State Legislative Updates

(This piece is published here with the kind permission of Republican Rhode Island Senator Jessica De la Cruz. You can subscribe to her legislative updates here.)

The 2026 legislative session wrapped up on June 11. Rhode Island closed the books on a record $15.2 billion state budget, an unprecedented $600 million bond package now headed to the November ballot, and local property tax hikes hitting their highest mark in a decade — with seven communities exceeding the state's 4% cap. We had a few bright spots this session, but overall, it was dominated by missed opportunities, record-high spending, controversial new taxes, and more government overreach. Here's my breakdown:

The Good

Creation of an Inspector General. After years of Senate Republican advocacy, lawmakers finally passed a bill establishing an independent Office of Inspector General to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse. It's not the office Republicans originally envisioned — the legislative and judicial branches are explicitly exempted from its reach — but a watchdog with teeth is better than no watchdog at all. The OIG gives us an immediate, independent mechanism to investigate the Executive Branch, state contracts, and quasi-public agencies — the source of many of this state's most expensive recent scandals. It's a hard-fought victory, and I'll keep pushing to bring the General Assembly itself and judiciary under its jurisdiction.

Social Security Tax Reform Republicans fought for a full, universal repeal of the state's Social Security tax. We didn't get everything we wanted, but I'd rather take a real win than let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Eliminating the age threshold — which previously disqualified retirees younger than 67 from the exemption — immediately shields roughly 9,200 early retirees from this tax. That's real relief, today.

No Further Erosion of Second Amendment Rights. Every restrictive firearms bill failed to advance, including an attempt to "finish the job" on last year's assault weapons sales ban by criminalizing possession outright — a bill that would have forced law-abiding gun owners to surrender their firearms, sell them out of state, or face a 10-year felony. Bills to strip liability protections from the firearms industry, overhaul the legal purchasing process, and repeal Rhode Island's recognition of out-of-state concealed carry permits all died in committee.

But don't let that lead you into a false sense of security. The Senate President's vote back in January was one of the most consequential of the year. When self-described "conservative' and "moderate" Democrats vote to install leadership that then advances gun control, voting "no" on the final bill doesn't wash that away — they made the bill viable in the first place, and they own that.

The Bad

No Broad-Based Tax Relief Despite a massive budget surplus, the supermajority refused to pass any sweeping, permanent relief from the high cost of living — including my legislation for a responsible, phased-in, across-the-board cut to personal income tax rates.

The New Millionaire's Tax The budget creates a new, phased-in surcharge on high earners that climbs to 6.99% in 2027, 7.99% in 2028, and a staggering 8.99% by 2029 for income over $1 million. Just 2,300 of our taxpayers already shoulder roughly 35% of the state's income tax revenue. This policy risks a serious budget hole if even a fraction of those mobile, wealth-creating residents pack up for lower-tax states. It guts our competitive edge against Massachusetts and is projected to drop our national individual tax ranking from 30th all the way to 40th — all while we're sitting on a surplus, with no compelling need to raise taxes at all. The Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council itself found there's no need for this tax. And when the bill eventually comes due because the revenue doesn't materialize, who do you think gets taxed next? The middle class, that's who.

While speaking at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, I made the case plainly: we should be courting the millionaires leaving Massachusetts, not chasing our own out the door. Rhode Island doesn't have a revenue problem — we have a spending problem. But politicians are always hungry for more of your hard-earned money.

The Massive Bond Package. A $600 million general obligation bond package will go before voters as five separate questions on the November ballot: $120 million for housing, $275 million for higher education facilities, $100 million for economic infrastructure, $55 million for environmental projects, and $50 million for historical and cultural sites. If voters approve all five, total taxpayer liability balloons to roughly $960 million over a standard 20-year payoff — including about $360 million in interest alone. Taking on this much debt at once pushes the state into risky territory and kicks the bill down the road to future taxpayers.

The Ugly

The Bloated $15.2 Billion Budget Senate Republicans voted "no" on the record-high FY 2027 budget, which sets the state on a collision course with a looming fiscal crisis. The Governor's original $14.86 billion proposal wasn't expensive enough for the House — they added another $340 million in pure spending on top of it, a roughly 6% increase over last year's budget in a single year. Since 2019, Rhode Island's baseline spending has exploded by an unprecedented 58.8%, forcing taxpayers to absorb $5.63 billion more in ongoing costs than before the pandemic. That is not a sustainable baseline. That is a structural crisis.

Green Energy Mandates. The General Assembly had a real opportunity to push back the state's aggressive, self-inflicted 100% renewable energy mandate from 2033 to 2050 and cap energy efficiency programs — saving consumers over $500 million in the near term, or roughly 25% on their utility bills. Instead, the supermajority doubled down on rigid mandates that will keep driving up delivery fees for families and small businesses already paying some of the highest electric bills in the country, all to fund expensive state climate bureaucracies that — even if 100% successful — won't move the needle on the global climate.

The Charter School Moratorium. Let me say this plainly: school choice is the civil rights issue of our time. Your zip code should never determine the quality of your child's education — but in Rhode Island, it does, and this session, lawmakers made sure it stays that way.

Lawmakers voted to impose a three-year ban on new or expanding public charter schools and permanently cut the statewide charter cap from 35 to 28. They went so far as to retroactively pull approval from the De La Comunidad Bilingual Charter School in Providence — a school that did everything right, spent over a year working in good faith through the state's approval process, and was preparing to open its doors to hundreds of students.

Here's what makes this so infuriating: Rhode Island already spends among the highest amounts per pupil of any state in the country. We are not underfunding these kids. We are trapping them — generation after generation — in some of the worst-performing school systems in the state, despite that spending, and now we're taking away the one option that was actually working for the families lucky enough to win a charter lottery seat.

This isn't about fixing a single classroom or repairing a broken funding formula. It's about protecting the status quo for the adults who run the system, at the expense of the children stuck inside it. Families with money can move to a better district or write a tuition check. Families without it just had the door slammed in their face by their own government.