- [Jim] Coming up on this week's A Lively Experiment, it's the rush to adjournment for the Rhode Island General Assembly.

We'll tell you what's been decided and what's still up in the air.

- [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 on Rhode Island PBS.

- [Jim] This week's panel has a full recap.

They include former Rhode Island Attorney General Arlene Violet.

Political Contributor and Former Providence Mayor Joe Paolino.

Plus, Attorney and Former Chief of Staff for Governor Lincoln Almond, Joe Larisa.

Hello and welcome to Lively.

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

It is a week where you need a scorecard to keep up with the action at the Rhode Island Statehouse.

Once the budget is passed, the rest of the General Assembly's business moves quickly and it's likely we'll be spending the next several weeks, if not months, sifting through the decisions from this final week of the session.

Arlene, let me begin with you.

The budget is the big deal.

We'll get to some of the other issues.

What do you like?

What do you not like?

- Well, first of all, I think House Minority Leader Chippendale is absolutely right that Rhode Island has to have a budget that is the right size for Rhode Island.

This incremental spending, the last minute things, like a 63% conveyance tax coming in at the last minute, it's really embarrassing.

And I just think Chippendale and his call to stop Rhode Island being one of the top 10 states for tax burdens on us taxpayers.

We've got to stop this incredible growth in government without analysis of what really should be the size of our budget.

It's disgraceful.

- Joe?

- Being a Monday morning quarterback is what we all are today.

We can be critical of a lot what goes on.

I don't like the Taylor Swift tax that they put on, and people's second homes, and there's ways that that can even be abused.

Why the state of Rhode Island now is going to get involved in collecting property taxes when it's a local community's responsibility to do that.

So I'm not happy with a lot of what I've seen over there.

But you know, they had a lot of money from the federal government on COVID and quite frankly, they blew it.

And now they're in the position that they're in now.

They could have watched that money, invested it properly.

Instead they spent the money instead of investing money.

And that's why we're in the position we're in today.

- And a lot of that went to affordable housing, but we haven't seen the results.

- We haven't seen the results yet.

- Joe?

- Jim, Rhode Island is not an island, meaning people can move.

They can leave.

We're a small state.

They can go to a lower tax state.

The Taylor Swift tax, is it good?

No, but the worst thing about it, it makes us look bad.

Makes us look like we're adding a new tax, and Arlene says high tax state, and we want people to stay here, we want people to move here.

And being a high tax state, we've really gotta look at neighboring states and get our budget house in order.

- There's an old saying, don't tax me, don't tax the tax of the man behind the tree.

And that's what seems that takes place all the time when the state is looking to try to get more revenues.

But the so-called 1% pays 35% of the tax burden.

So if you figure what 1% is, that's about 10,000 people.

So those 10,000 people want to move to New Hampshire, Alaska, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, where they don't have to pay an income tax, then the 99% of the people are going to be paying instead of 65% of the tax burden, they're going to pay 100% of it.

We cannot be a state of just wealthy people.

We can't be a state of just poor people.

We need to diversification and we have to encourage, we want wealth to be here because if wealth comes here, that wealth also gives into philanthropy and helps the charities that are in our state.

- He's absolutely right.

Obviously they continue to give funds here.

Some of the Rhode Island multimillionaires who've moved out of here.

But of course, in their new states, they have to contribute their charitable funds there as well.

Look, right-sized Rhode Island, will you please analyze the duplication?

I don't like what Musk did, but in a way, we need a non-chaotic Musk-type person to go in and study the entire structure and say, this is duplication, duplication, duplication, duplication.

That thing doesn't even shouldn't exist anymore as an agency, et cetera.

Not politically, but just in terms of function, we need to right-size Rhode Island's budget.

- You know, the House Speaker, Joe Shekarchi, said, "Oh, this is a good budget and we're taking care of the people."

The hard work is cutting and saying, look, we really need to go in.

So you alienate some people.

You may drop some people off who you've always taken care of.

I think we're at the point now, Joe Larisa, that we just can't, it's unsustainable.

The budget goes up about a billion dollars every four years, not necessarily concurrent with the governor's term, but where are we going to be in 10 years from now?

- And Jim, it's even worse.

I mean, I'm here with a sensible panel and I've got a smile on my face, but we've had other panel members in the progressive left that say Joe Paolino was completely wrong.

We've got to tax the 1% a heck of a lot more to pay for everybody else.

But when you do that, the 1% ain't going to be here anymore.

They're already leaving, more will leave, and then the tax burden, as Joe says, will be on everyone else.

We need more wealthy people here because they pay the majority of the taxes.

But Rhode Island is moving in the other direction.

And in 10 years, if the progressive left gets their way, there's not going to be any more wealth in Rhode Island and the tax burden is going to be higher on all of us.

- Joe, you would have thought this would have been the year.

It's a non-election year.

You don't want to make difficult decisions of any type when you're up for re-election.

But this would have been the year to go in with the scalpel or the hatchet and cut a little bit.

- Well, I think they think this was, they made some tough decisions.

They probably think that.

But I'm very concerned about what I heard the other day and that is the federal deficit, which is 36, $37 trillion, in another 10 years it could be $57 trillion and we're going to have bigger problems.

Right now, the burden that every American has is costing about $230,000 per individual in America of where our deficit is and we have a serious problem.

I can't why they just can't go back to the playbook back into 1990s when Gingrich and Clinton had a balanced budget and they did it together.

Yeah, you're going to have to raise taxes.

Yeah, probably.

I wish you wouldn't, but they're going to, but you've got to bring the interest rates down because that has an effect on the deficit and they're going to have to do maybe some Musk stuff that you talked about.

We don't like him, but that concept is not wrong if they do it properly.

- Joe is saying speak for yourself, not Elon Musk.

Let's go to a couple of the issues that are still outstanding.

Now we are taping on a Friday morning.

By the time you watch this, it's chance the session's gonna be over.

The assault weapons ban got watered down pretty heavily.

First it was, you're gonna have to either have a registration or you can't have it at all.

Now it's you can possess, but you can't buy.

What did you make of that?

- Well, usually any incremental improvement, you know, you're just sort of welcome, but this business where you just can't manufacture it, but you can use them and have them, it really is a phony.

It's a phony application.

It was a big loss, I think, for people on the assault weapon.

There's absolutely no doubt in my mind they ought to ban military-type weapons.

They didn't do it.

They're still the slaves of the NRA.

- 160,000 Rhode Islanders have the guns listed in the bill.

It's a radical step to try to take away possession on those.

But here's the bottom line, Jim.

This is all fun for the next year or two.

Justice Kavanaugh said it right.

They've probably got five votes.

They're waiting for the sixth vote.

All of these gun regulations are anti-historical, and they're going to go down at the Supreme Court, but they want six votes to do it.

So it's like probably a year to 18 months where it's up there, and they reverse all this.

- They paused on the magazine capacity.

There was no decision.

What you're saying is maybe the decision is going to come down the line?

- On all of these issues, yes, yes, I believe that's what's going to happen.

- Well how will that, Joe, I don't understand that.

What are they looking for the sixth vote to do what?

- It's kind of inside baseball.

Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, they want more of a majority, I believe.

This is what I've heard.

- They don't want it to be 5-4.

- They don't want it to be 5-4, even though a lot of these issues are 5-4.

- They want to get rid of the guns or they want to keep them?

- Oh no, it's a very strong second amendment.

We've got four solid votes on the record up there that all of these gun bans are unconstitutional under the second amendment.

This is going to be one of them.

It just hasn't percolated up there.

The lower courts are sustaining the bans.

Couple are saying, no, there's been dissents.

It's a mess in the lower courts.

They want to wait until they get more decisions.

Then they'll take the case.

And then I believe there's five or maybe six votes to outlaw these gun bans.

- Yeah, that's the entire structure, right of the court system.

There's supposed to be a record, really developed well at the district court level.

The Circuit Court of Appeals is supposed to really contemplate all of this.

Just like you need a record for what Mr. Trump is doing to get up to the Supreme Court.

So that's not unusual that the Supreme Court wants a fully developed record before they do any prolific change and that's I think they're waiting for.

- I don't know, if somebody's going hunting, how many times you got to shoot a rabbit?

- Well, the other thing is- - You need a machine gun to shoot a rabbit?

- Well, so that's the argument.

We had a national assault weapon ban from what, '94 to 2004 and its sun set it out.

Now I guess the issue then is nobody took that to court, but that was an agreement and it worked.

- It worked and death was doubted.

Then you saw it explode when they took that ban off.

You saw it explode and I think our country is more dangerous after that ban than it was during it.

- What about that, Joe?

That from '94 to 2004 everything was fine, nobody was, even the Second Amendment people were not bringing that- - I think it's a matter of what guns are listed.

The other side calls this assault guns, that you don't need the magazines and all that.

But the other side, there's a hundred, the majority of all guns in the United States are under what they're calling assault weapons.

A majority, over 60%.

Again, the numbers I saw yesterday, 160,000 in Rhode Island.

I don't see deaths skyrocketing because everybody has those guns.

And the numbers are the same throughout the United States.

And we have a history of gun ownership, and the gun people don't want their guns taken away- - There can be a weapons ban that's constitutional.

The problem is it has become totally politicized, overdone, when 160,000 weapons all of a sudden would become... Because I don't think my neighbors have machine guns or these mass capacities, et cetera.

We've got to go back to using our brains and getting back to the Constitution.

Keep politics and your own personal preference out of it, look at the issue and decide it.

- The City of Providence has been having its own financial challenges after losing a court case last year where the courts ruled that they need to cough up more basically for the school system which is being run by the state.

Joe, you're former mayor, real estate owner, you're as much Providence as anybody here.

This has gone through the legislature.

It looks like it's going to pass to go from the 4% cap to a 7.5.

Now they say it's a one-time thing, but they got to keep paying that bill.

What do you think about where this legislation needed?

- I think, yeah, I think it is needed.

I don't want to pay it.

I don't like paying it, but I think it's needed.

You have Smiley's trying to write a lot of problems that he's inherited from his predecessor who used revaluation to raise taxes, but he said he didn't raise taxes and used one time money and quite frankly tried to balance the budget on one-time money.

So it's probably needed.

But here's the problem that Providence is going to have and other major cities going to have.

The pandemic put a curse on all of major commercial office buildings in the major cities.

And in Providence, you're going to see buildings going up for auction, going back to the banks.

You're going to see assessments of a major office building that was once assessed at 50 million is going to be assessed at 30 million.

Tenants are leaving, tenants that had 70,000 feet before, and I can say this because it's happening to me, only want 20,000 feet now.

And the values of those buildings are less.

What does that mean?

Assessments are going to come down.

less money is going to be paid to the city of Providence and to other major cities and they're going to have to find how to fill that gap.

- Is it the homeowners?

- Is going to end up with the homeowner.

And that's why you can't be chasing people out.

Downtown is not a rich area, not in Providence.

It's not a place that office people can't wait to go to because they don't want to pay for parking and they don't want to, they don't need the glut of space they've had in the past.

And the only way to transition downtown properly is going to take some of the older buildings that were built in the late 1800s, early 1900s, convert them to residential and try to create a community there because the office market does not exist the way it did years ago.

- Like to ask the former mayor, some advocates are saying that Providence ought to ask the Infrastructure Bank of Rhode Island for funds to rehabilitate Benefit Street because so many tourists go there.

- City on street.

- City on street, but they want the sidewalks done.

Get a loan.

A lot of council members object to that, saying, "We want our sidewalks and our specific areas done."

Mayor Smiley yesterday was sort of ambivalent when he gave a response.

Mayor, what would you do?

- Well, I'm gonna tell you, what makes Providence a great city are the universities.

And Brown University is critical.

Brown University, Brown Med school, you see the expansion of Johnson and Wales, Rhode Island School of Design.

Unfortunately, that's the only economy we really have is health care and higher education.

And if we keep on treating them like they're step brothers and step sisters to us then you're going to see bigger problems.

Benefit Street is a historic street not just for Providence, but for the state.

And if we don't nurture our tourism we're going to be hurting ourselves.

The city council I think is well intentioned, short-sighted, and they don't understand the other side.

They only understand their side and that's their problem.

- Joe, jump in.

- I just want to know where I sign up for Paolino for mayor or governor?

(panelists chuckling) I like this guy.

He's talking common sense.

Providence schools are a mess Jim.

There's declining enrollment.

They're not producing as students who can actually function according to all the studies and yet more and more and more and more money is poured in.

The unions have control of it.

I don't know how you break this.

I just don't, I just know it's a huge problem and the taxpayers are paying a 7.5% increase again.

For what?

Just to pay for school funding.

It's a major problem and I don't know what the solution is.

- Schools need to go back to Providence Control or is it not ready yet?

- Well, I'm going to take a different route.

How do you have one teacher teach 30 kids from 30 different nations, 30 different cultures?

You have one teacher there and they're trying to teach these kids.

I'm going to tell you, if you want to fix the school problem, education in the urban centers, you got to cut the class size down in half.

You need 15 kids in the classroom is a budget buster.

Nobody wants to talk about it, but that's the only, you got to do more than what they do in the private schools, because you have the diversity of income, ethnicity, of culture from kids in Providence and you've got to give them special attention that they normally wouldn't get.

And with 30 kids in a class, you're not going to get it.

- Any thoughts on that?

- Amen.

- Yeah.

Two other things before we move on.

I do want to talk about some national.

The payday lending bill looks like Billy Murphy, the House Speaker, could only hold him off so long.

And casino smoking, I think both.

And it's interesting.

It was maybe because the Senate President, Dominic Ruggiero, unfortunately passed away earlier in the session.

It looks like both of those bills are going to go through.

- Payday lending, I said a year ago on this show, that the Democrats, it's a disgrace for them.

They always say they're for the poor people, but to allow that to go on as it has, it's been ridiculous.

Thank God that's gone.

Casino smoking, absolutely cut it.

I guess they're going to have a bar or two where you can go and smoke.

But for Bally's to ask for more money of the takers, we're going to lose business.

And to actually consider that is also ridiculous.

I'm sorry, you've got to run a job, whether it's at Bally's or in a manufacturing plant, that don't endanger your workers.

No smoking, amen.

How dare you expose the workers there to carcinogens like smoking.

Forget about it.

Don't ask for more money about it.

- But they wiped it out, but not until 2027.

- '27 - Just do it.

- Yeah, yeah.

Die until then.

- Cut it cold turkey, right Joe?

- Unbelievable.

- We used to call that time capsule legislation.

- Is that what it is?

- Yeah, that's what they call it.

- Keep on kicking the can.

- Yeah, down the road, just like the budget.

All right, let's move to national.

A lot going on.

President Trump, we don't know what's going to happen by the time you watch this.

There's the decision to go into Iran.

He's kind of pushed it off another two weeks.

Iran, Israel, some of the Trump decisions with the federal cuts.

Let's talk with our guy.

We've talked a lot about Trump's first 100 days with you.

We're well beyond that now.

What do you think about what's going on?

- We call it Trump time, the pace that everything moves.

It's 10 times what has happened previously.

This is vintage Trump at his best.

He knows exactly what he's doing.

Tell the Ayatollah, we know where you are, but we're not gonna kill you now.

Oh, we might drop the bomb, we might not.

He doesn't wanna drop it.

He doesn't wanna do, blow up the Ford Oak plan.

He doesn't wanna get involved.

But this is the Trump way to not get involved.

This is Iran's best chance to strike a deal.

He wants a deal, but he's letting you know, you don't strike a deal, we could bomb the heck out of you.

We could kill the Ayatollah.

Everybody leave Tehran.

This is how Trump does it.

And if we're going to get a deal, and I hope to goodness we do, it's Trump doing the thing in order for us to get a deal.

Doesn't want to, but he will if he needs to.

- Mr.

Ambassador, what do you think about that?

- You know, I'm not a supporter of President Trump, but he's not stupid.

And a lot of people underestimate him.

And what Joe is saying, I don't know if he knows what he's doing or not, but quite frankly, no, neither does anybody else.

And that could be the genius that hasn't, that isn't intended, but maybe that's part of the genius of him because people don't know what he's going to do.

I can tell you this, in business there are certain things I would normally do right now that I'm not doing because I don't understand where he's coming from and what's going to happen to the direction of the country in regards to tariffs, taxes, his budget deficits, everything else has got me concerned.

So the uncertainty of Trump may become part of the genius of Trump, but I don't think that's the way government should be run.

- And part of it leads to chaos.

I mean, the Musk, I mentioned Musk earlier, I mean, cutting people and then bringing them back.

I mean, that was just terrible, that approach.

- [Jim] Realizing they went too far.

We need these people in government.

- Right.

It's ruling by chaos.

And the problem I have is, hundreds of lies he's told.

When someone says, well, Iran is about to get the nuclear weapon and have it done, that's like saying if each Joe gave me a couple of pennies, you could say, oh, Arlene Violet's net worth just increased.

Well, yeah, but you can't believe anything this man says.

So I don't really know how close it is or it isn't.

I'm just glad the European leaders today, Friday, are meeting with Iran and I hope that they get something accomplished because I can't trust Trump.

- I'll tell you one thing that's shocked me is what's happening in America, especially with the younger people, putting a Palestinian flag in Providence City Hall, shying away from the Jewish community is beyond me.

I never thought I'd ever, ever see that.

We got to always stand with Israel in this whole Palestinian thing has got me concerned.

I don't get it.

- Jim, we have a chance to shape the entire Middle East in the next two weeks.

If we bomb Fordow or the Israel does and takes out their nuclear capability, Iran is useless.

Hezbollah has been decimated.

Hamas, gone.

This can shape everything for decades and it affects the Soviet Union, it affects China.

So there's a real push to end that nuclear program by bombing the underground bunkers that Israel can't get at.

And if we do, and if that's the limit- - And we're the only ones with the capability to do that.

- Right.

Now, let me give a prediction.

They're really smart about this.

Why would we do it?

We have the bomb.

We have the fighter.

Sell them to Israel.

Let their pilots fly them in.

Plausible deniability, we sell a ton to Ukraine.

They do all the work, get out of it.

But we can give them the technology.

We can give them the capability.

We can train their pilots and stay away.

If we do this, it's an entirely new Middle East and for the better and Israel's safe.

- That assumes the static nature of the rest of the Middle East, frankly, and the Arab world, believe me, aren't going to stay idly by and let this go.

I mean, the basic issue is what right does another country have to tell another country where who they can have as leaders, what they can have in weaponry, et cetera.

These are very broad issues that ought to be done with intelligence and reflection, not just a personal ire.

- And then that exposes American assets, which they said all throughout Europe.

- I can tell you this.

I can't see the Gaza Strip being developed as Miami Beach.

Can you- - That's a whole other issue.

- There's some crazy ideas- - Let's do this in the last couple of minutes.

Let's move to the Trump cuts.

They're working their way through court now.

President Trump has had some victories, but I think a lot of defeats.

And I wonder, Arlene, we have two lawyers here, and guys who maybe sometimes play lawyer on TV.

- Not you, Joe.

- No, I don't.

No, I don't.

- What is your thought as things begin to work their way up to the Supreme Court?

- Well, it's what happens in the courts.

- And what should happen.

- It should happen.

You have to develop a full record.

In some ways, it's good that there's a point and counterpoint on exactly the same, one rule X and another rule Y.

That's, in a way, what the Supreme Court wants to come up to it.

But in the final analysis, the last say is going to be what happens in the US Supreme Court.

So the jury is out since we're talking about courts.

- Jim, I read every day, Trump loses this, Trump loses that, National Guard shut down, Department of Education can't be shut down, USAID employees saved.

I laugh, that's all gonna go away.

Trump's gonna win every single one of these cases, and he has, up to the Supreme Court, except one, the birthright citizenship.

You've got left-wing judges putting policy over what the law really is.

USAID is gonna get shut down.

The Department of Education, he's going to be able to make those cuts.

The National Guard, we're already there.

Renegade judge, you can't use the National Guard, of course you can, he's the commander in chief.

Even the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said it's okay.

Supreme Court's going to sanction that.

He's going to win nearly every one of these cases, with the exception of birthright citizenship.

- Because he's solid on the law, or is the Supreme Court in his pocket?

- No, he's solid on the law.

The problem is that these things are unprecedented.

But a unitary executive, if you look at what the Constitution says, Trump is the chief.

And he gets to do these things.

- I have to dissent from my brother about left-wing judges.

We've gotta stop that.

Just like if somebody honestly- - Who they were appointed by, right?

- who allegedly was appointed by a Republican.

I hate it when I hear Democrats talk about that Republican judge, this or that.

Yeah, they might be a little tinged by prejudice or whatever, but most judges try their darndest to rule what they think is correct.

And I think we have to get away from a dialogue about lefties and righties and just get it up to the Supreme Court and let's see what happens.

- All right.

Let's do outrages and/or kudos.

Mayor, let's begin with you.

- I want to appeal to business people, people that own small business, large business, executives, restaurant owners, whatever.

Get involved.

Run for office.

Get up there.

Teachers are in the legislature.

You have labor people that are in the legislature.

And they get things done for their own constituencies.

But we have to get a business group, accountants, real estate people, lawyers, I don't care who you are, but if you're in business, to bring some business sense up there because what's happening is that business people are laying back and others are running and they're controlling our laws and they're controlling our taxes and they're controlling the agenda and that's leaving a lot of people out.

- Joe Larisa.

- My kudos, Jim, is to you today for assembling this all-star panel.

- Here we are.

It's Rhode Island royalty right here on a Lively set.

- I added it up.

Exactly.

There's over 120 years of Rhode Island political and legal experience on this panel.

And it's been an honor and a pleasure to be on this panel with this crew.

And thank you for putting us all together.

- Well, we brought you in.

Your debut was right after Trump was elected.

And that was, I think a lot of people were like, here we go again.

But it's been nice to have you as an addition.

- Thank you.

- So thank you.

General, what do you have for us?

- I want to give kudos to Rob Cody, who wrote a recent article in Ocean State Current, and by the way, about an outrage of mine, which is no taxes on overtime.

In his article, he correctly pointed out that what is going to happen in Rhode Island and other states is that public workers, like the firefighters in Warwick that he talks about, the younger people who don't qualify near retirement, they are going to take as many sick days as they want early, the older people will then get, it will take those as overtime, get time and a half and two and a half times, get no taxes on that, and then it goes into burgeoning their budget.

Already it was like from 1.5 to 3.5 million in Warwick under the old regime.

But what Trump has done, because he doesn't think, has set a tiger loose that's going to burst municipality budgets again.

- And also that's gonna affect Social Security earnings.

- Absolutely.

- And Social Security, they've already announced that it's, what, eight years from bankruptcy.

So, all right, that is all the time, folks.

Thank you for joining us, Joe and Arlene, and Joe, as I like to say, "the violet between two thorns" this week.

(panelists laughing) Folks, if you don't catch us Friday at seven or Sunday at noon, we're all over social media.

We also archive our shows at ripbs.org/lively or check out the Rhode Island PBS YouTube channel.

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We'll be back here next week with an all-star panel of reporters who were neck deep covering the General Assembly session.

We'll have their take on what's going on and what we can look forward to this summer.

We hope you have a great weekend and join us back here next week as the Lively Experiment continues.

(uplifting 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.

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