Proposed Budget Highlights
The governor’s budget proposal invests in key priorities including workforce development, education, and health wellness, with a focus on improving education outcomes, raising incomes, and making residents healthier – the three pillars of the Rhode Island 2030 plan. The governor’s recommendation closes a projected deficit without raising broad-based taxes or cutting core services, instead creating savings through operational efficiencies, strategic cost-cutting efforts, and targeted new revenue streams. Highlights of the budget include:
Education and Workforce
- Increases funding for K-12 education aid, including raising per-pupil funding levels
- Provides funds for Learn365RI municipal grants to support high-quality, out-of-school programming
- Launches Ready to Build, a pre-apprenticeship pathway to building trades
- Build new Culinary and Hospitality Hub at a community college
- Invests in the creation of 1,000 new work-based learning opportunities
- Allocates funding for dual and concurrent enrollment programs
- Funds a 4 percent increase for public higher education institutions, including funding for services related to career readiness, placement and internships
- Funds two positions in the Office of Postsecondary Commissioner to form a federated integrated data system across state agencies to evaluate programs
Health and Wellness
- Recommends a review of primary care provider rates by the Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner
- Provides for loan repayment assistance for primary care providers and pediatricians
- Increases funding for senior support services
- Bans assault weapons and creates a sales tax exemption for gun safety goods
- Increases the per-pack cigarette tax by 50 cents
Government Efficiencies
- Recommends purchasing a large, commercial building to co-locate multiple state agencies and achieve long-term savings
- Closes a minimum security correctional facility and creates a new unit within the medium security facility instead
- Reduces agency contractor expenses, eliminates telephone landlines, and pursues other cost-cutting measures
- Adds four new positions in Medicaid to identify provider fraud
Infrastructure
- Directs more funds to RhodeRestore to provide cities and towns with reliable funding to defray the costs of transportation projects and makes the program permanent
- Creates new, two-year registration fees for battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles to help offset declining gas tax revenue
Addressing Homelessness
- Provides funding from multiple sources for homelessness initiatives, including a new 5 percent hotel tax on whole-home short-term rentals (previously excluded) and an increase to the real estate conveyance tax for certain properties.