With the start of Rhode Island’s legislative session just a few days away, we reached out, as we have these past few years, to the area’s legislative delegation with a brief survey looking at their initiatives in the past session and what they hope to accomplish in the 2024 session. We also asked about their perceptions of the state’s greatest challenges and focused on affordable housing and healthcare.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be running their responses. We begin with state Rep. Alex Finkelman, who is a first-term legislator.
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Rep. Alex Finkelman, D-Dist. 74, Jamestown, Middletown
How can constituents learn more about you and your proposals, and how best can constituents contact you?
Website: www.alexfinkelman.com
Email: afinkelman@egisgroup.com
Social media: Facebook
Phone: 401-206-1030
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What legislation do you hope to introduce in the 2024 legislative session? Please give a brief description, and why it’s one of your priorities.
Finkelman: To name just a few:
- Increase Funding for Middletown to assist with School Bond
- Small Business Liability Reform to Reduce costs of doing business.
- CRMC (Coastal Resource Management Council) Reform to protect the coast.
What legislation did you introduce in the last legislative session and what was the outcome?
Finkelman: To name just a few:
- Increase tax breaks for Firefighters – signed into law.
- Additional time to pay for Pell bridge tolls – Passed house, not senate.
- Increase school construction reimbursement – Partially passed.
What do you see as the state’s greatest challenges in 2024?
- Economic downturn and balanced budget
- Housing
- Staffing for all industries
- Meeting the goals for the act on climate, while not hurting the economy or increasing costs
Affordable Housing and Healthcare are among the most critical issues in Rhode Island.
- What do you think the legislature and governor need to do to address affordable housing concerns?
- Finkelman: Increase supply. Hopefully, many of the laws passed in the prior legislative session will help along with additional legislation in the upcoming session.
- Over the last few years, healthcare has been, to be kind, uncertain in Rhode Island. We’ve had a failed merger between Care New England and Lifespan, we’ve had revolving Directors of the Department of Health, we have a critical shortage of primary care physicians with reimbursements in Rhode Island well below neighboring states. How should the governor and legislature address our critical healthcare issues?
- Finkelman: We need to be competitive with our payment to all healthcare workers. There are about 350,000 people on some form of Medicaid or government assistance. If we can reduce this number by raising the lower class and assisting in getting them jobs, we will reduce the burden on the cost of government assistance and be able to pay our healthcare workers higher wages while not increasing the budget.
Finally, this is an election year. Are you planning to run for re-election, or some other position (if so, which position)?
- Finkelman: Yes. I will be running for reelection.
