House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio held an initial meeting Tuesday evening on the state budget impasse and said they plan to continue talking.
“Senate President Ruggerio and I had a very productive meeting in discussing moving forward to resolve the budget impasse,” Mattiello said in a statement. “We will continue to meet in the near future and we will provide further updates to the media and the public.”
The two legislative leaders spoke for about an hour over coffee. The location of the meeting and other details about it were not disclosed.
“The speaker and I began discussions tonight that will continue over the next several days,” Ruggerio said. “My goal and hope is that we reach a conclusion that benefits all Rhode Islanders in the near future.”
Earlier, ahead of his meeting with Mattiello, Ruggerio said he remains concerned about the sustainability of the car phaseout championed by the speaker.
Asked for his idea for resolving a state budget stalemate, Ruggerio said he supports a trailer bill that would freeze the car tax phaseout if state revenue took a sharp turn for the worse. Ruggerio and Mattiello plan to discuss the impasse during a meeting at an undisclosed location.
Speaking with reporters during an unrelated event at T.F. Green Airport, Ruggerio said such a car tax safeguard is important to the Senate since the state backtracked on a car tax phaseout launched in the late 1990s.
“We went though this before,” he said. “The speaker didn’t go through this before. This happened before, where we had to rescind the car tax because it wasn’t sustainable and it wasn’t affordable. That was not a great experience, not for the members of the General Assembly or for the public.”
Mattiello was first elected to the House in 2006, after lawmakers had voted to begin rescinding the earlier car tax phaseout.
Asked if Mattiello is receptive to the type of trailer bill suggested by Ruggerio, House spokesman Larry Berman pointed to how the speaker opposed the concept two weeks ago. Berman declined to say if the speaker might be more willing now to consider a trailer bill.
Mattiello has questioned why the car tax phaseout should be prioritized for a freeze if state revenue declines.
Completely phasing out the car tax will cost the state about $225 million each year. Mattiello has outlined a vision for phasing out the car tax over more than five years.
While the Senate typically approves the state budget in little time, the state budget process broke down when the Senate tried amending the House-passed spending plan in the last week in June. Mattiello instructed his members to leave the Statehouse, so a new budget was not passed and the state is operating under the terms of the budget for the last fiscal year.
Ruggerio said he did not plan to discuss any bills other than the budget with Mattiello during their meeting.