Katherine Gregg, Providence Journal
Updated ·5 min read
PROVIDENCE – It was a leisurely five months at the State House, but Rhode Island's part-time lawmakers are now on a marathon voting spree ahead of a possible adjournment next week to get bills on their way to final votes – including a sex-worker immunity bill and casino bill facing some strong headwinds.
Can they make their June 13 wrap-up target? That remains to be seen.
In the last 24 hours, legislative committees have been voting on long-untouched and, in some cases, substantially rewritten versions of bills to:
Double the credit limit for gamblers at the two Bally's-run state casinos to $100,000
Allow the Bally's to negotiate "one or more amendments" to its operating agreement without need of legislative approval
Prohibit hospitals and other medical providers from reporting unpaid medical bills to credit bureaus or placing liens on the debtors' homes
Limit the number of self-service checkouts at grocery stores to six
Allow the electronic monitoring of nursing-home patients by their families, which kicked up a storm when it was considered earlier this year
Give cities and towns another way – requested by the City of Providence – to collect hefty fines from drivers with "automated traffic violation monitoring systems" at intersections to catch drivers who "block the box"
Provide immunity to sex workers who report crimes they either witness or personally experience
And this is just a small sample of the bills flying out of legislative committees on their way to the full House and Senate for votes Thursday and next week.
A once but no longer controversial bill to enable police and firefighters with PTSD to collect tax free, two-thirds pay disability pensions for life cleared the House on a unanimous vote on its way to the Senate.
Only one lawmaker – Republican Rep. George Nardone – raised any concern, asserting that "this could be a very easy venue ... to get onto retirement much quicker than they would normally ... [with] very lucrative benefits, tax-free benefits, free college tuition [and] their medical insurance is paid for."
A get-out-of-jail card for human traffickers?
As written, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation has warned legislators the immunity bill (H7165) "will allow a pimp or trafficker to claim he became aware that a person in prostitution became the victim of a crime – and get off the hook for engaging in trafficking."
"In short, the underscored quoted language – currently in the bill – gives bad actors a “get-out-of-jail free card for no good purpose," wrote the center's general counsel, Benjamin Bull.
The Bally's bill
A funny thing happened to the legislation introduced for Bally's by Senate President Dominick Ruggerio and Senate Labor Chairman Frank Ciccone in the Senate, and the Lincoln delegation in the House.
It ignited a strongly worded letter of warning from the state's top gambling regulator.
The original bill sought to double the credit limit for gamblers to $100,000, hike the marketing subsidies the state gives Bally's out of its own share of the action and free the operator of the state-run casinos from the need to get legislative approval for "one or more amendments" to its operating contracts with the state.
By the time it emerged from the Senate's committee on special legislation on a 6-to-1 vote on Tuesday, Bally's bid for additional marketing subsidies had already been stripped from the bill.
But state Lottery Director Mark Furcolo sent senators an eleventh-hour letter objecting strongly to Bally's bid for leeway to renegotiate a provision in its operating contract with Rhode Island that limits how much debt it can carry.
Furcolo explained the state's interest in how much debt the heavily extended Bally's runs up this way:
"As part of their efforts to preserve the flow of revenue to the General Fund from the Lincoln and Tiverton gaming facilities, the Rhode Island Lottery and Department of Business Regulation monitor Bally's Leverage Ratio in an effort to prevent the company from becoming overleveraged."
He specifically objected to the last-minute addition of a requirement that Bally's gambling regulators in Rhode Island accept the "methodology for calculating restrictions and limitations used in other Bally's debt agreements."
In his letter of concern to legislators, Furcuolo noted the bill does not specify what "other debt agreements" could come into play, while binding the Rhode Island Lottery and the Department of Business Regulation to "a methodology determined by non-state actors – namely lenders who have a much different interest in Bally's than the state and who have much different remedies available to them in the event that Bally's runs into financial trouble."
There is an even more basic problem with the latest version of the bill, which he did not mention – while Bally's lobbyist Elizabeth Suever told the legislators it allows Bally's only to renegotiate a single "amendment," as written it allows the renegotiation without legislative approval of "one or more" unspecified amendments.
Suever told the legislators "it's not going to be an open-ended negotiation," but rather simply a change in the way debt is calculated so "that we can get credit for building casinos and not just acquiring casinos that already exist today from other companies."
She led the legislators to believe new – and as yet – unseen language would be offered up for a vote when the Bally's bill hits the Senate floor on Thursday.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Buckle up, the end of the RI session is near. Here's where big bills stand
