Providence mayor unveils New Year’s resolutions in legislative package

Two days into Rhode Island’s six-month 2026 legislative session, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley briefed reporters Wednesday afternoon on his legislative priorities.

Smiley told reporters at City Hall that his administration’s priorities “have remained pretty consistent” since he took office in 2023, and this year is more of the same, with his office seeking to stabilize city finances, address the housing market and take back Providence’s public schools from the state control they’ve been under since 2019.

“There’s sure to be other pieces of legislation that individual legislators promote that we will throw our support behind,” Smiley said. “But these are our priorities and our package.”

One notable omission in light of the Dec. 13 mass shooting at Brown University is legislation on gun control. Smiley noted the state already has “relatively strict gun regulations” and Providence is not proposing any new ones. But he said “it’s entirely possible” the city could support such legislation if it appears at the State House this year.

The city has not yet tallied the total municipal cost of its response to the shooting which killed two teenaged Brown undergrads and injured nine other students. In the midst of the chaos, the city’s ledgers were not of great import, Smiley said.

“There was never a decision that was made, or a choice that was deferred or denied, based upon what the overtime cost might have been from any of the public safety tools at our disposal.”

Cost resumes its usual relevance, however, in the city’s legislative priorities this session. Smiley could not specify which state legislators would sponsor the city’s bills, as his office is still hammering out sponsorship with General Assembly leadership. The mayor’s office estimated the bills will likely be submitted later this month.

Smiley acknowledged that all signs point to “a tough budget year for the state,” but he’s hoping legislators will agree to shoulder a three-pillared support system for Providence’s own finances in the upcoming fiscal year. First on his wishlist is increasing the state’s Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) base rate from 27% to 30% of foregone revenue.

Municipalities make PILOT agreements with nonprofits to generate revenue that is lost due to the organizations’ tax-exempt status. The state also doles out PILOT funds to municipalities via a calculation that combines the total assessed value of tax-exempt properties statewide, which is then divvied up and “gets sent back proportionally to cities and towns based upon the tax exempt property that they have in their respective communities,” Smiley explained.

“What we’re saying is the pot should get bigger,” Smiley said.

He said the PILOT rate has not been increased since 1986.

The city hasn’t convened with other municipalities yet about the legislation, Smiley said, but the mayor expects other towns and cities will get on board as “anybody who receives PILOT funding will benefit from this.”

PILOT payments are especially important in Providence, where nonprofits eat up an estimated 42% of the city’s real estate, leaving the city unable to reap benefits from the approximately $8 billion in assessed value these properties represent.

Smiley’s administration helped broker the city’s PILOT deals with large nonprofits like Brown University and Brown University Health. But Smiley did not seek to further antagonize the nonprofits. The bargaining table, he said, often revolves around “not an impasse…just a slow negotiation.”

“I think the events of last month underscore a point that we’ve made for a long time, which is that all of our fates are tied together,” the mayor said. “I want the hospitals to be financially successful. They need to want the city to be financially stable.”

Providence submitted this legislation two years ago, Smiley said, and it returns now as he still believes it a suitable way to procure more revenue from nontaxable nonprofits. The mayor clarified that while the proposal would not fatten the state’s current deficit, it would ultimately draw from the future state’s tax base, because Providence would receive a share of the state’s income tax.

Still, the arrangement could be beneficial for all involved, Smiley thought: “It’s in the state’s best interest that the city, instead of fighting the institutions’ growth, be encouraging the institutions’ growth, and that we be partners with the state in trying to get these places to add jobs and grow.”

Providence got about $8 million last year from this funding source in the state budget last year. Smiley said he wants the state to keep the line item “held flat, to not be cut,” which would leave Providence’s share at roughly $8.1 million.

The preliminary version of Gov. Dan McKee’s budget is expected to arrive in the days after his Jan. 13 State of the State address. Lawmakers will then refine the budget throughout the legislative session.

Another legislative package wrapped in déjà vu is the city’s request to get back its public schools from the Rhode Island Department of Education. Smiley said he wants the schools to return to local control by July 2026, adding the legislation “should be no surprise.”

The protracted tug of war for power over the capital city’s historically underperforming schools began in 2019, when the education department assumed control via a little-used state law. In 2024, the state extended its control up to 2027. The same year, city and state concluded a funding dispute in court, with Providence on the hook for at least three years’ worth of boosted funding.

That settlement is still shaping the city’s fiscal commitments to its schools, with Smiley noting that about $147.5 million overall is earmarked for fiscal year 2027, plus whatever percentage increase in education aid appears in this year’s state budget.

The transition could happen through legislation or from direct action by state education commissioner Angélica Infante-Green.

“We would be happy for her to make a commitment next week that the schools are coming back this summer,” Smiley said, and argued that the purely legislative route was still suboptimal. “Getting permission in June for a July takeback would be difficult and probably a bumpier transition than is in the best interest of students.”

Providence submitted similar legislation last year, but this year, things are different because the city has “stayed at work since the end of the legislative session,” Smiley said. “Similarly, the school board has done exactly what they have been asked to do.”

Providence School Board President Ty’Relle Stephens submitted a letter to legislative leadership Wednesday afternoon in support of the still-to-come legislation.

A $25 million general obligation housing bond could go before voters this November, if lawmakers approve Providence’s request for the ballot. Smiley said voters last approved a housing bond in 2021, and that the $29 million it allocated helped to “seed” the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund. But there’s now less than $1 million left to disperse from that bond, Smiley said.

The taxpayer money borrowed via bond issue would “be restricted to affordable housing projects here in Providence,” Smiley said, arguing a new bond would help the city seize competitive borrowing rates and maintain momentum on easing the housing shortage.

More modest among Smiley’s proposals is a request to extend the city’s “Block the Box” pilot program to 2030. In 2024, lawmakers authorized municipalities to enforce violations at up to three intersections for motorists whose impatience causes them to clog intersections.

The program will sunset in 2027, but Smiley said the city needs more time to test and analyze the data of its camera-driven enforcement to stop box-blocking. Providence’s pilot program remains so nascent that Smiley said the city has not yet found a suitable vendor for the needed technology, because “other communities in America are not doing this. The city is reviewing responses it received from a request for proposals that went out in fall 2025.

“All of our camera technology in Providence is not meant to be revenue-enhancing,” Smiley said. “It’s meant to be behavior-changing…We want people to follow the rules of the road and not enrage people by standing in the middle of an intersection when the light turns red.”

The Crook Point Bascule Bridge, also known in local tongue as the Ghost Bridge, sits at the perimeter of Providence’s Fox Point and stretches over the Seekonk River — well, only partially, as it’s been drawn up since 1976. Smiley wants the state to authorize a new quasi-public agency, the Crook Point Bridge Authority, to whom the Rhode Island Department of Transportation could transfer ownership.

Smiley admitted his imaginings for the iconic landmark don’t quite fit his reputation for exacting governance: “This is a little bit unlike me in that we don’t have a firm plan for this bridge.”

But Smiley thinks the much-graffitied but much-loved structure could be renewed in its importance if owned by a non-governmental entity, which would make it easier to fundraise and manage insurance and liability for what he called an “an asset that is admittedly old.”

“There’s a lot of foundations and such that have either actual restrictions or no interest in giving to government itself,” Smiley said.

The mayor is opposed to demolishing the bridge — something RIDOT tried to do in 2019 — and noted the pedestrian bridge near South Water Street as proof the city can brainstorm first, blueprint later.

The annual upkeep for Crook Point span is “de minimis,” Smiley said, limited to things like fixing fences or mowing brush in the area. The city has no desire to make the bridge operational, lower the span, or fix its rusty gears.

“We want to make sure that it remains safe and stable until such time as we have a full plan for it,” Smiley said.

This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.