As Rhode Island heads into a critical budget season, Governor Dan McKee is bracing for potential fallout from Republican-led federal spending cuts that could impact Medicaid, SNAP, and other key programs. In a conversation with The Public’s Radio’s Ian Donnis, McKee addressed growing concerns over the state’s public transit funding gap, the fragile future of Roger Williams Medical Center and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, and his administration’s educational initiative “Math Matters.” While emphasizing the importance of real-time data and collaboration with legislative leaders, McKee said the state remains focused on minimizing disruptions and planning for contingencies.
Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity
Ian Donnis: Governor Dan McKee, thanks for sitting down with us.
Gov. Dan McKee: Well thank you for having me and I appreciate the opportunity.
Donnis: We’re coming up on June, the month when the General Assembly usually passes a new state budget. There’s a lot of uncertainty because of the Trump administration and potential cuts to Medicaid, food, nutrition benefits, and other programs.
How do you expect Republican spending priorities to affect Rhode Island’s budget?
Gov. McKee: Well, I’ve been saying that it’s very dangerous, the uncertainty that’s there. And so it’s very difficult to kind of see into the future. But there are some really problem issues that are coming our way, potentially Medicaid, the SNAP programs in particular. And we know that that creates a great deal of anxiety with people. But what we’re doing here is just trying to follow the bouncing ball, and so that we’re not overreacting. But at the same point in time, we are continuously meeting on the most updated information so that we can address the issues.
Donnis: Do you expect the General Assembly will have to come back sometime in the fall to address the fallout from the Republican budget plan?
Gov. McKee: It’s possible. You know, I meet weekly with the Senate president as well as the speaker. We talk about these things. So I think the main, most important thing is where we — let’s make our decisions based on what we know at the moment, when the budget’s gonna get passed, which is just a few weeks away. And we were fortunate to have estimated revenue, a little over $80 million from what we had to to work with in November. So I can see that, what we can see right now, we should be able to balance that budget with those revenues without creating any cuts.
Donnis: Medicaid is the insurance program mostly for low income Rhode Islanders. That makes up about a third of the budget. If there’s a sharp cut in that, how might the state be able to make up the money?
Gov. McKee: Yeah. So we gotta balance that, right? So we don’t know what we are actually dealing with right now. But I think that the idea that the people who can work, hopefully we’re gonna be able to find ways to have them work to offset some of those things. But in the extreme, it’s gonna be really difficult, Ian, right? But until we know what that looks like, it’s gonna be very difficult to kind of say, “Okay, this is what we’re gonna do on any of these issues that Washington is on fire on right now.”
Donnis: Speaking of spending, RIPTA, the state’s public transit agency, faces a deficit of about $32-33 million. According to a report in The Providence Journal recently, you have not proposed any new ideas to make up for that deficit. Why not?
Gov. McKee: Well, first of all, we were waiting on this study that just came out and we actually haven’t seen the full report yet. And so we’re asking RIPTA to provide that support. We’re meeting with their administration, that executive staff there with Chris [Durand] talking about ways that we can, they can actually internally offset potentially some of the moves they can make. And we’re working on that. And then we’re looking at strategies, quite frankly, that can not just plug the hole but also try to build it into the budget so that some of those dollars that they’re talking about we won’t have to deal with this year after year.
Donnis: You are supporting an event called Math Matters Rhode Island. Tell us about that. That’s happening May 31st.
Gov. McKee: Yes, a very important piece in terms of our Rhode Island 2030 plan, where we’re raising academic outcomes. One of our goals, raising incomes and also raising our health levels. The Math Matters is part of the Learn 365. We’re in every home, everyday learning matters. It’s an extension of one of the pieces that we put in place. Attendance Matters, which has been enormously successful, putting hundreds of thousands more school days into the school year compared to when we started it. The Math Matters now is saying, “Look, we have to really focus on math. Out of school strategies.” So we’re having that extravaganza. RIDE will be there. [Education] Commissioner Infante-Green is really leading the charge. And we’ll have this event on Saturday, nine to noon at the nursing school on Eddy Street, open to the public. We expect to have several hundred people there. There’ll be games, there’ll be prizes. There’ll be a whole bunch of opportunities for families to hear how they could actually play games with their kids in the out of school school timeframe that can help young people with their math skills.
Donnis: The Centurion Foundation, a nonprofit based in Atlanta, is hoping to complete a transaction to acquire Roger Williams Medical Center and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital. This would be financed through a bond sale. The bonds did not get a very good grade from a rating agency. Does the state have a backup plan if this bond sale is not successful?
Gov. McKee: Well, we’re continually working to make sure those hospitals stay open. You’ve got jobs there, you’ve got services that people rely on. We know that in other areas of the country some of these hospitals have closed. So we’re doing everything we can. I would expect that we’ll have something that will support those bonds. You know, we’ve already made a public statement with the Senate president and the speaker that we want this to happen, and we’re willing to to support the efforts of making that happen. In the worst case scenarios, we, you know, we’ll have to continue to find ways to keep the hospitals open. And we have some really expertise people in our office. Secretary Charest who’s ran a hospital. He understands the way that it works.
Donnis: Richard Charest, Secretary of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
Gov. McKee: Yeah, so I mean, we are meeting regularly on it. The goal is to keep the hospitals open. And at this point in time, as you said, the bonding is something that is still an unknown. Only a portion of the bonds have been purchased, you know, available. People are willing to invest in those bonds. And we need to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to have the bonds completely sold. If they’re not sold out, then we’re going to have to see, we have to regroup. And we’re going to have to do the things that need to be done to keep the hospitals open.
Donnis: Governor Dan McKee, thank you for sitting down with us.
Gov. McKee: Great. Thanks, Ian. And thank you very much for being here.
