By Katherine Gregg, Steve Peoples, Cynthia Needham and EDWARD FITZPATRICK
PROVIDENCE — In their usual chaotic rush to finish after six months at the State House, lawmakers raced through votes yesterday on scores of high-profile bills including a new $6.9-billion state budget now headed to the governor to be signed into law; a bill to “quash-and-destroy” criminal records, no matter how serious the offense, and legislation aimed at easing the brunt of the foreclosure crisis.
Other bills that bubbled to the surface in recent days — such as the proposed $12.6-million sales-tax rebate to the Canadian company talking about building a heavy-equipment auction house in West Greenwich — were still hanging in the balance.
Among the highlights of a session, that included 106 bills in the House alone on what may have been the next to last day of this year’s legislative session:
•The Senate approved, and sent to the governor, a $6.9-billion spending plan that lops hundreds of people from the state’s health-care and welfare rolls, freezes non-school aid at this year’s already-reduced levels, and relies on more than $150 million in iffy — and not yet fully explained — savings in the state employee and Medicaid arenas to help avert a humongous deficit during the budget year that begins in two weeks. The bill cleared the House a night earlier after close to 9 hours of debate, and the Senate on a 36-to-2 vote that belied the depth of some of the objections.
“The choices we had were slim,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Stephen D. Alves. “We came to realize that we were not going to tax our way out of this budget problem.”
Despite the lopsided vote, a chorus of senators voiced concern over cuts to early childhood programs, reduced health-care coverage and a perceived lack of oversight in the plan to transform Medicaid programs that serve more than 180,000 Rhode Islanders. “I honestly feel like we’ve kicked some people under the bus,” said Sen. Daniel J. Issa, D-Cumberland.
•A bill to lift a looming July 1 deadline for sprinkler and other fire-code requirements sailed through the House, with Rep. Joseph Trillo, R-Warwick saying that if left untouched, the law would “force the closure of many schools and places of business…because a lot of them have been unable to meet the code requirements at this point.” The bill — now headed to the Senate — does not specify a new deadline, leaving it to the state’s Fire Safety Code Board of Appeal & Review to grant extensions “for good cause.”
•Jerome Williams won Senate confirmation as director of the Department of Administration, the mega-state agency that oversees hiring, purchasing and auditing of government operations, after a year as state transportation director. Noting that “Jerry is no stranger to this building or state government,” Senator Alves, D-West Warwick, said, “Jerry certainly has the qualifications and knowledge to run that department.” Senate Government Oversight Chairman J. Michael Lenihan, D-East Greenwich, called him “a breath of fresh air.”
•Despite objections from the governor, state police and attorney general, a House-passed bill to automatically “quash and destroy,” after five years, the criminal records of people given “deferred” prison sentences was headed for a final vote by the Senate, after clearing a key committee on a 6-to-1 vote last night.
This was the sentence given, for example, to one of the admitted co-conspirators in the Lincoln bribery scandal, the executive secretary for the Barrington police chief who pleaded no contest to embezzling town money and the admitted accomplice to a gunpoint robbery in Waterplace Park who traded testimony for a reduced sentence.
Advocates say clean records are essential to the kinds of jobs that would provide an individual a second chance. For example, current state law bars people with certain felony convictions from obtaining state licenses to work in nursing, social work and auto repair; this would provide a way around that. But opponents question how the state, and other employers, can do required background checks if criminal records are erased.
Current law allows a judge to expunge a single nonviolent offense from the record of a first-time offender five years after the individual has completed a sentence for a misdemeanor, 10 years after completing a sentence for a felony.
This bill is not limited to youthful offenses, first-time offenders or even nonviolent crimes. Cosponsors included Representatives Joseph Almeida, D-Providence, Grace Diaz, D-Providence, Nicholas Mattiello, D-Cranston, and Frank Ferri, D-Warwick.
The criminal-defense lobby also scored another victory, with House passage of a bill to spare those criminals who can’t afford to pay court-ordered fines — as evidenced by their food stamp eligibility, for example — from going to jail.
But some bills got snagged on objections from powerful lobbies, such as the mortgage bankers association, including a bill aimed at making sure the banks that acquire multifamily houses, by foreclosure, pick up the bills for “essential services” such as water for at least 60 days so tenants are not left without.
Advocates for this “Tenant Protection Bill” conveyed a willingness to compromise. But a scheduled vote by the House Judiciary Committee was postponed, with the chairman, Rep. Donald Lally, D-Narragansett, saying he was concerned about “unintended consequences” and the possible problems cited in an e-mail to him from the chairwoman of the Bar Association’s Title Standards and Practices Committee. Among them: the potential difficulty in determining who is a bona fide tenant, and who paid what before the foreclosure.
“The practical effect is to require any foreclosing lender to pay all of the tenant’s ‘essential services’ as soon as the foreclosure takes place,” regardless of how much the tenant may have paid before, the writer, Linda Tessman warned. Lally promised to revisit the bill today.
More successful was the so-called Foreclosed Property Upkeep Act, which would require lenders — and any one else — who acquires a foreclosed property to post a bond equal to 25 percent of the assessed value of the property, subject to forfeit if the property condition slides below minimum housing code standards. The bill’s chances in the Senate are unclear.
The sponsor, Rep. Charlene Lima, D-Cranston, said the bonds would save taxpayers from having to spend “excessive” amounts for police and fire protection and code enforcement. But warning of more unintended consequences, Rep. Nicholas Gorham, R-Coventry, said “banks are going to be reluctant to foreclose if they have to pay for upkeep…Instead of foreclosing, they’ll just let the property rot.”
But some bills had a clear shot of passage, including one giving elderly drivers a break by raising the age threshold from 70 to 75 before they have to start renewing their licenses every two years. One of the two versions of the bill has cleared the General Assembly.
And the bills that sparked the longest debates were not necessarily those that had ever before captured public attention. In the House, for example, lawmakers spent 50 minutes arguing over who should pay for local hydrants –– ultimately deciding to shift the burden from taxpayers to anyone who pays for water, including tax-exempt institutions such as hospitals and colleges.
But it was a national political question of electing presidents by the popular vote that provoked the most vigorous House debate.
After clearing both chambers, the bill would allow Rhode Island to join a compact of states, who pledge their delegates to whoever wins the national popular vote. Legislators argued passionately for more than an hour on whether the change would help make Rhode Island more — or less — relevant on the national political stage. In one of the closest votes of the night, they voted 36 to 34 to approve the change.
Supporters argued that the “one person, one vote” concept creates a more democratic system while getting presidential candidates to pay attention to states such as Rhode Island that fall far beyond the so-called “battleground states” such as Florida and Ohio that are crucial under the electoral college system .
But critics on both sides of the aisle warned that abiding by the national popular vote wouldn’t get rid of the Electoral College; it would simply force Rhode Island to join a compact, which if it swings in favor of a Republican candidate, would force this Democratic state to vote Republican.
“This is absolutely trashing a good system for no good reason at all,” Rep. Robert Jacquard, D-Cranston, said.
While politics weighed heavily on the outcome of many decisions, the Senate in an unusually tight 17-to-15 vote approved a bill to allow the Town of North Providence to take by eminent domain 15 acres currently known as Camp Meehan to keep it out of the hands of a Lincoln developer who is the father of Rep. Peter Petrarca, the vice chairman of the House committee where a matching bill is stalled.
Senate President Joseph Montalbano recused himself from the vote without explaining why.
The last debate to hit the House floor was one of the more intense.
For more than an hour, Republicans lobbied against a plan to build a courthouse in Smithfield several years from now that would cost taxpayers $88 million. The lawyer-dominated legislature, they said, shouldn’t be so quick to commit an astronomical amount of money to the court system in a year that’s been fraught with fiscal cuts.
“How can we burden our state with $88 million of debt when we just came through one of the most difficult budgets?” House Majority Leader Robert Watson said.
But after a prolonged screaming match, Democrats ultimately won out, passing the courthouse bill in a 49-20 vote. Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox said it was critical to offer the citizens of Rhode Island an alternative to the congested Garrahy Judicial Complex in Providence.
“Access to justice is one of the services government must provide its citizens and to do that, infrastructure matters,” Fox said.
Originally planned as a less expensive facility to be located in Lincoln, the proposed courthouse was relocated to Smithfield this spring, with funding pushed off until 2010.
The Senate voted 33 to 0 for a bill that would prevent utility shutoffs in homes with children who are age 2 or younger. “It’s an important bill considering the budget and fuel prices,” said the sponsor, Sen. V. Susan Sosnowski, D-South Kingstown.
On lighter topics, the Senate approved the issuance of WaterFire license plates and a judge emeritus license plate for the recently retired Superior Court Judge VinBudget Briefing
The Rhode Island House and Senate have approved a $6.9-billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Here are highlights:
TAXES: No increases in income, sales, capital gains or corporate taxes. Tax on medical and dental premiums increases from 1.1 to 1.75 percent
DEFICIT: Closest estimated deficit of $422 million, mostly through spending cuts. Largest include $67 million in Medicaid spending; $90 million in cuts to state work force.
AID TO CITIES AND TOWNS: $12.5 million cut in non-school aid. Slight increase for school aid.
COMMUNITY SERVICE GRANTS: $9 million cut to programs such as Meals on Wheels, the Rhode Island Community Food Bank and the Crossroads homeless shelter.
WELFARE: Cut in maximum stay on welfare from five years to four years; recipients barred from collecting benefits more than two consecutive years of benefits in any five-year period.
MOTOR VEHICLES: $10 increase for motor vehicle violations; proposed $50 fine for driving while talking on handheld cell phone is rejected.
HEALTH CARE: $67 million in Medicaid savings through reducing eligibility to expensive nursing home care, requiring Medicaid recipients to use least expensive health care providers and other measures; cutting about 1,000 adults from state Rite Care health insurance program.
MOVIES: $15-million cap on tax credits for movie productions in Rhode Island.
HEATING: Repeals program to help poor people pay heating bills.
With reports from Associated Press
kgregg@projo.com
