PROVIDENCE – House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi on Thursday said two major employers are seeking regulatory relief on investments as lawmakers wrestle with proposals to increase taxes and cut spending to curb a budget deficit now estimated to be $300 million.
A year after state leaders successfully negotiated with Citizens Bank to keep the company headquartered in Rhode Island by changing how banks are taxed, Shekarchi said the latest requests for tax and regulatory relief are coming from Amica Mutual Insurance Co. and commercial property insurer FM.
The two companies have asked state leaders to lift Rhode Island's 10% cap on the percentage of admitted assets the companies can have in certain investments "to level the playing field" with Massachusetts, which has no such cap. Such investments could bring higher yields but also greater risks.
Shekarchi, who spoke during Thursday's Rhode Island Manufacturers Association's annual breakfast meeting held at the Omni Providence Hotel, is now working with Gov. Daniel J. McKee's administration on legislation "to address this concern," said House leadership spokesman Larry Berman. He added that neither company has so far threatened to move if the change isn't enacted.
New Senate President Valarie J. Lawson called Amica and FM “longstanding, valued corporate citizens in Rhode Island. While I have not yet seen the specifics of the proposal to remove the investment cap, I am open to the idea,” she said. “It appears that this would create a more welcoming, business-friendly environment and improve opportunities for job creation at no cost or risk to the state.”
Amica spokesperson Kristin E. Abdel-Aziz said the company has not expressed any intention to relocate its headquarters outside of Rhode Island.
The regulatory change would help Amica manage its “investments more effectively allowing us to deliver stronger, more reliable support for our policyholders when they need us most," she said.
FM did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Amica currently employs 1,736 in Rhode Island and FM has 1,393 local employees, according to the Providence Business News 2025 Book of Lists.
Shekarchi noted that he's willing to work with the two companies, even as lawmakers look to eliminate a budget deficit that has various proposals for
tax increases and budget cuts he said are still "on the table" for fiscal 2026.
“We don’t have the money” that was available in recent years, said Shekarchi. “It is a matter of priorities and choices.”
Now in his fifth year as House speaker, Shekarchi said working to balance the fiscal 2026 budget has been “by far the most challenging” due to the drying up of federal dollars and rising expenses in state government operations.
That all makes Shekarchi, D-Warwick, a popular figure with the state’s public, private and nonprofit sectors, given the day-to-day uncertainty in Washington, D.C.
Organizations across the board are now looking to him for help in the fiscal 2026 budget now being vetted by the legislature.
The Rhode Island Hospital Association is requesting a $90 million infusion into the state Medicaid system, and the R.I. Public Transit Authority and its advocates are lobbying for a $32 million budget fix.
Shekarchi vowed that the House and Senate's plan crafted from McKee’s $14.2 billion budget proposal will be balanced. He said a clearer picture of the state’s fiscal situation will come when the latest revenue numbers arrive in the next couple of weeks and are scrutinized at the May Revenue Estimating Conference.
Without the revenue to consider the kinds of tax relief enacted in previous legislative sessions, Shekarchi is tempering expectations.
“We’ve done that when we had money and resources to do that,” he said. “We are going to have to learn to live within our means."
State agencies could be in line for reductions, he added, acknowledging that historically Rhode Island has “not done well with execution in a lot of departments. We are going to have to learn to live within our means,” he said.
But the speaker assured the audience that the House and Senate will do what they can to prevent the private sector from bearing any more of a financial burden, particularly given the Trump administration's tariffs on many of the imports that the manufacturing sector relies on.
Asked what the experience has been communicating with the Trump administration, Shekarchi said the speed with which polices and directives are changing has added to the challenge of planning state finances. He added that it is possible the legislature will need to return to Smith Hill in October to make adjustments to the budget that takes effect July 1.
“It’s not easy,” he said. “We do the best we can with the information we have. But things change every hour.”
Shekarchi dismissed calls from progressive advocates for a so-called ‘millionaires' tax’ on high-income earners, calling the proposal “a 10-cent solution to a one-dollar problem."
Repeating previous calls to anyone seeking legislative solutions to make their voices heard at the General Assembly, Shekarchi said: "Silence is acceptance."
“As I always say, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” he said.
(Updated to include a comment from an Amica Mutual Insurance Co. spokesperson.)
Christopher Allen is a PBN staff writer. You may contact him at Allen@PBN.com
