- As Rhode Island lawmakers return to the State House for the 2026 legislative session, the state faces a lot of fiscal uncertainty.

A projected $100 million deficit for the next budget is relatively small compared with the past, but Trump administration cuts could blow a much bigger hole in the state spending plan.

There's also the uncertain future of two cash strapped local institutions, Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence and our Lady of Fatima Hospital in North Providence.

The Atlanta-based nonprofit that wants to buy the hospitals has struggled to complete its financing, and it's unclear if the state might need to pick up part of the bill.

All this takes place against the backdrop of a statewide election year when Rhode Islanders will vote for governor and a host of other offices.

To preview the new general assembly session, we're talking with two lawmakers, State Representative Marie Hopkins, a Warwick Republican, and later in the show, State Senator Victoria Gu, a Westerly Democrat.

Are they bullish on Rhode Island's future or alarmed about where things are headed?

I'm Ian Donnis, and that's just some of what we discuss in this episode of "One on One."

State Representative Marie Hopkins, welcome to "One on One."

- Hi, nice to see you.

- Thanks for joining us.

You were first elected to the House of Representatives in 2024 on your second run.

- [Marie] Yes.

- Why did you want to be part of the legislature?

- So I get asked that question a lot.

It's a pretty common question and I have a solid, simple, consistent answer for you and it's family basically.

I'm gonna say it's my children and it's my grandma.

My children who are getting older, who are in college and they said, we can't live here.

We cannot afford it.

We cannot afford rent.

We cannot afford a house.

The pays are low, we're taxed on everything.

And when we're getting out of college, we're moving away.

And I was like, how can you do that to me?

You know, don't leave.

But it was an alarming moment of the reality for our rising young adults.

How do they make it in Rhode Island?

And then on the flip side, I mentioned my grandmother.

She's 95.

I live next door to her, and she has so many of the issues that come with aging and the taxes on them and the small income and all of these things.

And how do you protect these?

So I think I was motivated by my two daughters' words really, but motivated to try to be part of the solution.

And that came from a lot of inward reflection.

I thought about it for a very long time, Ian.

I did not jump in, months and I spoke with my family.

I wanna say this as well, most of my life, I watched politics like so many people like, oh, so mad and I'm so upset and it's that person's fault, and it's that person's fault.

And forever pointing that finger.

And I sort of had this realization of, well, I can point the finger at myself.

Why not me?

Let me be part of the solution.

Just let me go help.

And that's the truth of it.

- Well, now that you've had the opportunity to serve in the House, how does the experience of being a state rep compare to what you thought it would be like?

- You know, I was anxious, and I didn't know what to expect.

You have some notions of what it's gonna be, and of course, that's never what it is, right?

So I went up there and I found, not going to be a great change maker.

I'm going to be part of a system.

And in some essence, not to be negative, but in some ways, you're a cog in a very big machine.

You're not the machine, right?

So I determined to be the best cog I could and do the best work possible.

I found that despite the differences of ideology, there's an incredible sense of camaraderie.

And I didn't expect that.

I think that was the most wonderful formative epiphany for me was, wow, they are cohesive.

They are working together.

Not that they agree on every issue.

There's plenty of infighting.

Don't get me, you've seen it, you know.

But a lot of cohesion.

So that was a surprise.

It was a pleasant surprise.

- You mentioned the concern about your children facing the possibility of leaving Rhode Island due to a lack of economic opportunities and other conditions.

This is a long running issue.

The one of brain train in Rhode Island.

- Right?

- There was actually, this came up during a debate between Lincoln Amman and Mirth York about 30 years ago.

How do you think the state is doing?

What do you think can be done to have more children of people who are adults like you stay in the state?

- You know, I don't have the magic wand, and I don't have the magic solution.

I think tax reform is one of the biggest things that needs to be addressed, because they're not just paying income taxes.

They're paying taxes on every single service, every single time they step outside, right?

So some of that would alleviate economic pressures, right?

The housing market, look what we're doing in Rhode Island to take that pressure off.

We're building like Warwick particularly is surpassing what we need to build.

We're doing that work.

So that's gonna help.

My daughters have decided to stay.

They took the threat off the table and one of them just purchased a home.

She purchased a home down in Richmond.

So I think that they need to be encouraged to grind out, work hard.

That's how her and her fiance did it.

They plugged away, they have no kids, put in the work, earned the money, do the savings, maybe watch your budgeting, and it can be done, but the housing, that is helping and some tax relief would help.

- Representative Hopkins, you've worked as a nurse and you now work as a nursing educator.

So I've got a healthcare question for you.

- Okay.

- There's a lot of uncertainty facing the next state budget due to possible cuts to healthcare out of Washington.

- Right.

- If people in Rhode Island lose access to healthcare because of that, do you think the legislature or the state budget should make up the difference?

(Marie sighs) - I don't know.

I would really rather see a solution before it comes to that, because our state budget is strapped already, right?

Like where are we getting more from?

And if we come up with that more, some other cut is going to have to be made.

So then it's a matter of priorities.

And for me, healthcare's a huge priority, right?

I voted for the budget and the reason I did that was because there was so much healthcare in there.

And so there's so much tremendous need.

I'm really banking on Washington doing its job and coming up with a solution before it comes to states having to self-fund these differences.

I just, I don't wanna see it come to that.

- You mentioned voting for the budget.

You were the only one of 10 Republicans in the House to vote for the budget last year, you say, because of healthcare.

And the budget did include tens of millions of dollars to try and get at this issue of how Rhode Island reimburses healthcare at a lower rate than our neighbors in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

That seems at the root of a lot of the problems that we have with healthcare in Rhode Island, including the departure of a lot of primary care doctors for other states.

What do you think the state can do differently to get at the root of that issue?

- So we don't really have a medical school.

We have Brown, but they attract out of state and international, who following residency, they leave.

They're certainly not gonna stay here with our low reimbursements, right?

We are talking about the possibility of building a medical school at URI.

I think it should be a health sciences school.

Put in a nursing graduate program, put in a dental program, put in a veterinary program.

We need those too.

I think that's going to help if we can get there.

But that's probably 10 years out, right?

The reimbursements did come up.

I don't think that they came up enough.

My brother's an MD.

I see, I hear him talk about how it's actually a struggle to keep the lights on.

He tries to provide benefits to his employees.

You have a tremendous amount of rent on your office.

There's so much back of the office work that people don't see, versus the face time that the doctor's reimbursed for.

So if he gets $37 for a Medicaid visit, and that's half of an hour, I'm making up figures.

But then the office staff has to call in the prescriptions and order different procedures.

It's another hour of work for which the office isn't reimbursed.

So we saw Anchor Medical go under, right?

25,000 people were left without an MD.

This is unacceptable.

This is absolute urgency.

So if we can get the reimbursements up, maybe we can get some of the Brown people come out of Brown Medical School to consider staying.

Maybe our bright students who go out of state to medical school will come home to Rhode Island, instead of staying out of state.

And if we can get that healthcare sciences building going, I mean, there is no magic wand.

I think that's where I started, but it's probably my biggest advocacy, yeah.

- Representative, we, I mentioned a short time ago how you are one of 10 Republicans in the 75 member House of Representatives.

It's been a tough lift to increase Republican representation in the General Assembly for many years.

What do you think the Republican party or Republicans need to do differently here in Rhode Island to elect more state lawmakers?

- So this may be 37% in the bank for Republicans, and then they have to work to obtain the unaffiliated and even cross aisles and get Democrat votes to get a seat, right?

So more grassroots effort, more involvement from the voters at a district level would make a difference.

There's a lot of people that complain about, we don't have representation, but yet, not to be too critical, but you've got to step up, right?

I told you the story about how I, it's your fault, it's your fault.

And all of a sudden I said, wait, why not me?

So I would say to people, what about you?

Step up.

And maybe through more people getting involved, we could grow that.

It is a heavy lift.

There's not a lot of money on our side.

There's not a lot of institutional support on our side.

That's a barrier as well.

I think the answer would be, I would like to see more people become present, become involved.

- This is a statewide election year with the top office of governor being up for grabs.

Who is your preferred choice to be the state's governor?

- On my way here, my husband said he's gonna ask you that.

I think it's really too early to call that.

I don't think everyone's in the race yet, right?

And I.

- Who else do you think is gonna get in on the Republican side, aside from the best known candidate right now, Aaron Guckian?

- So there is another candidate that I heard some rumors of down in South County.

I don't know much about that person, so can't really speak to it.

I don't know if they've even declared it's a woman.

Aaron obviously is the Republican front runner, but the Democratic field is not filled out yet.

Of that, I think we're all pretty sure, right?

So if there's a Republican primary who's coming forward, there's actually some rumors.

I won't go further than saying rumors of another possible Republican candidate coming forward.

So there could be contentious primaries on both sides, right?

Who am I gonna support?

We're a long way from that, yeah.

Bring me back and ask me again.

- We'll do that.

What is your top priority for the 2026 legislative session?

- Absolutely, healthcare.

I am on HHS committee.

I'm also on Judd, Veterans Affairs, and Labor.

But HHS is where my heart lies.

I think that's where I bring the most expertise, and I do my best work.

It's also a very non-partisan lane, right?

Where I can actually feel like I am succeeding and helpful and just doing good work.

- And what specifically would you hope to accomplish on healthcare this year?

- Oh god, well, I think the costs and the access are the biggest things, as we just talked about, are hemorrhaging providers.

There are all kinds of things that we could do.

We could increase the reimbursements further.

We could allow doctors to charge a facility fee, the way hospitals charge one.

I actually floated that last term.

I'll bring that back.

There's so, there's so much, I'm almost speechless with the way my mind is just thinking of the things that are so important.

Provider access is the biggest thing.

We have to find a way to get people to, do you know that the wait list for Brown Health is over two years?

That's what I was told.

And that there's a wait list to the wait list.

It's on, it's just, it's not acceptable.

- In closing, you're known as an avid reader.

What was the best book that you read last year?

- Oh my gosh.

I reread "The Kite Runner."

It's my third time reading it.

It is such a tragic, beautiful story.

So that's the first one that comes to mind.

But I read every single day.

- State Representative Marie Hopkins, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

- We talked with Warwick's Republican State Representative Marie Hopkins in the first segment, and now we're joined by state Senator Victoria Gu, a democrat from Westerly.

Thank you for joining us.

- It's great to be here, Ian.

- You first ran for the general assembly and won election in 2022.

Why did you wanna be part of the legislature?

- So I started out, well, just a bit of background.

I grew up in South Kingstown, and I loved going to the beach and going fishing with my dad and our dog.

And right after college, I got involved in some of the climate advocacy.

And I think part of the younger generation, we think more long term and what our planet's gonna look like and what our, what even my hometown's gonna look like in the future.

And I was worried we were not heading down a good path.

And so one of the things I emphasized early on is, you know, what is it gonna look like?

And are people who is the next generation gonna be able to, you know, grow up and afford to live here?

And is the next generation gonna be able to bring our kids and grandkids down to the beach and our favorite spots in South County and enjoy it like we did?

- How is the experience of serving as a senator compared to what you thought it might be like?

- It is, I would say a little, little busier than I imagined for a part-time job.

We get pulled in a lot of different directions.

So it means that you have constituents reaching out to you.

Sometimes they have very specific interests or niche things that they want you to work on, and you'd like to be able to help everyone.

But you're supposed to only submit 25 bills, and there's only so many, you know, hours in a day that you can dedicate towards this.

So I think time management has been a challenge.

- You mentioned the issue of climate change.

We see how the Trump administration has been rolling back efforts to fight climate change and even denies that it's a real thing.

How do you expect Rhode Island will be affected by that?

- So I think one thing I've been researching a lot is disaster relief because FEMA, you know, the Trump administration made clear they want to shift the disaster relief to the states.

FEMA usually, you know, responds and you have a disaster declaration.

But states like Arizona and a few others, Washington, have been applying for disaster relief just for floods and disasters in the last few months or year.

And it either takes a really long time for that disaster relief to get in, or they get denied.

So the state of, for example, Washington having to put up millions of dollars just to help people with their immediate needs of buying groceries and finding temporary living arrangements for people who are displaced by flooding.

So if you take that back to Rhode Island, and I think we're just, we don't have the budget and the everything set up so that we can do everything that FEMA does.

And if we, along our southern shoreline, you know, we can get exposed to, you know, hurricanes and just a category two hurricane can inflict a lot of damage.

So I think we need to be prepared in case that disaster relief doesn't come through.

And I've been thinking about some, you know, financing mechanisms for helping us prepare.

- You mentioned the issue of affordability as it applies to South County.

I remember the Providence Journal had a story probably 20 years ago, about how even back then the growing property taxes for older residents of South County were becoming too much to pay.

How do you think the state is fairing with that, and what should be done in your view?

- Yeah, so kind of a lot of different factors happen at once with 2020 and the pandemic.

A lot of people shifting towards remote or hybrid work.

A lot of people who maybe were in Connecticut but decided to live in Rhode Island full time, coming from New York.

It's a very attractive place.

Or South county's a very attractive place to live, if you like, love the outdoors and whatnot.

That means that housing prices have continued to climb here and throughout Rhode Island.

And one of the things, another factor is short-term rentals.

So that has also been taking up some of the limited housing stock that we have.

So affordability of housing means that a lot of the people I meet in their twenties and thirties in South County are still living at home with their parents.

And nothing wrong with intergenerational living.

I actually sponsored and passed a bill on accessory dwelling units, which would allow people to have another unit for a family member or to rent out that allows for seniors, as you mentioned, to be able to age in place and perhaps have a unit that is maybe on the ground floor.

They don't have to take stairs or a backyard cottage, similarly, more suited towards the senior living needs.

And also possibly have their children or grandchildren close by.

- You work in technology, and you chair the senate committee on artificial intelligence and emerging technology.

We see how AI is quickly being integrated in different aspects of the economy and business.

Do you have any concern that this is happening before appropriate regulation has been put in place?

- Yes, I think this is a extremely rapidly evolving technology and just the rate of adoption of something like chatGPT has really skyrocketed since it was released.

And there's many sectors that are, health insurance, the tech industry, and many others, entertainment industry are racing towards adopting it.

And we're starting to see some of the issues with it when it comes to chat bots' impact on mental health and the way that it will kind of feed people's delusions or tendencies towards depression or anxiety or things like that.

So there's also the chat bot use in say, health insurance or the financial sector.

So Congress has not really acted or laid out any framework really for putting in some guardrails.

So you're seeing a lot of states doing legislation, and we're often getting inspiration from other states.

So you, so I'd say without that national framework, the states have to step up and put in some of the guardrails.

And we are very careful in terms of trying to unify across states so that we share kind of what we've learned best practices and maybe hope towards something that Congress can then, you know, adopt.

- You mentioned how states are taking up efforts in the absence of action by Congress.

Do you expect any legislation on this in Rhode Island this year?

- Yeah, so we have worked on, so in our committee just this past year, we've worked on a transparency requiring health insurance companies to disclose how they're using AI to manage claims, to approve or deny health insurance claims.

This can be a sensitive area, as you can imagine, whether someone's treatment gets covered or not.

Moving forward, we do have ones that are working on chat bots and mental health therapy and that and guardrails around that.

One thing I did early on with the AI committee members is organize AI 101 presentations or demonstrations so people can get up to speed on this, on a very technical subject.

And one thing that stood out to me was the URI did a demonstration of a camera that they had pointed towards a fish tank and essentially, monitoring the health of the fish or the environment.

So it had descriptions of what the fish are doing all the time.

And this, I immediately thought about how this would be used for mass surveillance.

So usually you have a lot of cameras in an area, you would need to have someone actively monitoring them or going back through hours and hours of footage to try to find something.

But with AI, you can quickly come up with, like, quickly have the AI go through all the video footage or be monitoring a lot of video footage all at once.

It's the same way they were essentially coming up with and surveilling the fish.

They can do that with people.

So one of the bills that I'm also working on is around workplace surveillance and how electronic monitoring tools, audio, video, can then be augmented with AI to do workplace surveillance.

So especially, we have been working with a number of people in the labor movement who are also seeing this in the workplace.

- To shift gears a little bit, this is a statewide election year.

Who is your preferred choice to be the state's next governor?

- I don't think I have really paid a ton of attention in the race.

I would say, it's gonna be rapidly, you know, evolving and we don't even know who is definitely in or definitely out.

So I think it's hard for me to say at the moment.

- There's a lot of uncertainty about how federal healthcare cuts might affect Rhode Islanders.

If cuts reduce the access of Rhode Islanders to healthcare, do you think the legislature should support making up the difference?

- I think as much as possible, it's going to, this is a budget year where we're looking at a deficit again.

So we're going to take, have to take a look at not only the Medicaid cuts, but the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are going away, which both of those things can mean that more people are uninsured and more people will forego.

They won't be getting preventative care.

They won't be managing their chronic conditions, which six in 10 Americans live with a chronic condition.

And that means that like more people will end up in the emergency room for preventable reasons, and then if they can't pay, the hospital has to eat the cost.

So it's called uncompensated care, and our hospitals are already struggling financially as is, so it could push them more towards a really bad situation.

- Yeah, I'm looking at that.

Would you support making up the difference if more people are without healthcare in Rhode Island?

- I generally support that.

I think again, we have to somehow balance the budget.

So it's a matter of like finding, right now, we are not well set up to fill in everything that the federal government is cutting.

So it's gonna be a tough budget year.

So we, you know, I think we should help people who are uninsured.

The question is how to fit all that into the budget.

- We've gotta leave it there.

State Senator Victoria Gu, Democrat from Westerly, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for watching "One on One" with me, Ian Donnis.

You can find all of our past interviews on the YouTube channel for Ocean State Media.

We'll see you next week.

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