(Editor’s note: This is the third in an occasional series of stories speaking with this year’s gubernatorial candidates about their economic vision for Rhode Island. You can read the first installment here and second profile here.)
PAWTUCKET – For gubernatorial candidate Dr. Luis Daniel Muñoz, the path to an economically thriving Rhode Island starts at the local, micro level, and with communities that have often been left behind.
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For too long, said the community organizer and medical doctor, the state has relied on large, frequently out-of-state corporations to create jobs and boost its economy. Meanwhile, working Rhode Islanders and families struggle, he added, with marginalized communities bearing the heaviest burden.
As governor, Muñoz sees his role as “the state’s activist, the state’s advocate that is standing behind Rhode Islanders,” with a focus on addressing issues in health care and improving Rhode Island’s education system.
After running for governor as an independent in 2018, Muñoz is returning to this year’s race as a Democrat, with these two issues highlighted. In his ARPA spending plan, Muñoz proposed 90% of the state’s funding toward health and education system improvements, with the remaining 10% toward affordable housing, public transportation, business services, and other resources that Muñoz says will help to break cycles of poverty and inequality.
This plan drew partially from Muñoz’s own as experience as a physician. Muñoz, who grew up in Central Falls and now lives in Pawtucket, earned a doctor of medicine degree from the University of Connecticut. But seeing insurance companies and other corporations benefit from expenses passed on to struggling patients motivated him to become involved in systemically improving health care.
Muñoz also wants to disrupt the state’s history of what he described as cronyism among elected officials.
“The political powerhouses will fund the next candidate,” Munoz said. Pursuing a different funding path has led to comparatively low funding for his campaign, but “that doesn’t mean our fight is over,” he noted.
“As long as we are on the debate stage, I do believe that Rhode Islanders will be able to see who is authentic,” Munoz said, “who is truly fighting for them, and who is going to stand by their words.”
- What is your economic vision for the state – meaning what would be your plans as governor to grow the state’s economy?
It’s important to really focus on local economies, specifically microbusinesses that sustain economies. When you think about tangible asset taxes and times where we could have been supporting microbusinesses, we were focusing too heavily on large companies and providing tax breaks, and trying to incentivize them to come to the state with hopes that they would bring jobs, and those jobs never came to fruition. Moving forward, I’m a proponent of a supplemental wage program for specific microbusinesses that can allow us to bridge minimum wage earners over to an R.I. Commerce program, making sure that those nontraditional students have access to R.I. Promise. At the same time, the state can use some of its ARPA dollars to supplement wages for a period of time in which (employees) are essentially building their skillsets. That’s a path to a livable wage, and it’s also supporting microbusinesses, helping them maintain their employee base and giving them a chance to have some level of sustainability and possibly a trajectory toward growth.
I think the state can work more with municipalities in order to try to create incentive programs for Rhode Island tangible asset tax reductions, and then simultaneously see if we can allocate dollars to some of the housing projects that municipalities want to engage in. I’m a big fan of tech culture, and I think we in Rhode Island should look at technology not only in the medical space, but in block chain and in cyber (security) … these are areas that, given the global challenges we’re faced with, are going to become much more in demand.
- How do you foresee building a better business climate in the state? What actions will you take?
Building a better business climate has a lot to do with communication. I think it’s important to engage with businesses across the state in different industry verticals. Rhode Island administrations, at least from a PR perspective, have a tendency of focusing on hospitality and tourism, and those things are very needed, they’re obviously very strong in Rhode Island. But when we think about other industry verticals, what are we doing to support those businesses, or to bring them into the conversation around how we can help create an environment that can help their businesses scale?
[Also], how do we incentivize microbusinesses to better support the minimum wage-earners? I’m a proponent of getting a livable wage in the state, and then also trying to think creatively about how Commerce R.I. can support the businesses through R.I. package licensing of products. Many microbusinesses in the state may not even have had QuickBooks during a time where, if they’d had that, they could have more easily accounted for three to five years of their financial records to qualify for PPP loans.
- What strategy or plans would you have for working on the state’s economic development with the R.I. Commerce Corp.?
I do think we should direct our attention to local economies and microbusinesses, rather than the GEs and Johnson & Johnsons of the world, which have failed to bring any substantive value to Rhode Island in the past few years even though those deals were supposed to bring hundreds of jobs. We should push corporations to do more, rather than trying to offer them something before they even get the job done, so the attention needs to be completely redirected. Commerce R.I. has been looking outward, and I think we need to look inward.
And I think Commerce R.I. really should start to collaborate at the intersection of our educational systems. For instance, make R.I. Promise the umbrella kind of certification training and college degree program that is essentially free, but also available to nontraditional students.
- With the Lifespan/Care New England merger, which you previously opposed, now withdrawn, what is your vision for affordable health care in Rhode Island? How does your background as a medical doctor inform this vision?
I’m a proponent of using ARPA dollars to invest in a path toward single payer. And I say “path” because single payer systems will collapse under the burden of cost if we don’t have some level of cost controls and community health infrastructures to properly manage populations in a more sustainable way. So with ARPA dollars, I’m a proponent of a five county pilot where we would have health hubs in each of the counties, but at the same time, have the state taking an active role in the procurement process and the negotiations between insurers and manufacturers so that we can demonstrate that products can be free for the patients, ultimately. Doing that puts more onus on the state to not essentially deflect its responsibility out to these intermediary players like Medicaid management organizations or any other intermediaries that ultimately are private companies that are siphoning off public dollars and taking those dollars away from patients that need them.
My doctoral degree, and then venturing into the industry, has shown me that that game is one that we can dismantle. It’s hard to receive a medical degree, go through all that education, see what you’ve seen, to take an oath and to sit back and not do something about what’s going on.
- You previously ran for governor in 2018 as an independent. Why did you decide to run again, and why as a Democrat this time? How do you plan to build on your previous campaign?
When I ran as an independent, it was primarily because of corrupt democratic operatives. This whole political landscape in Rhode Island has always been one of family dynasties and insider politics. When I look back on that journey, I realize that, on one hand, I was so focused on pushing back against that corruption that has historically been corrupt. On the other hand, I was so focused on pushing back against the corruption that I did not realize how I created a barrier for others to truly understand what the programmatic solutions were that we could implement. This time, I decided that I would actually confront that corruption here in the Democratic Party.
- Are rent and housing expenses an impediment to economic growth in R.I.? What else does the state need to do to address rising rent and housing costs?
Absolutely. I think the municipalities should be having these hard discussions around whether there’s any measure of rent control, especially when we’re talking urban core. I think that is a local decision. As a state, I think that we can support the supplementation of data at the state level, and we can also provide data that we aggregate and analyze at a national level to try to bring ideas to municipalities. There should at least be some stabilization, and I think that even if we leave it to municipalities to take more aggressive steps around rent control if they choose to. At the state level, I think we should have some form of legislation that would focus on rent stabilization, especially as we’re now moving towards what can be a significant recession.
Jacquelyn Voghel is a PBN staff writer. You may reach her at Voghel@PBN.com.
