South County Health’s Mystery Partner

What the Community Deserves to Know

By Dr. Chris Van hemelrijck 

In mid-November 2025, South County Health (SCH) CEO Aaron Robinson and Board Chair Joseph Matthews announced they had signed a letter of intent with one of the “top 10” health systems in the country. A 120-day due diligence period followed. That period is now closing — and the community still knows remarkably little about what has actually been agreed to. 

SCH leadership has described the arrangement as “transformational” and “non-traditional” — a clinical and digital partnership that would bring an Epic electronic medical records (EMR) system, artificial intelligence tools, and world-class clinical expertise to South County. 

We are told that existing and future funds raised locally will remain with SCH and that local governance will not change. These are reassuring words. But words are not a governance structure, and reassurances are not contractual protections. 

The unnamed partner is just one of several unknowns. Robinson has referenced “multiple partners” — strategic, AI, digital, and clinical — but has not identified the AI company involved, the clinical partner providing second opinions, or how any of these relationships would be structured. 

Each of these entities may have its own financial interests and contractual claims. The public deserves to know who they are. 

Understanding why SCH is pursuing this deal requires looking at the finances honestly. Three consecutive years of net losses — $4.6 million in 2022, $6.5 million in 2023, and $534,000 in 2024 — against total revenue of roughly $239 million tells a difficult story. Current net assets stand at approximately $72 million. 

Today's civics class

Relief in cat-dom

Bike and walking trails lose hundreds of millions under Trump

Why Trump cut the funding is unclear.

By Shalina Chatlani, Rhode Island Current

Cities and states are filing lawsuits and scrambling for alternative sources of money as the Trump administration seeks to shut off the federal funding spigot for biking and walking trails.

Since the early 1990s, there has been fairly consistent — and largely bipartisan — federal support for bicycle and pedestrian projects. Federal funding for such projects reached new heights during the Biden administration, as major spending measures in 2021 and 2022 included billions in new money for them.

But in his efforts to eliminate what he perceives as diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — and to roll back anything associated with his predecessor — Donald Trump has targeted hundreds of millions in federal grants for biking and pedestrian projects. And further cuts could be coming.

The broad tax and spending measure Trump signed last summer rescinded $2.4 billion from the Biden administration’s Neighborhood Access and Equity Program, money included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to address long-standing safety issues stemming from past infrastructure projects, including interstate highways that split minority communities.

Of that total, at least $750 million was specifically earmarked for trails, walking paths and bike lane projects, according to data on grant recipients collected by Rails to Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit that advocates for trails and the construction of multiuse paths in abandoned railroad corridors.

Hitting the beach again to improve public access for Rhode Islanders

Sen. Gu, Rep. Cortvriend introduce legislation to strengthen shoreline access

Photo by Will Collette

Rep. Terri Cortvriend and Sen. Victoria Gu have introduced a trio of bills to protect Rhode Islanders’ access to the shoreline.

“Our coasts, rivers, ponds and lakes are precious resources that make Rhode Island special,” said Senator Gu (D-Dist. 38, Westerly, Charlestown, South Kingstown). “These bills provide the tools necessary to preserve historic foot paths and rights of ways so that every Rhode Islander can enjoy them.”

The three bills would make it easier for both the Coastal Resources Management Council and municipalities to preserve traditional footpaths and shoreline rights of way and to educate tenants of shoreline properties about public shoreline access rights.

Rhode Island is suing Trump again, this time over fair housing

Attorney General coalition challenges the Trump Administration’s attack on fair housing laws

Steve Ahlquist

In 1973, Trump and his father Fred were busted by HUD for racial
discrimination in housing under the FHA. Gutting the FHA is
another example of Trump's vengeance over past grievances

From a press release:

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha joined a coalition of 16 attorneys general filing a lawsuit challenging unlawful actions by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), including threats to withhold funding from state and local fair housing enforcement agencies for abiding by state laws and threats to impose illegal conditions on HUD funding. 

These actions threaten to weaken America’s fair housing enforcement system and undermine states’ ability to ensure equal access to housing.

Number of new CRMC members to come this year: 7. Number of nominees picked by McKee: Zero

Doing nothing is not a solution

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

From SteveAhlquist.news

Heather Low’s application to serve on the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) opens with a letter crediting her grandfather, a retired Navy veteran and avid boater, and childhood summers spent along the Kickemuit River in Warren, for her lifelong love for fishing and conservation.

Low, 51, of Coventry, has a bachelor’s degree in environmental science. She’s active in the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association, and, since May 2025, has also served on the CRMC’s Fishermen’s Advisory Board, representing recreational anglers in the agency’s negotiations with offshore wind project developers.

Low wants to join the politically appointed full council to share her perspective as a conservationist and angler.

She sent in her application the day before Thanksgiving. Since then?

“I’ve heard nothing,” Low said in an interview Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the March 1 deadline for Gov. Dan McKee to name seven new members for the state coastal resources panel passed without any appointments or even public mention of prospective candidates. 

The flags of MAGA

Get yours' free

Narragansett Tribe interested in acquiring possible burial site

R.I. Pond’s Drawdown Reveals What Could be Native American Burial Ground

By Dan D'Ambrosio / ecoRI News contributor

The drastically reduced water level in Old Killingly Pond has revealed a mystery site that may be a Native American burial ground, described as a rectangular area covered in stones on the Rhode Island side of the pond.

Rhode Island state archaeologist Charlotte Taylor said she has not yet been able to visit the site, which is accessible only from the Connecticut side of the pond. There are many unknowns about the site, according to Taylor, who has seen photos.

“It does not look like a typical Rhode Island Native American past period burial,” Taylor said. “These burials weren’t usually demarcated by rock piles on top in a rectangular way.”

It’s also not clear who owns the site.

“It could be private property; then it is the property of the owner of the land,” Taylor said.

Even if the site turns out to be on private property, it would still be protected by Rhode Island’s law prohibiting disturbing burial grounds, according to Taylor.

“Someone going in and digging up a possible burial would be against the law,” Taylor said.

Connecticut state archaeologist Sarah Sportman first learned of the possible burial ground in January, when she got a call from a reporter for The Day newspaper in New London.

What’s inside the Rhode Island Senate’s 2026 health care bill package

Rhode Island is on its own in fight to improve health care

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

The Rhode Island Senate on March 12 released its third annual bundle of health care bills for this year’s legislative session, with proposals from ensuring the 988 hotline stays live to guardrails on AI usage in psychotherapy to initial funding for a proposed medical school at the University of Rhode Island (URI).

The 17-bill package is nearly double the size of last year’s collection, which sported nine pieces of legislation.

“These are complex issues we’re facing,” Senate President Valarie Lawson said at a State House event Thursday introducing the package. “And this is a long, long process.”

Lawson said the chamber’s priorities reflect listening to consumers and primary care providers over the last couple of years as well as the work of a special Senate-led commission which determined in January that a medical school at URI would help alleviate the state’s primary care workforce shortage.

Senate Committee Health and Human Services Chair Melissa Murray joined Lawson and bill sponsors in the Senate Lounge to present their lawmaking to-do list, which Murray described as orbiting three major themes:

• One suite of bills aim to support people in crisis by improving access to behavioral health resources.
• Another tranche would boost the Ocean State’s health care workforce.
• The last set seeks to protect patients and providers via initiatives like further regulation of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and updated vaccination schedules for children.

“While we know that solving the crisis cannot be accomplished through any single piece of legislation, or any one collection of bills, those being highlighted today build on our past progress and help address the most pressing needs of this moment,” Murray said in a statement. “Achieving our goals will be a long-haul effort, and our chamber remains truly committed to seeing it through.”

Before Thursday, six of the package bills had already been introduced and await hearings in their respective committees. The remaining 11 bills were introduced Thursday and await hearings.

What Rhode Islanders should expect as economic consequences of Trump's Iran war

Cost of Iranian conflict likely to extend beyond energy prices, says URI economy professor

James Bessette

In the dead of night on Feb. 28, United States and Israeli forces conducted a massive surprise attack on Iran, resulting in several top Iranian leaders being killed, including the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei. 

The attacks, which were celebrated by many Iranians around the world in ending an oppressive regime, sparked significant conflict where ongoing missile strikes are occurring in the Middle East. Economically, energy costs—particularly oil and gas—have spiked in the U.S. and abroad. More recently, vessels traveling the Strait of Hormuz—a critical global shipping route—have struck mines reportedly planted by Iran, further affecting commercial activity.

Nina Eichacker, associate economics professor at the University of Rhode Island, says everyone will feel the effects of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East the longer it lasts. And, it’s not just at the pump where society will be hit hard, she says. Instability and civil unrest in the region also has a cost.

Governing on rage and by impulse leads to crazy decisions

Trump’s military excursion, into an abyss

David R. Lurie

Observers have spent two weeks trying to discern the “aims” of Trump’s war on Iran, and therefore what might constitute a victory or defeat. 

His every bizarre utterance about his war “plans” — including wildly conflicting declarations that Iran has surrendered and the war must be expanded to defeat the regime — immediately move markets.

The evident fact, though, is that Trump is completely nuts, and that he’s “governing” the country — and has now taken the US to war — based on his impulses alone, without even the pretense of a strategy or goal.

It’s almost as if Trump felt that, as a would-be dictator, he had to have his own nihilistic war, just like his idol Vlad Putin. But Trump’s “excursion” against Iran is nothing like Putin’s years long “special military operation” against Ukraine — it’s actually more stupid.

Note also that Trump's mother was an
immigrant as were both of his grandparents

Putin’s goals have never been hidden or uncertain — he wants to erase the nation of Ukraine and reincorporate its territory into his neo-Russian Empire. Trump, by contrast — and characteristically — is utterly unable to articulate why he started the largest war the United States has embarked on since the years following 9/11, let alone explain what “victory” might look like.

This is hardly unusual. In fact, it’s the sine qua non of late Trumpism, in which the Strongman of Mar-a-Lago “rules” the country based on pure impulse, rather than even the most misguided of strategy.

“Governance” by impulse

It’s a frightening reality of the Trump regime that, as Trump has descended into utter incoherence and is now nothing more than an assortment of adolescent (and frequently violent) urges, the US government has been remade into a tool for the immediate satisfaction of his wants and desires no matter how absurd or nihilistic they may be.

We’ve seen this dynamic of chaos descend upon various components of our government and society over the past 14 months.

Trump's latest money scheme

NO KINGS rally in Westerly, March 28