- We need to stop putting packages together to keep the best and brightest in Rhode Island.

It's simple as that.

If we're doing it for athletes, we can be doing it for doctors.

- We should have been doing this five, 10 years ago.

And I get a crisis- - Well, what should have caught a Hummel?

- Schools should be able to foster an environment of free thought, and the government should support that.

This is crazy and ridiculous.

- President Trump, we have a lot of issues in this country, and one of them is not what's going on on our college campuses.

(lively music) - And welcome to this episode of "Lively."

I'm Jim Hummel.

Thanks for joining us.

We are joined this time by our political contributor, Don Roach, and the one and only attorney and former prosecutor, Eva Marie Mancuso.

Welcome to you both today.

Thank you.

- Nice to be here.

- The president of Brown University told the Trump administration Wednesday that the school would not enter into a compact to fast track federal funds.

Saying to do so would forfeit Brown's academic freedom.

Don, let me begin with you.

It's appropriate as a Brown University grad, I know you've been following this, Brown's had a lot of interaction with the Trump administration.

Your reaction to President Paxton's decision on this?

- I feel like it's a very sane decision what the Trump is asking for, I feel like in a word, is crazy.

And I don't use that term loosely.

I've been on the show for years.

I'm a very moderate voice, but this is crazy and ridiculous.

Schools should be able to foster an environment of free thought and the government should support that as well.

When I was at Brown, you know, as a conservative voice, I didn't feel like I had a lot of compadres in the community or even support sometimes from the university to like speak out.

And so I get that in some institutions, not all voices are equally lifted up, but to put something forth like this just is crazy.

You need a space where universities can just speak freely without having to be concerned that their federal funding is gonna be cut.

- Yeah, there's one time in your life I feel that you can speak your mind and do it safely.

And that should be on a college campus.

You shouldn't have to worry about, especially with professors, right?

And I think what with Dr.

Paxton said is that, you know, when you ask professors and you're looking at funding for something, you wanna look at what is the significance of the project that they're working on.

Not what political side are they on, or is this a politically correct thing to do when you analyze whether or not a grant should be funded or a project should be funded.

You should be looking at the academic side of that.

And to then start taking on our universities with all of these pacts and the other things, it just doesn't make any sense to me.

You know, President Trump, we have a lot of issues in this country, and one of them is not what's going on on our college campuses, - And we should set the table.

The Trump administration wanted 10 universities, three Ivys, Penn, Dartmouth, and Brown to sign on, basically the carrot was, we're gonna give you a lot more federal money.

But they've gotten into transgender athletes, they're talking about limiting the number of international students.

They're talking about financial aid, all things that I think begin to encroach a little bit.

It's like, who's making the decision here?

- I mean, the one good thing in the this compact was freezing tuition rates for five years.

- You're all for that.

- That's great.

As you know, I have a child in college and one going to college soon.

So, and college just costs a lot more than it did when I was in college several years ago.

But I just think it's just ludicrous to force institutions of learning to abide by government regulations in terms of who should be attending the schools, who should not, how they admit students, because institutions of learning are just trying to get the best students they can for their universities.

Who then will then, as alumni, give back.

You know, Brown, you know, comes to me all every year, multiple times a year, and so.

- But you know, you raise an interesting question because on the tuition issue and maybe when I chaired the board of education, it was an issue that we looked at a lot because, you know, you always have that carrot and stick, right?

You raise the tuition a little bit, but then you're getting more academic work or what have you.

What concerns me too is the fact that Trump is messing with the Pell Grants and some of the other federal funding that would help students that are really in need to be able to go to school and to be able to participate in that.

So it's not just encroaching on, you know, what's in that compact on the tuition end, but it's all these other things that are a little bit on the sidelines, but also affect the same bottom line.

So when you say to an institution, hold your expenses for five years, you can't do that in a vacuum.

You have to look at, what are we gonna give up?

It's like anything else.

I'm gonna go on a financial diet in my house.

Right?

It's no different.

Something's gonna give.

Something's gonna give.

So it has to be part of a big plan, not as a compact coming from the federal government to tell you to do A, B, and C. And I think it's really the carrot and the stick that I saw with the whole thing.

Okay, we're gonna pick these 10 institutions and we're gonna throw that carrot out there so that they conform to what I wanna do and then go from there.

- But the federal funding is such a stick, right?

Because if they start, you look at what happened at Columbia.

Columbia basically capitulated because you think of, and they're in a tough position because that money funds research.

You look at the battle that Harvard's going through now, and, you know, Trump won.

He used a lo of more brought, Don, you and I were talking about this before the show, there were more guardrails.

Now, we're gonna yank the funding until a court tells me that I need to send it back.

- Right.

Trump too is untethered in terms of he is doing whatever - He wants- - He wants to do.

And so far no one has stopped him.

And for me, that's just, it's a little scary because if you are, I feel like now, if you're not on the side of government and I put that in quotes, then you are anti-American.

And that is, that's again, insane.

You know, you're not un-American because you question policies or you question different things that the administration is doing.

That is part of being an American.

But Trump too is basically saying, "If you are not with me, you are against me and you are not American."

- Doesn't it feel a little personal at times?

- It does feel personal, especially when you start getting into these basic principles and the basic tenets that we have of things like free speech.

Right?

And I think of a college campus and the ability to say what you wanna say and not have it resonate with you either for the rest of your life or you might change, you know?

I mean, I know I'm a lot more conservative today than I was when I was on a college campus.

I would've been the opposite of you.

I can remember when I was at URI and we had a tuition increase in the middle of the year.

So I was president of the student lobbyists.

And so what I did was I rented a school bus on a Friday afternoon.

- Wow.

- To come up to a rally at the State House.

Well, it wasn't a rally.

Everybody wanted to free ride to Providence to get home, you know, but the TV cameras showed them coming up the way.

And I had - Young Eva.

- We're all set.

We got the smallest room in the State house and we put, you know, 30 people in there.

And it looked like it was huge to have that rally.

But that's what college is all about.

It's about asking questions.

It's about having this dialogue and discussion, you know?

I worked on Howard Baker's campaign for president because we had somebody in there and I went up to and like Howard Baker and I didn't have a whole lot in common, but the idea was I didn't wanna go to work for somebody that I knew.

I wanted to see what was going on the ground for anything else.

That's something that you should be free to do in college Is to have those kind of discussions.

- And I would say in my college experience, conservative voices, I feel like were stifled.

So in terms of what the Trump administration is trying to solve at these more liberal universities, again, it's 30 years ago.

I don't know about campus life today.

Conservative voices worse.

I tried to get on the Brown Daily Herald for years and, you know, I consider myself a pretty decent writer.

I wrote for go local for several years, but I just couldn't get in unless I was talking about race.

If I talked about being a black person, I was able to write, but other conservative ideals and I was much more conservative then than I am today.

So I get why someone like Trump, who is conservative again, in quotes, would want to encourage universities to allow or conservative voices.

But this way just feels just completely stifling.

You can't oversing to the other side.

- Just the last point I wanted to get to.

You were the former chair of the Board of Higher Education.

What's going on?

As you've watched him try to dismantle the Department of Education and the trickle down, what do you think about that?

I have really mixed feelings.

I think we are very top heavy with regulations.

So having said that though, we also have certain protections.

You have to have a department of special education.

You have to have certain guidelines in the areas of what the big picture is.

But I think we are very top down in terms of regulation.

I'd love to see that money go directly to the states and directly to the teachers and directly to the schools themselves.

I think you'll get a lot more returns.

So I don't think he's wrong on some of the big issues with the Department of Education, but I think you still have to have the safeguards, especially for the protected classes.

- Yeah, so I think the next thing we'll have to look at in the weeks ahead is what decision the other universities make.

The deadline will be October 20th.

- Right.

- So we'll see on that.

URI is one step closer to creating its own medical school after a consultant said, building a public med school is quote, "Both viable and necessary to meet the state's pressing healthcare needs."

Eva, you are our resident URI grad.

- Woo-hoo.

- You keep an eye.

We will sing the roadie roadie fight song at the end.

We'll hold that off.

- Okay.

Okay.

- This is probably something they should have been talking about 10 years ago, right?

- So I analogized this to law school.

In 1978 when I was graduating from high school, my father said to me, "You need to go to Providence College and not URI because they're gonna have a law school."

Okay.

So Providence College still doesn't have a law school.

It's at Roger Williams University, which is doing great in gangbusters, but that's it.

So yeah, we should have been talking about a med school at URI a long time ago.

First of all, we have great leadership in President Parlange in terms of his vision.

We have the board now, which is a very different board, a governance board that's very different than when I chair the board.

- They used to answer to your board and now they're separately.

- Right, right, right.

It's a separate board, but it's also more of a fundraising philanthropic board than it is just governance.

So these are people that have, you know, these are billionaires that graduated from the university.

Not all of them, but a lot of them that have a say and wanna have a say in the future of it.

So we have the ability now, I think that we didn't have before with leading with Tom Ryan.

Right?

So what he's done for the university is remarkable.

Mike Fascitelli, what he's done for the university is remarkable.

These people wanna leave a legacy and huh.

Why not give them a legacy?

Right?

We have the University of Rhode Island.

So I think we have the leadership, we have the governance, and we certainly have the need.

We need to have a public university, you know, doing primary care.

Now, that's not to say we can't partner with Brown.

I think we already have the footprint.

Look what we did with the nursing school.

You know, we took the best of everything.

We put it all together.

We built a facility in Providence that everybody uses together, and it's off and running.

You know, that was done under my tenure.

So I knew, and I was part of that making the sausage, so to speak.

So the ability to do it is there.

- Yeah, and I mean, I think just the primary care doctor shortage in Rhode Island, this is a need because a lot of the doctors that come out of Brown aren't necessarily from Rhode Island, but a lot of the students who go to the URI medical school, potential URI medical school probably would be from Rhode Island and more likely to stay.

- And the other thing is that I was thinking about, you know, we had the Rhode Island Promise.

- Sure, scholarship.

- For CCRI and now it's the Hope Scholarship at Rick.

And you wonder they could design it to give you financial incentives to stay in Rhode Island.

- Well, that's what we need to do.

We need to stop putting packages together to keep the best and brightest in Rhode Island.

It's as simple as that.

If we're doing it for athletes, we can be doing it for doctors.

You know, I mean, you go to a basketball game, you sit there like this and you go, "Yep, well he's getting a million and he's getting 500."

NIL for doctors.

- NIL.

- NIL For doctors.

Right?

Why not?

So I think if we look at it from the standpoint of, this is an investment we have to make.

What I don't wanna see is I don't wanna see a legislative battle between Brown and URI.

Right?

I don't want it to start becoming a, "We're doing this and we don't don't want you to jump in on that."

I think that will just be divisive.

And we don't need to.

There's plenty to go around - Sure.

- In this, and I think it's time that we invest in a medical school at the University of Rhode Island.

Part in Kingston, part in Providence.

However all that sausage is made, let's just all agree we need to do it and put our heads together as to how we get it done.

Because I think you're gonna get a lot of philanthropy, a lot of private support for that from the URI grads.

- You're talking about 175 million and then maybe a $20 million every year in a $14 billion budget.

Big deal, right?

But you're right, the philanthropy to jumpstart.

But you look at the pharmacy school, nursing, all of that is already baked in already.

- [Eva-Marie] That's right.

That's right.

- Yeah.

And I think schools like Brown wouldn't mind partnering with URI.

Like you said, they partner with the nursing school, they partner with RISD on many things.

And then they also just got the, I think the exception from or the commitment with Neronha to, you know, - Right, the healthcare.

- Like getting 40,000 new patients with primary doctors.

- Brown physicians got absorbed by health and they're making a commitment over X number of years to bring on a lot more primary care.

Where are they gonna come from?

I'm not sure.

- So I think it would make sense for Brown here, but I think it makes sense for the state in general, because we do have that primary care doctor shortage.

And it would be great to have a public university that has a medical school.

- So, interesting to that, because I'm kind of a geek in this area, you know.

- Really?

- Pawtucket has spoken about it and may grab and kudos to him for stepping forward and saying, "Listen, our local kids need to have hope."

They need to say, "I wanna go into medicine."

Because you know what?

They're gonna be grabbed by schools.

The top kids in the classes are going if, if they wanna be doctors, they're going to medical school.

- Give them a reason to stay.

- That's right.

Give them a reason to stay, put a package together, get Joe Paolino for his downtown residence and put together some type of housing and academic, whether it's a waiver or whether it's a, you work here for five years and go forward.

You know, I could sit down and work on a team that put that together.

I think it makes a lot of sense.

- That should be a slogan for Rhode Island.

Give them a reason to stay here.

There's so many things that could apply to.

- We just, we're marketing right Now.

You give that to the (indistinct).

Have you heard any opposition to this?

I know we're in the early stages, so it's a consulting firm then it's gotta go to more committees and whatever.

But what I read was the first class, and I know it takes a lot to get there.

The first class could start if they green light it as early as 2029, which seems like a far away away, but it's only four years away.

- Well, you know, it's interesting because I'll go back to the Providence College and when you have the private institutions, you know, they came for permission to start the nursing program at Providence College and we gave them permission and they were up and running within like six months because it was private.

So I think we also have to look at some of the regulations around that too.

The state regulations to say, how can we fast track this?

You know?

And this is something, we did it in housing, we can't we do it in medicine too?

You know, I mean, I'm not saying we throw all the rules out the road, but I also out the window, not off the road.

- Yeah, down the road.

- Down the road, - Down the road, out the window.

But I do think that it's an opportunity for government to step in to say, "Listen, we're gonna make this a priority and we're going to lighten the load in terms of how we get there."

So it doesn't have to be '29, it can be earlier than that.

We just have to have some ingenuity and also have some faith.

Right?

We have to get the players together to say we wanna do this.

- I also think, and I know this has been in conversation, just the rates that Rhode Island pays for Medicare and Medicaid.

We've gotta talk about that because I do have some doctor friends who often talk about they hate just being in Rhode Island just because other states around us just pay more for- - And the legislature addressed that a little bit.

- The governor put more in his budget last year, and then the legislature also added it to it.

- But I mean, we should have been doing this five, 10 years ago and- I get a crisis.

- Yeah.

You know what shoulda have caught Hummel.

- That's my job is to say why didn't do this 10 years ago?

- I know.

You can't look backwards.

You just have to say, we now gut it.

It's the same thing with housing.

- But almost everybody I asked on "Lively," every panel.

Bill Lynch I remember was on here.

And he said, "I just lost my doctor."

There was somebody- - I know, I remember, I was on that panel.

- On that panel.

So, you know, it's almost like you hit the lottery if you have a primary care doctor now.

Right?

Because it's so difficult.

- I am vintage Rhode Island.

I went to high school with my primary care doctor.

- I bet.

- She says she's not going anywhere.

Did you take the walk down memory lane every time you get together or what?

All right, well, we will keep an eye on that.

And the next step will be for approval from the board, obviously down the line.

Despite no public support for it, the State's Ethics Commission has doubled the gift cap for public officials from 25 to $50.

So this is a revision of the so-called cup of coffee rule.

The feeling being you can buy a cup of coffee for a legislator, but not much more.

Don and Eva, apparently, the cost of a cup of coffee has gone up dramatically.

Senator Ciccone had wanted to increase this.

The Ethics Commission didn't have any public support, as I had mentioned for it.

And so I don't know what you think about this.

Look, it's the cup of coffee rule that they've talked about 25, $50.

It seems like.

- To me, this is no big deal.

25, 50 bucks.

I mean, I guess a lobbyist now can take maybe, you know, you to Chipotle instead of McDonald's, I guess.

But yeah, it's no big deal.

- So the other thing I want to tell you too is when you're on a border of commission, you have to file an ethics form every year.

I've had to do it many times.

If it's over the amount, you have to write it down and log it so that like, you know, and I had a big birthday this year, right?

So now if I was still on a board, I would have to file my form.

So suppose- - You know, because I paid for it once, you paid for it once, but there's that relationship.

- I'd have to write that down because if okay, was that- - He's a reporter.

- What did he have for lunch?

You know, we're back to the Capitol grill with the governor that time, you know.

Did he have the salad or did he have this?

We have way more things to worry about than 50 bucks.

- You know, and maybe just 'cause as a reporter, I've lived in this, I'm not a public official, but whenever I've gotten together with anybody, I don't let anybody pay for anything.

And so my feeling is, and maybe this is me kind of, you know, putting my own way of doing things on public officials.

Why are you taking anything from any lobbyist?

Anybody for the appearance.

Now, are you gonna get bought off for 25, $50?

Probably not.

But if you're sitting down, why don't you just say, "I'll pick this up."

Or, "We'll split.

Let's go Dutch."

- All right, so let me put a different way.

So a lobbyist is going to have a team meeting at the Crown Plaza.

And so it's a breakfast and they have this really elaborate breakfast and they invite you to come and it's a panel that they're talking about something.

So what are you gonna pass out particular, you know, slips to each person that's there.

They're hosting something- - That's a situ different situation.

- But it covers the same thing.

That's what I'm saying.

- Yeah, I'm thinking more of the one-on-one.

- Right, and what the public looks at is that I go over, I'm a lobbyist, Don's a legislator.

I'm handing him 50 bucks.

That's not what we're talking about.

And you know what?

If they raised it to 500 or it's something, that's- - Yeah, outrageous.

- That's a little outrageous.

You'd say, well, whatever.

But the cost of a cup of coffee these days is- - Have you been to Starbucks?

- Oh, listen, it's like six bucks.

You know?

Yeah.

Try taking your grandchildren there and all of a sudden, they want that toma macchiato.

- [Don] You gotta take out a second mortgage on the house.

- With this and that and everything else.

And it's like eight bucks for a cup of coffee.

- And I think while there may not be public support for this, I don't see there being public outrage.

- Right.

That's right.

- About 25 or $50.

- That's right.

- Because as you said, I don't think you're going to get bought off.

- And if you can be bought off for $50, then you could have been bought off for 25.

- Right.

That is true.

- It's not a huge leap, John, you know.

- Exactly, yeah.

We're not talking $500.

- And again, I look at things in issues that we have that we wanna look at.

And I'd say, that's not a hill I want to die on, you know, to say we're gonna have this big push moving forward.

So, you know, it didn't bother me.

It was neutral to me either way.

- Yeah.

- All right.

- Let's do this.

Let's go to outrageous and/or kudos.

Don, let's begin with you this week.

- I wanna give a kudo to this new, you know, set.

This is nice.

It feels- - You just stole my kudo.

- Oh, come on.

- Well, you're gonna have quick thinking.

You're gonna have to come up with something else.

- Yeah, no, it's great, it's comfortable.

I love the mics.

This is awesome.

- Yeah, no, I appreciate that.

Yeah, we've been working over the summer.

Don, you were here with us a little bit for some of our digital segments, which are continuing and this is your debut back on the new set.

- I know, I like it a lot.

I can't wait to see it.

I watched last week and I like the fact that it's more of a conversation than a ah, gotcha type.

Or scripted, you know, this is very nice.

So that was one of my kudos that I had too.

- Okay.

Okay.

- I had another kudo as well.

- Well you always come two or three deep, so go ahead.

- You know, I mean my URI football team.

- Yeah, you know.

- Yeah, you're doing great.

- We're back on track.

We had a couple of mishaps a couple weeks.

- Did they lose to Brown?

- [Eva-Marie] Well that was an accident.

- Is that a one off or what?

- I think what happened to, I have the background on that URI through the game because we really wanna have this joint medical school.

- Right.

- Oh, maybe it was long term.

- There was a little long term discussion back and forth.

You know, I was away and didn't miss the game.

I was very upset at that.

- That was it.

- Very upset.

- I will tell you about URI football.

Jim Fleming of course is brought in.

He's got the Southern draw, he's a folksy guy.

They were on life support three or four years ago.

No kidding.

And remember there was talk about, we're gonna get rid of this program altogether 'cause it's so bad.

- I was here, we had that discussion and what have you.

I think it goes into, there's a lot of things.

We're gonna have a new stadium in the next year or so.

And that's gonna be- - And that's a double bonus because you're gonna play in the interim at Centerville Bank Stadium.

- Right, that's right.

- And so that'll be nice.

- And I think what's gonna happen with bringing it to Centerville Bank, you know, a lot of people in Rhode Island still don't know where Kingston is.

So it would be nice because I think we're gonna get people from Pawtucket, Central Falls, Woonsocket that are gonna bring their kids and come to the URI football at the football stadium, the soccer stadium in Pawtucket.

And then they're gonna say, "Wow, I like this."

And now then they're gonna make the truck to Kingston.

So, you know, I remember the days when I had season tickets to URI football and it was really alive and- - Plenty of elbow room though, right?

The last couple of years.

- In the last couple of years, yeah.

But now it's back, it's back.

- The way brown football's going, that may be the highlight of the year.

- Pretty much.

Anytime Brown Beach, URI, PC, or any other Brian- - The Brian's prize list.

- Yeah.

- Right.

I know.

- That's good.

- I feel good.

- All right.

Thank you for joining us this week.

- It was great, thank you.

- Yeah, appreciate it.

- Thanks for joining us.

Be sure and check us out on Facebook, X, Instagram, and on the Ocean State Media YouTube channel.

We'll see you next time right here on "Lively."

(lively music)