Rep. David Morales, a Providence Democrat, speaks during an event at the Rhode Island State House on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025, about a bill that would authorize a limited number of economic impact statements in the Rhode Island legislature in 2025 and 2026. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
When lawmakers bring a bill to the chamber floor, one of the first questions their colleagues might ask is: How much will this cost?
Fiscal notes offer an answer to that perennial question, by estimating the financial impact of a piece of legislation. Could the same approach be applied beyond a budgetary context, and examine a bill’s possible effects on social equity or historically disenfranchised groups?
Such an analysis is called an equity impact statement, and Providence Democratic Rep. David Morales would like to see them written into the Rhode Island House of Representatives rules for the 2025 and 2026 legislative sessions.
“Equity impact statements are critical tools,” said Morales at a State House event Tuesday. “Tools that we as legislators and our staff members, and most importantly, the public can use to evaluate and understand how legislation serves to either benefit or potentially hurt our communities, whether it’s by coincidence or by design.”
That’s the idea behind bill H5010, which debuted on the Rhode Island House floor Jan. 10 and now moves to the House Committee on Rules Wednesday under the sponsorship of Morales.
With backing from the Economic Progress Institute and Common Cause Rhode Island, as well as eight other Democrat co-sponsors, the bill would allow both the House Speaker and the Rhode Island Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus (RIBLIA) to solicit equity impact statements on up to five bills each session.
“Now that we have started another legislative term, it’s important that we take the time to center ourselves and recognize that every legislative document that is introduced, from a resolution to a bill to a budget article, is in fact a moral document,” Morales said, one which mirrors “the values of a legislator and the changes that they seek to make in our communities.”
The impact statements would assess a proposed law’s plausible influence across categories like race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability or national origin. The request, according to the bill text, would specify which demographics would be analyzed. The statements would ideally provide legislators insight into whether a bill could increase or decrease equity, or leave it unaffected for the studied groups.
Morales pointed to small business grant programs as one example of where legislative language might appear “race neutral at face value” but contain consequences that could exacerbate racial disparities.
Sen. Tiara Mack, a Providence Democrat who introduced a similar bill last year, joined Morales at Tuesday’s rally in the State House Library. Speaking after Morales, Mack mostly agreed with her colleague’s sentiments — except Morales’ assessment that equity “does not come naturally,” but only from “a firm commitment to justice.”
Mack began, ‘“I’m going to fight back on something that David said. Equity impact should come naturally to us, because it is a love language.”
“Good policy is a love language, and is a statement that tells our neighbors across the state, from Woonsocket to Westerly, that we see them, and that we love them.”
Should the bill pass, the Legislative Council, which serves as the research wing of the Rhode Island General Assembly, would be responsible for fashioning the impact statements. The council would collaborate with the Rhode Island Commission on Prejudice and Bias, and other sources — like colleges, universities, and relevant state agencies — in the process.
Another stipulation in the bill text is that impact statements would be made available to the public at least a week prior to any committee vote on the proposed legislation.
This year’s bill is a redux of a more comprehensive effort in 2023, which was introduced by several of the same representatives. Bill H5763 would have required equity impact statements for any bill brought to the House floor.
Speaking only a few yards from a new portrait of state founder Roger Williams, Mack emphasized Rhode Island’s history as a long history of “fighting for equity.”
“Equity impacts is about telling people a story through policy,” she said. “That this building is not a complicated place to navigate, but that it’s a place that sees your struggle, addresses your struggle.”
It’s important that we take the time to center ourselves and recognize that every legislative document that is introduced, from a resolution to a bill to a budget article, is in fact a moral document.
– Rep. David Morales, a Providence Democrat
Joining Morales and Mack at the rally was an abbreviated who’s who among major progressive and POC-focused organizations in Rhode Island, including Weayonnoh Nelson-Davies, executive director of the Economic Progress Institute, who led the audience in a call-and-response during her opening remarks.
“Can you join me?” Nelson-Davies asked the crowd. “I want you to repeat: The fight for equity is alive in Rhode Island.”
Following several rounds of affirmations from the crowd, John Marion of Common Cause Rhode Island took to the podium. Nelson-Davies was a hard act to follow, he admitted, but he could still speak to the legislation’s merits, which would give lawmakers more information when they vote.
“When lawmakers have more information about legislation, they can make better arguments, whether it’s for or against,” Marion said. “They can better represent the needs and wishes of constituents.”
Nine states have equity impact laws in place: Iowa, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Oregon, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia. The legislation differs from place to place, and early adopters, like Iowa in 2008, narrowed focus to specific areas of law like criminal justice or prison sentencing.
A quick search for similar bills nationwide shows equity impact proposals have appeared before lawmakers in Minnesota, California, Washington, and Georgia, all within the last four years.
In his turn at the podium, Raymond Two Hawks Watson, a Narragansett activist and executive director of the Center for Indigenous Peoples Rights argued for equity as a fiscal measure in its own right.
“When I look at this bill, what I’m seeing is it gives lawmakers a tool to be better informed when they make decisions about how they administer public resources, funds and supports,” Watson said. “Why would anyone be against that?”
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