RIPEC: R.I. tops nation in spending for fire safety

Rhode Island spends more on fire safety than any other state, when ranked per capita and by expenditures per $1,000, but is near the bottom in higher education and other areas, according to a report released last week by the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council.
Rhode Island’s high spending on fire safety is due in part to older infrastructure in the Northeast, said Gary Sasse, RIPEC’s executive director. He cited other northeastern states such as Massachusetts, which ranked fourth in the country for spending on fire safety per capita in fiscal 2005, the year the rankings are based on.
He also cited a greater population density in the Northeast.
Fire safety, however, comprised only 3.1 percent of general expenditures in the state in fiscal 2005. That means that financial support for that area doesn’t necessarily come at the great expense of other needs, like higher education. Rhode Island ranked 44th in higher education spending per $1,000 of personal income and 47th per capita, both for fiscal 2005.
“If you look at where we spend money, higher education gets less because we spend so much in welfare and Medicaid,” Sasse said in an interview last week.
The lack of public spending on higher education is a reflection of the choices policymakers make, said Sasse, who next month is leaving his post as executive director of the independent watchdog group to head the state’s Department of Revenue.
When compared with many other states, Rhode Island spends significantly more on Medicaid, welfare cash-assistance programs, housing and community development, in addition to fire safety, according to the report, which focused on fiscal years 1995 and 2005. Along with higher education, it spends a small amount of its wealth on infrastructure, such as highways, and parks and recreation.
“These expenditure trends reflect policy choices by the state over the past decade,” Sasse in a statement. “However, resources are showing signs of becoming strained and these policy directions may not be sustainable given the current economic outlook and budget projections.”
Gov. Donald L. Carcieri “has been warning for years that Rhode Island’s spending on welfare and Medicaid is much higher than the vast majority of other states,” said his spokesman, Jeff Neal.
“Even without the state’s current $450 million budget crisis, Rhode Island taxpayers simply cannot afford that level of spending increase each and every year,” he said.
The RIPEC report, “How Rhode Island’s State and Local Expenditures Compare – 2007,” also states that Rhode Island has high expenditures in elementary and secondary education, which comprised the highest percentage, 22.9 percent, of the state’s direct general expenditures in 2005.
But Rhode Island is not an outlier in the category, Sasse said. Elementary and secondary education expenditures comprised 23.6 percent of direct general expenditures in the United States in 2005.
The state ranked in the top 10 states for expenditures per capita in fire safety (first), Medicaid/vendor payments (third), cash assistance payments (fifth), housing and community development (sixth), elementary and secondary education (ninth) and police (10th).
The state ranked in the bottom 10 for expenditures per capita in highways (46th), higher education (47th) and parks and recreation (49th).
Rhode Island’s total general expenditures of $219.29 per $1,000 of personal income were 6 percent higher than the national average of $206.83 in 2005, ranking Rhode Island the 18th highest in the country.
The state’s expenditures of $7,492 per capita ranked the state ninth in the country for 2005. Its expenditures per capita were 10.5 percent above the national average of $6,778 per capita.
Neal noted that Rhode Island’s high spending on Medicaid and welfare make it difficult to invest in other budget priorities, such as education. He cited the General Assembly denying Carcieri’s efforts to increase spending for local schools by 3 percent in the last budget, as an example. •