PROVIDENCE – Gov. Gina M. Raimondo says she will propose a budget this week that boosts support for education and teacher training from pre-school through college, expands state investments in job creation and job training, and increases the minimum wage for the third year in a row, to $11.10.
The initiatives include an additional $30 million in school funding and expansion of the Rhode Island Promise tuition-free program now available to community college students to include the last two years of a four-year degree at Rhode Island College. She also promised to support expanding the Real Jobs Rhode Island grant program, “guaranteeing job training and apprenticeships for thousands more Rhode Islanders.”
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She made the pledges in a State of the State speech on Tuesday at the Statehouse that also called on lawmakers to support legislation to protect the Affordable Care Act in Rhode Island, support a ban on assault weapons and “ban guns in schools,” and “codify women’s access to reproductive health care.”
Declaring the “state of our state is strong,” the Democratic governor also promised to propose a fiscal 2020 budget that “protects our most vulnerable, preserves our investments to finally end the opioid and overdose crisis, gives every Rhode Islander a big cut in their car tax” and invests in the state’s public parks and beaches.
Calling the $30 million boost in school funding “the single biggest increase of any part of the state budget,” Raimondo cited recent student test scores she called “just not acceptable. We’ve lagged behind our neighbors too long.”
She also pledged to bring “universal public pre-K to Rhode Island” before the end of her second and final four-year term.
Her budget, she said, will begin that process and also make it easier “for adults to earn a degree at the [Community College of Rhode Island].”
She said her proposal to increase the minimum wage would help the state keep pace with Massachusetts and Connecticut “and put us on a pathway to a $15 minimum wage.”
She also said the state needs to continue to “make it easier and cheaper to do business in Rhode Island.”
Raimondo said a loan fund begun by her administration has provided loans to 75 small businesses over the last four years.
“Last year we set a goal to double the number of small-business loans awarded. We hit that goal,” she said. “Let’s double it again.”
