Meanwhile, the Trump administration is causing uncertainty for the state budget outlook as lawmakers approach the end of the legislative session. And the state Senate is working to make up for lost time after a recent change in leadership. Big issues hang in the balance, including a proposed ban on new sales of assault style weapons and a potential tax hike on Rhode Island’s richest one percent. So how’s the outlook amid uncertainty in DC? And does the new soccer stadium signal brighter days for Pawtucket? This week on Political Roundtable, I’m going in depth with Pawtucket state Senator Meghan Kallman.
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript has been edited for clarity
Ian Donnis: Welcome back to The Public’s Radio.
Sen. Meghan Kallman: Thanks so much for having me. It’s great to be here.
Donnis: Let’s start with the new soccer stadium in Pawtucket. It’s brought some fresh energy to the city and it offers a new attraction. At the same time, the potential cost for taxpayers over 30 years could be up to $132 million and sports stadiums are not always huge economic generators. So do you think the stadium will be the economic catalyst described by Governor McKee?
Kallman: I think that is up to us as policymakers to decide how we engage with this resource, right? So the stadium has been full for the first couple of games. It’s been really well received by the community. The food happens to be great. Soccer’s on the up. The Boston Banshees played the day after, right? It’s a flexible space. But that doesn’t mean we can set it and forget it, right? What that does mean is that we’re going to need to be really thoughtful and intentional about how we handle development going forward. That includes paying particular attention to the surrounding areas. This is in a residential neighborhood. It includes really investing in the small businesses that are both the backbone of the economy and in places where sports stadiums can be or are shown to be better catalysts. It’s because there’s a robust infrastructure of small business and the whole thing isn’t sort of lumped into the stadium itself. So it is a catalyst. When we were first talking about the development first of old McCoy and then of Tidewater, those were among the concerns that I, among others brought up that said, we are here, we have this resource which has proved pretty promising in its first couple of weeks. And I think it, again, it is up to us to make smart policy and community-based decisions to reach and exceed sort of the expected potential of that. So my point is we can choose.
Donnis: What else would you like to see done to bring more jobs and more economic growth to Pawtucket?
Kallman: I think generally speaking, the things that I would like to see around the stadium are the things that I would like to see in general.
Which is robust housing and infrastructure. When you look at the data about what places experience growth in jobs, it is places that already have existing infrastructure. So, robust housing that people can afford. Quality schools, public transit, the kinds of things that younger workers are looking for. Those are investments that are going to pay off for our city. In fact, they’re gonna pay off for the entire state. So again, I think not seeing the stadium as it’s sort of own magic bullet, right? We have to see this as part of an integrated effort to become a resilient, dynamic intercultural city with support for our small businesses, for our community members, and for the infrastructure that keeps us all healthy.
Donnis: Let’s talk a little bit about national politics. Democrats were slow to respond to voters’ concerns about inflation and immigration. And then of course, Joe Biden had a disastrous debate performance last year. Do you blame Democrats for essentially handing an open door for Donald Trump to return to the White House?
Kallman: I think we need to take every conversation that we’re having about politics right now with this national picture in mind. People were expressing concerns that they had about the economy, about the cost of living, about the cost of childcare, about education, about the cost of food, cost of eggs and the Democrats did not take that as seriously as they could have taken it. I do think there’s a lot of dog whistling that goes on in punditry around, you know, who’s to blame? To me there are lessons that we can be learning, but for me, the biggest lesson is that there are some really big institutional failures that have occurred in the past 20 years. And voters recognize that, right? We do not take those institutional failures seriously at our peril. And again, I don’t even mean just Republican, Democrat here.
Donnis: When you talk about institutional failures, what are you talking about?
Kallman: I’m talking about all kinds of things from the cost of living, right? The systems that are supposed to protect our wellbeing to the fact that you can barely get healthcare in this country. And in Rhode Island, we’re experiencing a particularly acute crisis, right? The institutions that are supposed to safeguard people’s wellbeing. The ability to educate us, to make sure that we stay healthy, to make sure that we can feed our kids and make sure that we have 25 bucks on Saturday to go watch the soccer game. Cost of living has far outstripped wages. So, you know, American institutions, state institutions, regional institutions, oversaw those processes. And over the course of the last decades we have made choices that systematically mean that rich people do really well and average people really, really lose out. And Democrats weren’t listening to that frustration until very recently.
Donnis: Let’s bring it back to Rhode Island. You were first elected to the state senate in 2020. What are the key bills that you’d like to see emerge from the General Assembly this session?
Kallman: Some of them are mine, some of them are not mine. I will say at the top of my list, the Senate actually passed the Building Decarbonization Act last year. It got stuck in the house. We’re hopeful that this year that would change. This is a major climate bill. Basically, Rhode Island has very ambitious climate goals, and we’re not gonna meet those goals unless we figure out how to tackle emissions from buildings. So this is a big bill that would address that problem. The Senate last night, the Judiciary Committee heard the ban on assault weapons, which has been a major priority for many of us in the chamber for a long time. This is as close as it’s gotten, and I would like to see that come the rest of the way out. This is a huge concern for people all across both my constituency and the state. I will say that my constituency particularly cares a lot about this issue.
Donnis: Let me ask you about that, Senator Kallman. The people on the other side of the issue say that only law abiding people obey the law, and that if someone is intent on committing mayhem with a semi-automatic rifle, a law or prohibition is not gonna stop them. How do you respond to that argument?
Kallman: I mean, people can commit mayhem with anything, right? I could commit mayhem with a fork if I chose to. The question is, how do we make it harder for people to do a lot of damage if we find ourselves in a situation like that, and having an assault style weapon is not necessary for anybody but the military, right? I grew up in New Hampshire. People in my family have guns. People in my family hunt. I come at this from a very grounded place. And there is no reason that an assault style weapon would be necessary in the hands of a civilian. There just isn’t.
Donnis: We’re talking here with State Senator Meghan Kallman, a Democrat from Pawtucket. Your chamber has a new president, Val Lawson, who succeeded the late Dominick Ruggiero. What difference does it make for the Senate that Val Lawson is now the president?
Kallman: President Lawson has expressed her support for a number of key issues that I find really encouraging. One of which is the assault weapons ban that was heard last night. Another one was payday lending. Her politics are very close to mine, economically and otherwise. We also happen to both be teachers. I think it makes a big difference on some of these hot button issues, for instance, like the assault weapons ban. She has also expressed vocal support for more progressive tax structures. So basically making the rich pay their fair share which is something that has been at the top of my list for a long time. Bills that I have carried in, bills that my colleagues carry.
Donnis: You wanted to see a different choice become Senate president. You voted for Ryan Pearson, a senator from Cumberland. Last year we saw how two of your colleagues who previously supported Pearson, Dawn Euer and Alana DiMario lost their committee chairmanships for supporting Pearson. So I wonder, has there been any ongoing fallout for people like you who did not vote for Val Lawson for president?
Kallman: So the Senate is a deliberative body, right? By definition in a deliberative body, we are going to disagree if the deliberative body is doing the thing that it’s supposed to do, right? If I wanted to go somewhere where everybody agreed with me, I would not be a politician. And that deliberation includes conversations about which direction we want leadership to go, which direction we want bills to go, which direction we want policy to go. And if we can’t have disagreements about leadership and then go back into the room and figure out where this policy conversation is going, then I think that’s a failure on the part of the Senate and therefore it is my expectation, as someone who shares my values in a lot of these ways that President Lawson will continue to behave in that way.
Donnis: Rhode Island is back in a new era of persistent deficits. What do you think the state should do to either raise more revenue, cut spending, or both?
Kallman: Yeah. Well, there are a number of revenue raising proposals that I believe we need to be taking seriously. There have been various forms of wealth taxes proposed over the course of the last X number of years. One of them is carried in my chamber by my colleague Melissa Murray, which is what they, fondly known as the Millionaires tax. I actually have a bill that is fondly known as the Taylor Swift Tax, which is a sort of additional surcharge on second homes that are valued at over $800,000. And so this, for instance, to get in the weeds for a second, it’s called the Taylor Swift text because it would affect people like Taylor Swift who have very expensive second homes in coastal areas. But it’s actually quite a politically safe bill because most people who have very expensive homes in coastal areas actually vote somewhere else, right? New York or California or Massachusetts. And so that there are additional programs or changes contemplated to do things, for instance, like fund RIPTA, which is a big priority of mine. RIPTA is facing a $32 million deficit which is not an acceptable place for us to be. That said, the General Assembly has taken virtually no action on funding RIPTA for three decades because we’ve been funding it with a gas tax. Gas tax is going down. We need to be very seriously considering other options. I have some proposals. My colleague, Senator Zurier has some proposals. My colleague, Senator Britto has some proposals, but we can’t just cut our way out of this. Rhode Island obviously gets a huge amount of our budget. I think it’s 37% from federal grants and aid. We’re not gonna be able to fix all of that, but we do need to be doing everything in our power, and that includes adjusting our own tax code and making sure that the people who are at the top of those brackets are contributing fairly to the wellbeing of the state. And we have not yet done that.
Donnis: You are the Senate sponsor of a bill named for former Senator Lila Sapinsley for physician assisted suicide. This is a controversial issue. It raises hot buttons for different people. So how would you expect to ever pass this legislation if it is to get eventually passed?
Kallman: I think the way that we pass all controversial legislation, which is with a lot of dialogue and a lot of consensus building and over a little bit of time. And I want to interject here again and say that this issue is quite personal for me. One, because when my grandfather was sick he was a very sort of staid farmer and he didn’t talk about feelings, but when he got his diagnosis, he started kind of littering the house with these pamphlets for for physician assisted suicide in Vermont and programs in Oregon. And it really made an impression on me and I guess. I also want to note that Senator Gordon Rogers, who represents Foster Gloucester and he’s a Republican, he has signed onto this bill for the last X number of years. So there is already evidence that there is ideological diversity behind this. And you know, like for instance, abortion, this legislation enables people to make choices regarding their own bodies. And to me it’s the other side of the same coin.
Donnis: Very short on time here. So just a yes or no please. You mentioned payday lending earlier. Do you expect a cap on payday lending to emerge from the Senate this year?
Kallman: I certainly hope so.
Donnis: That’s all the time we have, so we need to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us. State Senator Meghan Kallman, a Democrat from Pawtucket.
Kallman: Thanks so much for having me.
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U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse says Democrats need to beat Republicans at their own mastery of political messaging. The four-term senator is looking for his party to stage a comeback in mid-term elections next year. You can read more about that in my Friday TGIF politics column posting around 4:00 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.
