nancy.

- If I could say, one way to solve it, Allan would know this better than anybody, is don't call the mayor of your city on a Friday at five o'clock and say, "Hey, just want to catch you before you head out for the weekend."

- [Jim] I need another a couple million.

(everyone talking over each other) - I need $11 million and I need it in the next 24 hours.

Now I gotta run, bye.

- Get back to me tomorrow.

- Oh by the way, in the traditional fashion, your dad probably went through that I went through, we're gonna cut school sports, we're gonna cut this, cut that.

- It's gonna be the gifted program goes, middle school sports, the play won't.

Yeah, they hold them hostage every year.

- I don't know we if Brett Smiley was having dinner that Friday night, but I can guarantee- - Show me money.

- Enjoy it.

- That's right.

- It ruined his dinner.

Nancy had a great piece this week on... She had talked with pec executive director, Michael DiBiase, on exactly where all this housing money's going.

We've talked about the $250 million bond.

Next month you're gonna be asked for another $120 million bond.

I think it kinda reinforced what we all knew.

So what did the report say about how our housing investment is going in Rhode Island?

- Yeah, basically it's not great.

We've invested a large chunk of our federal pandemic aid, about a third of the $1.1 billion we got, into housing initiatives to help private developers and affordable housing nonprofits build or revitalize.

We're asking voters to borrow another $120 million.

So we're doing the work now, but we haven't done anything much before that in terms of state programs to stimulate housing.

And so we're kind of coming from behind, playing catch up, and at the same time, as we all know, costs of everything have gone up so much.

So kind of the end result is that, are we getting our money's worth?

Not really.

By the end of it, I think, 300 something million dollars we're gonna be spending or borrowing to stimulate housing production is gonna give us like 2000 new units when we're facing a 26,000 unit shortage just to meet existing supply.

- Yeah, I think the good thing is that under speaker of Shekarchi really, is the first time we've really seen at the State House a major push to actually try to address this issue.

I agree with Nancy, it's been an issue that someone like the Washington Bridge maybe has been ignored for a long period of time because people had other priorities.

And over a number of years, we now know that we have a serious housing crunch, not just in Rhode Island, you see the same thing across the country.

So I think that the legislature, both the House and the Senate, deserve a lot of credit for finally saying, "Look, this is a very serious issue" and they're addressing it with significant financial contributions, but they're not done, that's the problem, it's not an issue that's gonna be fixed overnight.

- Yeah, but what's sobering out of it, and I love Nancy's article about it, is even the bond that we're voting on, it's only gonna... Because of the cost of construction right now and everything that's really risen so much, it's not gonna make a dent- - 586.

- 586.

- Units, yeah.

- That's sobering.

For $120 million bond.

- But isn't some of it also the the red tape that you have to go through?

- Oh, absolutely.

- Because look at the pallet shelters, that's the poster child for government getting in the way.

They have these pallet shelters down off 146 and it's been a year because they have to get some special type of paint that only one person does.

And it's just...

It doesn't seem to address the need, 'cause a lot of builders have to get all of this to get from here to there.

- Yeah, the RIPEC report also highlights some of the state...

The criteria by which they score and award funding to projects.

They're not necessarily prioritizing projects that are the most cost efficient sometimes.

And that again, bureaucracy, local zoning laws, which Speaker Shekarchi has been battling with municipalities about for the last several years.

So there there's other things besides sort of the economic situation of inflation and construction costs that the state can do to award... To spend its money as effectively as possible, to give money to projects that can maybe leverage those dollars further.

- I've heard the grumbling in some of the communities that have been resistant to the state laws about relaxing some of the stuff, this has been the speaker's priority.

But I wonder at the end of the day, even if there's lawsuits or resistance, the new laws are state law, they're gonna probably hold up in court.

- But then again, that's a system that doesn't happen overnight either.

If you end up in court in litigation, it just slows down this entire process.

And what the speaker's been trying to do is to make people aware and recognize that this is a serious issue and we need to start working on it more aggressively.

And you're right, he's been very aggressive legislatively to address this, financially to address it, but then you run into the issue of some of the cities and towns sort of see it as an overreach by the state.

- And there's a slow walk- - And everybody has this, "We wanna control our own city and town and this is what we want," and all that does is slow the entire process down.

- The one thing that I've seen a lot more happen, 'cause I do some development work as well across the state, is you're seeing a lot more neighbors getting active, where they're hiring attorneys.

So as much as the speaker in that legislation that he put forward, created a special court to to handle a lot of this stuff, you're seeing a lot of neighbors coming together and be that opposition to drive a lot of, not just political, but in litigation as well to kind of stall some of these projects.

So there's always gonna be that counterbalance there where sometimes when you have new laws, the ones that benefit are the attorneys, because it's a noble goal- - Well, there's nothing wrong with that.

- There's nothing wrong with that, especially with two of these guys over here, right Bill?

- The attorneys always win, we've understood that.

- But that slows the process sometimes.

- All right, let's do this, let's go to outrageous and/or kudos and then we'll see, we might have a couple other things to get to.

Nancy, what do you have this week?

- So my kudos is to the commenter at the Washington Bridge meeting last night who suggested that the state make paperweights out of the old concrete from the Washington Bridge and sell them.

- Perfect - Rhode Island, if we can sell pieces of McCoy Stadium, why not the Washington Bridge?

- That's right.

- And this specific person also suggested that they donate the proceeds to the food bank, so maybe make a good cause out of it, but I think there would be demand there.

- That's creative.

- Yes.

- Yeah, I have a piece of the Washington Bridge.

Billy, what do you have?

- I got my man, Trump, again, I mean...

There's so many things you could say, we could do more than a whole show on him alone.

But I did see last week that he's been out there pushing these bibles that are "Make America Great" Bibles or something, and they're selling for $60 a Bible or something, and it was disclosed- - I wanna know who's buying those?

- Well, I don't know, I know Allan didn't buy one.

But I saw within the last week or so that they're actually being made in China and they cost about $3 per Bible to make.

- [Jim] Perfect.

- He's having them shipped in from China and then selling them here in the US.

- It's a pretty good profit margin.

- Absolutely.

- Absolutely.

- He's gonna need it to pay off those 100s of millions of dollars in legal actions and lawsuits.

- The question is, what would Jesus think about that?

Think about that.

Allan, what do you have?

- Actually, I just have a commentary, way off of the Rhode Island topic.

My wife and I just had a great trip, long weekend, went to Cooperstown, but it's more of a commentary on the changing face of what was once America's pastime.

We're coming into the World Series soon enough, but when you take a look at who is now watching baseball, in that last National League championship game, because Shohei Ohtani was playing it, 12 million Japanese viewers were watching it to only 7 million in the US.

Just think about the change in dynamics of how over a course of a generation and having the right individual be the face, talk about change in society, in America's pastime.

So it was kind of fun to see that kind of swing right now.

And I'm a big Shohei fan, so go Dodgers, although I'm always a Red Sox fan.

- Yeah, once they're out, you're- - Once they're out - The Dodgers.

- How can you root for the Yankees, come on?

- Yeah, exactly.

Well, a lot of people watching this show can, but that's okay.

Just quickly, we have a couple minutes left, Constitutional Convention.

We haven't had one for 40 years, there seems to be kind of a loose coalition of people recommending against it.

Your thoughts on the Constitution?

- I'm not in favor of it.

I think it's a waste of money, frankly, at this point in time.

I think we've got a great legislature who listen to their constituents, let people vote.

I just don't see- - How's that Inspector General bill going?

- The house term limits coming.

- I don't think, I'm not in favor of that.

I think it's a waste of money.

- 70% of people.

- It's a good- - 70% of the people in the poll say that they favor an Inspector General.

- Sure, and then if you ask those same 70%, do you still favor it if it's gonna cost three or $4 million a year, we're gonna hire a whole- - It's a $14 billion budget, please.

- It's a waste of money.

It's a waste of money.

- Let's shift the term limits then, because I think that's one of the reasons why I do definitely support Constitutional Convention here.

Because that's another very strong... On the minds of not just Rhode Islanders, but people across the country.

And with the legislature right now, that's never gonna happen.

And you need to effectuate change a different vehicle sometimes, and one that's been long overdue.

- What I've thought of is that usually you see all the bond issues and it's gonna be number one.

So many people go in and they vote for the bond issues.

You wonder whether they're really gonna be paying attention and just go check, check, check, check, whether that would help in terms of those who would vote for it.

- I don't think most voters probably are gonna understand what they're voting for with a Constitutional Convention.

Obviously we're seeing both opposition and proponents spending money and putting out ads, but at the end of the day, I think a lot of voters aren't necessarily gonna totally understand what they're voting for.

Personally from a reporting standpoint, I think it would be really interesting to cover- - To cover one, yeah.

- Absolutely.

- A Constitutional Convention.

- Because you get the election, you get the thing and then down the line.

- Line item vetoes, like there's so many issues that come up every year in the legislature, and it's like, "Oh, we can't do anything about that."

And so just to cover the process would be interesting to report on.

- Okay.

- See this is representative, three against one.

- Yeah, there you go.

- Used to that.

- Yeah, exactly.

No, it's usually...

It's usually the other...

It's usually the other way around.

All right, that is all the time we have, folks.

Thank you for joining us.

Bill and Allen, you can take it outside at the end of the day.

Nancy, thank you.

Folks, we appreciate you joining us.

We are heading into the home stretch to the presidential election and Constitutional Convention and the bond issues.

Please join us back here, we'll have a recap of everything going on and a full analysis as "A Lively Experiment" continues.

Have a great weekend.

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