- [Jim] Coming up on this week's "A Lively Experiment," Kamala Harris replaces Joe Biden on the presidential ticket.

Can she carry the initial burst of momentum into November?

And there are already storm clouds on the horizon surrounding next year's state budget.

We'll tell you why.

- [Announcer] "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 and Rhode Island PBS.

- Joining us on the panel, Nancy Lavin, reporter for the Rhode Island Current.

Aaron Guckian, former candidate for lieutenant governor and current executive director of the Rhode Island Dental Association, and political contributor, Pablo Rodriguez.

Hello and welcome to "Lively."

I'm Jim Hummel, and we appreciate you spending part of your weekend with us.

And just like that, the Democrats have a new presidential candidate.

We'll get to that a little later.

But first up, Rhode Island hasn't had a constitutional convention in four decades, in part because of organized opposition.

That has convinced voters three times it might open up a Pandora's box of problems and not to do it.

And this week, they are back, urging defeat of a question on the November ballot.

Pablo, let me begin with you.

You were not a part of this official opposition, but you have for many years, and coincidentally, you were here, you had just arrived in Rhode Island, for the first constitutional convention, seemingly a long time ago.

- 1985 was when I came to Rhode Island, and 1986 was when the last convention happened.

And I was part of the Stop 14.

The 14th Amendment was the one that was looking to outlaw abortion in Rhode Island, you know, through a backdoor, like many amendments throughout the country.

And I was also part of the opposition 10 years ago, when the question was put to the voters again, and for the same reasons, which is that when you open the rule book of democracy, which is what the Constitution is, at this particular time, when you have so many special interests that can come from the outside, spending millions of dollars to elect members of this constitutional convention, you know, it's ripe for real shenanigans that can impact civil rights, workers' rights, reproductive rights.

And it's something that unions, Planned Parenthood, many civil rights organizations, the ACLU, are against.

- Nancy, you really laid it out beautifully in your article for the Rhode Island Current, and there are arguments on each side on this.

- Yeah, so it was actually my coworker, Chris, who wrote the story, not me.

- Oh, sorry.

- But he did do a beautiful job.

So yeah, I mean, definitely, as Pablo said, there are concerns about sort of when you open things up, what are you gonna try to kind of sneak in that may be sort of not reflective of what Rhode Islanders really want.

The flip side of that is that there are changes that have been incorporated through the constitutional convention that some people would say are good.

We got the ethics commission out of the '86 convention.

And there was also, although it's now been sort of disputed and in court for the last couple years, some nod to shoreline access added in the 1986 constitutional convention.

So, you know, there are ways that revisiting a really old document and updating it for modern times and sort of new questions could be a good thing, but there are also ways, especially, I think, in this age of sort of disinformation and conspiracy theories where, you know, I think the fear is that people can be sort of almost tricked into supporting something that they may not actually want.

- Yeah, I mean, I kind of, you know, understand, you know, the feedback you're saying.

I think that sometimes when you have an open forum, it can be dangerous with the dark money.

However, you know, you can have some really, you know, good, lively conversations and discourse in regards to line item veto and things that, you know, people might agree with or disagree with.

You know, I trust the voters.

You know, we'll see what they do in November, and then you go from there.

But it's, you know, you definitely, I get worried, especially with, you know, social media and the way that they can push things, but then it has to get voted on again.

So, I mean, there's definitely, you know, ways that the voter will be able to be in control, and I trust Rhode Islanders.

- And that's the point is that if we, and the process is if voters in November vote a constitutional convention, that it would happen probably next year, maybe the year after, and then whatever they put forward like they did in '85.

So your concerns about abortion rights, I think, were well-founded, but the voters ultimately would decide.

Do you think that would ever go over in Rhode Island?

- Well, this is the problem.

Only 18% of people participated in the election of the constitutional convention participants.

So that's not representative.

- Right, but not in the election where they ultimately decided on the issues.

- I understand, but reform, such as term limits, the judicial nominating commission, the separation of powers, didn't come from a constitutional convention.

It came through the legislature, and you have a greater ability to throw away the bumps that put up bad stuff in the legislature than you have to change the Constitution, once somebody changes the Constitution.

Remember that the problem here is that we took 25 amendments in '86, and condensed them to 14, so they could fit in a piece of paper.

And just imagine, you know, with the lack of civic engagement and the lack of civic education in this state, that we're gonna have, you know, 2,000 words for people to just, "Oh yeah, I'm going to be analyzing perfectly whether this is good or bad."

The people that have the most money are going to be able to win the day.

- I all, go ahead.

- And there's also polling that shows that most voters now don't even really know or understand what a constitutional convention is.

So when they're being asked this November, should we have a constitutional convention, ostensibly, a fair amount of them, at least, if asked today, wouldn't really know what they're voting yes or no on.

- I also think there are issues, though.

The classic one is the inspector general.

There are basically one or two people at the legislature that are holding that up because polling has showed, now, particularly with the Washington Bridge and all these other issues, 70% of the people say, "That's a great idea.

Joe Shekarchi's standing in the way of that."

You know what would move Shekarchi outta that?

A constitutional convention, and you put that on the voters.

So what about that?

- Well, you know, and the voters.

You know, we have to put the responsibility to where it lies, is the voters who need to vote people out of the legislature.

And, you know, we have to educate the community on civic participation.

We have such poor civic education in the state, that asking people that don't have the ability to understand what they're voting for is just foolish.

- Final thought on that?

- I think, you know, just checks and balances.

If you're talking about with the inspector general, I mean, these types of things matter, especially, you gotta keep people accountable, and if something is going wrong, and there's nowhere to get those checks and balances, it's problematic, so, that's where I stand.

- All right, it looks like the salad days for the good budgets are over.

Already, now, this is not a surprise, federal money is running out, and next year, we're looking at a structural deficit of more than a quarter of a billion dollars.

You wrote extensively on this.

I'm sorry, I- - Yes, that was me.

- I mixed up the articles.

Probably not a surprise, but they're already, Governor McKee is already saying we need to tighten up a little bit, so tell us what you wrote about.

- Yeah, so last week, his administration, his budget director sent a memo to all the state agencies basically saying, you know, "We just approved this historic budget, woo-hoo.

Slow your roles."

Hiring, even of funded, unfilled positions, purchases over $5,000, they're not saying you can't do them, but there's gonna be extra layers of review.

Any discretionary spending, anything that is not critical, don't do it for now.

So, you know, I think on the one hand, the governor and, you know, some fiscal policy watchdogs are saying, "This is smart to do because we know that we have this structural deficit.

Extra review is always good."

The flip side of that is that bureaucracy is very slow to begin with, and for a lot of departments that are sort of critically understaffed, or have sort of big contracts coming up, will all of this extra review around like hiring a staffer or awarding a contract, kind of run the clock out, and they'll miss a chance, especially when you think about, like the Department of Housing is pretty new in leadership turmoil, doesn't have enough staff right now, has funded unfilled positions.

You know, if they have to go through extra layers of review to award contracts to hire staff to roll out these critical programs, is that going to undermine their abilities?

- Yeah, and Rybak pointed out that the governor used almost $200 million for recurring expenses, basically, to fill a budget hole with one-time money coming in, so that creates a bit of a problem.

- Yeah, absolutely, I mean, it reminds me of the Carcieri administration.

You know, I was a special assistant to the governor and the first lady, and, you know, you start getting people retiring, and you're not filling these positions, it puts a lot of pressure on our state employees and their directors, but, you know, we're in an inflationary environment, so at least there's a lot of tax returns that are going back.

However, what happens when things start to slow down, you know, we could be into a, you know, a hurricane, you know, for a fiscal storm here.

So, you know, we'll see what happens.

I don't like to speculate too much into the future.

Once you get the budget, you gotta see what you do.

I'm a banker by trade, and, you know, you get the budget, and you go at it, but, you know, I trust Senator DiPalma and, you know, the chairman up there of finance to, you know, do the right thing for the people of Rhode Island.

- A budget has two things, just two things, money in and money out.

And somehow we continue talking about money out and never talking about money in.

Taxes for millionaires were cut in Rhode Island years ago.

If we add just the 3% that we cut in the past, now it's 5.99% for millionaires, the top tax rate.

If we just increase it three percentage points, we bring in $126 million, and it only affects 2,000 people.

The benefit accrues to hundreds of thousands.

The problem is that when you concentrate on the expenses, the first place where people want to go is Medicaid, is, you know, poor people programs, and that is not going to make Rhode Island a better place.

So I think that it's time to start talking about raising taxes, especially for millionaires.

For somebody that's making adjusted gross income of $1.5 million, that will be an increase of $15,000 a year.

- Yeah, but a lot of those people, and with the estate tax, Pablo, they're voting with their feet.

They're going to Florida, they're moving.

- Yeah, I gotta jump in on this one.

I mean, it's great in theory, however, we're in a real mobile economy, so, and millionaires and people that have done, you know, been successful in their life, they're just gonna go to Florida.

They're gonna become citizens in different states, and then you lose the tax revenue.

- [Pablo] They're doing it already, they're doing it already.

- Well, what I'm saying is if you incentivize them with this, meaning that you increase it, it doesn't usually work, in my opinion, but I respect your opinion.

What I would say is we really have to, with the AI and innovation, you know, working with Rhode Island College and URI and all of our universities, I think we really need to start to attract the hub here.

I know they're working on it, and I know in the dental industry, in oral health, Dentech and Forsyth up there with the American Dental Association, there's a lot of happening.

So, hopefully, we can talk about the positives and so attract businesses here in the state of Rhode Island.

- The budget, though, has gone from 9.5 six years ago to 14 billion.

Now I know some of that was the COVID money, but that's a 50% increase, and it doesn't look like it's coming back.

- Yeah, I mean, I think before the governor released his proposed budget in January, everyone sort of expected it would be a couple million or- - [Jim] 11 billion, maybe 12 billion.

- A couple billion below.

Last year, we had the record 14 billion, and then the governor comes out in January with, I think it was 13.7.

By the time the legislature adds in their stuff, and it gets signed, it's 13.96.

- They added a quarter of a billion more that the governor didn't ask for.

- And the other interesting thing about that is that they knew, the governor and lawmakers knew they were facing this quarter-billion-dollar structural deficit.

Those projections existed when they passed the budget.

But, you know, it's not very popular to say, "Well, we have a structural deficit, so we're not gonna do the three-year increase in Medicaid fee for service reimbursement rates in one year.

We're not gonna do that so we can fill our structural deficit," that, you know, doesn't sound as good as a politician.

So, yeah, I think it's gonna be interesting.

Basically, every year, there's kind of been a warning, like the good times are gonna be over soon.

I think we're gonna really start seeing that play out probably next year.

- Briefly, and you keep an eye on it.

Aaron, in addition, and welcome, we didn't give you the official welcome at "Lively."

In addition to having run for lieutenant governor, you are also the executive director of the dental association.

So, before we get into a story I wanna talk about of kids with dental problems, what, in the session this year, and Pablo, you keep an eye on this, reimbursement rates for doctors has been a huge deal.

What happened this year?

- Well, you know, I mean, patient premiums need to go to patient care, and the administrative costs, I mean, there's, we can't attract dentists, we can't attract doctors because it's not competitive.

You go across in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and I think we agree on this for sure, you know, it's 30% more.

And not only is it dentists or doctors in our field with oral health, but it's hygienists, it's dental assistants.

I know two doctors up in the northern region, Woonsocket, they just lost two hygienists because they're going across, and they're going to Connecticut.

And if, I think right now, we're down 10% with hygienists after the licensure, you know, process, so bottom line is if we don't get competitive, you know, we're going to struggle, and what's happening, we were talking about this, is it's, so I know a guy with a doctor, "Can you help me fit the person in this way?"

I'm becoming like the, you know, people are calling me all the time.

I'm talking about very, very powerful people saying, "I can't find a dentist."

Well, if those people are having problems, what's gonna happen to those people that are just, you know, just hardworking, trying to get their children in to a dentist, so this is something we wanna talk about today.

- [Jim] And primary care too.

- And primary care providers.

- Yes, exactly.

- And this is not an issue of greed because, you know, I hate it when people just, you know, think that, "Oh, doctors are greedy, and they want more money."

Doctors are paying 200, 300, $400,000 for an education.

Coming out of school, you know, at 30 years old with that kind of debt burden, you can't even buy a car.

- [Aaron] No.

- Because you can't afford it.

And that is the problem that we've had for many, many years.

The last 10 years of my practice, I could not bring a new doctor in because they would go to Massachusetts for 20 to 30% more.

So we don't have any primary care providers accepting patients at this point, and we have the crisis of retirement.

- [Aaron] Mm.

- I mean, we have a big amount of doctors and dentists that are going to retire in the next five years.

- What was the buzz at the legislature this year?

They nibbled around it a little bit.

- So what they did actually was pretty significant for certain Medicaid providers.

So community health, some behavioral and at-home care providers who get reimbursed through Medicaid, the governor's budget had originally recommended a rate increase spread out over three years to get to the full amount that was recommended.

The legislature came in and said, "No, we're gonna do it all in one year."

So they're getting a rate increase in one year.

However, this does not apply to primary care, doesn't apply to dentists.

There is now, you know, they're gonna start studying more what they would need to do to increase rates, but first there need to be studies before there can be recommended rate increases for these other types of healthcare providers.

- And the Journal had a great article a couple of months ago.

I've been meaning to get to this, so I'm glad you're here today, that hundreds of kids in Providence, as part of the fallout from COVID, but also a shortage of dentists, have serious oral needs, and there's nobody to take care of them.

- Yeah, I mean it's over 500 children alone in Providence.

And I believe it's one of the largest diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging issues in the country.

One of the biggest reasons kids miss school is tooth infections.

There's nowhere for them to go.

The Providence Health Center, you know, the federally qualified health center located in Providence, they're at capacity.

Samuels is at capacity, which is, you know, the nonprofit on the Lifespan campus at Rhode Island Hospital, and it's terrible.

I mean, I was just telling him, you know, Mayor Rivera from Central Falls called me three, four months ago.

So we have a child with boils and smells.

It was late on a Friday afternoon.

Dr. Fotini Dionisopoulos, who's our president-elect, you know, got him in and was able to, you know, figure it out and get 'em antibiotics, but, you know, children can die, you can die from a tooth infection.

- But you also multiply that by many, many, many other- - Yeah, over 500 kids alone.

There's one school, when they go through these screenings, it's over 80 kids that need emergent dental care with anesthesia.

Now, I'm really happy to report that Senator DiPalma, the speaker, senate president obviously was sick, Senator Gallo and Rep McNamara, we all got together, and they passed this code, this Medicaid code that will help for a facility fee for our oral surgeons, pediatric dentists, to get to some of this work, but then we gotta get the ambulatory surgical center, and we gotta get the space.

So it's something I'm really passionate about, and, you know, I'm sounding the alarm.

If we don't get this going, some child is going to die.

And you can speak to it, I'm sure.

- Mm-hmm, yeah, and we need to stop, in this country, separating body parts.

Medical health, dental health, and behavioral health are part of one body.

We should start looking, you know, collectively at how to manage every part of your body, not just one part at a time, because what happens when you do that is that you're creating administrative layers, one for behavioral health, one for dental health, and one for medical health.

It doesn't make any sense, and we're spending money that we shouldn't be spending.

- Okay, we would be remiss if we didn't talk about the presidential race.

It's amazing what has happened over the last two to three weeks.

We were talking about the assassination attempt on former President Trump just two weeks ago, and then last week, we were talking about whether President Biden was gonna get out of the race, and here we are with a seemingly ordained new Democratic candidate in Kamala Harris.

So, you know, there's a lot of buzz around her candidacy.

I think the question is, you know, can she carry that going into November?

- Yeah, I mean, I think for right now, like I think my interpretation and what I've heard and read is like this was kind of the easy part, right?

Like to win over the Democratic voters who were unsure about Biden, who were worried after his debate performance, for them to turn to, you know, someone who's been his kind of right-hand woman, but also has her own, you know, credentials and track record, easy.

What's going to now be, you know, potentially not so easy is going toe to toe with Donald Trump and sort of carrying that energy and translating that energy into votes in November.

- And she has a track record, so they're gonna be going after that and try to link her to President Biden.

- Numbers don't lie.

They were able to, the Democrats were able to raise over $100 million in the first 24 hours after she became the candidate and vote.org broke records in voter registration, 80% of them young people, 38,000 in 24 hours.

The margin is going to determine this race, and the margin for Democrats, it's young people, African Americans and Latinos, which are the places where they have lost that margin, margins that were in the 80, 90%.

So with this candidate, you have the youth, you have the people of color vote, and you have the money.

It's a good recipe for success.

- Yeah, I mean, well, it's open water right now, right?

You got your red team, you got your blue team, and then, you know, where do the centrists go?

And I think that that's been sort of the disappointing thing for the last, you know, many years right now is, you know, and also, there's an enthusiasm issue at some level for certain candidates.

I, you know, I'm just kind of thinking about Rhode Island and how it'll impact us, and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo's up there, but, you know, I yearn for an articulate, compassionate, humble leader, and a centrist.

And, hopefully, we can get back to that, but I don't see it in this election.

- Well, but that's a little what Biden tried to go for when he ultimately prevailed against Donald Trump.

He went back to Pennsylvania and a lot of these Rust Belt states and said, "I'm that guy who can," no, he moved a little bit to the left, I think as most candidates do once they get in, but I think that's where I agree with you, the minorities, Black voters, where the suburban women, and then you have the swing states, 'cause everybody's looking at Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, so I guess that's where, and isn't it amazing that our elections, that's what it really comes down to is that narrow focus.

- Six states, that's really, six states maybe, that's right.

- And this is the year of the women, you know?

You know, the fact that reproductive rights have become a center of many campaigns throughout the country, winning campaigns, by the way, throughout the country, and the fact that Donald Trump chose a vice presidential candidate who is an absolutely clear misogynist, talking about cat ladies and saying that women that don't have children don't have a stake in this country.

I mean, it's going to be a really interesting debate.

- Do you think this brings the Gen Z and the Gen Xers off the couch that they were worried about?

- You know, I don't know at this point.

I think, again, it's hard to tell how much of this, like, enthusiasm right now is kind of a blip on the radar.

And if that, if also that enthusiasm translates to voting.

And I also think, in Rhode Island, we kind of live in a bubble where like, it's hard to imagine, to me, living in Rhode Island, living in a place where there is like strong Trump support because that's not something that you see here, but, I mean, I think it could.

Certainly, I think the memes that have come out of Kamala Harris is something that the younger generations are attaching themselves to.

- All right, folks, it is a quick 30 minutes.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Aaron, great to have you, welcome.

And Pablo and Nancy, thank you.

Finally, earlier this year, the Media Education Lab at URI launched an initiative called Courageous RI, an effort to counter disinformation, enhance civic participation, and improve media literacy.

That is all a tall task.

Part of the initiative was a youth media contest drawing dozens of participants.

Earlier this month, I spoke with the winner, Nico Upegui from North Providence, who is going into his sophomore year at Yale University, and he wrote a song as his entry.

So we are here with Nico.

Nico, so happy to have you.

First of all, congratulations.

- Thank you so much, and I'm so excited to be here.

- Yeah, you beat out a lot of people in this competition, and we'll talk about your winning entry in a second.

But the whole point of this program, Courageous RI, is to look at media literacy and disinformation, and what's that like?

You just finished your freshman year in college.

A lot of social media talking to you all day long, right?

- Yeah, it's very true, I mean, I think we live in a time in society where it's so easy to get, you know, roped into, you know, things that people are feeding you, whether that's intentional or not, how it's motivated.

You know, we open our phones every day, a lot of us probably when we wake up in the morning, and all of a sudden, we're just through a loop of scrolling, and, you know, a lot of information will get fed to us, whether that's, you know, verified information or not.

Especially in social media, you know, there's not as much protection.

I mean, there's kind of policies trying to go that way, protect, you know, information, make sure it's verified.

But, you know, there are a lot of posts that, you know, even I will see every day, and, you know, it's not always accurate, and then you have to look up, you know, these things, see what's accurate, see what's not.

But, a lot of times, that takes a little extra step, you know?

You can't be lazy about it, and the real problem is that, you know, as soon as you see something, you wanna believe it.

And so I think it's a big problem, you know, it's something that we definitely have to address.

- Your parents probably told you, just as I told my kids, you know, you don't believe everything on the internet.

- Yeah.

- But you're right, you're inundated with so many things, it's difficult to know how to weed through that.

So this contest was aimed at media literacy and fighting disinformation, and I wonder what advice you would give to people watching this.

How do you navigate that?

The Internet's a big world out there.

- It is.

You know, I think the best way to sort of navigate it is just, whenever you see something, just question it.

You know, just see, like ask yourself, not only like, what biases do I have, what biases does whoever put this out, whatever type of media it is, who put it out, what biases may they have?

Always ask those questions.

And not only that, but asking whether, you know, is this really true?

And it's as simple as, you know, switching your app from, you know, Instagram, Facebook, whatever you're looking at to, you know, Safari or Google and look up the articles that are going on.

And even then, you know, you'll see some biases in articles, but then you can kind of get a fuller picture of what's going on.

And it's something that I like to do every time I see anything, even from, you know, you know, I get emails from like, you know, news outlets, and you see the headlines, and I think it's, you know, really, really easy to know.

Just look at the headline and say from there, kind of take whatever it says.

But then, it's something, it's different to read the article and read other articles about topics.

It takes a little bit of extra work, but I think it's worth it to sort of, you know, find the full picture.

- Your winning entry was a song called "My Child," and you can see it online, it's at CourageousRI.com.

We've posted it there.

The two lines that really struck me from it, "The first thing to go in war is truth, find the facts and ask for proof."

And that really, that first line is really powerful to me, the first thing to go in war is truth.

What did you mean by that?

- Actually, so that's a cool line that you picked out 'cause, so that line, actually, I was inspired by a show that I was watching.

So just for some background, my family's Colombian, both my parents from Colombia.

And, you know, coming from a time where, you know, there was a period of, you know, a lot of violence, you know, drug cartel involvement.

And so I was watching a show called "The Final Score."

It's on Netflix, and it's about, you know, Colombia in that time in the '80s, a professional soccer player, Andres Escobar, who was killed during that time, sort of involved with, you know, that, but also with soccer, and yeah, so essentially, there was an attack there, a bombing, and there was the guy, Andres, asked why was this kind of stuff happening, and the father told him the first thing that goes in war is truth, and so I kind of like was inspired by that, not only in like a physical sense, but also like a metaphorical sense.

- Great, so I encourage people to go, CourageousRI.com.

Nico, thank you so much for joining us, I appreciate it.

And we wish you luck going back to your sophomore year at Yale this year.

- Thank you so much.

- That is great.

All right, folks, thank you for joining us.

We hope you come back here next week as "A Lively Experiment" continues.

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