Requests for spare change eventually cost the city of Cranston a quarter million dollars.

Most days, there’s a single, approximately middle-aged male, standing in the median at the entrance to Walmart on Plainfield Pike in Cranston.

He usually has a crate to sit on. Maybe a few belongings scattered at his feet or bound tightly in a bag. A can in his hand, held out to passing cars as they exit the store parking lot.

But occasionally it’s an entire family squatting in the median. The children seated on the ground as two adults ask passing motorists for loose change.

For years, this activity existed in a legal gray area in Cranston. An anti-panhandling ordinance existed on the books, though at its core, the law had been deemed unenforceable by the courts.

Following a unanimous vote by Cranston City Council's Ordinance Committee on Thursday night, Aug. 15, the panhandling ordinance was stricken from the city’s criminal code. The ordinance repeal even had the support of the office of Cranston Mayor Kenneth Hopkins, who originally voted to enact the original ordinance.

That family, standing in the median, asking for spare change, once again has the legal right to “panhandle” in the city of Cranston.

Ward 3 Cranston City Councilman John Donegan, Democratic Majority Leader, sponsored the amendment to “Miscellaneous Traffic Regulations,” known as the city’s “Panhandling Ordinance.”

According to Donegan, the “Panhandling Ordinance” was first passed in 2017,” prior to his first term on City Council.

The council debated the proposal “early in the 2017 term, just after the election of Donald Trump, and a group of local residents, myself included, began to do some organizing around municipal issues,” Donegan said earlier this week.

According to Donegan, “(The) panhandling ordinance … shifted a lot of my attention and focus from national and state level politics to working to make positive change at the local level.”

“Dozens of us showed up to committee and council meetings to oppose the ordinance,” the outgoing councilman recalled. Donegan recently announced his decision not to run for another term on city council. “The ordinance was opposed by a broad coalition of individuals and organizations, from local progressives, libertarians, and the ACLU; who opposed the measure on moral, policy, and first amendment grounds.”

Donegan said the ordinance ultimately passed the council along party lines.

“I was a part of a group who protested the ordinance, though I was not ticketed under the enforcement mechanisms,” he recalled.

Several years later, litigation challenged the ordinance, and eventually the city settled in 2021 under Hopkins. As a City Councilor, Hopkins was one of the Republicans who had voted to approve the panhandling ordinance in 2017.

“The ordinance ended up costing the city approximately $250,000 in legal fees and the settlement,” according to Donegan.

Hopkins’s Chief of Staff Anthony Moretti told the City Council Ordinance Committee that the mayor’s office had no objections to a repeal of the ordinance.

“You would have to get the intention of this proposed ordinance amendment but it seems to me that this results from a Federal court ruling that allows ‘panhandling’ as constitutional,” Moretti wrote via email earlier this week. “I believe the councilman’s intention is to bring our ordinance in line with Federal law, thus, essentially eliminating the ordinance previously banning (panhandling).”