Even under the best of circumstances, Providence struggles to generate enough revenue to pay for city government. And despite decades of talk about the need to improve Providence schools, that goal remains elusive. The man responsible for taking on these challenges is Providence Mayor Brett Smiley. He emphasized a so-called back to basics approach when he won election in 2022. But what can Providence do if cuts in Washington, DC, have a big local impact? Does Smiley have a real plan for improving city schools? And what does the first-term mayor think Democrats need to do to raise their national appeal? This week on Political Roundtable, I’m going in-depth with the mayor of Providence, Brett Smiley.
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Ian Donnis: Let’s start with the Trump administration. Congressional Republicans are considering cuts to Medicaid, the insurance program predominantly for poor people. Also, the Trump administration is looking at cuts to research, which could cost hundreds of jobs at Brown University, and really have a destabilizing effect on research there. Since Providence is the economic and population center of the state, how will these kind of moves, if they come to develop affect the city?
Mayor Brett Smiley: Potentially seriously, we are, we are looking at threats from all sidespotential threats to funding from the department of justice, as you point out to the social safety net from the NIH and what it does here for Providence because of not just Brown, but also Rhode Island Hospital and Women and Infants Any one of these things would be a risk. All of these things has the potential to be a catastrophe. And so I appreciate the attorney general and others who are filing suit. We have not yet seen any pause in funding because of success in the courts. But these are major looming threats for, for Providence and for basically every other city right now.
Donnis: How do you, how do you assess the response by elected officials in Rhode Island?
Smiley: I think that our federal delegation continues to represent us well but it’s a tough time in the Democratic Party right now and I think all of us are looking for national leaders to help rally the cause. At the local level, which is what I remain focused on, is taking care of our city, making sure that we are defending our values, standing up for what we believe in, but also sort of preparing for the worst as opposed to just hoping for the best because that’s no way to run a major organization with you know, a couple hundred thousand residents that depend on us.
Donnis: The Trump administration’s hardline approach on immigration has sown fear and anxiety among immigrant communities. Are you actively concerned about an ICE raid happening in Providence?
Smiley: We’re absolutely concerned about threats to our undocumented community. We have yet to see an actual raid in Providence, although I think that’s a little bit of a term of art. We know our policy. We’ve trained on our policy. We’ve tried to communicate that to our constituents, which is that Providence police officers are not ICE agents. They will not act as immigration agents. If we have a violent criminal who has a detention order signed by a judge, then of course we’re going to cooperate. But if your only crime is being in this country and in this city undocumented we’re not going to participate in that action. And to date, thankfully we’ve not seen any ICE activity in the city of Providence since the Trump administration started. But I know there’s real fear in our community. And so we’re trying to educate our residents on what their rights are and to do our best to try to dial that fear down so that kids still go to school and people still go to work.
Donnis: Democrats would not be in this situation had the party held the White House last November. Why did the party’s appeal diminish to the point where Donald Trump was the preference of voters last year?
Smiley: Listen, there’s smarter people than me at the national level who are doing the diagnosis of what went wrong. What I will say, and you see this a little bit right now with what’s happening with Elon Musk and with President Trump. I think the Republican Party and the Trump administration has hit on some right, on some issues. I think their diagnosis of the problem, we need to acknowledge, at least for many Americans, is right. Is that government’s not working for some of them, that they think it’s too bloated, that they think that there is spending that doesn’t make sense. What we need to do as a party is articulate a different solution as opposed to reject the problem. And so I don’t think we should be defending the bureaucracy either. I think we need to articulate that we know how to make government work for people as opposed to just defend the status quo, which is what we’re trying to do here in Providence, which is to demonstrate that government can work, that government can get things done, that it can be easy, it doesn’t have to hurt and that it can actually help people. And so, you know, that’s what I’m staying focused on, which is demonstrating competence here in Providence and proudly demonstrating competence as a Democrat to try to show people that there is a way that government can work for them.
Donnis: And speaking of getting things done, let’s talk about the Providence schools. Fewer than 10 percent of Providence eighth graders score proficient on math in standard assessments and about 15 percent on English language arts. I don’t think it’s going out on a ledge to suggest that if those were the results in Barrington or East Greenwich, parents would be marching in the streets. Why is there not more outrage about that in Providence?
Smiley: So it is outrageous, those results, and people should be very upset. I think people are upset. I just think the parents in my city are tired. They’ve been saying this is not okay for a long time. Part of the reason that we’re even talking about the fact that there’s a takeover, which we’re now six years into, was because these are the same results that we had six years ago. And I don’t want to blame parents. Parents have spoken out. They say they’re dissatisfied with the results. And that helped get us into the takeover, the turnaround. And so our parents have said that we’re not satisfied with the outcomes. I think the reason you’re not seeing protests in the street every day is because they got three jobs and are working hard, just keeping it all together and they have already expressed their dissatisfaction with the results. And we’re trying to now deliver for them.
Donnis: There’s a bit of a tussle right now between you and state officials like Governor Dan McKee and Education Commissioner Angelica Infante Green about when Providence will regain control of the city schools. I think the larger point is how the schools continue to underperform. This is a long running issue preceding your administration by years and decades. Is it foolhardy to think that your administration can help to improve performance once the city does regain control?
Smiley: Listen, I’m not going to make false promises to parents and we’re not going to go overnight from 10 percent proficient to 80 percent proficient. That’s not how that’s going to happen. But what I do know is that morale is low in our schools. Turnover is high in our schools, and that parents and teachers and community leaders all want our schools back. And that by taking our schools back into local control, we can turn around the tone and tenor in our schools and continue with the good work that is happening. There are many, many bright spots in the Providence public schools. But it is crystal clear to me, yesterday we released a community satisfaction survey, a community input results where an overwhelming majority of Providence residents want to see their schools back in local control. And that sort of boost in confidence that boost in morale will yield results to continue make progress.
Donnis: We know how cities like Providence have lower occupancy in downtown office buildings due to the pandemic and changing work habits. At the same time, Rhode Island has a huge demand or huge need for more housing. So why haven’t we seen more conversion of privately owned residential privately owned buildings in downtown province.
Smiley: So we’ve seen some conversions, but the reason we haven’t seen more is because the financial models still don’t work, which is why one of my top priorities this year in the general assembly we have a piece of legislation that would provide a commercial to residential tax credit to help make the math work, if you will, for developers, and it would be a long term tax property tax savings for any and only for the conversion of commercial space into residential space, because we’ve got too much commercial space and not enough residential space. And we know how to do this.
It’s just that the math doesn’t work. And so this subsidy will help assist that conversion. And so it’s something that we’re pushing very hard this year at the Statehouse.
Donnis: Providence has faced a perennial need for more revenue. Do you have any out of the box ideas for increasing the city’s revenue?
Smiley: Every city and town in Rhode Island, Providence especially, needs to diversify its revenue from just the property tax. We have a double problem here in Providence, which is not only are we over relying on property taxes, half of our property is tax exempt. And so you can’t, you just can’t squeeze any more out of that. And so this year we are also at the General Assembly have a proposal for a tax on parking in the city. This would apply the state 7 percent sales tax to any paid parking in Providence, the revenue coming to Providence. This is a statewide bill, so it could apply to other communities. If they chose, they’d have to vote to opt in. Providence would and that will allow for anyone who’s coming to see a show at PPAC or watch a game at the AMP or coming into work that they pay a little bit to the services that they consume while they’re here. Because whether you’re from Providence or not, while you’re here, we’re providing fire protection, police protection, we’re cleaning the streets and sweeping the sidewalks. And so someone has to pay for all of that. So that is this year’s new revenue and it’s not property taxes.
Donnis: The bill to the effort to outlaw assault weapons faces a better outlook this year due to a shift in position by Senate President Dominic Reggiero. Nonetheless, the people most at risk of violence through handguns are people of color in poor parts of Providence. What is your plan for addressing that?
Smiley: So we need to do both. We do need to continue to tighten gun laws. We should make it harder to get a gun and Rhode Island has relatively strong gun laws as compared to many other states in the country. And we should continue to make progress, but then we also need to get those illegal guns out of people’s hands. Providence police is our primary tool for that. Last year they took something like 400 guns off the street. Every year we take more and more guns off the street. And sadly it doesn’t scratch the surface. You know, I’ve talked to some senior police officers who used to tell me that if there were two or three gun seizures a month, that was a big deal and a great success. Now we’re talking about hundreds per year, and it doesn’t scratch the surface. And so even though we should continue to pass stricter gun laws, the reality is there are so many guns in our community already that all we can do is to continue to support smart and effective police methods to get some of those guns off the street and out of the hands of people who have no right having one.
Donnis: Our interview is airing on Valentine’s Day, a day to celebrate love. You and your husband, Jim DeRentis, got married in Massachusetts because that was before Rhode Island legalized same sex marriage in 2013. With civil rights very much in the news, how do you see the outlook for love between consenting adults in America?
Smiley: It’s something that we didn’t think we would be worried about taking a step backwards. Traditionally in this country, when we’ve afforded new rights to people, that has always been a forward progress. And it’s something that I know many members of my community, the LGBT community, is nervous and worried about. We can’t go back to the old days, the early days of marriage equality, what would happen is you were married in one state and then if you were driving across the country, you’d be unmarried multiple times on that car trip. That’s no way to protect people and, and I think what we’ve demonstrated over the last decade or so of marriage equality is that, and, and this was the case that we had to make and it seems tiring and tedious and frustrating to have to re-litigate this but marriage is actually a very conservative institution and it’s like we were fighting for the right to be in a committed relationship to one another in what is one of the most conservative institutions in this country and that should be what the other side of the aisle would want to provide for, and so I understand and recognize people’s anxiety around it, but we’re not going to give up our rights without a fight.
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Craft brewing exploded in popularity over the last 15 years. In Rhode Island, the number of craft brewers has climbed to almost 40 and they can be found around the state. But craft brewers in Rhode Island are regulated more stringently than their counterparts in Connecticut and Massachusetts. They say that has made it more difficult to expand their business. You can watch my story about that on RI PBS Weekly at 7:30 pm this Sunday. And
you can find my Friday TGIF politics column around 4 this afternoon on X, Bluesky, Threads, Facebook, and at thepublicsradio.org/TGIF.
That’s it for our show. Political Roundtable is a production of The Public’s Radio. Our producer is James Baumgartner. Our editor is Alex Nunes. I’m Ian Donnis, and I’ll see you on the radio.
