Providence Special Committee on State Legislative Affairs - Wednesday, June 3, 2026 - UTR

Good evening. Thank you for joining us. Today is Wednesday, 06/03/2026. This is the special committee on state legislative affairs on the rise. The time is 05:49.

And third, please

call the roll. Chairman Gonzales. Present. Vice Chairman Loias is absent. Councilwoman Peterson.

Present. Councilwoman Vargas. Present. Councilwoman Graves? Present.

For president, I have seen you have a forum.

Thank you all for being here, and I'd like to acknowledge our policy analyst. Brandon, thank you for joining us. If have you any questions, we'll certainly well, thank you for all your expertise, and thanks to the court's force for all that you do.

So I I'm thinking what would

be helpful here is if we I know some of us have had an opportunity to to read through some of this legislation, and we have our memo on so many of these items, item number one, item number two, item number three, item number four, item number five, item number six. And so those items, one through six, are all related to childcare and education. So I think we could we could probably pass all of those items together. There's a motion for that. I think we can go through it very quickly.

But the number one is early education, childcare access, and affordability legislation. So I think that would some of you know here, if you had a chance to read through it, would expand child care access, child care workforce development, compensation, and proof in the government program access. Item number two would support legislation directing the management of the existing workforce development, and that's supported through DHS and department Elementary and Secondary Education. Item number three would be provision of childcare funding for early child educators and modifying these the eligibility requirements to 85% of state leading income and expanding funding to at least twenty hours per week and so on and so forth. So there's increase in childcare worker retention bonuses, legislation to specify that pre kindergarten programs could be added to programs to increase access to voluntary high quality pre kindergarten programs, and then house bill twenty twenty six h eight one sixty three would establish guidelines, rules, and regulations for the implementation expansion of pre k education programs for kids ages three to four.

Mhmm. So I think a lot of this stuff is pretty self explanatory. So if we could certainly have questions from committee members, but I think most of us will be in agreement with these items. So if there's a motion to approve one through six, we can do that, but I can certainly open it up to to questions from committee members first. Questions from committee members about these items, number one through six.

Can.

Second.

Great. So moving to approve councilor Graves. And then second by councilor Peterson, we're gonna pass items number one through six. These are all pieces of legislation related to pre k and child care. All those in favor?

I'll have.

All those opposed? The ayes have it, so we will pass item number six. Item number seven is a house bill and senate bill related to ranked choice voting. This is an interesting oh, madam or apologies. Do you agree to item number seven Yes.

For the record. Item number seven, resolution endorsing and urging passage by the general assembly of house bill twenty twenty six h eighty one sixty three, an act relating to education Rhode Island Pre Kindergarten Education Act.

So this resolution would support state legislation enabling the establishment of a system of prime choice voting whenever a municipality's charter amendments is approved by its voters. So it still have to go through the charter amendment process. I believe this is introduced at the state house by might be Brett Kislak on house side and maybe senator Zurier on the on the on the senate side. If I have that wrong, apologies, but it's essentially legislation that support legal and legislation should municipality want to implement ranked choice voting. So there are other municipalities in the country that do this.

New York being one of them. So very simple piece of legislation in terms of ranked choice voting. Any questions from committee members about this? Okay. Seeing that there's no yes?

If I may Yes. Quickly, chair. On item number one, I should state that item number one, the early education child care access resolution is from the twenty twenty five legislative session separate and apart from the other items here. Oh, I see. Okay.

So For the other child care items, which are from the current general assembly session.

Okay. So What happened? Mhmm. Okay. Since we already passed it, we have to kinda move on.

So it is it is what it is, but we can I guess if that goes to the floor, even if it passes, it'll get transmitted to the to the general assembly, but I think there might be similar bill this this year? We'll just transmit those over to the general assembly. So but thank you for providing that. Sorry. We we should continue that indefinitely.

So any additional questions about item number seven? Motion to approve. Counselor Peterson. Second. Seconded by counselor Vargas.

All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed, the ayes have it. Item number seven is passed. And then we can move on to item number eight.

Item number eight, resolution urging support and passage of the 2026 Rhode Island House of Representatives Housing legislative agenda.

Great. So this is a pretty expansive legislative package introduced by a former speaker. This is housing package. So h 8,000 amends the homeless bill of rights to require a minimum fifteen day notice of This establishment to resident individuals and families subject to emergency and safety exceptions. H 8,001 enables municipalities to temporarily allow pallet shelter like units during a declared emergency with specified requirements and replacement of state, fire, building, and housing maintenance codes, and so on and so forth.

I I don't think I need to go through all of that. Maybe we should just should we take a moment to just read through this Mhmm. And then we can we can have a discussion about it. So I I proposal here. So 8,000 as well as so 8,000, that's the first bullet point there.

I can see that. Mhmm. And then h 8,005, which would bar zone ordinance requirements of more than two off street spaces for any dwelling unit. Those two, I would presume, are more of a controversial for the, like, the entire body, and people might have disagreement on those those two. We did remove the there was a h 8,006, which was going to amend the law, and and we we don't support that so that was removed.

You could potentially remove eight thousand and eight thousand and five, and the others are pretty self explanatory. So 8001 would be allowing for pallet shelters. 8002 would allow for the construction of single stair four story buildings. H thousand 8,003 would exempt adaptive reuse on state owned land from municipal comprehensive planning. 8,004 was the technical and procedural amendments, the comprehensive planning at the state level.

8,007 would amend the minor subdivision definition in state law to allow single family infill. So allow allow for single family infill subdivisions essentially by right, and then 8008 would form a special legislative commission to study current condo law. So those are, I would presume, not particularly controversial. I could see eight thousand eight thousand five. There could be some disagreement on those.

So what if we pass this without those exempting those two?

I'm trying to debate Resolutions. 8002, you know, we we will be thousand I had more questions, like, what district like, what resident like, within part threes? Is it in commercial? Is it all around? Is it general because if it's a general allowance of building four story buildings in multifamily residential areas, I would take just a little bit.

I would need some more community input on that one for me particularly because I know that it becomes it could just be be a lot more questionable for my particular neighbors. So I would not want to support 8,002 without further understanding of it. So that's just me. Yeah.

I could see that, like, being challenging for, like, ADA accessibility, disability requirements. So what if we what if we added that to what we would what we would remove? So we would remove 8,000, 8,002, 8,005. Are there any others that we'd wanna remove before? If I weigh eight thousand, I propose through that because I don't know I mean, the minimum notice requirements, I I think that probably

I I don't know how comfortable I feel with that. I believe it happens now. They

do, but I don't it's I'm not sure what the what the difference in the timeline is. And I

If if I may, I am not exactly precisely sure of the minimum you're referring to. It could be that that is the standard operating procedure, but it's not necessarily codified. 8,000 would specifically codify a minimum of fifteen days. So even if they're the typical protocol is a thirty day, then in this case, they'll provide a specific statutory requirement for a minimum of fifteen days notice of encampment.

Got it. Yeah.

For of an encampment closure or clearing out.

Yeah. I just I don't know if that's, like, good or bad.

Mhmm. Well, if pardon me also if

I may.

It's it's subject to additional exceptions. So if there are health and safety concerns associated with the encampment, that fifteen day minimum can be waived.

Well, what's that current minimum? Is it longer or

is it shorter? I again, I'm not exactly sure. It could be that this one that's currently in use is merely a rule of thumb, but is not codified in state law. So there may be municipalities that have the encampments that are not abiding by, say, a thirty day notice. So this would provide a blanket minimum across the state.

Yeah. Yeah. Likewise. So if we what if we remove that one too so we get it for clarity? Mhmm.

Because I I mean, I don't I would hope that the minimum is maybe I don't know of this, so I wouldn't wanna reduce the minimum. And to your point, I don't know if this is just codifying that minimum to make it better for our house people, or I I I feel like we should look into this. Yes. Like, those people need time.

And I was that's what I was trying to find.

Once you get that Yes.

I I could if I may. I can certainly determine what might be standard operating procedure, but from a very cursory understanding, the the encampment notifications or other the clearance notifications are done municipally. Mhmm. Again, this would codify the minimum at a state level.