The former Cumberland mayor has had the benefit of serving during good times for the state budget, thanks to a gusher of federal COVID aid. To top it all off, McKee earlier this year became a grandfather for the first time. But not everything is rosy. Higher interest rates have had a chilling effect on development in Rhode Island. Not everyone embraces McKee’s plan for improving public education. And if there’s a recession, Rhode Island could take it on the chin. How will McKee confront these challenges? And at age 71, does he hope to seek another term as governor? I’m Ian Donnis, and this week I’m going in depth with Rhode Island governor Dan McKee.
Transcript:
Ian Donnis: Welcome back to the public’s radio.
Gov. Dan McKee: Well, thank you very much, Ian.
Ian Donnis: This is the first time you’ve been in since last August. A lot has happened since then you won a close primary for Governor won a lopsided victory for governor and you also became grandfather for the first time. So congratulations on all that.
Gov. McKee: Yeah. Well, I definitely was overshadowed by the women in my life. You know, we got Mabel James was born in January and of course my mom was a it was a hit during the campaign. My daughter was on the voice, and now she’s pursuing some music in Nashville, so and my wife Susan had a happy birthday sung by the President in February, early February at the White House. So yes, it’s been a very interesting time.
Ian Donnis: To bring things up to the present, you announced plans this week to end the sale in Rhode Island of gasoline powered cars in I believe, 2035. A lot of people like this direction that you’re following, too, because the exigencies of climate change. But critics, including some Republicans in the legislature, see this is more an example of big government, and they worry that it will impose more costs for consumers, what do you say?
Gov. McKee: Well, I say they, you know, I have the cell phone in front of me right now. And we, you know, we used to have cords that were, you know, had, you know, our phones hooked to it, that’s no longer the case, this is, this is where the world’s going this is where Rhode Island is going to follow that lead and, and actually lead it in many ways, whether it’s in offshore wind, whether it’s the act on climate that I signed with carbon emissions are going to be reduced, on schedule at 2030, ‘40 and ‘50. Of the automobiles, about 40% of the carbon emissions that happened. And nationally, the automakers have already set the standard, right? There’s, there’s companies that are gonna only do electric vehicles by 2030 2035. So that’s a long ways away in terms of the technologies and the improvements. So we’re, we’re very confident that this is a, this is a trend that is going to become the, you know, the actual costs of business.
Ian Donnis: Let me stop you there if I could, because we’ve got a lot of issues to cover. You recently outlined your education plan with the goal of reaching the same level of academic performance in Massachusetts by I believe it’s 2030. The emphasis is on having students spend more out of school time on learning. And you’ve gotten partnerships with the city of Providence and some other communities. And you and you say there are plans to closely monitor this to see how students are doing. If academic performance does not improve as desired, what is the fallback plan?
Gov. McKee: Well, first of all, I believe it’s going to really work very well, you’re going to have buy in from virtually every community in the state of Rhode Island through the municipal leaders, the idea, as you said, was to set the target to meet or exceed Massachusetts levels by 2030. We also put in there that attendance would would improve improve in our in our schools, and also that our FAFSA applications would be increasing as well, we left 6 million bucks on the table last year with families who didn’t apply. So it’s a comprehensive effort. And we believe that what we’re going to do is we’re going to change the culture relative so that in every household, the goal is every household in the state of Rhode Island will value the importance of learning every single day. And the fact of the matter is coming out of COVID, we know there’s a recovery there that is that, you know, that’s going to take a great deal of time to make sure that the mental health issues, the health issues, as well as the education issues are addressed. And quite frankly, you can’t do that in a normal school day. So all the stars are aligned here. And we’re going to make sure that working with the communities, increasing, creating partnerships, like we announced in Newport, as you said, Now, other communities already signed on, we got four or five more ready to sign on next week. You get a mayor, you get a school superintendent, you get a business, you get a nonprofit that’s willing to put the time in and and partnering in with the universities and Salve and CCRI that’s going to be duplicated all around the state in any community that wants to get involved and the indications are that most will.
Ian Donnis: We see how there’s a slowdown on development in not just in Rhode Island, a lot of places because of higher interest rates. You wrote to the Federal Reserve asking them to stop raising rates. What can Rhode Island do? What can the state do to try and move forward projects that were previously announced, but that seemed to be at something of a standstill, more or less like the Superman revitalization project and the Pawtucket soccer stadium.
Gov. McKee: I have been certainly been very public about the Fed being over aggressive on the on interest rates. I think their strategy is wrong for Rhode Island, pushing us to more towards a recession and higher unemployment, that’s not a good model for us in Rhode Island, we’ve never done well, during a recession. Yet, we’re now we have one of the lowest unemployment rates on, you know, for a long period of time in the history of the state. Yesterday, we were just to be able to announce that the revenue is is, as we expected, right around a $600 million surplus. You know, we manage the state. So we got to be disciplined, and and then we got to use the dollars that are available to keep people working. And that’s my goal is to use the federal dollars, whether it’s for road improvements, or whether it has to do with bridge improvements, or use the surpluses to invest in URI, Rhode Island College and CCRI. And in a projects like down in, down in Quonset, or whether it’s Galilee with the fisheries, whether or whether it’s in Providence, with the health lab facility, the health building or private-public partnerships on the life sciences. So we need to continue to be smart about how we invest our dollars. $45 million alone, working with the general assembly right now for really planting the seed to expand or to actually create a footprint for life sciences. We need to get the projects done that we can that we can get done. And then where you’re indicating where there’s private capital that’s needed, we need to, you know, impress on, on those individuals that they made commitments to get projects done. And we expect them that they we expect both, you mentioned Superman and the Soccer, we expect that those developers will, will follow through and do what they need to do to get the projects done.
Ian Donnis: In terms of projects getting done. Rodon is at the early stage of trying to tackle the state housing crisis. Both you and speaker Shekarchi, senate president Ruggerio have expressed support for moving forward at the same time, we’re at an early stage. So what would success look like in three years? What would you consider progress in three years on the housing front?
Gov. McKee: Well, there’s layers in the housing area, right? I mean, we’re dealing day to day right now with the homelessness issue, right. So a success there would be to have more shelter beds than what we then we need. And having that and that’s why we got a $30 million ask the budget this year to address long term ways that we can control real estate on a state and work with the providers to actually deliver on that issue. As far as the other issues, we do have strategies in place $250 million of the billion dollars that we got in federal money. We’re establishing an office, housing office with as you said, with Secretary Pryor. Hannah Moore as a as a lead person there as well. But we’re going to be hiring into that office if the General Assembly approves what’s in the budget this year. So I think success is that you would have a really active viable housing office in state government that has not existed and will exist once the funding gets passed. And then it’s really just a progressive type of working with the cities and towns to identify ways that they can add more housing, and that we’re supporting that and leveraging that $250 million. As I said to at least a billion dollars worth of housing.
Ian Donnis: Advocates this week held a news conference at the Taunton Avenue collaborative in East Providence. That’s a planned 160 unit apartment complex project between one neighborhood builders, Family Services of Rhode Island, Crossroads Rhode Island described as innovative and they say they need a $28 million state appropriation to move forward. Do you support making that $28 million appropriation?
Gov. McKee: I’ll leave that up to you know, the Secretary of housing and working with me with Stephen but we need to leverage our dollars. Right. So that project right now is only leveraged about 8%. With with with with funding that is coming through normal financing. We need to make sure we leverage those dollars. It’s a great project. East Providence and Mayor Da Silva has been fantastic in terms of, you know, addressing housing, in East Providence. We hope that that AV community will follow their lead. So I think it’s a viable project. It depends on how, you know what the how they can bring the funding in. We certainly would participate with them if we were if we knew about that project, because we were doing the budget. And I think it would probably have led in some way into our budget. That came that came after the fact. So I think that’s on the table. I think it’s a good project. I think that we should try to figure out a way to make it happen.
Ian Donnis: What does your gut tell you as we sit here talking today about whether you will seek reelection in 2026?
Gov. McKee: Well, I think that first of all, we have some long range plans. You mentioned the the 2030 objective on education. We talked earlier about our Rhode Island 2030 plan. It’s certainly layered in so I got some certainly long term commitments to the State and the policies that we develop. We’ll make those decisions, you know, you know, down the line in terms of, you know, where, you know, what makes the most sense in terms of, you know, my family, and as well as whether we continue to do the job we’re doing, which we are, we got great momentum in the state. And I’m very optimistic about the future.
Ian Donnis: Back here in the present, Rhode Island’s hospitals face a lot of challenges the payer mix depends a lot on public funds, which are less profitable than private payers, Attorney General Peter Neronha has been kind of a lonely voice in calling for some long term strategic planning on the hospital landscape. Are you focusing on that at all?
Gov. McKee: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have people in our office that are assigned directly to the hospitals working with, with Teresa Paiva-Weed, and that whole organization of all hospitals there. I mean, is that the women’s and infants yesterday, supporting an expansion there as well. So meeting with the Presidents we’ve met with the incoming president, and you know, down in Westley hospital down there and talked about exactly what you’re talking about reimbursement rates are key for them. That’s, we provide getting information there. So we have our Department of Health, we haven’t taken our eye off that ball at all, no matter what anybody might say.
Ian Donnis: On a related note, when do you expect we’ll have a permanent director for the State Department of Health?
Gov. McKee: Right now, the permanency of these issues is not as important to me as having good people in place that are actually doing the job. At this point in time, Dr. Bandy is doing a fantastic job there, We’re doing the work. And that’s what’s most important to me, and is how we’re doing the work. And we have interim directors that to me, as long as they are skilled and talented, that’s all that matters.
Ian Donnis: We’ve got to leave it there. Thank you very much for joining us, Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee.
Gov. McKee: Thank you.
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When CD1 candidate Aaron Regunberg this week called for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former gubernatorial candidate Ken Block responded on Twitter by describing that as an unrealistic prospect. Block was right about that. With the GOP-held House and a divided Senate, there’s little chance that Thomas will face impeachment. But the First Congressional District has a strong Democratic tilt, so there could be significant support for Regunberg’s viewpoint. His statement marked the first bold stand in the race to fill the seat being vacated by Congressman David Cicilline. Just three of the 15 Democratic candidates have run statewide before, and Regunberg is one of them. Another is Lieutenant Governor Sabina Matos, the perceived frontrunner at this stage in the race. With just four months until the all-important September primary, the fireworks among competing campaigns will likely flare well before the Fourth of July. You can read more about that in my Friday TGIF column, posting around 4 this afternoon on my Twitter @IanDon and at the publics radio.org.
That’s our show for this week. Our producer is James Baumgartner.
I’m Ian Donnis and I’ll see you on the radio.
