POLITICS

The unfinished business awaiting RI lawmakers this fall

Patrick Anderson
The Providence Journal

Politically, September is just around the corner.

Even as Rhode Island lawmakers exhale after Thursday's session-ending vote-a-rama, attention is already turning to unfinished business and a special back-to-school General Assembly session sometime after Labor Day.   

The headline topic this fall, beyond the Senate confirming judges, is to settle the long-burning issue of marijuana legalization. 

But there are more — many more — issues that people on Smith Hill have been working on that could return when the weather gets colder. 

Charter schools

Talks on a proposed three-year moratorium on new charter schools continued until the final days of the legislative session, and with Gov. Dan McKee threatening a veto, the issue had the potential to grind business to a halt.

The Senate passed the moratorium earlier in the year, but as the hours ticked away on Thursday night with no movement from the House, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ryan Pearson looked to tee up the issue for fall.

The Lincoln Democrat, whose local school district has been affected by the growth of Blackstone Valley Prep, proposed a charter spending cap intended as an alternative to the moratorium.

It would cap local charter tuition and state aide at no more than 9% of a school district's budget, or 23% for districts operating under a state takeover, which for now means Providence. Charter schools could not enroll any new students that take their district over the cap, which charter backers might see as a de facto cap.

The cap would be "ensuring that charter schools be there but not grow to where they are detrimental to their host districts," Pearson said Thursday before the Senate passed the bill. It was not taken up by the House.

On Friday, Pearson said he sees the spending cap as a starting point for talks in a fall session.

Police accountability

Changes to the Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights have been a State House non-starter for years, but considering how far Democratic Party opinion has moved on policing in the past year, it's surprising nothing passed in this last session.

According to lawmakers involved in the discussions, the biggest substantive difference between the two sides was whether one of two new members added to police disciplinary boards would be from the state Human Rights Commission. Original bills by House Labor Chairwoman Anastasia Williams and Sen. Ana Quezada included a commission member, but Assembly leaders were concerned it might present a conflict of interest.

House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi this week promised to work on police bill of rights reform this summer with a eye toward passing legislation in the fall.

Regional climate pact

The regional agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation — known as the Transportation Climate Initiative — seems to suffer a new setback every few months.

At the start of the year, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia were all that remained of an original 13-state pact to charge gasoline and diesel wholesalers for their contributions to warming the planet.

Since then, lawmakers in first Connecticut and now Rhode Island have declined to authorize the plan. (A Transportation Climate Initiative bill passed the Rhode Island Senate but never got a committee vote in the House.) 

Is it dead?

"I just think it is an issue that came in the latter part of the session. I don't think we had a hearing on it," Shekarchi said. "I try to keep an open mind on everything and listen to the facts presented."

Alana O'Hare, spokeswoman for McKee, said the "governor supports efforts under TCI to address climate change and improve public health, and is actively in conversations with Governors Lamont and Baker on this initiative."

The conservative Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, which has opposed the Climate Initiative since its inception, wrote in a Friday release that "motorists must remain vigilant and demand that the House not follow the Senate's lead, by considering this destructive legislation in the upcoming special fall session of the General Assembly."   

Voting

COVID and the 2020 election helped draw new attention to voting laws across the country this year, but the issue never gained much traction in Rhode Island.

Pandemic executive orders transformed how many Rhode Islanders voted, but with the COVID state of emergency nearing an end, things are about to go back to the way they were.

That means getting witnesses (or a notary) to sign off if you want to cast a ballot by mail.

It also means the new machine-aided system for verifying mail ballot signatures that the Board of Elections instituted last year, and which allowed relatively fast results despite the record mail-ballot volume, couldn't be used.

A package of voting-related bills written by civic groups and backed by Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea would have preserved the pandemic-era rules, among other things, but never made much headway at the General Assembly. 

"Because of their inaction, access to the ballot that was expanded during the pandemic will go back for the most part to pre-pandemic levels," Common Cause Rhode Island Executive Director John Marion Jr. said Friday. "With respect to mail ballots, Rhode Island will be one of the most restrictive states in the union ..." 

Marion said his group will push to have the voting package taken up in the fall.

Since this isn't an election year, the state has time, but voting bills are even tougher to pass in election years.

And then there are the pandemic open meeting rules that for more than a year have allowed government bodies to meet remotely.

The executive order allowing remote meetings is set to expire in September after lawmakers took no action to put it in law. 

Whether local councils and boards will continue to provide digital access for the benefit of the public, something that has increased participation in some places, is unknown.

"Members will have to attend in person, but they can provide remote access for the public if they want," Marion said. "The question is whether the public demands it." 

More unfinished business

The Senate passed more bills that the House declined to act on -- 121 -- than vice-versa. 75 House-passed bills didn't pass the Senate. The House's power to write the state budget likely plays into this and some Senate bills reflect budget items.

The Senate, of course, voted to legalize recreational marijuana and regulate it with a Senate-confirmed Cannabis Control Commission.

Other bills that passed the Senate and could come back include measures to: 

- Allow unauthorized immigrants to get drivers licenses

- Require more information from owners seeking approval for hospital sales

- Write rules governing the use of electric bicycles

With reports from Journal Staff Writer Linda Borg

panderson@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7384

On Twitter: @PatrickAnderso_