Governor brings back Stefan Pryor to fix problems he couldn't fix the last two times he served in government

Will the third time be the charm? Ask Einstein.

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Gov. Dan McKee has tapped a familiar face to return to his former job leading state economic development efforts.

McKee unveiled Stefan Pryor as his pick for Rhode Island Commerce Secretary Thursday afternoon. If confirmed by the Rhode Island Senate, the nomination will return Pryor to the same post he held for eight years, from 2015 to 2022. 

“Stefan Pryor has the experience and the right skill set to steer Rhode Island’s economic development efforts,” McKee said in a statement. “He has forged strong relationships with business over the years, knows Rhode Island’s strengths and potential, and is skilled at liaising between the public and private sectors.” 

After a failed run for Rhode Island General Treasurer in 2022, Pryor went on to lead the state housing department. He served as housing secretary from February 2023 to July 2024, before leaving for the private sector.

The once-prominent state cabinet head known for helping lure big-name companies to Rhode Island with public subsidies, and later, to shore up the nascent and struggling housing department, disappeared from the public eye after stepping away from state government. He most recently worked as a partner for Palm Venture Studios, a Connecticut-based impact investment firm.

However, speculation over his return to Commerce began to swirl after former Commerce Secretary Liz Tanner announced in June she would be leaving to take a position with a new nonprofit tied to the 2026 World Cup. The need to fill the role intensified after temporary replacement, Jim Bennett, took a leave of absence for health reasons weeks into his new duties, as first reported by the Boston Globe Rhode Island. Bennett, who also serves as Commerce president and CEO, did not attend the agency’s most recent meeting on Tuesday. 

Rhode Island has the right to remain silent

Secretary of State Gregg Amore hasn’t answered DOJ voter record request

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Silence can speak louder than words.

Just ask Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore, who as of Friday afternoon had yet to respond to a U.S. Department of Justice request for information about registered voters. 

Rhode Island is among a growing number of mostly Democratic states facing federal probes into voter rolls, ranging from basic lists of registrants to massive documentation requests including ballots cast and voting equipment used in the 2024 election.

The July 8 email Amore’s office received from Scott Laragy, principal deputy director in the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, is far less expansive and detailed than requests made to other states.

Laragy asked Amore for a phone meeting to discuss a “potential information-sharing agreement,” that would give the DOJ information on state registered voters who lack eligibility, have falsified documents or “may otherwise have engaged in unlawful conduct relevant to the election process.” 

Eight days later, Amore had not responded to Laragy — Amore’s office was still reviewing the request, Faith Chybowski, a spokesperson for Amore, confirmed in an email. Chybowski was unsure when, or if, Amore plans to answer the DOJ.

But the Democrat and former high school history teacher is not keeping mum on his feelings about the probe.

“This is a highly unusual request as the States are Constitutionally empowered to manage all aspects of elections that are not otherwise mandated by federal law,” Amore said in an emailed statement. “It appears this is a continued attempt to promote the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen and to undermine confidence in our elections—pretty consistent playbook from the Trump people.”

John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, backed Amore’s approach.

“It’s right for Secretary Amore to be both cautious and skeptical of the request given the history of this administration’s propagation of lies about voter fraud,” Marion said in an interview.

McKee among the least popular governors in the nation, new poll finds

Even in true Blue Rhode Island, incumbent is widely disliked

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current

Gov. Dan McKee remains among least popular governors across the country, according to new polling data released last week by Morning Consult.

Surveys conducted between January and March show 43% of Rhode Islanders approve of the job McKee is doing, with 41% of respondents disapproving. Around 16% of those surveyed for the first quarter of 2025 did not have an opinion on Rhode Island’s Democratic governor. 

That’s a six point drop in favorability from the same time last year. McKee’s disapproval rating remains unchanged, leaving him tied for the fourth-highest disapproval rating among the nation’s 50 governors. 

Democrat Tina Kotek of Oregon and Republican Ron DeSantis of Florida also had disapproval ratings at 41%.

Morning Consult’s latest poll comes a little over a month after McKee announced his intention to seek reelection in the 2026 gubernatorial race.

Campaign spokesperson Mike Trainor did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Where's Gina?

RI Needs a Housing First Economic Development Strategy

Everybody's got a right to live

By Samuel Gifford Howard

Currently, there is an increasingly contentious battle between state and local legislators and their executive branches about homelessness in Rhode Island. 

Zillow has declared that the Providence-Warwick-New Bedford MSA (which includes all of Rhode Island plus Bristol County, MA) is the third hottest housing market in the country. 

Point-in-time counts of homelessness (a single night census of homelessness gathered by volunteers on behalf of the state’s service providers and reported to the federal government) have revealed a significant 35% growth between 2023 and 2024; and an even more astounding 120% growth in homelessness from 2020 (with a 394% growth in individuals on the street). 

The National Low Income Housing Coalition reports that RI has a shortage of 24,054 rental homes affordable and available for extremely low income (ELI) renters, leading two a 2:1 ratio of ELI households to rental units. The Joint Center for Housing Studies reports that the median home price in our MSA in the is 5.3 times that of the median income here. 

HousingWorks RI reports that in 2024 there was no municipality in the state where it is affordable to own a home, and more than 11 municipalities where ever a household earning more than six figures in yearly income would find it unaffordable to rent. 

In the same report, HousingWorks notes nearly a third of RI households are cost-burdened by housing costs, falling heaviest on low-income households and renters. The slow population growth caused by the housing crisis is likely to lead to us losing our second representative in Congress in 2032, the sole New England state projected to lose representation.

I could go on like this for a long time. Not since the foreclosure crisis has the housing situation been this bad, and in many ways, it is notably worse. Progress has been fitful. One problem is that the Department of Housing (the creation of which was a longstanding goal for advocates) has had significant leadership problems and faces an unclear mandate and uncertain control of funding:

the state has to figure out who exactly will be in charge of administering the [recently passed affordable housing] bond funding once it becomes available.

Federal court upholds RhodeWorks truck tolling program

Opposed by Republicans, truck tolls help fix roads and bridges

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

Former Charlestown state Rep. Blake "Flip" Filippi railed
against truck tolls and wanted to pass a Constitutional amendment to ban
highway tolls.

Trucks can once again be tolled in Rhode Island, a federal appeals has decided.

A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled caps on tolls for local traffic were unconstitutional, but that the overall system created under the state’s RhodeWorks program could remain in place.

Under the 2016 legislation signed by then-Gov. Gina Raimondo, tractor-trailers and larger trucks were required to pay a toll when they crossed through 14 gantries across Rhode Island’s highways and bridges. Funding from the trucks would then go to improving the state’s bridges. The plan placed a $20-per-day cap to cross the state in any one direction for large commercial trucks.

Each gantry had an average toll of $3.

Tolling began in 2018, but the program was soon hit with a lawsuit from the American Trucking Associations that claimed the collections violated the U.S. Constitution’s dormant Commerce Clause, which prohibits states from engaging in protectionist practices against other states.

U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith sided with the association, ruling in 2022 that the state had to stop collecting truck tolls — which the state appealed.

In his ruling Friday, U.S. Appeals Judge William Kayatta wrote there was “insufficient support” toward the association’s claims.

“Even were we to assume that a few Rhode Island single-unit trucks compete in some manner with a few out-of-state tractor-trailers, ATA’s argument would still fall short,” he wrote. “The dormant Commerce Clause is not an atomic fly swatter to be wielded against any and all trivial effects on commerce.”

However, Kayatta agreed that the caps placed on trucks traveling in and out of the state were unlawful.

“At first blush, RhodeWorks (minus the caps) would seem to pass the fair-approximation test quite easily,” he wrote. “Out-of-state tractor-trailers receive substantially less of a discount per bridge crossing than do in-state tractor-trailers. Therefore, the privilege of toll capping is considerably more valuable for intrastate carriers than it is for interstate carriers.”

But the truck toll system would be constitutional as long as the daily toll caps are removed, Kayatta ruled.

American Trucking Associations Chief Legal Officer Richard Pianka said he is reviewing the court’s decision and considering next steps.

Plans for Gigantic URI Greenhouse Complex Grow Slowly

"Controlled Environment Agriculture" has its detractors

By Frank Carini / ecoRI News staff

Nearly six years ago, when Gina Raimondo was still governor and David Dooley was the University of Rhode Island president, voters approved a green bond that included providing URI with $4 million to build greenhouses on prime agricultural land.

Michael Hallock, co-founder and CEO of the RI Mushroom Co., has partnered with Cambridge, Mass.-based American Ag Energy to build a greenhouse complex next to Peckham Farm in the village of West Kingston. They signed a lease Feb. 4, 2020, with URI for use of the property on state land south of Route 138. ecoRI News reached out to Hallock to talk about the project but our request didn’t receive a response.

URI, in conjunction with Rhode Island Agricultural Technologies LLC — a Delaware-based limited liability company consisting of the RI Mushroom Co. and American Ag Energy — will create the Rhode Island Agricultural Innovation & Entrepreneurship Campus, according to a Dec. 18, 2018, URI press release announcing the project.

Rhode Island Agricultural Technologies “shall be vested with legal title to certain property formerly owned by or under the control or in the custody of the Council on Postsecondary Education for the benefit of the University of Rhode Island,” according to the 109-page lease.

How do we make sure companies don't rip off taxpayer investment in the semiconductor industry

Make sure companies don’t blow our tax dollars on stock buybacks and sky-high CEO pay.

By Sarah Anderson, Natalia Renta

The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act created a huge opportunity to boost domestic production of the semiconductors that power everything from refrigerators and trains to electronic devices.

The Biden administration has also taken important steps to make sure these investments create jobs that are actually good.

For instance, CHIPS grantees must submit plans to provide affordable, high-quality child care services for their manufacturing and construction workers. And President Biden has ordered all construction firms involved in large public infrastructure projects to negotiate collective bargaining agreements with their workers.

But if you look at corporations in line to pocket CHIPS manufacturing subsidies, you’ll understand why some Democrats are urging the administration to do more to prevent corporate executives from misusing these funds to enrich themselves and wealthy shareholders.

Our new report from the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund looks at the first 11 corporations to sign preliminary CHIPS agreements with the Department of Commerce — including giants like Intel, Samsung, BAE Systems, and others. 

These companies are in line for subsidies totaling nearly $30 billion. And when it comes to stock buybacks and CEO pay, it’s clear they need guardrails.

McKee releases his lame, sketchy "plan" to boost Rhode Islanders' incomes

He promised a "plan" but issued a "plan for a plan," if that

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Ears perked when Gov. Dan McKee unveiled an ambitious goal during his Jan. 16 State of the State address, promising to raise per-person annual earnings by $20,000 by the end of the decade.

The many questions that followed were met with one answer: Wait 100 days. The plan is coming.

A day before the 100-day mark, McKee delivered. Sort of.

The three-page memo announced on X on Thursday and added to the state’s long-term planning website, Rhode Island 2030, is more of a plan for a plan.

Or, in the words of Laura Hart, “a framework.”

“It’s not the plan itself because if we created a full plan and imposed it on people, we didn’t think that would work,” Hart, a spokesperson for McKee’s office, said in an interview on Friday.

Instead, the “Rhode to Prosperity” document proposes a series of summer outreach sessions with business and education leaders to gather feedback and hone details on the personal income goal. 

The document is rife with buzzwords popular in the workforce development world: stressing the need for “viable pathways to higher-wage jobs” and the role of “experiential learning” that relies on traditional educational programs and “employer-aligned models.”

Highway closure gave Gov. McKee a chance to shine. He still needs a moment.

McKee holds master class in bumbling and incompetence

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Longtime residents fondly remember the calm and reassuring authority with which a flannel shirt-wearing Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy appeared on TV in the wake of the historic 1978 blizzard.

It’s a stark contrast with how Gov. Dan McKee has handled the emergency closure of the Washington Bridge due to safety concerns, first missing the initial Dec. 11 press conference to visit a Providence pizza shop. That was mistake one, according to Mike Raia, a public relations consultant and former communications adviser to then-Gov. Gina M. Raimondo.

“Communication is as important to any crisis response as actual operational response,” Raia said. “In these moments, everything you do at the podium, on a radio interview, on your social media matters.”

Making matters worse: McKee’s testy response to a reporter’s questions two days later about potential leadership changes in the wake of the catastrophe.

“By getting emotional and getting defensive, it undermines the confidence you’re trying to build, it undermines the empathetic connection you’re trying to show to people that are actually impacted,” Raia said.

The blistering rebuke is hardly the first time Rhode Island’s otherwise mild-mannered head of state has bristled at pointed questions from the press, or turned disagreements with fellow officials into headline-making feuds. 

And some warn McKee’s thin skin may prove his downfall.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island Share Solar-Siting Buffoonery

The "either-or" choice is unacceptable

By Frank Carini / ecoRI News columnist

Some good news for the Ocean State, kind of. Rhode Island isn’t the only southern New England state bungling the siting of ground-mounted solar arrays. 

A recent report determined Massachusetts’ existing solar-siting policies are counterproductive, haphazard, and need to be revised.

There’s good news for the Bay State, though. Rhode Island is still doing a lousier job when it comes to managing solar development.

A rapid transition to cleaner electric power is imperative for meeting Massachusetts’ commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to the Growing Solar, Protecting Nature report released last month.

But, like in Rhode Island, much of Massachusetts’ renewable energy development has been shortsighted.

“Solar energy in all its forms — rooftops, canopies, and ground-mount systems — must play a major role in this transition,” according to the report co-authored by Mass Audubon and Harvard Forest. “The absolute urgency of the climate crisis, however, does not justify sacrificing our natural and working lands to make way for ground-mount solar. We can have our forests, working lands, and solar, too.”

The Public Purse Should Fund the Public Good, Not Private Profits

Why should taxpayers subsidize stock buy-backs?

SARAH ANDERSON, Inequality.Org

The Biden administration is giving companies a leg up in the competition for new subsidies for U.S. semiconductor manufacturing if they agree to forgo all stock buybacks for five years.

The reasoning? These CHIPS program subsidies, explained Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, “should be used to expand in America, to out-innovate the rest of the world. Invest in R&D and your workforce, not in buybacks.”

Wielding the power of the public purse against buybacks makes total sense.

Taxpayers want every dollar of their public investments to produce maximum benefits. But every dollar spent on stock buybacks is a dollar not spent on worker wages, R&D, and other productive investments to stimulate long-term growth and make U.S. companies more competitive. Analysts have documented how buybacks are associated with reduced capital investment and innovation and wage stagnation.

And yet in the past two years, S&P 500 corporations spent record annual sums repurchasing their own stock—$922.7 billion in 2022 and $881.7 billion in 2021. In the first half of 2023, share repurchases were down a bit but still an eye-popping $390.5 billion.

What’s the goal of all these buybacks? This financial maneuver artificially inflates the value of a company’s share price by reducing the supply on the open market. That keeps shareholders happy. It also creates huge windfalls for CEOs, since most of their compensation is in some form of stock-based pay, and their bonuses are often tied to financial targets that can be influenced by stock buybacks.

Rhode Island to be site of one of 31 technology hubs

Joe Biden and Gina Raimondo announce new program to boost innovation, manufacturing and good paying jobs

Charlie Hankin

President Joe Biden and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced the designation of 31 communities across the country as Regional Innovation and Technology Hubs (Tech Hubs) through the Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration. 

These Tech Hubs will catalyze investment in technologies critical to economic growth, national security, and job creation, and will help communities across the country become centers of innovation critical to American competitiveness. The Tech Hubs program was authorized by the CHIPS and Science Act – signed by President Biden in August 2022 – and is part of the President’s Bidenomics agenda to grow the economy from the middle out and bottom up.

The 31 Tech Hubs focus on developing and growing innovative industries in regions across the country, including semiconductors, clean energy, critical minerals, biotechnology, precision medicine, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and more. 

Tech Hubs bring together private industry, state and local governments, institutions of higher education, labor unions, Tribal communities and nonprofit organizations to compete for up to $75 million implementation grants to further develop these fields and make transformative investments in innovation, supply chain resilience, and job creation.

President Biden’s Investing in America agenda has used strategic public investments to crowd-in private sector funding in key areas driving American competitiveness. Since President Biden took office, private companies have announced more than a half a trillion dollars in clean energy and manufacturing investments, including $230 billion in semiconductor manufacturing, nearly $140 billion in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing, and $20 billion in biomanufacturing, all of which are represented by the Tech Hubs.

These investments will further position U.S. businesses and workers to outcompete the world in the economy of tomorrow and strengthen our national and economic security.

For too long, economic growth and opportunity has clustered in a few cities on the coasts. Tech Hubs awardees were selected to represent the full diversity of America, selected from more than 370 applications spanning 49 states and four territories. 

The Tech Hubs will bring the benefits and opportunities of scientific and technological innovation to communities across the country, with nearly three-quarters significantly benefitting small and rural areas and more than three-quarters directly supporting historically underserved communities.

The Tech Hubs all include workforce organizations such as labor unions, helping create good-paying, union jobs in the communities where workers live. And, in addition to the 31 Tech Hubs, the Department of Commerce is awarding 18 coalitions Strategy Development Grants to build economic development plans to compete for future rounds of the Tech Hub program.

Tech Hub Designations

Tech Hubs spanning 32 states and Puerto Rico will catalyze growth in critical industries:

Enabling Safe and Effective Autonomous Systems

·       Tulsa Hub for Equitable & Trustworthy Autonomy (THETA) (OK), led by Tulsa Innovation Labs, aims to become a global leader in developing and commercializing autonomous systems for use cases ranging from agriculture and pipeline inspections to regional transportation.

·       Ocean Tech Hub (RI, MA), led by the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, aims to develop, test, and commercialize emerging maritime artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled robotics and sensors.

·       Headwaters Hub (MT), led by Accelerate Montana, aims to become a global leader in smart technologies for automating complex processes, such as industrial manufacturing.

Campaign finance violations are soaring.

Local candidates caught include MAGA Sen. Elaine Morgan, her opponent Jennifer Douglas and former state rep. Larry Valencia

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Richard Thornton, director of campaign finance for the
Rhode Island Board of Elections, is finding more mistakes on
reports filed by candidates more often.
(Michael Salerno/Rhode Island Current)

Think of Richard Thornton like a financial detective.

As campaign finance director for the Rhode Island Board of Elections, Thornton devotes his days to combing through stacks of spending and fundraising reports for candidates, political action committees and ballot question advocacy groups, cross-checking those accounts with bank statements for potential errors or red flags. 

And these days, he’s finding problems a lot more often.

Indeed, the $13,150 in fines candidates paid to the election board in 2022 for campaign finance mistakes (not counting late fees) is more than triple the amount paid the year prior, according to data obtained by Rhode Island Current. With another $5,000 in finance violations paid through July of this year, 2023 is also poised to show a larger increase than in years past.

At face value, this might be cause for alarm. But Thornton sees it as a good thing; it means his three-person team is getting better at sniffing out rulebreakers.

“Our focus has really shifted through the years,” Thornton said. “We have these additional tools which have expanded our role, and we’ve seen a lot of success in that approach.”

The turning point came in 2015, with a trio of bills signed into law by then-Gov. Gina Raimondo that strengthened campaign finance rules and reporting requirements. 

John Marion, executive director for Common Cause Rhode Island, describes the bevy of law changes as the “post-Gordon Fox reform,” referring to the former Rhode Island House Speaker who was sentenced to three years in federal prison in 2015 after pleading guilty to bribery, wire fraud and tax evasion.

“I think the number 1 reason you’re seeing more violations is thanks to the post-Gordon Fox reforms, which make it easier for the Board of Elections to spot when there is a violation,” Marion said. “It may look like more people are cheating, but the reality is, people may have been cheating all along, we’re just catching them more.”

Among the bills passed in the wake of the Fox scandal: requiring candidates and political action committees to turn over quarterly bank account statements in addition to their separate accounts of fundraising and spending. 

Other laws passed as part of the package of campaign finance reforms require candidates, officeholders and political action committees to keep their campaign accounts separate, and to appoint a treasurer other than themselves if they raise or spend more than $10,000 in a year. 

The bank statement law, in particular, was a “gamechanger,” Thornton said. 

Comparing a bank statement with a campaign finance report allowed his staff to find “variances,” which in turn, often revealed larger problems with a candidate or committee’s finances. 

Also crucial: the almighty subpoena, which the elections board has always had authority to use but has turned to increasingly in recent years if a candidate or committee isn’t willingly turning over their financial information, Thornton said. 

While the changes to state campaign finance law went into effect in 2016, the results of those changes took longer to realize. Hence, the increase in fines from campaign finance violations starting in 2021, according to Thornton.

A few of those violations suggest glaring and intentional rule breaking, but more often, Thornton described the violations as inadvertent or accidental errors. 

Take Sen. Elaine Morgan. The Hopkinton Republican was among the nine people who entered into consent orders with the election board in 2022 for campaign finance violations. Morgan, who has served in the Rhode Island Senate since 2014, paid a $1,200 fine after she was found to have spent more than $2,600 of campaign funds on personal expenses during the two prior years, according to the election board audit.

Morgan readily admitted to the mistake, which she chalked up to “accidental stupidity.”

She had wrongly thought her campaign debit card was her personal one, since both were marked with her name and from the same bank, Washington Trust Co., she said. 

While she characterized her violation as inadvertent, she also stressed the importance of candidates following the rules.

“If we’re going to take money, we have to know the rules,” she said. 

Which, based on Thornton’s efforts, they should.

CD1 candidates, face-to-face and on the record

CD1 candidates take on abortion, climate and affirmative action in first in-person forum

By Kevin G. Andrade, Rhode Island Current

Photo by Steve Ahlquist

Democratic candidates for Rhode Island’s open congressional seat squared off in a wide-ranging debate dominated by questions of abortion access and the climate crisis.

About 50 people gathered at the Weaver Library as 10 of the 12 Democrats running in the 1st Congressional District race vied for votes ahead of the Sept. 5 primary by sharing their views on equality, affirmative action and even fiction. 

“Who is your favorite fictional character,” queried Rev. Donnie Anderson, chair of the Rhode Island Democratic Women’s Caucus, the host of the event.

“Belle,” responded Stephanie Beauté, a technology professional. “She likes books and she doesn’t need a boy.”

Candidates received only 90 seconds for an opening statement, 45 seconds to respond to questions, and 60 seconds for a closing statement. They were prohibited from speaking or referring to each other directly over the forum’s 75 minutes. 

The forum was the second, following a virtual event Wednesday hosted by Raymond Baccari, Jr., a Rhode Island College student and YouTuber, and Ryan Lukowicz, a South Kingstown High School senior and podcaster.  

Participants Monday included: Gabriel Amo, Beauté, Walter Berbrick, state Sen. Sandra Cano, Don Carlson, Spencer Dickinson, Providence City Councilman John Gonçalves, Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos, state Sen. Ana Quezada, and J. Aaron Regunberg.

Allen Waters, a former Republican, declined to participate because Anderson is a transgender woman. Woonsocket Rep. Stephen Casey did not respond to invitations, according to Anderson. 

What to do with the messed up CRMC?

Series of Bills Would Revamp Ocean State’s Coastal Management Agency

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

The calls for reforming the state’s coastal management agency are growing stronger in the General Assembly.

Members of the Senate Environment and Agriculture Committee heard a package of five bills to overhaul the Coastal Resources Management Council, the regulatory agency responsible for permitting offshore wind, aquaculture, and development along Rhode Island’s more than 400 miles of coastline.

Unusually for state agencies, CRMC’s final decision-making authority lies with a 10-member council, on which nine seats are appointed by the governor, and the council has no coastal policy expertise requirements for its members. Members representing specific communities are required to be appointed or elected officials within that community, although that rule often hasn’t been enforced.

As a result, the council has attracted increased scrutiny over its decisions in recent years.

Looming Medicaid Tsunami

Overburdened Rhode Island DHS Faces Renewal Crisis

By Steve Ahlquist For UpRiseRI

With the end of the COVID emergency all states, including Rhode Island, must begin the process of annually renewing those who receive Medicaid benefits starting in April. 

Unfortunately, under the administrations of former Governor Gina Raimondo and present Governor Daniel McKee, the Department of Human Services (DHS) has experienced a dramatic shortage of workers, which may cause the 300,000+ people in need of Medicaid renewal long wait times, unnecessary stress, and possible gaps in medical coverage. 

An already overburdened DHS will be seeing an increase of 15,000 renewal applications per month, rising to 25,000 later in the year. With roughly half the renewals being passive, that is relatively automatic, it still leaves DHS with 7,000-12,500 renewals per month, on top of the regular work they already do.

On March 8, Stacy Smith told the Rhode Island House Finance Health and Human Services Subcommittee that DHS is unprepared for the “tsunami” of Medicaid renewals that will be starting in April. 

Smith is the President of Council 94 AFSCME/AFL-CIO Local 2882, representing 280 workers who make eligibility determinations for programs such as Medicaid, SNAP benefits [formerly food stamps], cash assistance, and child care.

“While things have improved slightly under the McKee administration, Director Brito’s leadership, and the General Assembly’s required reports on hiring, we are still desperately short staffed,” said Smith.

Speaker Joseph Shekarchi (Democrat, District 23, Warwick) held a Medicaid Renewal Information session for House members and reporters. Uprise RI asked Director Merolla-Brito about the 120 unfilled positions at DHS. 

Director Merolla-Britto countered that the most recent numbers she had indicated that there are 117 open positions throughout the entirety of DHS, and 75 open positions that affect field operations, including eligibility technicians.

Gina Raimondo’s CRMC was designed to favor wealthy and connected interests

And it delivered

By Steve Ahlquist for UpRiseRI

The October 14 Rhode Island Supreme Court decision against the Champlin Marina expansion puts a period at the end of a long sentence begun in 2017 when then Governor Gina Raimondo decided to stack the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) with insiders and bad actors who favored fossil fuel companies over climate justice communities and the interests of wealthy resort owners over ecological devastation.

The CRMC is a state regulatory agency tasked with maintaining and regulating the use of Rhode Island’s 400+ miles of coastline. Agencies like the CRMC, said the Attorney General in a statement, “…have been given extraordinary powers by the General Assembly to make decisions that directly and significantly impact the people of this state. 

Under long-settled Rhode Island law, this grant of power is conditioned on several things, including a requirement that their quasi-judicial decision-making process be transparent and provide for public input, and that every agency decision be supported by specific findings of fact and conclusions of law that objectively justify the decision.”

Friday’s decision by the Rhode Island Supreme Court found that the CRMC illegally and behind closed doors reached a settlement with Champlin Marina, allowing the resort to potentially expand into the Great Salt Marsh on Block Island. This was an attempt to circumvent a public regulatory process conducted by the CRMC that in 2011 denied Champlin’s expansion, a decision that was “well supported by the evidence” according to the Court.

But this out of control, backroom dealing CRMC, headed by Raimondo appointee Jennifer Cervenka, was only doing what it was intended to do: Serve the interests of the wealthy and connected, all other concerns be damned.

Who should RI Democrats pick for Governor in the September 13 Primary?

Five candidates offer wide variety

By Will Collette

With the start of early voting and mail-in ballots, some of you may have already made your choice. But for those of you who haven’t, I’d like to offer my opinion of the field.

The five candidates are accidental incumbent Dan McKee, term-limited Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, former CVS executive Helena Foulkes, left-wing guru Matt Brown and activist Dr. Luis Daniel Munoz.

To be blunt as well as consistent with my past criticisms, I think Dan McKee has been a lousy Governor, a post he got by virtue of Gina Raimondo’s decision to go to Washington to become Joe Biden’s Commerce Secretary.

McKee was a lackluster, almost invisible Lieutenant Governor and only stayed in that office when challenged in 2018 by Aaron Regunberg who actually wanted to make something out of that office. McKee won the primary by only 2,466 votes. In my opinion, he would have lost if more voters actually cared about the office of Lieutenant Governor.

Other high-ranking Rhode Island politicos describe him as “lazy” and “stupid,” not able to focus on more than one issue at a time. It used to be McKee’s sole focus was charter schools. Now it’s “small business” (whatever that means) to the exclusion of all else.

I am especially furious at McKee for his COVID practices. In the name of small business, McKee ended all restrictions and pretty much has tried to make COVID invisible. He closed down state testing and vaccine sites. 

The State Health Department only reports statistics, such as they are, once a week now. (By the way, we remain at a community infection rate that is ten times higher than it was on July 4, 2021 and that only includes cases the state knows about, not those discovered on home test kits).

I blame him for people no longer masking and, frankly, not even paying any attention. Yet, ask yourself: can you remember any time during the pandemic when you’ve had so many friends and family come down with COVID?

McKee is in a statistical dead heat in the polls with his top competitor, term-limited Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea. In many ways, Nellie is the opposite of McKee. He is as inspiring as Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup® while she is dynamic and creative.

She has also had eight years to show us an outstanding record as Secretary of State – running efficient, fraud-free elections, handling COVID’s potential to disrupt the 2020 election, expanding her department’s services and fighting hard for every citizen’s right to vote.

Her office is always coming up with innovations. I just ran across a new one where she tracks the early votes as they come in. Using this new RI Voter Turn-out Tracker, as of August 30, 33 Charlestown voters have voted early at Town Hall. No mail-in ballots for Charlestown has turned up yet.

Nellie has my vote without doubt or question.

Behind McKee and Nellie, there are three also-rans.

Helena Foulkes is the only one to break into double digits in the polls, largely based on her ability to use her considerable fortune to buy a lot of advertising. Her downside is that she takes the blame whenever CVS gets negative headlines, such as the recent court award of millions in damages against CVS for its role in pushing opiate drugs and contributing to our national overdose epidemic.

I saw her when she met with the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee and found her to be a knowledgeable and likeable person. I don’t see her as Governor, but I do hope she stays in Rhode Island politics. Her main hope of winning lies in Nellie and McKee attacking each other so badly that voters turn to her instead.

Behind her is the enigmatic Matt Brown, leader of the Rhode Island Political Coop. I think of Brown as an anti-Democrat, as his driving motivation seems to be the belief that Rhode Island’s entire political structure is corrupt and needs to be torn down completely and replaced by him and his followers.

Brown harbors a deep-seated grudge against the state Democratic Party. After serving as Secretary of State from 2003 to 2007, Brown declared for US Senate in 2006 seeking to unseat then Senator Lincoln Chafee.

That campaign ended on accusations that Brown engaged in a practice called “donation swapping” to evade campaign donation limits. In this case, Brown received large donations from state Democratic Parties as far away as Hawaii while Brown’s own high-roller donors sent equivalent donations to those out of state parties. He was exonerated by the FEC in 2007.

Brown left Rhode Island to run an anti-nuclear non-profit in Washington, only to return 12 years later to run against Gina Raimondo in 2018. That was an ugly campaign, as Raimondo reminded voters Brown was accused of political money-laundering. Brown called Raimondo’s charge “defamatory,” citing the FEC findings, but the damage was done.

While I take no joy in grudge matches and find that Matt Brown offers little else in his run for Governor, I do acknowledge his creation, the RI Political Coop, and the boost it has given to progressives running for local and General Assembly seats.

We have three local Coop candidates: Charlestown’s Jennifer Douglas who I hope will be successful at defeating ultra-rightwing Sen. Elaine Morgan; Megan Cotter of Exeter who hopes to defeat insurrectionist state Rep. Justin Price and Michael Niemeyer of Westerly who is one of three Democrats on the September 13 Primary ballot seeking to replace retired state Sen. Dennis Algiere.

The last of the five Democratic Primary candidates for Governor is Dr. Luis Daniel Munoz. This is his second run for Governor, having run as an independent in 2018. He received only 6,223 votes.

I heard him speak at the state Democratic Convention and, despite the severe limits on speaking time, I thought he was quite impressive. Nonetheless, he is polling last.

Like a number of other good people running for state offices they have no chance to win, I just wish he would try to build some experience in local office. He’d make a great state senator or representative or city council member.

Final note

No matter which candidate emerges as the Democratic choice for Governor, they will be far better than the nightmare represented by the GOP choice, Ashley Kalus. 

Up until recently, Kalus' only connection to Rhode Island was to run a COVID testing company based in Westerly. The state decided to terminate her contract. That led to an altercation on January 16 at the job site that required the intervention of Westerly Police.

Days later, Kalus registered to vote in Rhode Island for the first time and then declared her intent to run for Governor in March. Does anyone smell pay-back?

She and her doctor husband bought a house in Newport in May 2021. As of last March, she was still registered to vote in Monroe County, Florida - while declaring her candidacy for Rhode Island Governor!

Her Florida history is interesting in itself. According to tax records, she and her husband own a condo in the Florida Keys (where she had been registered to vote) but paid ZERO taxes based on what appears to be a homestead exemption EVEN THOUGH her billing address is listed on the tax bill as 151 Belle Ave., Highland Park, IL 60035-2503. The property ownership is listed as WEINZWEIG JEFFREY / ASHLEY.

I wonder if she was ALSO registered to vote in Illinois where she worked as "director of public engagement for Illinois' former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner" failed 2018 campaign.

She is a true Trumplican. In an interview with WPRI's Ted Nesi, when asked which living political leader she admired most, she picked fascist Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. OMG!

Gina says we should blame Mitch

Commerce Secretary Raimondo Exposes Sen. McConnell’s Blockade Against Lower Prices

White House sTATEMENTS AND RELEASES

Speaking with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo pointed to legislation in Congress to build domestic manufacturing of semiconductor chips as a concrete step that needs to be taken to bring down prices for the American people. 

This legislation would create thousands of good-paying jobs and address the chips shortage that has driven prices higher on cars and countless other products. As the Secretary noted, Senator McConnell is now attempting to hold that legislation hostage to block another crucial effort to lower prices on prescription drugs for the American people.

The Secretary also noted that there are profound national security implications in not addressing the chips shortage, saying “He’s playing politics with our national security and it’s time for Congress to do its job on both of those dimensions.”

Watch the clip: https://twitter.com/abcpolitics/status/1546127074058031105?s=21&t=S6SP7ACmRsV2YnOLwiulVQ

STEPHANOPOULOS: …Is there anything more the President can do to combat inflation that he’s not doing now?

RAIMONDO: Well, one of the things that Ro Khanna pointed out in that piece is that Congress needs to pass the CHIPS Act. There’s a bill right now before Congress which Ro Khanna supports, President Biden supports, which would increase the domestic supply of semiconductors and also start a supply chain office in the Department of Commerce. That has to pass. Has to pass now. Not in six months from now, now. It’s bipartisan.

Mitch McConnell just threw a wrench in that about a week ago, saying that he wasn’t going to allow Republicans to move on that unless we move down reconciliation. That’s a perfect example, George, of increasing supply. We have inflation now because of lack of supply. And let’s increase supply.