While the health and financial threats posed by an ongoing pandemic remain ever-present in the Ocean State, the General Assembly begins 2022 in the fiscally enviable position of having more money to spend than members know what to do with.
The incongruous nature of those circumstances is likely to make this election-year legislative session among the most challenging and memorable in years.
As this week’s cover story reports, in addition to $1.1 billion in new federal pandemic aid, the state is slated to receive at least $2.5 billion in infrastructure-related federal money and could finish this fiscal year with a whopping $618 million surplus.
Let’s hope lawmakers and Gov. Daniel J. McKee resist the temptation to try to satisfy every voting constituency with an oversized slice of that windfall between now and Election Day.
After failing for months to reach consensus on some short-term pandemic-aid spending, they managed to find common ground at the end of last year on $119 million approved on Jan. 4 to help small businesses, boost affordable housing and support social and human services. Gov. McKee and state lawmakers will almost certainly look for more immediate spending from the pandemic aid.
But their constituents would be best served by their leaving most of that pie for post-election deliberations that could one day help transform the state’s economy. That includes economic-development programs and projects that could finally make Rhode Island less reliant on federal windfalls the state won’t see in such abundance again.