Chafee Details Tax Plan to Narragansett Businesses, Residents

NARRAGANSETT – Citing the need to submit a balanced budget and to simultaneously maintain higher education, transportation and pension funding, Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee answered questions about his proposed budget from Narragansett business owners and residents on Wednesday morning.

The governor spoke about his budget for about 19 minutes, referring to papers for certain statistics from time to time, before opening the floor to questions. See the attached videos for all of Chafee’s remarks, along with his response to specific questions from residents.

Chafee noted that while he realized his budget proposal of broadening the sales tax to a slew of new items wasn’t popular, he viewed it as the right thing to do as a first-year step in combating Rhode Island’s huge projected budget deficits.

The forum was organized by the Narragansett Chamber of Commerce and hosted at the Village Inn.

The crowd of about 35 remained cordial toward Chafee for the entire session, which lasted about 40 minutes.

Chafee left at about 8:55 a.m. for another speaking appointment, but Paul Dion, the chief of the Office of Revenue Analysis in the Rhode Island Department of Revenue, and Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation Executive Director Keith Stokes answered questions for another 40 minutes.

Stokes said that while there was definitely room for a “small, compact state” like Rhode Island to become more efficient, it would require some sacrifice on the part of individual towns.

“Sometimes we don’t want good government, we want good government for ourselves,” he said. “It’s a shared sacrifice initially.”

Stokes said that as a result, towns had to stop looking at tourism and marketing as individual, competitive ventures. The state needs a comprehensive, cohesive marketing and branding plan.

“It’s not one town versus the next, it’s working collaboratively,” he said. “If not, we’re going to continue to lose market share [to other states].”

He noted that just Connecticut’s marketing budget for tourism was about $15 million, which was almost equivalent to what the state of Rhode Island collected in tourism revenue from taxes.

Deborah Kelso, the executive director of the Narragansett Chamber of Commerce, expressed concerned about a RIDEM proposal to double parking fees at state beaches. She said that the neighborhoods around Scarborough and Roger Wheeler state beaches weren’t configured to handle people attempting to skip out on a parking fee.

“They’re going to park on Knowlesway and hike on down,” she said.

Dion said that the DEM had decided to raise rates after a comparison to other town beaches, in order to remain competitive. He added that the fee increases had not yet been approved.

“The doubling of the beach parking fees is not set in stone,” he said, noting that hearings had just been held, as opposed to an adoption of new rates.

“Beach fees haven’t been raised since 2002 … The reality was that we were significantly below what those town beaches are charging.”

The new rates were also proposed with an eye toward Misquamicut Beach in Westerly, which is close to the Connecticut border.

“Down in Misquamicut, we realize that is all Connecticut traffic there,” he said.

Another resident who works in the human services field asked Dion about the cuts to those programs in the budget. He said that he had worked with one local for five years, to rehabilitate him into a citizen with a full-time job, only for the program he is involved in to be cut.

Unfortunately, Dion noted that when it came to human services, the executive branch was under pressure to cut costs and services, and there wasn’t an easy, obvious place to do it.

“The hardest hearings in the world when it comes to budget cuts is human services,” he said.

Stay tuned to Narraganset Patch, as we will update this story with other videos from Chafee’s forum today.