Gov. Gina Raimondo submitted her budget recently, and it’s exactly what Rhode Island needs: a bold plan to spark an economic recovery and put people back to work.
For too long we’ve been passive in Rhode Island. We’ve been adrift without any focused plan. And the results of our inaction are clear: we’re among the worst states in the country in unemployment, among the last states in job growth, and our median income is more than 20 percent below that of our neighbors in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
The governor’s budget focuses on changing all that by putting us on a path to grow the economy. She proposes: long-term investments in economic growth; medium-term investments designed to create jobs and investment in the next couple of years; and initiatives to help people immediately.
This budget focuses on long-term growth by investing in building skills in Rhode Island. Education is a ladder of opportunity, and it’s also an investment in economic development. The governor shows a commitment to great schools by fully funding the state’s K-12 formula. She also makes investments in early childhood education as well: the budget would expand all day Kindergarten to every community in Rhode Island, and would more than triple the number of pre-k classrooms in Rhode Island by 2019.
She also prioritizes college affordability. The budget proposes last-dollar scholarships for low-income Rhode Islanders, and would establish a student loan forgiveness program to keep the best and the brightest in Rhode Island. That focus on schools would help Rhode Island create a pipeline of well-educated, well-trained workers.
The budget proposes game-changing initiatives that would work in the medium-term to attract companies to invest in Rhode Island, and to encourage our existing businesses to grow and thrive. For too long, Rhode Island has sat on its hands while other states have worked aggressively to spur job growth and development. This budget would get Rhode Island back in the game. It includes a series of initiatives to attract businesses, to spur construction, and to foster an innovation economy. It would finally end Rhode Island’s unilateral disarmament, and get our state off the sidelines in bringing companies here to create jobs.
The governor also proposes immediate actions to help people. The budget would put people to work right away rebuilding infrastructure. The governor proposes creating a School Building Authority to modernize our school buildings, creating an Infrastructure Bank to complete energy retrofit projects, and increasing funding to rebuild our roads and bridges. To put more money into the pockets of hard-working Rhode Islanders who have a tough time making ends meet, the governor proposes raising the minimum wage to $10.10, and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. And her budget would exempt Social Security benefits from state taxes for Rhode Islanders who make less than $50,000 a year, and for couples who make less than $60,000.
The governor was able to make all these investments even though her budget had to close a $190 million shortfall. And she was able to do it with no broad-based tax increases. Her creative proposal to generate up-front funds by more actively managing our state’s debt makes sense. Her plan takes advantage of historically low interest, which most people expect to go up in the years ahead. And it’s also “net present value positive,” which means that even though we will have higher debt payments in later years, Rhode Island comes out ahead in today’s dollars. This is something lots of other states have done.
The bottom line is that if you want to invest in putting people back to work (which we desperately need), and you have to do it in the context of closing a $190 million deficit while preserving investments in schools and avoiding broad-based tax increases, this plan is a no-brainer.
We’re thrilled that Rhode Island is getting a plan to re-grow our economy and help struggling families. We hope the General Assembly will work with the governor to enact this bold jobs budget.
George Nee is the president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO and a member of the Board of Directors of Commerce RI. Donald R. Sweitzer is the chairman of GTECH Corporation.
