- [Jim] This week on "A Lively Experiment," what will be the key issues facing this year's session of the General Assembly?

Less than a week in, there's plenty on their plate already.

- [Narrator] "A Lively Experiment" is generously underwritten by.

- Hi, I'm John Hazen White Jr. For over 30 years, "A Lively Experiment" is 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.

(screen whooshing) - Here to talk about it.

Senate Majority Leader Val Lawson, House Minority Leader Mike Chippendale, House Majority Leader Chris Blazejewski and Senate Minority Leader, Jessica de la Cruz.

Welcome into this week's "Lively," I'm Jim Hummel.

It is back to the future with a projected budget deficit of several hundred million dollars for next year.

But lawmakers also have a host of policy issues to contend with as they settle in for their annual six month session.

So we invite back the leadership from each chamber to get their perspective and a little later, legislation they have a particular interest in this year.

So welcome, one and all.

This is the same panelist we had last year.

You know the drill.

We got a lot to get to, before we get to the budget, Mike, let me start with you.

You had strong words earlier this week concerning what's going on with the cyber attack on the state's computer system and Deloitte.

So can you follow up on that for people who may not have heard that?

- Yeah, certainly.

I mean, that project, which was estimated to cost the state $135 million back in 2013, is now closer to $800 million and it's still not serving the people it was intended to serve.

And giving out the private information of 63% of Rhode Islanders to hackers across the world.

There's a problem there.

We cannot salvage.

If you build a house on a really bad foundation, you can make the house look as nice as it as you want.

It's still not going to stand.

The foundation is broken with that program and it needs to be scrapped, in my opinion.

- We hear it from your constituents, I'm sure.

Any thoughts on Deloitte?

You know, I think we hear the governor saying it's kind of hard to start with the new company 'cause we're so invested, they've re-upped that contract twice.

What are you hearing from your constituents on this?

- Well, I think first the primary concern right now is we need to ensure that anyone, everyone's information is protected and we address that, right?

And it can't happen again because this is a major concern.

And I know we're talking about having conversations about having hearings around that.

And in the Senate we've just created a, we're creating a brand new committee that will address this area of concern with AI and technology.

So first and foremost, it's protecting consumer, the consumers who use that.

- [Jim] Jessica?

- Yeah, I mean I've gotten several phone calls about it and so I know that more than just the several people are affected by it.

We know that 650,000 Rhode Islanders are affected by this.

We have a population of a million, so.

- And that's past and present.

So it's not necessarily everybody present, but those are people whose system - Yeah.

- information that they have.

- And I mean, how many of those still reside in Rhode Island?

So, but so this is, (grunts) I don't wanna say catastrophic, but in a way when we're talking about social security numbers, we're talking sensitive personal data.

And so even people who just went on the system to apply for or to search for healthcare plans, you know, under Obamacare, everybody had to have insurance, otherwise you're gonna be penalized.

So we're talking about what, eight years back.

It's a lot of data.

Someone needs to be held accountable.

This is, we can't give government a pass.

And so if it means that we have to get a new contractor, then that's what we're gonna have to do.

- We - Nope, go ahead.

- So we joked last week, if you have oversight hearings, do you do the bridge first or has this moved into the front spot?

Do you see oversight hearings on the horizon on this?

- Well, I expect oversight hearings on both issues, both the Washington Bridge and Rhode Island bridges, which is this system that has been hacked.

As Jessica just said, this isn't hundreds of people, this is thousands of people.

This is hundreds of thousands of people who've been impacted.

And let's remember, these are folks that are, some of our most vulnerable Rhode Islanders who are applying for state programs where they need support.

Additionally, it's a lot of small business owners that participate in the Affordable Care Act through the exchange.

So this impacts lots of people and accountability is gonna be something on our mind.

I certainly expect oversight hearings on this issue, but I expect the Washington Bridge to be a first target of oversight in the new year.

- Mike, just quickly before we finish on this, what about the argument Deloitte's too big, it'd be hard to shift over to something else.

What would be your solution in terms of cutting ties and make and still serving the people who need this the most?

- Absolutely, you know, when, as I said earlier with the foundation, we have a crumbling foundation of a program.

We can continue to try to fix it, which will cost us more and more money.

It costs them over four times their estimate to make it function in the first place.

And it functions poorly.

So we can continue to try to pretty it up by bringing other more competent contractors in, but they're still working with a fundamentally flawed foundational system.

So that's why I feel that way.

Look, we've sued, we're suing over the bridge right now.

We sued over 38 studios.

We should be auditing this program doing a performance audit of its implementation.

All of the partners and suing to get our money back for that program, which never did what it was promised to do.

- Okay, going back 10 years.

- Absolutely.

Going back to 2013.

- And just add one thing.

I believe Attorney General Neronha is looking right now at doing exactly what Leader Chippendale has said.

- Great.

Chris, lemme stay with you.

A several hundred million dollars budget deficit, I think it will vary and we won't know until the May Revenue Estimating conference.

Let me ask you, before we get into this year, the governor presented a 13.5, little bit more budget last year, the legislature, by the time it came out of the meat grinder, added a quarter of a billion dollars last year.

Did you not see the storm clouds on the horizon that we're gonna have to basically that's baked in now.

I understand there was covid money.

Why did the legislature add 250 million over what the governor asked last year?

- So this is the Speaker's fifth budget, my fifth budget.

And each and every budget we've done, including the first budget during covid and subsequent budgets have been balanced.

The budget we passed last year was balanced.

We can't anticipate what's gonna happen into the future with revenues.

We do our best based on projections and the budget we passed was balanced.

- Why don't you put a couple hundred million on the rainy day fund?

'cause the rainy day is coming.

- Well, we've actually have increased the amount in the rating days fund as part of our budgets.

What we did is address concerns of Rhode Islanders and the many needs that are out there, including by restoring education aid to Rhode Island cities and towns to support public education.

That was one source.

We provided an additional COLA for retirees who had gone 10 years without a COLA.

What we're hearing from our constituents is we need to support them to make sure that we're lowering costs.

And that's something that we target in that budget.

This year, we're gonna take a look at the revenue numbers as they come in.

We are anticipating over $300 million deficit.

We'll address that, how exactly we do that, that would the first step, will be next week, when we see the governor's budget.

Our finance committee is then gonna do a deep dive into it over the course of months and then take in May numbers after we get tax collections in April and then focus thereafter on making sure we pass another balanced budget, which we will do.

- Well I just read this morning the RIPEC report.

Not completely 'cause I didn't have enough time to get here for the show, but I read the RIPEC report and one of the things that really stuck out to me, which is something that Republicans have echoed for a long time.

It says that we do not have a revenue problem.

We have a spending problem in this state.

We've been saying it for a long time.

And so it's been said in the report, which I felt a little bit of vindicated for Republicans in this state.

We do not have a revenue problem.

We have a spending problem in this state.

The one time use of revenue has contributed to the runaway costs.

Using ARPA funds for reoccurring for costs, I'm sorry, using ARPA funds is really what exasperated this issue.

Instead of using it for one time uses, we kind of filled the gaps in some of the budget.

And so this is what's led to the problems that we have now where we see this $300 million deficit.

- Mike, you've talked about this a lot too, and I wonder, the Speaker in numerous interviews said, we want to do investment, not exactly actually spending.

And what we're finding now is somewhat of it is baked in going forward.

I mean, it was $9.5 million that may have been on your first budget years ago, maybe a little bit more 10 million, we're up 40, 50% on the budget.

It's unsustainable.

- It is unsustainable.

You know, there's a couple of factors here, right?

We've got inflation, which is costing the state more for everything that we need, whether it's goods or services.

So that has to be baked into it, that's going to account for a certain amount of it.

But we also have a fairly large cohort of legislators since 2020 who have come in and they are largely progressive in their ideology who have only known these fat times of federal money coming out of our ears.

And I think that that is going to be the biggest challenge for leadership in both chambers is to sort of retrain their expectations of just exactly, what we will be able to do with the limited funding that we have.

We have to do, like every household in this state is doing, we have to tighten our belts.

We have to look at what the nice to haves and the must haves and make some really hard decisions.

And not everyone's gonna be a winner.

- Val.

- Yeah, I think I'd like to track back to the cyber breach Washington Bridge.

In both instances, I think right, all Rhode Island is deserve accountability.

That's what they want, right?

And we need to make sure we have faith in government.

And I think this applies also to the budget process as well.

And I agree with the leader, right?

We need to, there's tremendous need out there.

We're trying to address that need and we need to maintain that.

So as we go through that process, I think through both finance committees, we can do it and make good decisions that when we spend the money, it's in the best interest of Rhode Islanders.

- One thing that surprised me was, and governor, I've alluded to this several times, Governor McKee, in one of his debates with Ashley Kalus years ago, they said, when all the Covid money filters out, you know, clearly you have to run it through the budget.

So it's a lot higher than it was.

What do you think the budget's gonna come in at?

And he said maybe 11 and 11 and a half billion.

It came in at 13 billion.

Why is it so much higher, even with the Covid money flushed out now?

- Well, we rely on numbers that are run by the administration that provides us with the estimated revenues that we have to work with.

And so we have seen through additional tax revenue that's come into the state, an improvement in our tax situation.

But I'm not gonna just agree with folks in this panel.

We're gonna have to look at every program, every department, we have to take a close look at it.

We may need belt tightening, as a speaker has said multiple times in our finance committee is supported every option's on the table.

Every time we do a budget, we make sure that we're scrutinizing the departments, we're scrutinizing our use of resources.

We wanna make sure that those dollars are being used for the people in Rhode Island in the best way possible.

- Val, the truck tolls court prevailed for Rhode Island in its appeal.

I was skeptical that it was gonna go through.

All of a sudden the decision is they can turn the truck tolls back on.

But what you guys did years ago, you put a cap on.

If the Cardi truck is going back and forth of the local delivery, you can't do that anymore.

So now that the legislature has to take, and I know these discussions are gonna be up at the leadership level where you guys are, I don't think there's any doubt that the tolls are gonna come back on, but how do you protect the locals while taxing or tolling the out-of-state trucks coming through?

- Right.

I think the fact that the state won the lawsuit is great for Rhode Islanders.

And I think that is our task, right?

In those discussions we have to find a way where we can have the truck tolls but you know, help local truck trucking companies in a way that's constitutional, right.

That's our challenge.

But I think we can do that and move forward.

- Jessica?

- Yeah, I'm.

It's another tax and we don't need more taxes.

We do not have a revenue problem.

We have a spending problem.

And if we're talking about now tolling individuals such as, you know, parents taking their kids to school or driving their kids to the mall or to the beach, Republicans are against that.

We need to look at our budget as a whole and see where is the biggest growth and health and human services is for one.

But the RIPEC report that I read this morning, I was talking about education and COLAs, which are outpacing the growth.

Like, you know, I have a family budget, we all have a family budget.

We live within that budget.

We take care of our needs first and then our wants or you know, we like to haves.

So we need to take a serious look at the budget and say, all right, what do we have to cut so that we are not raising taxes on Rhode Islanders?

And here's the other thing, you have truck tolls, you're not going to absorb that cost.

They're going to pass it on to the consumer.

It's another tax on the consumer in addition to taxing them to use the road, which they've already, you know, the gas tax is supposed to take care of the roads.

So it's just, it's too much.

No more taxes.

Read my lips.

No more taxes, like George Bush said.

(chuckles) But we need to, we need to tighten our belt.

- I think I would just like to add that we don't support taxing regular vehicles, right?

- Right.

- Not nowhere are we, is that under consideration in the Senate?

And I think what already exists now we are paying that tax.

Every other state is charging this truck toll.

So our consumers in Rhode Island are already paying it.

So this just puts us on a level playing field.

- Yeah, I supported roadworks then, I support roadworks now.

I agree with Leader Lawson that we received a lot of testimony that showed that trucks are the vehicles that do the most damage to our roads and bridges.

We have to maintain those roads and bridges as we've seen.

We have to, right now, my understanding is that, the appellate process, we're not sure whether an appeal will be taken as to the First Circuit's decision.

If an appeal isn't taken, then we'll have to look to see if there are ways to address the concerns of local truckers.

But we have to be, as leader Lawson said, we have to be within the constitutional constraints of the First Circuit decision, - Which means you have to rewrite the law that you passed, right?

- We may, but a First Circuit decision would strike down the portions of the law that are unconstitutional.

So we may have to pass additional statute or alternatively we just enact a statute as passed without including the provisions that have been found to be unconstitutional, which has been struck down by the court.

- Yeah, the bond, when we passed the roadworks program, we bonded in anticipation of the revenue that the tolls would bring in.

So right now we are doing our infrastructure work, however poorly it may be getting done with money that we brought in anticipation of getting this stream of revenue from tolls.

- So we need that revenue to be able to pay buck?

- That's the quandary that the state faced when it was put on pause by the initial decision.

So from a financial perspective that we will be able toll trucks that does support the initial roadworks plan.

Ideologically, I don't think that is the way to go because we see repeatedly how Rhode Island is ranked at the bottom of every list, no matter what source you wanna look at, as one of the least business friendly states.

And this is just one of those other areas where we're demonstrating our unfriendliness towards businesses.

They are challenged with regulations, with fees, with taxes, with all sorts of things that strangle businesses.

They spend more time complying with regulatory and fees and taxes in the state of Rhode Island than they do in their business.

That's not healthy.

That's why we can't attract good and new businesses into this state.

And we have to take that seriously.

We are an outlier.

Not every state, tolls, in fact most don't.

So we have to be more creative and more responsible with how we use the funds that we have.

- We could do- - Can I?

- Okay, go ahead.

- So, and this is not where money's going into a restricted receipt account where we could say, well this money really is dedicated to roads.

It's going into the general fund, which is a black hole.

And- - Would it make you feel better if it was a restricted receipt account?

- It would make me feel better, but - a little bit better?

- A little bit better, I would still be against it.

And here's the other thing, you know, New Hampshire has tolls, sure, but they don't have an income tax, right?

So it's not an apples to apples comparison.

- I would take issue with that though, Mike.

If you go up and down from Florida to Rhode Island, the East Coast, you're tolled on most of that - Certainly.

I mean East- - Yeah, if you live in Montana, not, but I mean if you live - Absolutely.

- in where we live - And that's what I mean, again, most of the states don't, but the eastern seaboard certainly.

When I go to North Carolina every summer we pay about $75 in tolls each way.

- Yeah, and you don't realize when you go down that stretch in Maryland 'cause it's on your EZPass and you're like $4, $8 all of a sudden it's like, it's $30.

- Yeah.

- And before you can sneeze.

Alright, we could do an entire show on affordable housing homelessness.

I do want touch on it.

Look, I know a lot of this is being driven by the Speaker, but it's the legislature overall.

$250 million from the federal ARPA money, $120 million bond.

I think most people that I hear from would like to see a little bit more results this year.

- Yeah.

We all love to see results.

You know, when I look at the pallet shelter kind of lends to the issue even with affordable housing with building is that, you know, you have these regulations and so these pallet shelters can't be open because they don't have a paved path to the pallet shelter or because it doesn't have fire suppression.

Obviously we want fire suppression in these pallet shelters.

But if you're living out in the cold in a tent and you have, you know, a barrel with fire there, I mean your tent can go up in flames, you know, with an ember or, you know, there was a factory in Massachusetts at one point, a few years ago, where there were homeless individuals living inside and they had, you know, a barrel with fire going and the factory went up in smoke.

And so what we're looking at is, you know, there's so many regulations in which are impeding the ability to get these housing projects done.

So we need to look at them and say, okay, what can we, obviously we wanna build safe structures.

We're not trying to build shoddy, you know, homes and shelters, but how can we streamline 'em so that building in Rhode Island is easier?

Because once we build, it's a supply and demand issue.

If we have more housing, then the price comes down.

If we, you know, and so when it comes to the housing, I feel like on all fronts for the homeless, for affordable housing, it's like the state can't get anything right.

(indistinct), we can't get right, bridge, we can't get right, homelessness, we can't get right, and, you know, not to point fingers and point blame, but, you know, I feel that a lot of times that falls on not having parody with Democrats and Republicans finding a balance.

- This has been the Speaker's signature thing, the last couple of years.

When you're talking with him, you know, out of the public eye, is there frustration that we haven't gotten more progress in terms of getting stock available for people to move into?

- Well, I think Leader de la Cruz makes a lot of good points.

The speaker has prioritized housing right from the beginning.

We held a caucus in our first month as leaders and found that housing was an issue across the state.

In that time, the issues only gotten more prevalence, not just in Rhode Island but across the country.

Our goal is to lower the cost of housing for people by producing more housing.

So we're a complete agreement on that.

I think, yeah, there is frustration, this frustration that over the years we have funded programs designed at lower the cost of housing for Rhode Islanders and they're not being implemented.

And this pallet shelter issue, again, enormous source of frustration.

Our housing commissions repeatedly have brought people in and asked questions in the spring, in the fall, in December recently, when are these things getting opened?

What do we need to do to get them opened?

David Cicilline from the Rhode Island Foundation ask questions at a commission right along those lines.

And yet we're here today where they're not open.

So if it means having an emergency executive order to get these open so that people who are suffering out in the cold can get the warmth and a safe place so that they don't suffer on these terrible nights, then that's what we have to do.

- Should the governor do that?

- I completely believe he should do that.

If that's what it takes, then that's what he should do.

- Yeah, I've always said Governor McKee, I said it on this show, Governor McKee and the fire marshal who's a good man, but I think has kinda lost his way in this.

They should spend a couple of nights out in the cold and see what it feels like.

The Senate came around on ADUs last year.

I also wonder though there's been a little bit of pushback that East Providence is different than Providence from Newport, from Woonsocket and whether one size fits all on some of this housing legislation.

I know we're mixing, you know, the pallet shelters and affordable housing, but the larger issue of affordable housing and where we are now.

- Yeah, I think that's always gonna be the case in different communities.

They have different concerns and I think the housing issue, in general, I agree with everyone, is an enormous point of frustration for everybody on both aspects because we've allocated, has historic amounts of funds and yet the production that we need hasn't happened.

I was here last year, I'm sure I mentioned the development in East Providence.

We're waiting to break ground on, right?

So we're still there trying to put that all together and I was at another one earlier in the year and they just continually take too long.

And this is a pressing need and we need to make sure people have affordable housing and you know, shelter's a basic human right and we need to provide for that.

- That RIPEC report you read was not too rosy on where the, (chuckles) I was just thinking of that as you said that.

Mike?

- The inability to deal with on any measurable level, the homelessness issue right now is just an utter failure on the part of the administration.

Housing, in general, nationwide, there's a shortage.

There are very few municipalities, counties, states, et cetera that are doing well.

Most are not.

We find ourselves in a particularly unique situation, based, geographically where we are, we have a lot of folks making Boston Beltway salaries who can very easily tack 20 minutes onto their commute every day coming to Rhode Island and buy a house for $700,000 that would cost 1.4 million in the Boston Beltway - It may not have to commute every day.

And spend two days commute.

- And they may not to commute And what that does is that, takes opportunity away from Rhode Islanders who do not have the economic opportunities through employment in our state to make the same amount of money you can make in the beltway of Boston.

The same is is true with Manhattan on our southern coast.

They're doing the same thing.

Manhattan is largely a ghost town in many of the offices because they're working remotely.

So they can now live in - From Charlestown - In Westerly and Charleston Block Island.

And they are, and so we, our natives, are competing with those buyers who have cash in hand.

I'm so proud of my son, he just bought a house, but I'm heartbroken that he had to buy it in Connecticut because you cannot afford to buy one in the state of Rhode Island.

There is no more starter homes for young professionals and young couples in the state.

- Yeah, I think of that.

My kids' son and daughter-in-law in North Carolina, I'm sure at some point they wanna move back.

But where do you live?

How do you afford it?

Alright, let's do- - Can I make a point of, because I made a statement and I didn't clarify, but what one of the pallet shelter problems was that no fire suppression is present in these pallet shelters.

So my point was, you know, do we have them out in the cold huddled, you know, around fire, right?

- What's more dangerous?

- Right, or do we just put them in a pallet shelter and you know, continue to work on the pallet shelter, make sure that that it's, you know, up to code.

- Alright, let's do this.

We have a couple other things, but I had asked each of the leaders all to bring maybe a piece of legislation that is flying under the radar that they're gonna champion this year.

Val, let's start with you.

- So actually mine, it has to do with housing.

So a constituent of mine brought this to me at the end of the last session and it's to create a similar program like a 529 for Rhode Islanders where they can contribute, the funds go in tax free and they can use it on closing costs, a down payment.

So it's a way to sort of help that process.

So I'm looking, I think we have to look at creative ways to address this problem.

'cause it is a priority.

- And if it's coming from the majority leader, that helps get a little juice, right?

- Hope so, (chuckles) - Well I guess we'll see the, we'll test your juice this session.

Chris, what do you have?

- So we are focused on healthcare and primary care especially, and I have to give credit to the Senate, they've been working on this issue as well.

I think if you ask Rhode Islanders, many Rhode Islanders don't have a primary care physician or have struggling to get it.

I know the Speaker has said publicly that if he lost his.

- He lost his?

- Yeah.

_ I don't have a primary care physician.

My wife can't find a primary care physician.

This is happening everywhere.

Doctors, we would talk to doctors, do you know anyone?

The doctors in Rhode Island can't find a primary care physician.

So this is, and if you talk to people, what's the average age?

It keeps increasing and these doctors are gonna retire.

So we need to address this issue at its root.

Make sure that more primary care physicians can be brought to Rhode Island.

Those that here stay.

And maybe we can find ways of licensing more here in Rhode Island.

And maybe, you know, I know the Senate's looking at, creating potentially a medical school.

I don't know if that's the solution, but I love that there's some creative thinking going around about how we can solve the primary care crisis we have in our state.

- Michael.

- It's not by any means under the radar, but I'm not gonna stop talking about it.

And that's the Office of Independent Inspector General.

(Jessica chuckling) And the reason why I feel we need that is because we don't currently have a gatekeeper.

Earlier it was mentioned that our Attorney General is now going to consider suing Deloitte over this issue.

I assure you that that would not be happening.

There would not be Democrat on Democrat crime (Jessica chuckling) if there wasn't contention between the AG and the governor right now.

And that's the only time things happen is when there's contention in the super majority, an Office of Independent Inspector General eliminates that partisanship because it is truly independent and it will get to the bottom of whatever the issue is, whomever is responsible for it, regardless of what party they come from.

And that, as we see on a federal level, has a return on investment of $21 per every dollar invested in that office.

- Is that a phrase you like to use Democrat on Democrat crime?

Or is that forbiden (all laughing) in the Speaker's office?

- Well that's always leadership of (indistinct) always adding to the vocabulary of this state.

(all laughing) - I appreciate that to you, you have the last 45 seconds.

- Okay, great, well, I do love Inspector General, but since Leader Chippendale has already mentioned it, I'll mention, you know, I was on the Providence Public School Study Commission with Senator Zurier.

We listening to a lot of testimony with other states and what they're doing and how we can improve education.

And one of the things that really stood out to me was open bargaining.

So having these teacher contracts out in the open bargained so that students can be part of the process.

Parents can hear, you know, what's going on, the public, everyone, it's public school, we pay public dollars for it, so why not have open bargaining?

So it's, you know, everybody can see what's going on.

- Great idea, don't hold your breath.

I see Val's got a little vein going in her head over there.

(Jessica chuckling) - No, I mean that, that actually is a practice that is been around for a long time.

And if all sides are in agreement, that can be done.

- Yeah.

- And if I could- - Oh my goodness.

- There's agreement.

- Well, no, if all parties are in agreement and that's how they wanna move forward and they have that type of relationship.

- We'll end on that note.

You're gonna have a little confab after the show.

Folks, that is all the time we have.

Mike, good to see you and Val and Jessica and Chris as always.

We'll see you again next year, hopefully.

Folks, if you don't catch us Friday at seven or Sunday at noon, we archive all of our shows at ripbs.org/lively and you can take us along wherever you get your favorite podcast.

So listen to us on the car or maybe your run, maybe not this time of year, but wherever you listen to your podcast, come back here next week.

We'll be following everything that's going on in the legislature and in the larger what's going on in politics in Washington too as we head toward inauguration day.

We hope you have a great weekend.

Come back next week as "A Lively Experiment" continues, (bright music) - [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.