Shekarchi: Deficit, housing top concerns

As the calendar turns to 2025 and Rhode Island’s legislature prepares to begin another session, House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi is getting ready for the challenges of the new year. The most immediate concern: the state budget.

This year’s budget, Shekarchi said, will be the most challenging he’s had to put together throughout his time as speaker. That’s largely due to the state’s financial posture.

“We’re about $330 million in a deficit situation right now,” Shekarchi said. “So we have to, obviously, close that deficit. [A lot depends on] how we close it and how much it ultimately ends up being in May. We’ll have to wait and see what the revenue numbers are.”

Shekarchi attributed the deficit to higher state expenses, saying that over the last year, more people had received aid from state agencies and state employees had received significant raises.

Finding the revenue to close that deficit, Shekarchi said, was why he was in favor of reinstating truck tolls on highways, which the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals recently determined the state was within its rights to do.

“As you know, we have a bridge problem, and though I’m very grateful for all the federal money we have, there’s going to be a cost associated to state taxpayers, so we need to either offset it or find another revenue stream,” Shekarchi said. “What I am definitely against is tolling of cars.”

Before truck tolling can happen, though, Shekarchi said the state will have to change its current enabling legislation, which gives preferential treatment to local truckers – something the First Circuit determined was unconstitutional.

Shekarchi also said that the First Circuit’s decision was not necessarily final, as the trucking companies on the other side of this legal tug-of-war can ask for an en banc hearing or to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The speaker said he can’t say what the top budget priorities will be until meeting with other members of the House.

“We’ll listen to our caucus,” Shekarchi said. “We’ll listen to what the members have to say.”

Housing: Local control isn’t the issue, speaker says

In addition to the budget, Shekarchi’s top priority for the 2025 session is unchanged: housing.

After passing 47 housing-development bills in the last three General Assembly sessions, Shekarchi said more are needed.

“When you hear people say ‘We don’t want affordable housing because we don’t have enough water or sewer lines,’ that’s a false premise, because if you don’t have enough water, you don’t have sewer, you don’t have any housing,” Shekarchi said. “And we’re not mandating housing in any way that communities can’t support it.”

In response to Johnston Mayor Joseph Polisena Jr.’s vow to challenge Rhode Island’s affordable housing laws to stop the proposed development of a 252-unit apartment complex near George Waterman Road, Shekarchi said he thinks Polisena is trying to negotiate for a smaller development on the site.

“I think he’s doing what he thinks is best in his community,” Shekarchi said. “But we cannot leave it to local cities and towns to make a lot of these decisions regarding land-use process. I want to distinguish between the process and the decision, because every single decision made regarding any development is still made at the local level. The Johnston Planning Board, appointed by the mayor, Johnston Zoning Board, Johnston Town Council, make the final decision.”

What the Assembly has done, he says, is to make “the process easier to go through.”

Shekarchi also said that if Johnston was looking to build single-family homes — rather than apartments — in the area where they are proposed, they would have to be small buildings on small lots to be affordable.

The speaker pointed to a backlog of Superior Court cases relating to land-use disputes as an example of how housing-related decisions have picked up the pace recently. Prior to 2024, there were 131 cases in the backlog; now, Shekarchi said, there are only 20.

Three different commissions — the landlord-tenant commission, affordable housing commission, and land-use reform commission — will also wrap up their work in January and suggest legislation to help ease the housing crisis.

The speaker challenged those who have opposed his housing plans to find other solutions, saying that while he has heard plenty of criticism of his plans to increase housing supply and density, he hasn’t heard any feasible alternative solutions.

“This is a very difficult 30-year problem, and quite frankly, I don’t see anyone else stepping up to pick up the ball and try to find some workable solutions,” Shekarchi said. “I welcome anybody who opposes any of this to come forward and give me a different plan, another workable solution. And I haven’t found anyone to step forward, other than saying it’s going to be left to local control. Well, we’ve left it in local control for 30 years, and what do we have? A housing crisis.”

Despite all the attention paid and the work done to encourage more affordable housing, however, Rhode Island’s homelessness rate has been among the nation’s fastest rising, with data from the state Coalition to End Homelessness showing a 35% increase in the unsheltered population statewide last year.

Shekarchi said that Rhode Island led the country in enacting a Homelessness Bill of Rights, but that government could not do much more beyond that and increasing housing supply.

“Homelessness is a very complicated problem,” Shekarchi said. “We, the General Assembly, pass laws, we appropriate money, and that’s it. The actual running of the programs — the hiring, the implementation — is all done in the executive branch.”

With the new year starting, many laws passed in the General Assembly’s 2024 session are now taking effect, with at least four of them having to do with housing.

Other laws now in effect include significant reforms to the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBOR), a ban on food packaging and firefighting foam that contains PFAS, known as “forever chemicals,” and a law prohibiting health care providers from reporting medical debt to credit agencies.

After four years as speaker of the House, Shekarchi took November’s election results as a sign of confidence in his leadership and is hoping he can make 2025 a strong year for the state.

“Every single incumbent, Democrat and Republican, won reelection in November, and I think that’s a validation of the work we’ve been doing,” Shekarchi said. “My next election is January 7, for election of the speaker. I want to get elected speaker and I want to be the best possible speaker I can be.”