- [Jim] This week on "A Lively Experiment."

Skyrocketing electric bills have customers crying foul, and one legislator offering a way to potentially reduce their bills.

And President Trump's efforts to slash programs and the federal workforce continues to have a ripple effect here in Rhode Island.

- [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, Weayonnoh Nelson-Davies, Executive Director of the Economic Progress Institute, attorney and former state representative Nick Gorham, and WPRI Digital Content Producer Raymond Baccari.

Hello and welcome into "Lively."

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

That collective groan you've been hearing are customers of Rhode Island Energy opening up their electric bill the past several months.

Many of us have gotten sticker shock and are asking, "Why is my bill so high?"

Turns out there is a lot more than just the energy you're paying for, and the state of Rhode Island has something to do with the added cost.

So welcome, everybody.

If you get an electric bill, we're all in the same boat.

Ray, let me begin with you because there's a legislative aspect to this.

Representative Charlene Lima, longtime House member, has her eye on this.

- Yeah, absolutely.

First off, I wanna say, we've been getting a lot of emails from viewers talking about their bills being so high, and it's caught the attention of State Rep. Charlene Lima.

She has legislative priorities where she wants to, one, get rid of what she's calling a $5-million payment that the electric and gas companies are paying to the state for what she says was a state infrastructure bank, and then she also wants to push back the goal for the state to be 100% dependent on renewable energy, which was supposed to be by 2033.

She wants to push it back a decade, so 2043.

- Yeah, and then there's another representative, Cotter, I believe, who also wants to cap the profits of the energy company.

I'm not sure... - Yeah, so we talked with State Senator Dawn Euer, who said she doesn't agree with Rep. Lima's approach on this.

She instead wants to introduce a bill to cap the delivery charges.

- Well, it's tough because I understand the goal of renewable, but you have to pay bills right now.

And it's a difficult discussion, I think, that's gonna happen up at the State House.

- It is.

So I decided to look at my electric bill to see the breakdown.

63% was going to these delivery charges.

And, yes, the cost to the customer is, maybe half is towards clean energy, 0.2 towards energy assistance for low-income neighbors, but then the other half is profit.

So I think the decision needs to be, are we gonna address the costs for both clean energy and profit, or which one takes priority?

In my opinion, that's an investment in clean energy.

If we're gonna get there in about eight years, I say maybe that's the better decision to continue supporting that and think about the profits.

In 2023, the profits that we were paying out as customers was about $42 million in profit to the electric company versus maybe like 30 something in clean energy.

And so we have to really balance which one is a priority and which one is an investment.

- Nick?

- Well, I switched over to electric... What do they call those, splits?

It's very expensive to heat your home through the splits, a lot more expensive than fossil fuel and stuff.

But the renewable issue, we're just light years away from that.

We're not gonna get there by the deadline.

They should move it.

You know, right now it's fossil fuel, mostly natural gas that sustains our electricity.

I don't see any way possible that they're gonna be able to do it through renewable.

With the timetable they have.

- I wonder what the... You know, you'd have to talk to each representative what the feedback has been.

Because there are a lot of people, I'm sure, in all of their districts are like, "Look, I wanna save the climate too, "but I've got a $250 bill that was 150 last month.

"What are we gonna do?"

So I wonder.

The governor has held the line in interviews, saying that, "We wanna stay with the climate change goals."

I wonder whether that's gonna soften as the session's gonna go on.

- Maybe.

But I think, again, with the Euer bill, I think going after profits right now is a way to go too.

Especially when you look at the national landscape, the federal government's going after FEMA.

And so when we're talking about climate change and environmental justice, I think Rhode Island leaders may have to take a stand to say, "We have to protect Rhode Island "because it's not gonna happen on the federal level."

But they have to address costs.

So they have to decide, is it both clean energy and profit or is it one or the other?

- And speaking of profits, my colleagues Eli, Kate, and Sarah worked on a story where they talk about and they break down with charts and all what goes into how much an electricity bill costs.

And I've heard that argument too about how much profits RI Energy, we have a graph of how much they made in 2023, which that figure was 42 and a half million.

- Yeah, and I also wonder, though, that I've read some things, Nick, about, if you go after the profits, that some of it, legally, they're allowed to make a certain profit.

So if the legislature tries to step in, they're in a private business.

I understand it's a utility.

It could be problematic legally.

- Yeah, I think so.

The other thing is... - [Jim] It's good we have two lawyers on the panel who can argue this out.

- Well, the other problem is, if you don't allow them to make a profit, what is in it for them?

You know, enough of a profit.

I don't know about cutting profits.

I don't know if that's a good idea.

I just, really, the renewable thing, I don't see a path to it.

There's not enough room in Rhode Island for all these solar panels and wind turbines.

And some of those things are getting pretty confident, excuse me, controversial now too.

So I think they should really scrap the deadline or at least move it.

- I think they're gonna have to push it back with what's going on federally, you know?

President Trump's not a big fan of... We'll get to that in a second, not a big fan of the clean energy.

All right, a lot has been going on.

You miss a week, you miss a lot around here.

With the Trump administration, there are several things going on.

There's a court case.

We're gonna hear from Judge McConnell shortly, maybe even by the time you watch this, about a decision about stepping in on the federal freezes, some of the money.

There's a lot of trickle down.

I don't even know where to begin, Weayonnoh.

So why don't you dive in to what you've been seeing over the last three weeks or months since the president took over?

- Yeah, I don't know where to begin either.

- We can do a whole separate show, right?

- Yeah, I've had a lot to say, a lot of material to go on.

Regarding the federal freeze, so what's happening right now, Judge McConnell is looking at preliminary injunction brought in by a few attorney general, including our own Peter Neronha here.

And what they have to prove and what he has to decide on is, one, whether they have a likelihood of winning at trial if they went to trial and whether there is irreparable harm to people who have relied upon the commitment made by Congress to pay for especially reimbursement.

So he has to make a decision whether there's gonna be harm that has to be addressed now with a decision for a preliminary injunction.

I think they've made a good case because it's been so sweeping.

Yes, it may be the president priority, prerogative to think about whether to look at spending, but these decisions have been made by Congress, and people are relying upon it.

And that's the decision the judge will have to make.

- [Jim] Lawyer?

- It's all going to the Supreme Court of the United States.

- [Jim] Either way?

- Yeah.

And it's gonna be a very, very groundbreaking exploration of the separation of powers between the executive branch and the judicial branch and Congress.

And I think, you know, I think there's a good chance that Trump is gonna be upheld.

You know, if Congress doesn't specify it enough, and many times they don't, it's the president's discretion on how to spend money.

And he runs the country, you know, by the laws enacted by Congress.

So it's gonna be fascinating.

- I'll get to you in a second.

You guys are both lawyers.

What do you think about that?

Do you think there is a chance it could be upheld?

Again, the complexion of the Supreme Court's a lot different than it was three years ago, right?

- Yeah, so I think that's a chance because of who's on the Supreme Court.

However, I think the Roberts court does look at things, and they may be nervous about the separation of power issue and how much power is really going to the executive branch.

It is, you know, he can make the decision on spending, however, the way he's doing it is harmful.

And so Congress, I think the Supreme Court have to look at, Congress can pass another budget.

You know, they have the right, the next budget cycle, they can address that.

But now with this budget, the way it's happening, I think the Supreme Court may have to set some boundaries here or else we might be in trouble.

And they have to make that decision in a broad scheme, not even just this case.

- Aside from the lawsuits that are definitely dominating the headlines, I also look at how our local leaders are reacting to all these decisions being made by the administration.

For example, our congressional delegation has been very vocal.

We've been seeing a number of demonstrations occurring where people are vocally showing their displeasure about these cuts being recommended by the department.

- [Jim] Protests at the State House.

- Exactly.

There was one this past weekend where there was a couple hundred there, and the delegation were there, Gabe Amo and Seth Magaziner.

And then also there's the impact that I've seen headlines about that it's having on people who work here.

So to do another plug of a story that our station's done, my colleagues Kate Wilkinson and Alex Torres-Perez, they talked with five people who worked in the USDA office in Warwick who were terminated.

- Yeah, I wonder legally, though.

I was listening to what you were saying, Nick.

I wonder if there was pushback from the Republican Congress, that it might be different.

Trump has basically bullied a lot of representatives and senators into saying, "You know, we're gonna primary, "there are gonna be consequences."

You hear a little bit of rumbling now, Lindsey Graham and some others are concerned about that separation of powers issue that you're talking about.

But I wonder, if two or three or four people in the Senate stood up, besides Murkowski and Collins, the old-line hardliners, whether it would be a different dynamic right now.

- It's a razor-thin margin really in both chambers, the Senate and the House.

So it's very dynamic, I'm sure, because of what you just said.

Some of the Republican senators or representatives who value their seats and wanna help their constituents are going to be insisting to the president, you know, "Hey, we don't want to give you everything "that you want to cut."

- [Jim] Yeah, it reminds me of... - And then begins an avalanche.

- Well, eight years ago.

You're seeing some of this now where they go to their local, they're back in their districts for the first time, and there's some people like, "Hey, my neighbor got cut.

"He was a federal worker, he voted for you.

"What's going on?"

The same thing happened with the Affordable Care Act eight years ago.

I remember seeing these town halls in Louisiana, Mississippi, and people are like, "Wait a minute, "you're gonna take my healthcare away?"

And that's why it never got through.

So, I mean, the constituents at some point, red and blue, are gonna have to have something to say.

- And they started to say that, and some Republicans are pushing back, you know?

There was one, I forgot where he was from, saying Democrats were paying people to show up at these town halls.

But they have to pay attention.

The Republicans, for now, is walking a fine line and thinking, "You know, President Trump "is here about a mandate, "and that mandate mean we need to sort of kiss the ring "of the self-proclaimed king."

However, there are a lot of people in the states that are pushing back and saying, "We're losing Medicaid."

And even with the House resolution now to sort of cut Medicaid and SNAP and push forward with these tax giveaway, even with that, they voted on the process, but while they voted on the process, a lot of them started talking about, they're not satisfied with what is happening, they do not want cuts to Medicaid.

The Latino delegation wrote a letter saying that.

So I think when we get to the point where they have to make a budget reconciliation, there's gonna be a lot of debate, and some Republicans are gonna scale back on the support they're giving to the president.

- And, Ray, you talked about the local.

The trickle down is now we've got a budget that we're already looking at a $250-million to $300-million structural deficit.

If any of that federal money starts to dry up, it's gonna be problematic here.

- Even more so with the Washington Bridge money, which a lot of that is gonna be federal money.

And, as you mentioned, the size of our budget's like around the 13.8, $14 billion, with a B, size.

And, you know, when I've had people on my podcast talk about the budget, sometimes they often say, "Well, we get a lot of support from the federal government."

And, you know, especially you have senators like Senator Reed who brings home the bacon.

So that's definitely gonna be something to look at as time progresses in this term.

- Nick, you had sent me an email, and you have a column that you've been working on about the big audit.

For those of us who have been around for many years, Don Carcieri was gonna come in and do, I think, not as drastic as what President Trump is doing, but he wanted to go in and look at the state.

And it's not always...

I think, whether you agree with it or not, some of the urgency is President Trump is thinking, "I've got four years, the clock is ticking.

"Anything that gets in my way, I need to do this."

So people may disagree with that, but fundamentally he's trying to root out the waste and corruption and whatever else.

Don Carcieri did a little bit of that.

Briefly set the table for what happened a couple years, well, a couple decades ago.

- Don Carcieri was elected in, I believe, the 2002 election, and he promised during his campaign that he would do a big audit of state government.

- [Jim] How'd that go?

- Well, it catapulted one thing to getting passed, which was the separation of powers amendments, which the governor heartily endorsed.

The big audit itself never really succeeded, I think, the way the governor wanted to.

Some money was saved, but nothing along the magnitude that Governor Carcieri had wanted and imagined could be done.

But he was right.

I mean, there's a lot of waste in Rhode Island government.

There's a lot more now even than there was then.

So he had the right idea.

The separation of powers amendments passed.

But until you have some type of competition in the two chambers, the House and the Senate, that is, enough Republicans to get something done or to be a deciding factor in spending, until you have that, you really have nothing.

Because General Assembly controls your bureaucracy.

Governors have eight years to get things done.

Legislators have unlimited terms.

Some of them have been there more than 40 years, if you can imagine that.

- Chuck Grassley.

It's a long time.

You've been keeping an eye on the budget.

Federal budget.

And the local budget.

But the federal budget passed the House.

Gonna be a lot of tax cuts, and there is a concern that it's gonna be cutting a lot of programs, Medicaid, food stamps.

What are you keeping your eye on?

- Yeah, we're keeping our eye on both, especially the entitlement and safety nets programs.

And for a few reasons, because the impact it's gonna have on the state.

So over 324,000 Rhode Islanders depend on Medicaid.

Over 144,000 Rhode Islanders depend on SNAP.

So that is issue of real people that will be impacted.

Our budget will also be impacted.

36% of our budget is coming from the federal government.

And so that cost is gonna be shift to the states.

And when people talk about budget all the time, they always start with cuts to safety net.

Like that's where we like to start.

You know, in budgets, there's spending and there's revenue.

I don't understand why we're not having a conversation about how we're raising revenue 'cause some of the cuts are happening to give tax giveaway to wealthy people.

In Rhode Island, we have to make a decision.

Our federal budget's gonna be cut, and we already have a $220-million deficit.

We have to talk about revenue as well and not just spending, especially when it comes to cutting essential services.

So as you know, we've been talking for years that we don't wanna touch, you know, this 1% tax on the wealthy.

But if we do it this year, we can raise over $190 million, and that also address the deficit.

So we have to talk about revenue.

Whether people like it or not, that is a opportunity to address our budget issues.

- So the big audit was definitely well before my time.

But I wanna ask Nick, how would you connect what went on with that to what's going on with DOGE right now?

(Nick chuckles) - Well, DOGE... Well, let's see.

President Trump was not the governor of Rhode Island for the big audit.

It probably would've gone very, very profoundly different.

You know, Governor Carcieri had a different style.

But he was aggressive.

I honestly think he just didn't have the votes in the House and Senate of Rhode Island, you know?

What I'm trying to say is that... - [Jim] It's a Democratic supermajority.

- Yeah, right.

There are 113 legislators, and 99 of them are Democrats.

- [Jim] Right.

- And it wasn't much different back then.

- But don't you also think the president realizes it's the same thing that happened eight years ago?

They have the keys to the car, they've got the House, they've got the Senate, and they've got the administration.

And I think he knows, in the midterms, they traditionally go to the other side.

If he loses the House, or the Senate, less likely, then it's gonna get...

He needs to do whatever he is gonna do in the next year and a half.

- And that's the battle that we've seen go on during President Biden's first term where they wanted to push these things through like Build Back Better.

But you had like one or two senators, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who didn't wanna break the filibuster to get a lot of those bold policy goals that the Democrats wanted.

So it's just kind of a wait and see what happens during those votes.

You know, there's a couple senators who didn't back some of the president's nominees who may be holdouts in the budget.

We just have to wait and see.

- So EPI is always, you have a presence up at the State House.

A lot more difficult in difficult budget times.

So I know there are things you want to talk about, payday lending, minimum wage increase, and all of that.

How does that dynamic change now that the salad days of the COVID money are over?

It's a lot more difficult to try to get any of that through, right?

- It is.

And, you know, when you speak to the speaker right now, the first thing he says to everyone who even smiles at him, "I have no money."

And one of the things... - [Jim] It makes a little easier for him, doesn't it?

"Sorry, the well is dry."

- And so I've been responding to him.

"I have an option for you, Mr. Speaker.

"Raise revenue."

But you're right.

I think so some of the things that we have to look at in Rhode Island, one, I think our state leaders have to be a little bit more vocal so we can be part of the federal fight.

Because we don't want to lose any of the money that's coming.

I think that's one part of it.

But there are other policies that are not budgetary that we need to look at.

Assault weapon ban.

You know, that's something that the governor put in his budget even though it's not a budget issue.

So there's an opportunity, I think, in the chaos to look at other policies that may not cost money that can actually still help Rhode Island.

- Do you think an assault weapons ban, is this the year that it's gonna go through?

Senate President Ruggiero seems to be softening a little bit on that.

- Yeah.

And the fact that the governor has put it in the budget, I suppose, suggests that he thinks it's gonna get carried through with the budget.

But we don't know how popular the budget's gonna be.

It's not gonna be a fun year at the State House.

Because they have to cut.

The COVID salad days are over, like you said, and it's just not enough money.

- I've said this more than once on this set.

Maybe the legislature last year shouldn't have taken what the governor proposed, which was a healthy budget, and added $250 million.

Because that's baked in going forward now.

What do you see this spring playing out in terms of budget negotiations?

It's gonna be tough.

- Yeah, there's no more federal money, as Nick was talking about.

And there's gonna be a lot of tightening of the belts, and, yeah, it's just gonna be sit back and see what happens during, especially later on, you know, when they're walking up and down and doing those votes toward the end of the session.

And speaking of the assault weapons ban, we've seen that it polled strongly.

There was an AFL-CIO poll.

64% of the respondents, so a sample size of 400 registered voters, supported the assault weapons ban.

As for if it, you know, goes through in the budget, there's no line-item veto.

If you're a legislator, you vote up or down on the budget.

So that's gonna definitely put, we were talking about this in the green room, some of the folks who are more pro-2A in a tough situation.

- Yeah, that AFL-CIO poll came out.

It did not talk at all about candidates.

You know, Channel 12 or others usually do that.

I wonder what you took out of that.

A lot of the stuff that you have supported, minimum wage increase, a dollar each year till you get to $20, payday lending.

Are we gonna see that in your lifetime, Weayonnoh?

What do you think?

- Ugh, I hope so.

(Weayonnoh laughs) - Even if you could get it down to 25%, you'd be happy, right?

- Well, yeah, you know, like right now we're at 260% interest on payday lending reform.

The poll reinforce that policies that are popular with Rhode Islanders for some reason are not being responded to the way it needs to by the General Assembly.

So I think voters need to step up and say, "We want, you know, payday lending, "we want assault weapon ban, "we want minimum wage to increase."

And if leaders are not responding to that, then the voters need to decide in two years what that means.

But, again, we're showing over and over again, these are popular issues for the Rhode Island community, and we need the General Assembly to respond to that if they're really representing the interests of the people.

- What about that?

- The AFL-CIO represents its members.

I don't think it represents the majority of Rhode Island.

- Yeah, it's interesting on that poll.

Look, Joe Fleming did it.

So, I mean, Joe's a respected pollster, but, at the same time, when you hear it's a union poll being commissioned, I think everybody takes that just with a little bit of, "Okay, it's coming out from them."

The one thing also that Rhode Islanders overwhelmingly favor but one guy in the state, Joe Shekarchi does not, Inspector General.

- Yeah, that's a constitutional amendment.

It's not gonna go away.

The Republicans, few as they are, are very, very committed to that.

- [Jim] And some Democrats now.

- Yes, yes.

- And Shanley's come over and a couple from the other side.

- You know, if you had balance in the General Assembly, I don't think you'd need a Inspector General as much as we do now.

Right now, with one-party rule, there just aren't any checks and balances in place.

- [Jim] Yeah.

- Especially when the governor... Well, I won't expand on it, but I don't think Governor McKee does the types of checks and balances that a Republican governor would've done.

- Right, right.

And we saw that for years.

All right, let's go to Outrages and/or Kudos.

Raymond, let's begin with you this week.

- I have a kudos.

So I was reading the Rhode Island Current.

Alexander Castro had a good story where he summarized this report by the Rhode Island ACLU that talks about how many of the local city and town councils and school committees livestream their meetings.

So, one, the number for how many city councils stream their government meetings, it's like all but, I believe, six.

Which, one, that's a good number, especially for, it's a win for transparency.

And also, you know, from the media perspective, you don't have a reporter that's in all 39 cities or towns.

That's just not how things are.

So it helps us out if, say, there's, I don't know, a debate about school lunch prices going up in Cumberland.

It really helps us be able to watch that meeting, get the gist of what happened, and then show it to the people.

- Yeah, back in the good old days when the Journal covered, we had reporters, we, when I was with the Journal back in the '80's and '90's, we covered every school committee and town council meeting, you know, long before the internet.

But I agree with you.

There's been some meetings where I've based stories, I've been able to go back and take everything verbatim.

And not everybody can get to a meeting.

- And I also do, if I can add onto the kudo, Burrillville, they have timestamps.

I found this out semi-recently.

We were doing a story where we had to watch a meeting for Burrillville.

They have, if you go to the meetings, one, it's archived really beautifully.

I feel like that should be a standard for a lot of other ones that don't.

And then, two, they have timestamps where you could click on the specific thing from the agenda, and it brings you right to that point in the meeting.

Just a big win for transparency.

- [Jim] Shout-out to Burrillville.

Weayonnoh, what do you have this week?

- I think, you know, because I've been working very closely with our congressional delegation, so kudos to them.

I think they are very vocal with what's happening in Congress, especially with these cuts.

And I think they're representing Rhode Island very well.

So kudos to them for a job well done.

- Yeah, it's gotta be frustrating, though, because when you don't have any power at all...

I mean, look, they're fighting the good fight.

I get the releases from Congressman Magaziner and Amo and, to a lesser extent, Whitehouse and Reed.

Those guys have seen, and of course Reed and Whitehouse have been through the wars where they've seen Congress go back and forth.

But it's new for Amo and Magaziner because they've really only been in the minority.

- So I like the energy they're bringing.

I think it's giving Rhode Islanders that we can fight, you know, even though we don't have a lot of leverage.

But it's good to see.

- [Jim] Mr. Gorham, what do you have?

- My kudos goes to Gary Alexander.

He wrote a very, very good piece in the Journal just a couple weeks ago, an op-ed.

He was secretary for Governor Carcieri.

- [Jim] Health and Human Services, right?

- Health and Human Services.

And I just wanna point out a couple of his points that he made 'cause they're very compelling and alarming.

One third of Rhode Island residents rely on public assistance in Rhode Island.

Fewer than one and a half taxpayers support each individual on public assistance.

How can that be?

Because the mammoth size of our government, the mammoth size of our government is also...

They're not taxpayers in the same way as people who are not in government.

So the the point is that there isn't enough money coming into the government.

- He's been writing that column... Gary Alexander, I covered him.

It's so funny when we're talking about Don Carcieri, it's like the Don Carcieri Hour.

20 years ago, I covered him, and he's been writing that same column probably every five years, and it's not getting any better.

- Right.

And what I meant about, I wanna make sure I clarify about the government employees.

Yes, they pay taxes, of course.

I don't want to...

But we also have to pay them with the taxes that they pay.

And so, in the end, it's not a zero-sum situation.

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

We appreciate your spending this week with us.

Weayonnoh, good to see you again.

And Nick.

Raymond, nice to see you after a little bit of a hiatus.

Good to have you back on "Lively."

Finally this week, we have some news to share about an issue we've been talking about frequently right here on "Lively" for more than a year.

Rhode Island PBS and The Public's Radio are launching a project to provide a deeper dive and continuing coverage into the issues surrounding the failure and rebuilding of the Washington Bridge.

Our reporting will reach across all of our programming with a variety of stories, showcasing how this structure is affecting our daily lives.

Here's a first look.

- [Interviewee] This is a lifeline right here.

This bridge connects so much.

(dramatic music) - [Announcer] "Breaking Point: The Washington Bridge."

A community-centered project that asks the hard questions about life in our state today.

- And now it's, you're going into over a year.

- [Reporter] Governor McKee and DOT Director Alviti say the state is on the right track now.

- [Announcer] Access all the latest news on demand at ripbs.org/breakingpoint.

- This is a community-led project, and we want to hear from you.

So send us your stories and ask your questions at ripbs.org/breakingpoint, or scan the QR code at the bottom of your screen.

We appreciate you spending some time this weekend.

Come back here next week as "A Lively Experiment" continues.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [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.