Top 10 stories of 2024 in Rhode Island

Construction equipment is seen near the partially-demolished Washington Bridge on Oct. 11, 2024. (Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)

The Washington Bridge is a perfect emblem for Rhode Island’s overarching narrative in 2024, a year that ends with the state’s human benefits enrollment system — known as RIBridges —  taken offline.

After all, the emergency lane closure of the span over the Seekonk River on Dec. 11, 2023, served as the prologue to the end of an era and the start of a new one. Come Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, the relative financial plushness under President Joe Biden’s administration will give way to a sequel Donald Trump presidency that promises to reimagine federal funding via DOGE — a still-embryonic initiative that shares its name with a decade-old meme. 

Presidential election years tend to be liminal, existing between two states with full awareness of that often uncomfortable in-betweenness. There was no surprise in the expiry of federal pandemic relief money to states, which can be spent through 2026 but must be allocated by Dec. 31, per U.S. Dept. of Treasury rules. The state’s budget office has prophesied a fair amount of gloom in the year ahead. But the “Times They Are A-Changin” sentiment found more than budgetary forms of expression over the past year.

Here are the stories that captivated us in 2024:

1. A caveat emptor year for McKee

The state was plagued by procurement problems involving high-dollar, high-importance state contracts in 2024. Gov. Dan McKee’s administration named two finalists who will compete for the final contract to rebuild the Washington Bridge on Dec. 10, then issued an initial request for proposals on Dec. 18 for the pair of design-build teams to offer feedback for the final RFP due Jan. 24. But the winner will remain a mystery till five months into 2025. Had the state found a willing firm in its initial solicitation attempt — which yielded no bidders — the new westbound span would conceivably have welcomed motorists by August 2026.

There’s also no clear end in sight for a decision on a five-year, $15.5 billion Medicaid contract. The massive state contract, equal to 25% of the state’s annual budget, determines which vendors run the state’s medical assistance program for nearly 320,000 Rhode Islanders. A tentative award announced July 16 would have split the deal between two of the bidders — Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island and UnitedHealthcare of New England. But after two losing bidders, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island and Tufts Public Health Plans, Inc., appealed the decision based on flaws in scoring criteria and membership of the review panel, the state agreed to revisit all four bids. There’s still no deadline for a decision as of Dec. 20, said Kerri White, a spokesperson for the Rhode Island Executive Office of Health and Human Services.The contract was initially supposed to take effect July 1, 2025, but is likely to be delayed, White added.

Then there’s the fallout from a $5.2 million state education contract the McKee administration awarded to the ILO Group two-and-a-half years ago and a potential civil investigation looming. The long-awaited results of an investigation unveiled by the Rhode Island Office of the Attorney General and Rhode Island State Police in late October, fell short of legal standards for a criminal conviction. But there was plenty of criticism lobbed at McKee for “steering” the school reopening contract to ILO, a firm linked to McKee’s former adviser, Mike Magee. Common Cause Rhode Island came to an initially more damning conclusion: that McKee violated state ethics laws for accepting, and not reporting, free campaign consulting services from a separate firm linked to Magee. 

Common Cause opted not to file an ethics complaint, finding the same lack of definite proof as Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha did. But the advocacy group has logged a complaint with the Rhode Island Department of State against Magee for failing to register as a lobbyist during his involvement in the contract award.

The saga has also led to talk of adding a proposed “anti-bid-rigging” provision to state procurement law in 2025. Stay tuned.

— Nancy Lavin

2. Step by step, inch by inch, Rhode Island moves right

Apropos of a place nicknamed the Ocean State, Rhode Island has reliably voted blue, year after year. But this year, like many other states considered to be Democratic strongholds, it moved right — at least when it came to the presidential race. Yes, Kamala Harris led Donald Trump by a decisive 13.7 percentage points and secured all four of the state’s Electoral College votes, according to final results of the Nov. 5 election.

But Trump had his best showing among Ocean State voters yet, cracking the 40% threshold for the first time in his three presidential campaigns. The last Republican presidential candidate to receive more than 40% of the votes in Rhode Island was George H. W. Bush in 1988. Trump also flipped Woonsocket, which hasn’t voted for a Republican for president since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Trump leaned heavily on the state’s western half, characterized by more conservative cities and towns, but also made inroads with voters in Pawtucket and Central Falls. In Central Falls, the state’s only majority-minority community, Trump gained nearly 10 percentage points compared with his showing in 2020.

The same push right cannot be said for the members of Rhode Island’s General Assembly, all of whom were up for reelection. The 113-seat legislature retained the exact same partisan split overall: 98 Democrats, 14 Republicans and one independent representative. A few districts changed parties, particularly in open seats. But incumbents prevailed in nearly every state legislative race, including in western Rhode Island’s House District 39, where Democrat Megan Cotter defeated Republican challenger Justin Price by 698 votes, a much wider victory than the 32 votes she won by in 2022. The district spans Richmond, Exeter and a slice of Hopkinton, all of which voted for Trump over Harris in the presidential race.

The only exception to the incumbent victory trend: Warwick Republican Sen. Anthony DeLuca, who lost his reelection bid to Democratic challenger Peter Appollonio, confirmed in a recount. Warwick voters also backed Harris, but by a narrower margin than Biden won the city in 2020.

Across parties, Rhode Islanders eagerly embraced early, in-person voting, with one-third of ballots cast during designated, early voting at polling places statewide — the highest share since the state began offering the option during the pandemic in 2020. Over half, 56%, of voters cast ballots in-person on Election Day, while 11% submitted mail ballots.

— Nancy Lavin

3. Gimmee pallet shelters

Forty-five tiny cabins off Route 146 in Providence were supposed to be a quick solution to ease the state’s growing homelessness crisis. But getting these pallet shelters ready for habitation has been an agonizingly slow process that isn’t done yet.

Assembled in February, the $3.3 million ECHO Village project was supposed to have opened by the end of March. Then it was pushed to the end of spring, then the fall, and then by the end of 2024.

As the year draws to a close, the pallet shelter community is still not up and running — mostly due to bureaucratic hurdles attributed to gaps in the state’s fire and building codes and delayed supply shipments for necessary utility hookups. Delays to ECHO Village come as the state’s unhoused population reached an all-time high, increasing 35% from 2023.

Rhode Island’s first pallet shelter community is now slated to open sometime early next year, according to the state’s newest housing secretary, Deborah Goddard.

The General Assembly as part of its fiscal year 2025 budget called for the housing department to review and recommend ways to streamline housing governance across the state. The report was due by the end of the year.

— Christopher Shea

4. The kids aren’t all right, but could be one day

It’s not just kids in foster care who rely on the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF). Families of kids with significant emotional or behavioral needs can turn to DCYF for help navigating a labyrinth of options for intensive mental health care, from residential treatment centers to East Providence’s Bradley Hospital, the nation’s first psychiatric center for kids.      

But not all options are equal, something made painfully obvious in 2024 thanks to a string of child welfare offenses so egregious that state Rep. Patricia Serpa couldn’t summon the perfect adjective: “I don’t know what the word is,” she said at a January oversight hearing into abuse and neglect reported at St. Mary’s Home for Children in North Providence.

DCYF shared an uncomfortable spotlight with its contractor St. Mary’s, which eventually shuttered its doors in August after an unsuccessful campaign to restore its reputation. But in May’s federal probe into prolonged hospitalizations at Bradley, the hospital escaped fault, while DCYF did not.

The state reached a Dec. 19 agreement with the feds to address the systemic issues underlying the overly long stays at Bradley. Still skeptical are the three advocacy groups behind November’s separate, federal class-action lawsuit against the state for failing to meet its Medicaid obligations for children’s mental health care.

There was a call to reform the system entirely, while researchers relayed concerning rates of kids’ self-reported sadness (but less drinking). Lawmakers tried to keep the phones ringing at a youth psychiatric hotline, and projects began for new intensive care beds in both Exeter and Newport. 

One protagonist in this not-so-fairy tale was attorney Katelyn Medeiros, confirmed as permanent leader of the Office of the Child Advocate in May. Her office is charged with watching the watchers — that is, overseeing DCYF and its contractors — which made for a year of “significant challenges,” Medeiros told Rhode Island Current via email earlier this month. The child advocate said her office plans to leverage all the available powers — legislative, community, and state — in the year ahead, to create “the improved outcomes our children and youth deserve.”

“We will continue to advocate for a system that can be responsive to the complex needs of our children and youth, in real-time,” she said. 

— Alexander Castro

5. Stepping into the breaches

Plenty of questions remain about an end-of-year news dump regarding an end-of-year data breach of RIBridges, the system run by Big Four accounting firm Deloitte is used to determine eligibility for numerous social benefits from food stamps to Medicaid. The online portal, HealthyRhode.RI.gov, is also linked to the state’s health insurance marketplace, HealthSource RI.

That means the personal information of an estimated 650,000 Rhode Islanders — like Social Security numbers, home addresses and banking info — could be released by Brain Cipher, the cybercriminal group that took credit for the breach. State officials scrambled to recommend how the public can protect their info, while human services workers on the frontline have switched to paper processing for benefits.  

There are no estimates for when the customer-facing portal will go back up — the system’s network will have to remain down until an incident response team finishes its work removing anything malicious, including possible ransomware, from the system. If the recovery process takes too long, the state may need to tweak its Jan. 31 open enrollment deadline for HealthSource RI, although officials weren’t committing to anything until more details emerge from Deloitte. A trio of class action lawsuits against the multinational firm filed days after news of the breach shows people don’t need all the technical details to become angry over a state contractor inadvertently leaking their information.  

Ken Block, president of Barrington’s government waste-hunting Simpatico Software Systems and former gubernatorial candidate, didn’t think you needed to be a clairvoyant to see this one coming. For several years in a row, the state’s Auditor General has noted severe deficiencies in the state’s IT policies and incident preparedness, Block said in a Dec. 20 interview. 

Less predictable, perhaps, was September’s hack of the Providence Public School Department, which saw 200 gigabytes of private student and employee data spilled online. That hack ended up being a seriously bad omen itself, preceding the RIBridges system breach by three months. The Providence hackers likely blended into normal network traffic, chameleon-like, evidence that some problems are almost imperceptible unless you know where to look. 

— Alexander Castro

6. A lively experiment in state controlled-schools goes on life support

The largest school district’s governance, staffing and budget — normally the purview of the local school board — became a shared responsibility between city and state when the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) took over the embattled Providence Public School Department (PPSD) in 2019. 

But there was a light, supposedly, at the far end of the tunnel: The state takeover was set to expire in 2024. That didn’t happen, because in August, RIDE Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green made her official recommendation to the state’s K-12 council that the arrangements continue. And so it was: The Council on Elementary and Secondary Education approved an extension of state control that could last through 2027. 

Most available data points to the notion that the district’s schools have not dramatically improved, while a handful of especially struggling schools are receiving extensive makeovers — sometimes at the cost of closing existing schools, which proved a deeply unpopular choice with students and families in the case of 360 High School. The takeover could theoretically end sooner, if metrics like grades, graduation rates and standardized testing improve.

RIDE’s continued reign has not been received with open arms — most especially by the city of Providence, which is now on the hook for $15 million, and statutorily increased funding in 2026 and 2027, thanks to RIDE’s victory via a settlement in November. That money is headed straight for the school systems’ gargantuan structural deficit.

The Crowley Act is the law that made the takeover possible, and it serves as the chessboard for all political moves. The kids are less than amused at being stuck in the middle of it all. A hybrid school board that starts in January — half-elected, half-appointed — seems likely to entertain reform but won’t effect much change as it’s mostly advisory under RIDE rule. 

Whoever rules the capital city’s schools in 2027, Infante-Green will be there to traverse the takeover’s elongated path. Her contract was extended in September and it includes a raise, much to the chagrin of her unionized professional staff. 

Meanwhile, Sen. Sam Zurier, a Providence Democrat, has tried to get the General Assembly to care about Providence schools. Yes, the issue affects Providence residents most directly — but per the local adage, “As Providence goes, so does Rhode Island.”

— Alexander Castro

7. Ruggerio rises again

Fault lines linger between Rhode Island’s 34 Senate Democrats months after the November caucus to decide the party’s leadership for the next two years. While Senate President Dominick Ruggerio held on to the throne, fending off a challenge from his former right-hand-man, Sen. Ryan Pearson, the 23-9 vote, with one abstention and one “present,” showcased deep divides between the two camps.

Much of the division stemmed from lingering questions over Ruggerio’s ability to serve, coming off a year where illness kept him absent from the chamber for much of the 2024 legislative session and his own reelection campaign. Indeed, Pearson’s alleged offer to take over amid Ruggerio’s health issues appears to be the root of the rift between the estranged former allies.

“Everyone wants to be the Senate president, but you have to do the work,” Ruggerio said in a Dec. 17 interview, disputing claims that his prolonged absences in 2024 left fellow senators hamstrung in advancing legislative priorities. “I don’t have any malice against Ryan or anyone else that would want to run. Let’s leave it at that.”

Ruggerio acknowledged he has not spoken to Pearson in “a very long time.”

As for the other eight Democratic senators who backed Pearson over Ruggerio on that fateful November night at the Waterman Grille, Ruggerio said there will be no consequences. He also maintains that he fully intends to resume his regular post as president from the Senate dais.

As of mid-December, he had yet to name other Senate leadership roles beyond Senate Majority Leader Valarie Lawson, of East Providence, including the majority whip and committee chairs. Two of the high-ranking former committee leaders, Sen. Dawn Euer of Newport, and Sen. Alana DiMario of North Kingstown, backed Pearson in the caucus vote.

— Nancy Lavin

8. RIPTA switches lanes

The first half of 2024 for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority’s (RIPTA) was a bumpy road at best: The statewide bus agency faced an $18.1 million budget deficit, its CEO suddenly resigned in April after being accused of leaving the scene of a fender bender at a Warwick McDonalds, and it considered service cuts or reductions to 20 routes due to a lack of drivers.

But RIPTA managed to reverse course. The agency’s board of directors in February approved a 16.7% starting wage hike for new drivers, a decision that — along with a paid CDL permit training initiative —  led applicants to line up outside RIPTA’s Melrose Street headquarters in Providence and eliminated the need to suspend or reduce any routes. Since the new wage increase took effect, agency spokesperson Cristy Raposo Perry said RIPTA has hired 44 new drivers.

The state also gave RIPTA $15 million of unspent COVID relief funds in its fiscal year 2025 budget to help plug a deficit brought on by, yes, the drying up of pandemic aid.

In November, the agency elevated former CFO Christopher Durand from interim CEO to permanent CEO to replace predecessor Scott Avedisian — a move lauded by transit advocates, union officials, and the agency’s board of directors. But Durand has his work cut out for him heading into 2025, as RIPTA faces a $31.5 million budget shortfall. 

— Christopher Shea

9. Shedding light on dark money 

What was a pretty uneventful race for Rhode Island’s U.S. Senate seat heated up in the final weeks after a mysterious super PAC decided to back Republican Patricia Morgan’s bid to unseat Democratic incumbent Sheldon Whitehouse.

Roosevelt Society Action, which was created in September, spent roughly $388,000 to try to influence Rhode Island’s U.S. Senate race, according to the post-election filings with the Federal Election Commission. The group sought to persuade voters through mailers and commercials that aired during  two Sunday Night Football games.

Televised ads first linked to the website of a  New York-based economic think tank connected to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. The use of the URL came as a shock to the institute, whose spokesperson said it planned to take action against the PAC after it was alerted to its existence by Rhode Island Current. The PAC’s website has since changed.

Who is behind Roosevelt Society Action is a mystery. The largest known donation came from a Florida couple who contributed $200,000 to the PAC, said Thomas Datwyler, a consultant who has worked for dozens of GOP candidates and causes. He declined to reveal their names.

Two other out-of-state groups with a history of backing conservative causes and candidates contributed $190,000, but only how much they contributed and their addresses were made public on Roosevelt Society Action’s FEC forms.

Despite its last-minute spending spree, Roosevelt Society Action did not sway the outcome of the race as Whitehouse secured his fourth term with 60% of the vote.

— Christopher Shea

10. (Tie) The State Crime Lab goes under the microscope

The Rhode Island State Crime lab in September halted all toolmark testing on firearms after officials discovered a discrepancy with the identification of a gun allegedly used in a Pawtucket murder case in 2021.

A report by a California-based consultant who formerly worked for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found there was a lack of diligence and confirmation bias on the part of all three forensic examiners who performed toolmark analysis — the method forensic examiners use to determine if a cartridge or shell is fired from a specific gun — at the lab on the University of Rhode Island’s Kingston campus.

The fallout prompted delays in nearly two dozen criminal cases, which had to get re-tested in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. As of Dec. 18, Crime Lab Director Dennis Hilliard said nearly all cases have reaffirmed the initial findings made in Rhode Island.

“There’s still one case where there’s an issue, and that’s going to be reported on shortly,” Hilliard said.

All three toolmark examiners who were on staff when work was passed are no longer on the job and Hilliard is actively looking to fill at least two spots. In the meantime, the lab has contracted with Stria Consulting Group of Brooklyn, to handle toolmark testing for Rhode Island gun cases through at least April 2025.

— Christopher Shea

10. (Tie) Blowing smoke at Bally’s casinos 

Bally’s Corp. has long opposed efforts to ban smoking at its properties in Tiverton and Lincoln. Unsurprisingly, the casino giant’s board of directors also came out against an activist shareholder proposal at its May 16 virtual annual shareholders meeting that sought a study on the economic costs and benefits of going smoke-free. 

The push by Michigan-based Trinity Health and California-based American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation marked the first attempt at the investor level to force Bally’s to ban smoking inside its casinos. It had the backing of Rhode Island General Treasurer James Diossa but was rejected by most Bally’s shareholders. 

However the proposal —  which Bally’s directors deemed “unwarranted and unreasonable” gained enough support to come back at the company’s 2025 annual meeting.

The push to end smoking ignited again in the General Assembly. The House Committee on Finance on the final night of the 2024 legislative session voted 10-0 in favor of a bill by Rep. Teresa Tanzi, a South Kingstown Democrat, that would end the exemption Bally’s Lincoln and Tiverton casinos have from Rhode Island’s indoor smoking ban.

The 11th-hour proposal did not advance beyond that symbolic committee vote, but it was enough to spark hope among public health advocates and casino workers that Bally’s Rhode Island properties could become smoke-free next year.

House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi at the end of the 2024 legislative session encouraged Bally’s workers and management to work out a resolution before the General Assembly returns in January. But no discussions ever occurred, Table Game Dealers Laborers Local 711 President Matt Dunham told Rhode Island Current Dec. 19.

— Christopher Shea