- [Jim] This week on "A Lively Experiment," lawmakers return to the State House next week.

What will be the key issues facing them over the next couple of months?

And another federal judge from Rhode Island has some strong words for the Trump administration.

- [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.

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- [Jim] Joining us for a reporter's panel: Nancy Lavin, senior reporter for the Rhode Island Current, Patrick Anderson, State House reporter for the Providence Journal, and Boston Globe political reporter, Ed Fitzpatrick.

And welcome into "Lively."

I'm Jim Hummel.

It's great to have you with us this week.

When Rhode Island lawmakers return from vacation on Monday, it will be the busiest stretch of the season, likely concluding sometime in June.

This year, major uncertainties confront the senators and reps, particularly with a budget shortfall and potentially more cuts coming outta Washington that could have a major effect on the state's final bottom line.

So all of, you're up at the State House.

Ed, let me begin with you.

The May Revenue Estimating Conference is usually the one that determines where they're gonna go with the budget.

This year, it's Washington's the wild card.

- Oh yeah, I mean all these funding freezes that you're seeing coming out of the Trump administration are gonna have a huge impact on the state budget.

And it's undetermined.

We're seeing a ton of litigation trying to stop these funding freezes from taking place.

And a lot of it's coming through Rhode Island.

All roads lead to Rhode Island.

- Yeah, it's gonna be, I think, still a guessing game when lawmakers have to approve a budget by July 1st as to what the federal funding situation is.

And for certain programs, certainly Medicaid, which is, you know, a third of our state budget, but a massive amount of federal funding, is coming into that.

It's, gonna be difficult to sort of put any numbers together that have a reasonable chance of being true.

- Yeah, the sense I get is that people don't think they're going to know by the time the budget is done, or at least that's the way that they're proceeding to just go as business as usual.

And if something changes, then react to that.

But they're not expecting clarity from Washington definitely by the time the revenue estimating numbers come out.

And probably by the summer, I wouldn't expect the revenue numbers in the state to be down that much, at least in May when they get the new numbers.

Things were pretty much okay, a little bit ahead of target through February.

And we haven't seen, like, the stock market impacts and the market turmoil, and carnage really affect too much of the, like, hard economic data yet.

So things might not be too different, at least when they start their annual budget process, even though there is all this huge looming uncertainty and like all manner of government and business.

- The only bit of good news was that the Washington Bridge money is gonna be able to be drawn down to- - [Jim] Is that in the bank?

- The latest news from the governor was that they were gonna be able to draw it down, you know, that it wasn't gonna be frozen with the DEI and green revenue.

- When they announced that, they said they had started to draw down money already.

So... - Okay.

I wonder...

I was thinking about this as I was driving in today.

You remember during COVID they did kind of the skinny session and then they came later.

But what you're saying is it's probably gonna be let's go as if we normally would, and then we will react maybe, if we have to, in the summer fall or in the off session years, right?

Off months.

- That's how it looks right now.

I mean everything can change, but there isn't an expectation that the budget in Washington and all of the spending measures in Washington are gonna be sorted anytime soon.

And, you know, and the state has to move quickly to get its budget together.

So that's the default setting, and the way they're gonna proceed.

Yeah, and then if something takes a left hand turn, then they'll react from there.

- What are you keeping your eye on as we head in.

Hey, this is not the home stretch, but, you know, it's typical in the early part of the session.

You know, committee work's going on.

They only meet a couple of days.

The Senate was one day beginning now after April vacation, they really start to kick into gear.

So what's on your radar?

- I mean, I think the assault weapons ban has been sort of on everyone's radar this year, particularly because Senate President Dominick Ruggiero, who's kind of been the main opposition in the legislature leadership for the last few years, signaled at the beginning of session that he was at least open to it this year.

So that's something that, you know, it comes up every year.

It's in the governor's budget, even though it's not really a budget item, it's a policy item.

So that's something that I think we might actually see movement on.

Another thing is repealing the exemption for allowing indoor smoking at casinos.

Again, longstanding issue.

Has not made a lot of progress, but the House speaker has co-signed onto the bill and the House, this year, is a co-sponsor, which is the first time that's happened.

- And Ruggiero's the one who stood in the way of that.

- Right.

- For a lot of years.

- And I think I think, you know, Ruggiero is still opposed, but I think if the house were to pass something, you know, there's concessions given on either side to what they want.

And he might not stand in the way.

- Have they figured out on the assault weapons ban, there was all that talk about the governor put it into the budget.

The speaker said, "I don't think that's an appropriate way."

Is there a outside the budget to- - Oh yeah, it's not gonna be I mean- - So what are they- - I'm not in a position of authority, but I would be shocked if it ends up in the budget.

I think that was just sort of a way for the governor to- - To get people's attention?

- Yeah, exactly.

The speaker doesn't want it in the budget and he writes the budget, so the governor can put it on every line of his budget, and they'll just take it out of every line.

But that doesn't mean it's...

It can pass as a standalone bill.

And if it does, I think that is how it would happen.

But, again, the fact that the Senate is a little more of a mystery than it's ever been in any year is really a big question mark, both on the assault weapons ban and on smoking at the casino.

Obviously, the Senate president, who is battling cancer and is not been present for most of the session, is a gambling man and is very in tuned to everything that happens at the casino.

And so we just don't know if the dynamics in the Senate have changed, or are the same, or are just slightly more middle of the road or we just really, really don't know.

It's a huge wild card.

- Yeah, I mean, Ruggiero really put this assault weapons ban into play this year 'cause he's always said that's a federal issue that should be settled on in DC and not in Rhode Island.

But he said, "That's no longer my position."

So, we'll see.

But I agree.

I think it's still up in there in the Senate.

That Senate Judiciary Committee would handle that bill.

And it seems evenly divided.

And, you know, there's some interest in whether the Republicans and some Democrats would oppose it and would there be enough votes to get it outta committee on the Senate side.

And the House speaker has said, Shekarchi has said that, you know, there's concerns about the constitutionality of the bill as written.

They can change that and get it outta the house.

But, yeah, I think if it makes it to the floor, I think it passes.

- As to the casino smoking, it's just a little ironic somebody who's been battling cancer is so opposed to smoking in casinos.

It's hard to wrap my mind around.

Inspector General.

We've talked about it a lot, just as Dominick Ruggiero has kind of been opposed to banning the casino smoking Joe Shekarchi and the Inspector General, he's really been the one guy who's standing in the way of it.

- Yeah, I mean we're hearing the same arguments for and against this year, which is I believe the 23rd year that we've had some- - And it's going nowhere, right?

- I mean, I think, again, knowing that we're already dealing with our own budget shortfall and all of this uncertainty in Washington, just the fact of even if there is some potential for long-term savings maybe, there is an upfront cost to create this office, hire someone, and then staff up with other employees.

The Republican sponsored bill by Representative Nardone, they don't have a, like, full fiscal note, but he estimates it's about 1.5 million.

I think there's just not a lot of appetite for it.

And then, again, we're hearing, "Oh, it's redundant.

We have an Auditor General.

We have an Office of Internal Audit.

We have an Attorney General."

So we do have these other sort of control mechanisms, which have actually found problems that are supposedly being worked on, so... - But sometimes they get ignored.

They brought up things about the Washington Bridge and some other things that weren't addressed.

I also think in a state that's looking for revenue, Ed, you would think theoretically the Inspector General can, you know, uncover waste.

But maybe it's, you don't want the camel's nose under your tent.

That might be the problem.

- Yeah, I think the Republican leadership that pushed for this, especially on the House side and the Senate were talking about- - But it's got bipartisan support too.

- It does have bipartisan support, and I think they thought the Washington Bridge would be the issue that would bring that to the fore and maybe have the gravity to make that happen.

But, you know, it's a perennial issue now.

And I just don't see it passing.

- I mean, the powers that be think that they are doing a good job of running the state and do not want some other independent entity coming in and messing with that.

I mean, that's the bottom line.

They are, the governor, the speaker and the Senate president, all of the same party are working together for the most part, and they don't wanna share with other people and get some other kind of rogue actor involved.

And that's the politics of it and why they don't want to pass it.

And this year they are also kind of armed with at least rhetorical ammunition that we just had a vote on a constitutional convention, and it got crushed.

And a constitutional convention would've probably been a possible avenue to get an Inspector General 'cause it, you know, you theoretically wouldn't have had to go through the legislature to get it.

But that didn't even get even a proper, like, campaign.

- I don't know if you saw it.

Our colleague here at The Public's Radio, Ian Donnis, who of course is a panelist here, he talked to Speaker Shekarchi about it, and never in the world did I think that this quote would come out.

Shekarchi basically said, "Well, you know, when the president took over, he fired 17 inspectors general.

So if it's not good enough for the president, why should we have it?"

He was aligning himself with Donald Trump.

That kind of blew my mind.

Talking about the Senate president, the Senate has been in flux, and if you look at the dynamic of the House speaker and the governor, and the Senate, they really have to work together at the end of the session.

And there's been that vacuum in leadership, and we're facing this again this year.

How does that affect as we head toward the home stretch of the session?

- Yeah, I mean, as a reporter I would say it makes it much more difficult to sort of gauge what Senate leadership's position on these key issues is.

And whether there is sort of any openness there on issues that there may not have been in the past.

I think for the function of the Senate day to day, it's also probably quite difficult.

And I mean we saw this last year that, you know, in some ways I think the Senate perhaps didn't get to advance some of its own priorities as much because there was this, not only was the Senate president out, but there was just so much kind of uncertainty and chaos about how to fill that void.

And I think we're seeing kind of the same thing again this year.

And what that means for the Senate's priorities being advanced, you know, a lot of their stuff is around healthcare.

We're gonna see.

- Yeah, I think that, you know, we're all counting how many days the Senate president is presiding or in the chamber.

- Or not presiding.

- Or not presiding.

But I mean, a big part of that job is not just having the gavel, but negotiating with the House, negotiating with the governor, making sure that the Senate's priorities are realized at the end of the day, and that segment of the session's about to happen.

- Yeah, and we're just also watching, is there anyone else in the Senate who is going to emerge, who's gonna step up and have a larger role?

'Cause right now it's difficult to even see who is kind of the second power broker in the Senate.

- Even though Val Lawson is the Majority leader of the- - Is the majority and has the support of the chamber voting-wise, and of the Democratic caucus.

But there isn't a sense at the moment that she is kind of taking a larger role in Ruggiero's absence.

So that's just another thing to watch.

- In the last couple of months, eventually getting into the home stretch, what else are you looking at up there?

- Well, one issue that I think will again come up is the Coastal Resources Management Council.

And whether that becomes a state agency or, you know, there's been a lot of objections over the way it functions now.

- [Jim] Well, what are you looking at?

- Millionaires tax or just income tax increase.

I think the politics of that are better now than they have been.

Because of the finances and because of what we talked about earlier with the uncertainty in Washington and a possible recession looming, I think the probability that there is a tax increase is higher than it's been before.

- Nancy, you've been talking...

It's funny that Ed talked about CRMC.

You've been writing a lot about it.

I don't even know where to begin.

We've been talking about for years.

Mainly because I think the council itself sometimes is not always listening to the staff or the experts.

That's been the main, a lot of people on the council don't have environmental expertise, so it should it come under the governor's wing?

I think there's pros and cons to that, but you've been looking at a couple of subsections.

- Fill us in on your report.

Yeah, so NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, actually regulates a big part of the state's coastal program.

And they issued, they do these sort of periodic reports of all state coastal programs.

Are you following federal rules?

So they issued a report of the CRMC.

Again, you know, touted our expert staff who are nationally renowned.

They're some good stuff, but, again, called sort of notice to the fact that there are three open seats on the 10-member appointed council.

Which means that if more than two people miss a meeting, they don't have a quorum and they can't vote.

- [Jim] And that's a perpetual problem.

- And it's long been a problem.

NOAA is calling it out, calling on the governor.

"Hey, you need to get some people on here stat."

They say they have some candidates they're considering, but, I mean, we don't know where that stands, how many, who.

Separately from that, there is a advisory panel of fishing representatives who, under the CRMCs own rules, have to meet with offshore wind developers anytime the CRMC is reviewing an offshore wind project, which they have one that's under review right now.

Presumably, well maybe more coming up.

I guess we don't know under this administration how that's gonna go.

And the panel has been inactive, defunct, for a year and a half.

All of the former members quit in protest, saying the council was just deferring to the wind developers and not listening to them.

They finally repopulated it.

Within a week of the call for volunteers all being appointed, four of them have quit.

And several of them said, "We didn't even know we were officially being put on this, and hey, we don't really wanna do this."

- Yeah.

- One thing I was struck by that the CRMC board hasn't had a full 10 members since 2019.

The governor did just appoint a podiatrist, but it hasn't been a full 10 since 2019.

- [Jim] Yeah.

- I guess it's why do we have a CRMC?

I would love to hear that from some of the state leaders- - The old timers?

- The governor.

No, just sort of, what did they see as the kind of base principle of why it's there?

'Cause it's obviously you could just have a staff who say, again, you can't do this on the coast, you can't mess around with this, this is against the rules, but I think the point of it is to sort of have, you know, like a zoning board to be able to do things that don't meet the rules.

And I don't know if, like... And that seems to be why it exists, but I don't know what our leaders' positions are exactly on that.

- Yeah, I mean with everything else it's probably getting lost in the sauce.

But I mean CRMC, if you're within 200 feet of the coast anywhere in Rhode Island, they have jurisdiction, a billboard blows down, you wanna replace your dock, or whatever.

So, and I did the story a couple of summers.

I think the poster child was Champlin's Marina kind of did the end around, and CRMC, there was this big backroom deal.

And, you know, that's kind of the beauty of what we do as reporters.

If that hadn't have been reported, you wonder what would've happened ultimately.

But I wonder whether there's much juice.

You talk about cost, to bring it, again, under the governor's staff.

A lot of people have lobbied.

"Well, it would cost way too much to do that."

I'm not sure shifting over would actually do that.

I dunno.

- So the state did do...

The Department of Administration did a study as commissioned by the legislature, and they put a pretty hefty price tag on what it would cost.

But that's based on the assumption that CRMC would need to hire like 10 more staffers, which, you know, the advocates for this overhaul say, like, " No, they can function as is."

- It seems the staff's not the problem.

It's the people making the decisions, you know?

- And interestingly, of the 29 states that... You know, we can do whatever we want sort of within the bounds of federal regulations around our coastal program.

Of the 29 states that have federally recognized coastal programs, only two others, California and North Carolina, have an advisory panel that has kind of like final decision making authority.

Most states have an advisory panel, but they are not the final like authority.

- Interesting.

- And save the base is you just need to hire one lawyer to make this happen.

And Jay Edwards, Rep. Edwards has a bill that would make it part of DEM.

So, you know, there's simpler ways to do it.

- I know the governor was on vacation for a period over the last couple of weeks.

Does anybody find it odd that there has been no response, no press conference from either the legislative leadership or the governor about Anchor Medical and the fact that 25,000 people are gonna be looking for a new doctor?

Now, some of them might be with doctors to other places, but this is such a chronic problem.

It's been crickets at the State House.

Is there any behind the scenes chatter going on up there?

- Yes, I mean on the governor, I mean he is saying that he is, I guess upset that he didn't know about it and is, you know, talking about is there a way to make sure that they come to us, if a health care organization is in trouble, you know.

That's all well and good, but that's not gonna solve the... Just letting you know that they're going...

They're still going to be going out of business.

I mean, I think, 'cause, I think, they don't want to necessarily talk about the underlying question, which is in reimbursement rates and how much all of these organizations, hospitals, doctors, practices get paid.

I mean, it usually does come down to money.

And this is serious money.

This isn't a million...

This isn't a lawyer at the CRMC.

This is tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars - [Jim] Which they should have started on 10 years ago.

- Right, or at minimum during COVID when there were budget surpluses and they were raking in federal cash.

So they've waited, and waited, and waited until now they're looking at a budget deficit.

But that is another thing that I'm watching in the final days of the session.

I mean, there are bills, there is legislation, and all kinds of proposals from hospitals to raise reimbursement rates on both Medicaid and commercial rates.

It's very expensive.

So I don't know whether it's gonna happen, but that's sort of the real rubber-meets-the-road stuff.

And I don't think the governor, you know, wants to have a press conference - On, but there wasn't even a press conference to say, look, there are doctors at Anchor Medical.

They're not all retiring.

You know, we're working behind the scenes.

Just assure people that they- - Healthcare, it does not seem to be a huge interest point for Dan McKee as far as I can tell.

I mean, Attorney General Neronha is very vocal in saying that he knew about all this stuff 'cause he's been working on healthcare stuff.

So, you know, I think it's just not a super interest point for him.

- Yeah, I think the guy using the bully pulpit about the shortage of primary care doctors has been the Attorney General Neronha.

And, you know, we just had an op-ed by some of the senators, Dimario, Sosnowski, and Lauria, talking about the need to increase the reimbursement rates to keep primary care doctors, create more here in Rhode Island.

- Yeah, I mean I think healthcare is so complicated, and the problems are complicated, and the solutions are complicated.

and the solutions also don't happen quickly, as Patrick said.

The reimbursement rates for doctors is a big issue, not competitive with other states.

There is sort of this idea of we're going to study for primary care doctors, which would be, you know, people at Anchor Medical, we're going to study increasing rates for our primary care doctors, but assuming that that makes it into the sort of final end of session, the study would happen next year, and we wouldn't see the rate increase until the year after that.

So none of this like regulatory reform can happen quickly.

- I've always said they could've, you know...

In politics they talk about protecting your base.

The doctors who are here, or the potential med students coming out of Brown, or young students with this crushing medical debt, they could have taken some of the COVID money.

I mean, we put a quarter of a billion dollars into housing to say, alright, let's take 15, 20 million, and if you're a young doctor, we can forgive 100,000 of your 200,000 if you stay in Rhode Island for five years.

I didn't see any of that creative thinking.

You would've thought... Well, and again, I know there were a lot of demands on the COVID money, but those would've been the one-time expenditures that the speaker talked about that they didn't do.

- Yeah, I think they did some reimbursement rate adjustments last year for other services, behavioral health and things like that.

But primary care doctor shortage, that's been a crisis for years.

- Yeah, let's do outrage and/or kudos, and we'll get to maybe a couple other things.

Nancy, what do you have this week?

- A kudos over an outrage, I suppose.

So two of Patrick's colleagues at the Providence Journal, Antonia and Niche wrote a really compelling story about enforcement for snow removal on sidewalks and how the sort of generally not very good, but also very varied enforcement by municipalities is creating serious safety problems.

A kid died because she and her mom were having to walk in the street, and they got hit by a car - [Jim] In Woonsocket, yeah.

- Because they weren't enforcing snow removal.

So really, you know, terrible stuff.

But a good story, I think, and one that, you know, may create some action.

- [Jim] Yeah, Patrick, what do you have?

- Maybe it's both an outrage and a kudos, but the new soccer team in its second year, and it's about to open, the Rhode Island FC, that's about to open its new very expensive stadium that taxpayers are helping to fund.

Just got a meeting with the New England Revolution, which is sort of the bigger soccer team in a tournament.

And I am convinced, I have no evidence of this, but it just feels like it has to have been rigged.

It could not... Because this will be their second ever game in this stadium.

It has to be a big boost to get local attention to have the New England team that plays in Foxborough come there.

So if it was rigged that, I guess it's an outrage 'cause that would be bad, but I think it's should be a kudo 'cause that would be a good idea to rig it.

It's good that they have this - Yeah, but I mean also, rigged?

Isn't that rigged in a good way.

We usually think of rigged as bad, but rigged to get 'em in there to create the buzz, right?

- Yeah, I think it's good.

I think we should, yeah.

Look at it as a positive.

- Therein lies the fine line between the kudo and the outrage.

Ed what do you have?

- I've got an outrage or an alleged outrage of a federal court case that involves a resident of Ireland who's accused of being part of a traveling conman fraud group.

He's accused of going around.

- Are they incorporated Traveling Conman Fraud Group?

- Yeah, yeah.

- What's the acronym?

- It's a band, yeah.

And I went to the home of 83-year-old Air Force Veteran down in Warwick, Donald Fife.

And he talked about how this guy rang the doorbell and said he was from Ireland, and, you know, Fife's Irish and American, and they bonded over being Irish, and he bought the neighbors some Guinness, and all this.

But you know, first it was 4,000, then 9,000, then $95,000 to fix his foundation.

And he lost a lot of money in the process.

And I guess the FBI says this is more and more common, and you should take precautions.

- Just a couple of minutes left.

Actually, it's been refreshing not to talk a lot about federal of what's going on 'cause that's dominated the news.

But you had a story, Rhode Island's in the news, again.

Mary McElroy, who is one of our local judges, federal judges, district court, along with Jack McConnell, she now is involved in a Trump case, so- - Yes, I think she's involved in a couple, one over arts group funding and a second one filed by a group of mostly environmental nonprofits, including a few in Rhode Island, the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council, over funding freezes from Biden-era congressionally appropriated money that they were already awarded grants for, already had started, you know, getting money, hiring people, signing contracts, and then all of a sudden it's frozen.

So she sided with the nonprofits and ordered, at least for now, that the federal agencies, Department of Energy, Department of Interior, Department of Agriculture, have to resume making these payments.

You know, pretty like the other federal judges who all, you know, for the most part seem to be sort of, like, siding against the Trump administration on some of these funding pauses, pretty strong language that the federal agencies do not have, like, unfettered ability to do whatever they want.

- Now the question is, does the Trump administration?

They seem to not be inclined to listen to the courts in certain cases.

That's the big question.

Are they gonna play ball?

- Yeah, and at the same time you've got a couple of Republican congressman saying they want to impeach judges, including our own US District Court Chief Judge Jack McConnell.

- The only other thing is it makes you think, we just had this big fight, it seems like a million years ago, but over a government shutdown and it'll happen again.

But with all of these court cases, you have to think that if the government was shut down, it would be more difficult to have judges trying to restore funding of agencies that aren't even operating, and that Congress has basically said, you know, go home.

So I think there was a lot of outrage among Democrats at Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senate leadership, but that, at least, makes you think maybe they're getting something outta this 'cause they're able with these court cases to keep these running that might just be completely dark.

- His argument, Schumer's argument was we don't wanna shut the government down because then it makes it easier for the Trump administration.

- Right, it's like threatening the Trump administration with a good time to shut them down.

- Okay folks, it's a fast 30 minutes.

We appreciate you joining us.

Nancy, and Ed, and Patrick, some of the best in the business.

They'll be keeping an eye on the State House down the stretch and so will we.

Everything going on locally and in Washington, and right here in Rhode Island.

We hope you have a great Easter weekend, and join us back here next week as "A Lively Experiment" continues.

Have a great week.

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