A Rhode Island Superior Court judge on Friday ruled in favor of the state education department, which has withheld $8.5 million in aid from Providence for failing to meet funding obligations for city schools, widening the rift between city leaders and state education officials.
Rhode Island Superior Court Associate Justice Jeffrey A. Lanphear issued tworulings in favor of the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), backing the state-run Providence Public School Department (PPSD)declaring that the city is not paying its fair share to the school department.
“This court, in everything that it does, somehow always seems to apply principles of fairness,” Lanphear said at an afternoon bench motion that followed the release of written decisions Friday morning. “But frankly, balancing the equities is simply not an element of this motion…Here, the only issue is whether or not the city can pay its obligation to the state department. Otherwise, the state can freeze the money.”
Providence School Board makeover is halfway there after Tuesday’s election
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The first ruling partially denied the city’s appeal to stop RIDE from withholding over $7 million in state aid from the Distressed Communities Relief Fund in fiscal year 2024. The judge’s decision underscored the state’s authority over municipalities when they fall short of fulfilling the Crowley Act — the statute that authorized the 2019 state takeover of Providence schools and also prescribes how much funding a state-controlled district must receive from local sources.
Lanphear’s second ruling concerned an October request from RIDE Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green to state Treasurer James Diossa to withhold $8.5 million in car tax payments, claiming Providence owed nearly $30 million to the district overall. The city then filed a legal complaint. The disputed funds remain in escrow — which is where they’ll stay for the time being, as just how much the city will owe is still unclear.
Lanphear scheduled a hearing for Wednesday, Nov. 13, at 9:30 a.m. to help complete what he called “a simple mathematical calculation” that will determine the city’s debt to its schools. Lanphear said he didn’t trust his own mathematics and would be leaving that to experts at next week’s hearing.
I am disappointed that the wasteful, irresponsible spending of the Providence Public School District and the historical lack of sufficient State funding for our highest need students has led us to this point today.
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– Providence Mayor Brett Smiley
While the judge didn’t trust his math, he was more confident in his reading of the Crowley Act. The state could probably fund the entirety of the budget shortfall on its own, Lanphear thought, but the Crowley Act compels the city to increase financial support for the school district each year, regardless of the state’s financial health. RIDE and the city’s wildly different interpretations of the act have formed the terra firma of the ongoing legal contest.
Lanphear rejected the foundation of the city’s argument: That the act requires municipal aid to state-run school districts to mirror the increase in state aid to that particular district.
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“Since the statewide total school aid increased, the City must increase the amount of funding to the PPSD with an equal percentage increase,” Lanphear wrote in his first decision. “The increase in aid to the particular district is not a factor in this calculation.”
Infante-Green’s request to withhold funds followed Providence Mayor Brett Smiley’s public feud with Providence Superintendent Javier Montañez. Montañez called Smiley ahead of a school board subcommittee meeting on Oct. 9, and requested nearly $10.9 million in emergency funding. Without the money, there could be cuts to winter and spring sports, student bus passes and numerous other areas, the superintendent warned.
Smiley responded with a $1 million offer the following day, promising to use money from not-yet-finalized payment in lieu of taxes agreements recently struck with nonprofits in the city. The City Council promised an additional $1.5 million from the final reserves of pandemic relief money. Both mayor and council agreed that the school district would be subject to a third-party audit before they could get any funds. The school department has yet to take any action on the offers, and the City Council earlier this week canceled a meeting that would have authorized the funds, due to the court battle. Rhode Island Superior Court Associate Justice Jeffrey A. Lanphear ruled in favor of the Rhode Island Department of Education, backing the state-run Providence Public School Department in an ongoing budget battle. (Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
Consequences may be very costly
A “deeply disappointed” Smiley issued a statement Friday, arguing that the decision could have expensive consequences for residents across the capital city, including students and their families.
“This decision puts the City’s finances at risk and in the days ahead, we will need to make difficult decisions that we had hoped to avoid, including the potential to increase taxes, cut programs and stop future borrowings, the largest of which is for the future development of new school buildings for our students,” Smiley wrote.
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The mayor then echoed his previous skepticism about the district’s budgeting skills: “I am disappointed that the wasteful, irresponsible spending of the Providence Public School District and the historical lack of sufficient State funding for our highest need students has led us to this point today,” Smiley added.
Providence City Council President Rachel Miller issued a statement Friday lamenting the judge’s “striking decision,” saying it may endanger the city’s financial health. RIDE, Miller argued, sacrificed collaboration and transparency to pursue “an adversarial route” that ignores city needs beyond the school department.
“While RIDE does not have to consider the impacts of cuts to critical city services or tax increases on a struggling community, we do, and the families of PPSD students do as well,” Miller wrote. “Why should Providence taxpayers be forced to bankroll an opaque and irresponsible budgeting process that treats students and families as collateral damage?”
On the greener side of the grass were the victorious Infante-Green and Montañez, who celebrated the ruling in a joint statement.
“Today’s Court ruling is a win for our kids,” they wrote. “Our priority throughout this legal dispute has been clear: making sure Providence students, teachers, and school communities have the proper resources they need and deserve.”
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Jennifer Wood, executive director of Rhode Island Center for Justice, said after the bench motion that she would be meeting with Providence students and parents to consult further about the new developments.“Even from preliminary conversations I know that they are tremendously relieved that further immediate cuts to their schools may be avoided based on the two rulings today,” Wood said.
Wood also highlighted Lanphear’s argument focusing on “the harm to students and their families” without a “‘great’ school system.”
“There are so many small decisions that can make a difference in what a student learns and how they develop and become adults,” Lanphear said at the bench motion.
PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island Department of Health has suspended the license of a nursing assistant who allegedly inappropriately touched a resident of an assisted living facility, records show.
The department filed a notice of summary suspension for Julian Rodriguez on Nov. 25, four days after the resident gave “a detailed statement” to the department, the filing states.
The resident allegedly said Rodriguez was assigned to assist him with showering and used “a massage tool on the patient’s genitals,” according to the notice. Rodriguez also allegedly placed his hands on the resident’s genitals, among other inappropriate conduct, the filing states.
“After considering the above facts, the director of the Department of Health finds that public health, safety, or welfare imperatively requires emergency action,” the notice states.
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The filing does not identify the assisted living facility by name, and says only that Rodriguez was employed there “on or about October 2025.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Health did not immediately return a request for more information on Wednesday morning.
Court records do not show any criminal charges filed against Rodriguez.
Christopher Gavin can be reached at christopher.gavin@globe.com.
PROVIDENCE — The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Vermont, and Washington, asking a judge to force them to hand over voter records that include driver’s license numbers and partial social security numbers.
The lawsuit is the latest of the DOJ’s efforts to compel states to hand over the records.Rhode Island Secretary of State GreggAmore said in September he would hand over the public voter list, but not the list that includes private data the DOJ was requesting.
“One of my most important responsibilities as the chief state election official is safeguarding the data privacy of Rhode Islanders, who entrust us with their personal information when they register to vote,” Amore said Tuesday after the lawsuit was filed. “I will continue to fight to protect it.”
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Amore’s office said the Trump administration has “not been forthcoming on how they will use Rhode Islanders’ private voter data, and they have not provided valid legal justification to obtain it,” said LeeAnne Byrne, Amore’s chief of staff.
She said Amore is concerned that Trump will try to “challenge the clear Constitutional role of states to administer elections in order to undermine voter confidence.”
On Tuesday evening, the DOJ said in a press release that they would continue to file “proactive election integrity litigation” until states comply.
“Accurate voter rolls are the cornerstone of fair and free elections, and too many states have fallen into a pattern of noncompliance with basic voter roll maintenance,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in the press release.
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Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said states that refuse to turn over the data are interfering with the DOJ’s “mission of ensuring that Americans have accurate voter lists as they go to the polls, that every vote counts equally, and that all voters have confidence in election results.”
The Justice Department has requested voter data from at least 40 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
In its lawsuit, the DOJ said it was seeking to investigate Rhode Island’s compliance with the National Voter Registration Act, commonly known as the “motor voter” law from 1993 that allowed states to register voters when they apply for driver’s licenses, along with the 2002 Help America Vote Act.
The goal is to “ascertain Rhode Island’s compliance with list maintenance requirements,” the suit says.
Trump has long claimed that illegal voting is happening in the US, including noncitizen voting.
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The New York Times reported in September that the Justice Department is trying to compile a national voter roll, “buttressing an effort by President Trump and his supporters to try to prove long-running, unsubstantiated claims that droves of undocumented immigrants have voted illegally.”
Elections — including federal elections — are run by individual states, which also maintain the voter rolls in their own states. In his letter to the DOJ in September refusing the request, Amore said Rhode Island maintains the list according to the law and has removed more than 100,000 voters since 2023.
Amore also recently sent out a letter to active voters asking them to confirm their voter registrations ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. If someone received a letter for a person who no longer lives there, they were asked to send it back and note that the person is not at the address.
Cities and towns are currently processing the responses to that letter, Byrne said. Voters whose letters were returned as undeliverable will be moved to inactive status in the coming weeks.
The ACLU of Rhode Island said the DOJ’s demand posed a “major threat to the privacy of Rhode Island voters.”
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“Drivers’ licenses and social security numbers provided as part of the voter registration process are sensitive pieces of information that deserve to be protected,” the ACLU said Tuesday. “This latest attempt to collect enormous amounts of data should be of concern to anyone who wants to prevent the misuse of personal information by the federal government.”
Amore has 21 days to respond to the DOJ’s lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Providence.
Steph Machado can be reached at steph.machado@globe.com. Follow her @StephMachado.
Those costs aren’t the only ones on the minds of those surveyed: “A majority of Rhode Islanders believe prices have increased on regularly purchased items over the past year and will continue to increase in the coming year,” according to a report on the poll’s findings.
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A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State.
“Only 13 percent of Rhode Island residents think their household is better off financially than a year ago, 40 percent think their household is worse off, and 47 percent think their household finances are about the same,” the report states. “The percentage who feel worse off (40 percent) has declined somewhat since May (45 percent).”
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The poll surveyed 711 state residents between Nov. 13 and 17, with a margin of error of 3.7 percent. Thirty-four percent of those polled are registered Democrats and 15 percent are registered Republicans, while 51 percent are not registered with either party.
“Most Independents (88 percent) and Democrats (84 percent) are very or somewhat worried about winter energy costs while 61 percent of Republicans are very or somewhat worried,” the report states.
Data from the US Energy Information Administration shows residential heating oil prices in Rhode Island rose to about $3.88 per gallon the last week of November, up from $3.52 per gallon the same time last year.
The price of natural gas in Rhode Island was about $31.28 per thousand cubic feet in September, according to the most recent data from the agency. Data for September 2024 was not available on Monday but natural gas cost $25.04 per thousand cubic feet in October 2024.
However, winter electricity rates for customers of Rhode Island Energy, although higher than the summer season, have dropped 9 percent compared to the previous year, at 14.77 cents per kilowatt hour compared to last winter’s rate of 16.387 cents per kilowatt hour.
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The company’s electricity customers can also expect to save about $32 a month this winter, after the state’s Public Utilities Commission approved bill credits last week.
Still, the savings fall short of those included in a proposal initially filed by Rhode Island Energy as part of a “hold harmless commitment” intended to shield customers from costs associated with National Grid’s sale of the Narragansett Electric Company to PPL Corporation in 2022.
The proposal, which was withdrawn last month, would have saved customers between $20 and $30 a month on electric bills and $40 to $50 a month on gas during the first three months of 2026. The company said the proposal “faced unexpected and unwarranted opposition seeking to change the terms that were reached through a lengthy process.”
Rhode Island Energy also announced last week the company filed a proposal to increase its gas and electricity distribution rates next year for the first time since 2017. Customers who receive both gas and electricity from the utility provider would see a monthly increase of about $36 beginning Sept. 1, 2026, if approved by the Public Utilities Commission.
According to the poll, 79 percent of Rhode Islanders surveyed also said “prices of things they regularly purchase have risen significantly (49 percent) or slightly (30 percent) in the past twelve months.”
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“Nearly all Democrats (98 percent) say prices of items they regularly purchase have risen in the past 12 months while smaller majorities of Independents (66 percent) and Republicans (57 percent) feel that way,” the report states.
Looking ahead, 64 percent of those polled said they expect prices for regularly purchased items to increase in the next year due to “tariffs (34 percent), poor economic stewardship (23 percent), because prices always seem to increase (12 percent), or because of general inflation (10 percent).”
The majority of Democrats and independents surveyed believe prices will rise over the next 12 months. Meanwhile, 37 percent of Republicans believe prices will decline, compared to 33 percent of those registered with the party who said they think prices will go up.
“Rhode Islanders are generally downbeat on the state and national economies, as a majority feel that the economy is getting worse,” the poll’s report states.
Christopher Gavin can be reached at christopher.gavin@globe.com.
