The guest on Political Roundtable this week is RI House Speaker Joe Shekarchi (D-Warwick).
Shekarchi won election to what is often called the most powerful role in state government in 2021. The speaker has significant influence over state spending and related issues.
Here’s a transcript of the interview:
Ian Donnis: Rhode Island House Speaker Joe Shekarchi, welcome back to The Public’s Radio.
Joe Shekarchi: Always a pleasure to be here.
Donnis: We are now less than three weeks away from the September 13 primary election that will decide who the Democratic general election candidate for governor is. You are supporting the incumbent governor, Dan McKee. If you believe he’s doing a good job, why has McKee, after eight years as lieutenant governor and more than one year as governor, failed to come close to hitting 30% of support in three different polls?
Shekarchi: I don’t really know the specifics of his internal polling and what it’s showing. But my guess is I think it’s because of COVID. And because even though the first eight years of lieutenant governor, it’s a very low profile office, and it doesn’t really generate a lot of headlines, he’s only been the governor, the Acting Governor for, you know, a year and a half. It’s been a good year and a half for him and for the state as we came out of the COVID pandemic, and he’s had a lot of good things to announce. But you have to look at the other candidates. They’ve been around. They have resources, they’ve run, you know, relatively good public campaigns. So it’s a matter of letting the voters decide, and they’ll make that decision in three weeks.
Donnis: Many longtime political observers think this has been a strange campaign year with a questionable level of public interest. And far fewer public campaign events than in years past, despite high-level races for governor and state general offices, mayor of Providence, etcetera. What’s your explanation for that?
Shekarchi: Well, first, I happen to agree with that. I think there’s a lot of voter apathy. I was asked this question recently at a public lunch that I went to and I attribute it to coming out of COVID. I think people have been focused in the house, watching TV, reading the newspaper, reading the media. And finally after, like, two plus years of living in almost near hibernation, people got out. And this summer, they were not interested in listening to politicians. They were at the beach, they were at concerts, they were out visiting families, they were on vacation, they traveled. All this is for the first time in two years. So I think Rhode Islanders have had enough of mainstream media and news and they wanted to enjoy all the wonderful resources that the state of Rhode Island has to offer. I think you’ve seen people now focusing, we’re approaching Labor Day, that’s traditionally been the time when people start focusing on elections, back to school. I think you’ll see more engagement with the public. And I think you’ll see more engagement with the press and the politicians.
Donnis: As house speaker, you’re one of the most prominent Democratic elected officials in Rhode Island. Given the view that Democrats were somewhat slow in responding to the issue of inflation, why should Rhode Islanders support Democratic candidates this year?
Shekarchi: Well, I think Rhode Islanders should look at — make the distinction between federal candidates and state candidates. And I’m only going to speak for the state candidates because I am one. But I think you have to look at what we’ve done and what we’ve accomplished in the two years, the last two years since COVID came in. We have attributed a lot of successes to a member-driven body, in the environment, in the economy, reducing taxes. I passed three budgets without raising taxes, a record number of federal spending here in the state for resources, very targeted tax relief. I think that when voters go and look at where we are, is where you want to be in the future. Do you want to continue with the people who’ve done a good job, in my opinion, for the last two years? And do you want to have Democratic leadership in Washington? Or do you want to make a change? It’s going to come down to when people vote, they totally vote on where they want the future to be for the next two years.
Donnis: You’ve had the benefit of being House speaker during favorable budget conditions. The state recently had its first annual budget surplus for the first time in decades. Has the state done enough to catalyze this circumstance to create long term economic growth?
Shekarchi: I certainly believe the answer to that is yes, we have. We have made investments with the federal stimulus dollars in affordable housing, in mental health areas, targeted tax-relief, elimination of the car tax. I think those are investments that will last for years to come. We won’t see the benefits immediately. Our budget is only about six-weeks-old, but I think you will see the benefits in the years to come and I’m hopeful. We also have significant structural changes regarding the pension and hospital reimbursement formula — funding formulas. Those two things we were carrying, what I would say were indiscrepancies forward; we address them, it costs significant amount of money to do so. We also eliminated the car tax, that was $63 million. We’ve done a lot of different things that will put the state on a strong budgetary trajectory in the years to come including the pension. We actually borrowed money to pay for pensions. It was a small amount, but we were carrying several million dollars a year in, basically, a repayment plan; we eliminate that altogether. So that money can be used for resources in the state going forward and not to pay back a bond.
Donnis: One spending decision made by yourself and other state officials was to put $100 million toward the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund. According to Ken Block, former gubernatorial candidate, the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund still has a hole of $170 million that he says is on the back of Rhode Island businesses. How do you respond?
Shekarchi: That’s true. But it would have been $270 million if we didn’t make the $100 million dollar investment. And I think that businesses are coming back stronger, they will slowly start to replenish that. But we want to make sure that we had enough resources in there, because we just don’t know with COVID. If it’s coming back, we’ve seen a recent uptick in COVID. The economy at the moment is stable. We hope it stays that way. He is right in terms of the actual numbers. But I think that, you know, 10% of the federal allocation went to an unemployment insurance fund was a good thing. I wish we could have done more. But we had other priorities. And it was about balancing it. And I will point out that both RIBEC and the Manufacturers Association applauded the General Assembly for making that investment. And that was the amount that they both had requested.
Donnis: One other spending priority is housing. That has really emerged as a big public issue in Rhode Island. Two-hundred-fifty million has been directed toward that, thanks to the input from you and other elected officials. How many housing units will that create?
Shekarchi: It’s not just about housing, there was a significant amount — I don’t have an exact amount — but it’s targeted in several different areas. There’s $10 million that goes to Crossroads to help with the homeless population. There’s $10 million that will go into a pilot program to help housing authorities expand their housing stock. There’s that money put aside for first time homebuyers, there’s money to create more units. So it really depends at any particular moment the cost of construction, the cost of the land, and if some of these pilot programs are going to be utilized. In addition to that $250 million, I want to point out for housing, we also created a revenue stream. So any sale of homes over $800,000 will have dedicated revenue to fund affordable housing going forward, we pass an additional 10 different pieces of legislation that helps move the needle. This is a long term problem that’s going to require a long-term solution. We have made a substantial down payment, we’re going to continue to do so. We’ll look at housing as a way to help economic development, help our cities and towns. And hopefully we can knock down some of the barriers that have been in the way as an impediment to create more housing.
Donnis: How long would you like to be House Speaker if the voters decide to return you to office?
Shekarchi: I never set a time limit. This job and all jobs have a temporary lifespan. So I will let the voters decide. And not only that, I will let my colleagues in the House decide, basically, as long as they’ll have me — both the voters and my colleagues. I don’t anticipate it being a long-term commitment on my part, or a long-term endeavor. But I’d like to stay at least another four to six more years if the voters will have me and if my colleagues will have me.
Donnis: One of the Democratic candidates for governor Helena Buonanno Foulkes says if elected she would not seek another term if there are not certain improvements on public education during her four-year term. Is that an approach that more public officials should take — putting more skin in the game and personal responsibility? After we’ve last seen a lack of progress on public education for decades?
Shekarchi: I will defer to Helena to make her own judgments as to, you know, how she moves the needle. I’ve always been a little bit cautious because there’s so many outside factors that can go into the results. You need to look at them, you need to be able to respond to them. I feel, quite frankly, that the General Assembly has done its part and continues to do its part — we’re very much in tune with the voters. We go for elections every two years. And I think there’s a certain accountability, not only in terms of education, but overall spending, as far as what we do in the budget and every vote we take. We have to explain and justify that to the voters every two years. So I will let the voters make the decision on when it’s time not to run or not to run for re-election or not.
Donnis: One of the nuances of Rhode Island politics is that as House Speaker, Joe Shekarchi, you are among the most powerful, if not the most powerful elected officials in the state. But you have to run for reelection to your house of representatives seat every two years. You face primary and general election opponents this year. Your primary opponent is Jackie Anderson, supported by the progressive Rhode Island Political Cooperative. She says people like you have failed to do enough to extend abortion coverage for women on Medicaid and state employees on the state employee health plan. I know you’ve said that your membership did not support expanding coverage in that way. But is there an argument to be made that as the House speaker, you should have used your leadership to bring people along, speak for the voiceless, and get an affirmative vote on that issue.
Shekarchi: So first of all, the people who wanted that particular piece of legislation are not voiceless; they were very vocal. This is not a new issue. This issue, which is called, you know, insurance coverage, taxpayer-funded insurance coverage for abortion has been introduced and around the General Assembly for at least three or four years. And the decision with Roe being overturned by the Supreme Court did not affect this at all. It happened after the legislation was out. The General Assembly had adjourned for the session. There is a path for this legislation, it will take some time. And quite frankly, the votes were not there. They weren’t there not only in the House. And if you want to make the argument that I am the most powerful person, I could have pushed it through the House, the Senate had zero appetite to take this issue up. And you need both houses to pass a piece of legislation. So the Senate has said publicly on two separate occasions, they were not considering this bill for this term. And it didn’t really make sense to put a lot of political capital when we were passing gun legislation; we were passing a budget; we were passing shoreline access; we were studying very carefully and killing the high heat — that’s the plastics incinerator bill. So we had a lot of very important legislation. It really just didn’t make sense to push something through the house that we had zero opportunity of passing in the Senate. We will work on it next year. I know this is a very important issue to a lot of people. But it is not a new issue. And it has really been not affected at all, by the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Donnis: There’s an ongoing lawsuit backed by the former Rhode Island House Republican leader Blake Filippi over the Joint Committee on Legislative Services. That’s the hiring and spending arm of the legislature. Could you settle that lawsuit by agreeing to public meetings of the JCLS?
Shekarchi: So I don’t want to talk about specifics because I have been meeting with the new Minority Leader, Mike Chippendale who is a good friend, I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. And we are in discussions about a possible solution. But he’s got a Republican caucus that he has to talk to; I have a Democratic caucus that I have to talk to. And then we have other members of JCLS, namely the Senate, to talk to as well. So there are ongoing discussions about it. I would point out a couple of points about that. First of all, the General Assembly operated as usual, without any problems at all. I have not withheld any kind of funding at all for the Republican caucus. They have received their legislative grants, just like the Democratic caucus has. Nobody has been, I don’t want to use the word ‘penalized,’ or impacted in any way by that. In addition to that, when I was elected Speaker that night — I believe you were there at the Crowne Plaza, it seems like forever ago, but it was a year and a half ago — I publicly stated that I wanted to have regular meetings of JCLS. That was the first night. One of the first questions, that may have even been from you. But it was certainly from the media that was there. And I committed to do that. And we actually had — before we could have a meeting the Superior Court, Judge Silverstein, ruled in the favor in terms of that. There was an immediate appeal by the minority office. That was the — in my opinion, that was a window to settle this lawsuit right when that decision came down. But before we could even have a discussion or a meeting with that, Leader Filippi chose to file an appeal for that, he amended the lawsuit and he’s filed a personal action against myself and other members of the JCLS. And when we got served personally, and he decided to continue a lawsuit, all collectively four separate lawyers — actually the House Majority Leader Chris Blazejewski and I share a lawyer, but the other lawyers who were involved in the Senate side, all had advised their clients not to discuss this. And so we need to play this resolution out. Now JCLS is changing. We have a new Senate Minority Leader, we have a new House Minority Leader. So hopefully when we come back and we adjourn, get back together, convene again — I said the word adjourn, I meant convene. It seems like we’ve never adjourned.
Donnis: Freudian slip.
Shekarchi: Yeah, Freudian slip was right. When we convened again, that would have been an opportunity to resolve this. I just think it’s a big waste of time. And now it’s not like anything is being done. I want to point out one last thing that since I’ve been the speaker, we have substantially reduced employment in JCLS. And we have substantially reduced the budget and the cost. So I am cognizant of taxpayer dollars. I treat it very transparently, very open. We just gave an interview to Channel 10 about it. I take any questions at any and all spending is posted online. We keep a very much, an open book and are very transparent about it.
Donnis: Your choice for governor, Dan McKee, cast the tie breaking vote for the Pawtucket soccer stadium. That includes public investment of $60 million. Reporting shows that the soccer stadium will not pay for itself, at least in the initial years. Is it foolhardy for people like Dan McKee to support that given that indications are that it will not pay for itself?
Shekarchi: So I will defer to the governor. Obviously he is privy to a lot of information on the Commerce board that I have not seen and I don’t know. So obviously I’m sure he did his due diligence and the majority of the members on that board did enough to support that. I have not been briefed. I have not seen any pro formas. I don’t know what the particulars are about that. There has been no request, and there has never been a request from the General Assembly for additional funding at all. So if and when that request comes, it will go through the normal House process. It’ll be vetted very carefully by the House fiscal staff. The House Finance Committee will be very open, transparent. There’ll be televised hearings, so that the media and the public can weigh in and be heard on that. If that request comes. I don’t know the particulars of the deal. I don’t know the details of the deal. But I will defer to the people who have had all those expert reports and analysis done. Let’s hope they’ve all made the right decision.
Donnis: Finally, there was a questionable fire at your Warwick law office some time ago. What is the latest on the investigation into that?
Shekarchi: It’s funny you said that. I had some communications today with the state Fire Marshal and it’s still an ongoing investigation. And to be quite honest with you, I was asked to, and nor do I want to, comment any further than that. It’s still open and it’s still ongoing. And I trust the professionals who are doing that investigation. It is both a joint local and federal investigation.
Donnis: Rhode Island House Speaker Joe Shekarchi, Democrat of Warwick, thank you for joining us.
Shekarchi: It’s my pleasure to be here and I’ll always come back. You always invite me and I’ll always come back, sir.