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R.I. House passes $9.9B budget

Providence Journal - 6/22/2019

PROVIDENCE -- The Rhode Island House of Representatives reshaped the state's medical marijuana industry and restored funding to combat gang violence Saturday on the way to passing a $9.97-billion budget for next year.

The tax-and-spending plan for the year starting July 1 passed on a 64-9, party-line vote, with the entire Democratic caucus supporting it roughly six months after a group of left-leaning lawmakers refused to support House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello over a host of grievances.

"There is something in there for almost every segment of society," Mattiello told reporters about how he generated support for the budget. "I would guess that everyone in this chamber had something they liked, but not everything they liked. ... This is a very good budget."

The budget now moves on to the Senate for a vote next week.

Outnumbered House Republicans stuck together in opposition, but their attempts to trim spending or block the medical marijuana expansion was an uphill battle.

"We didn't really do anything to encourage organic business investment in the state," House GOP leader Blake Filippi told The Providence Journal about why his caucus voted against the budget. "We doubled down on corporate welfare and handouts to people to develop our economy."

Beyond that, he said, Democrats "repealed the promise to reduce the sales tax to 6.5%. They didn't add more front-line workers to the Department of Children, Youth and Families. The medical marijuana legislation we passed is going to put out of business local cultivators and empower out-of-state moneyed interests to come in here and take over our industry."

After lawmakers passed the bulk of the budget Friday night, expansion of the state's medical marijuana program was the prime sticking point on Saturday.

The budget would triple the number of medical marijuana dispensaries allowed to sell and grow the drug to nine, while doubling the license fee for each new business to $500,000.

Opponents on both sides of the aisle argued that by allowing the dispensaries to grow their own product, they will cripple the nascent industry of cannabis cultivators in favor of larger, vertically integrated medical marijuana businesses.

Newport Democrat Lauren Carson laid out the two options left to the 45 currently licensed cultivators and others with licenses pending who have "gone out and invested probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, in starting these cultivation centers."

"The first option is that these businesses go under. ... The second option is they continue cultivating and there is no market for them in the [dispensaries]. They're going to sell on the black market."

Providence Democrat Marcia Ranglin-Vassel said the expansion, with its heavy licensing fee, will effectively exclude disadvantaged communities that have been hurt by the war on drugs.

"Who can afford that?" she asked. "Is that what this body calls justice?"

"This is not right. This is wrong. This is a travesty of justice. This [budget] article would further marginalize people that look like me, that sound like me, that do not come from wealth."

Even supporters of the marijuana changes considered them the best of a bad series of options to deal with the spread of the drug.

"None of them are good," Cranston Democrat Robert Jacquard said. "We have to choose something we can live with and something we as a state can operate this program under."

Mattiello acknowledged that the cultivators have put "significant investments into their business, probably a couple of million dollars to run a decent operation ... presently."

But "there is no marketplace for them to sell their products" now, and "free market forces" will determine what happens when the six new dispensaries open.

"I would guess that some of [them] will grow [their own product], and I would guess and hope that some of them will grow a higher-quality product for some of the patients that are not currently being served and that will be a specialty niche," but others will sell retail only and buy from the cultivation centers.

Much more popular was the last-minute addition of more than $4 million in spending, including $200,000 put back in the budget for the Nonviolence Institute, formerly the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence.

Earlier in the week, Mattiello told reporters he had cut funding for the South Providence nonprofit because it had not shown enough "work product" and was spending too much on administrators.

But House supporters of the institute said its work preventing gang violence saved lives and they questioned some of the other spending proposed in the initial budget, particularly $1 million for a Cranston chiropractor's experimental brain therapy.

As Mattiello promised on Thursday, that $1 million for Victor Pedro's Cortical Integrated Therapy was removed from the budget Saturday.

The largest new spending item was $1.5 million to provide larger raises for workers helping adults with developmental disabilities, taking them from $12.68 to $13.09 per hour. (These workers now earn $12.27 per hour, and the budget already included $3 million proposed by Gov. Gina Raimondo to take them up to $12.68 per hour.)

Other new spending items include:

-- $1 million for the Commerce Corporation to prepare sites for development

-- $500,000 to the Department of Children, Youth and Families for the agency to seek accreditation.

-- $600,000 for Rhode Island College.

-- Four full-time workers for the the Department of Education to implement this year's package of education reforms.

-- One full-time worker at the Public Utilities Commission.

-- $300,000 for the Blackstone Valley Park Improvements Project.

The House cut the General Assembly's proposed $46-million budget for next year by $200,000 to make room for the Nonviolence Institute grant.

In closing speeches from Democrats hailing the budget, state Democratic Primary Chairman and Warwick Rep. Joseph McNamara brought attention back to Mattiello's signature policy of killing the car tax, which the budget keeps on its current trajectory of phasing out in 2024.

"For the past two decades, the Rhode Island General Assembly has been focused on phasing out the most regressive tax in the history of the state, the car tax," McNamara said.

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Mattiello said he "absolutely" planned to seek reelection next year and at least until the car tax is totally phased out, "and then maybe a little bit more," he added, "to make sure it is cemented in place."

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