RI House of Representatives - House Minority Office - GOP

07/31/2026

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” Abraham Lincoln

2026 Intern Appreciation:
Rebecca Davis, Bella Garces, Jacob Silva and Kamryn Lindsey~

Your exceptional work speaks volumes. Thank you for choosing to share your talents with us in the RI House Minority Office.

07/30/2026

From Leader Michael Chippendale:
I was asked to submit a contribution to a partisan newsletter. My submission received an unprecedented number of reads, and shares, and I've had Democratic colleagues and friends alike who've read it, urge me to spread the message as far as I can. To that end I offer this piece. For those who find anything here to be unbelievable, or inappropriate - I ask you to directly challenge me publicly so that I can respond.

07/24/2026

Yesterday, Leader Michael Chippendale joined Gene Valicenti
to discuss election integrity in RI in the wake of New Jersey's discrepancies with the same voting software used here in the Ocean State.

Leader Chippendale announced that he will be introducing legislation in the 2027 session, working with the Secretary of State's Office, to ensure drivers licenses for ineligible voters has a flag activated at polling locations.

Please take a moment to watch this conversation on “Gene Off Script” (Coastal ABC):

House Minority Leader Michael Chippendale joined “Gene Off Script” ...

07/23/2026

Today RI House Minority Leader Michael Chippendale and Tara Granahan Wpro discussed election integrity in RI.

Leader Chippendale publicly called for an investigation into the state’s voting rolls, urging RI Secretary of State Gregg Amore to cooperate with federal authorities to ensure absolute election integrity ahead of the 2026 cycle.

Chippendale addressed the ongoing dispute between state officials and the federal government regarding access to voter data. While acknowledging that there is currently no evidence of nefarious activity, Chippendale argued that taking proactive measures is a matter of institutional prudence, and that the argument to not share "sensitive RI voter data" with the feds is ridiculous given that they already possess social security, Medicare and Medicaid data.

"It would only be prudent that if we learn a vendor used by our state has been compromised in some extent somewhere else, that we ensure it's not happening to us."

Please take a moment to listen in:

House Minority Leader Michael W. Chippendale has publicly called for an investigation into the state’s voting rolls, urging Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore to cooperate with federal authorities to ensure absolute election integrity ahead of th

07/22/2026

In case you missed yesterday's inaugural meeting of the RI Inspector General Independent Advisory Commission, please take a moment to view, below.

Leader Michael Chippendale and RI Representative George Nardone District 28 Coventry worked with Will Fletcher, President of the Association of Inspectors General over the years to help create our OIG legislation and to secure professional testimony in support of this good government position, which is definitely needed given our costly missteps over the past few years (Washington Bridge, Deloitte, RIBridges data breach, truck tolls, medicaid reporting, to name a few). Will offered thoughtful commentary in regard to Inspector General qualifications.

Inspector General Independent Advisory Commission: 7-21-2026

07/21/2026

Kudos Representative Richard Fascia!!

Bills creating special license plates for disability access and to benefit RAMP ceremonially signed into law

STATE HOUSE — Legislation from Sen. Lori Urso and Rep. Earl A. Read III creating special license plates for vehicles adapted for those with disabilities and from Sen. Andrew R. Dimitri and Rep. Richard R. Fascia creating special license plates to benefit the charity Real Access Motivates Progress (RAMP) were signed into law today at a ceremony at the Cranston Headquarters of the Rhode Island DMV.

The bill (2026-S 2185, 2026-H 7229) sponsored by Senator Dimitri and Representative Fascia empowers the Division of Motor Vehicles to make available special motor vehicle registration plates to benefit RAMP, a volunteer organization that works for break down barriers for those living with disabilities in Rhode Island.

“I am extremely proud to have sponsored legislation to create a RAMP charity license plate, which will generate critical awareness and support for accessibility in our communities,” said Senator Dimitri (D-Dist. 25, Johnston). “Like so many other great causes, I am grateful that Rhode Islanders will now have the opportunity to display their support for this outstanding organization on their vehicles.”

Said Representative Fascia (R-Dist. 42, Johnston, Cranston), “I am very proud to have sponsored this important legislation in the Rhode Island House of Representatives. This registration plate will not only help raise funds for RAMP but more importantly, it will highlight the innovative efforts of RAMP to break barriers and champion accessibility for the disabled. As important contributors to our communities, this special plate will help to support a more equitable future for our disabled friends and neighbors.”

07/08/2026

Rebuttal by Leader Michael Chippendale Re Rep June Speakman's editorial in today's PBN:
June’s “Apples-to-Oranges” Defense Misses the Point

I respect my colleague June Speakman’s passion with regards to housing. She clearly wants progress, and I know she believes Rhode Island should do more to help people struggling to find a safe and affordable home. We see eye to eye on that goal.

Where we disagree is on the method of obtaining the level of housing we need, and getting the pricing into the place it must be if we want any true success.

June’s failed attempt to rebuke RIPEC’s housing analysis tried to argue that the report makes an “apples-to-oranges” comparison by measuring ordinary private construction against larger, more complicated publicly-subsidized housing developments. That is a criticism which deserves to be considered, but no means does it come close to disposing RIPEC’s central arguments.

RIPEC’s private-market benchmark isn’t perfect - but it’s exceptionally hard to create a comprehensive measure when you can’t get reliable info from the players. The asking prices for new duplexes and triple-deckers are not the same as “audited development costs” for the larger apartment projects. A two-family home is certainly not identical to an integrated supportive-housing development. Those are 100% fair distinctions.

But this comparison does not need to be “perfect” to reveal the real, serious efficiency issues.

RIPEC has found that its private-market sample averaged $342,832 per unit - which is approximately $303 per sf of living space. The five developments that could be supported with enough data averaged $512,377 per unit - $575 per sf. The subsidized model is thusly producing housing at a substantially greater cost - both per unit, and per square foot of actual living space. That’s not magically explained away by the comparison model.

My colleague explains that these projects are “more complicated.” They may include environmental cleanup, adaptive reuse, supportive services, community facilities, labor requirements, multiple financing sources and other public-policy goals. And while she embraces that to explain why it’s so much more expensive, she does the very thing that RIPEC report itself is doing - exposing that it’s much more expensive to build under the schemes currently being employed.

Are they more complicated? Yes - that explanation is accurate. Ironically, it is also the heart of RIPEC’s concern and that the author didn’t realize she was validating the very observation of this critical report is demonstrative of the “bubble” policy makers live in when they immerse themselves in a “method” as opposed to a “goal.”

Rhode Island has built a housing-production system where every single development is expected to accomplish a long list of additional - often very expensive objectives. Those objectives may be worthwhile in some measure of “virtue” - but that’s not solving the housing crisis. Each “virtue” adds expense, complexity and bureaucratic delay. Eventually, the project becomes so cumbersome and so cost-burdened with secondary goals that have nothing to do with getting people housed, that the actual number of homes produced becomes almost an afterthought. Strike that - it becomes a complete afterthought.

Don’t mistake this as an argument against supportive services, environmental remediation or fair wages. We have existing laws that deal with all those areas. I’m joining RIPEC in merely recognizing that every additional requirement carries a cost burden - and those costs greatly reduce the number of people we can house with limited public funds that are not being most effectively spent.

The adaptive-reuse defense also doesn’t come close to explaining the numbers. Champagne Heights, The Paddock and Wunnáunt Apartments are both new-construction projects. Together, they produce 146 units averaging at a total development cost of close to $533,000 per unit. So removing adaptive-reuse projects from this calculus does not make the cost problem disappear - in fact it only highlights it.

Champagne Heights alone is an 85-unit new-construction project that cost more than $48 million. That is not driving the cost of housing lower - it’s driving it higher. Even after we account for the conditions identified by RIHousing, the cost remains obscenely high on a per-unit basis.

June is right to point out that these developments serve residents with substantial needs - and that is important. People with disabilities, people who are homeless and low-income families deserve access to housing and appropriate support - there is no dispute about that.

The question becomes whether every worthy service has to be bundled into the same development, and financed from the same limited pool of housing money.

Worthiness and virtue doesn’t make cost irrelevant - that red herring must stop being clutched. The fact is - the greater the need, the more carefully every dollar should be allocated. If Rhode Island spends more than necessary per unit - fewer families are helped. It really is that simple. Inefficiency is not compassionate when its practical result is that thousands of people remain homeless, or priced out altogether.

Why do people who just moved from homelessness, or someone who is disabled, need to bear the burden of the cost from EV-charging stations? These are some of the mandates placed on some of these projects.

RIPEC estimates that the 2024, and the proposed 2026 housing bonds which total $240 million, would produce only 642 net new affordable rental units. 642 units. It further projects that the $522 million in authorized rental-housing investment since 2021 will produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,207 units - when our shortage exceeds 23,000.

Those numbers should concern every single taxpayer and policymaker, regardless of their party or ideology.

Not to pinata the entire message, but June’s “apples-to-oranges” argument raises a very important question - where are the apples?

Where are the more conventional state-supported duplexes, triple-deckers, townhomes and regular old apartment buildings? Where are the projects which are designed to produce the greatest number of homes at the lowest responsible cost? That’s the measure we all should be focused on. Where is there a substantial portfolio of ordinary subsidized homes that RIPEC should have used for the cleaner comparison June asserts isn’t being made?

Let me be clear - the shortage of those types of projects is not RIPEC’s fault - it is literally part of the problem RIPEC is identifying!

June wants progress on housing, and I believe she is sincere about that. But defending the same broken system simply because its stated goals are admirable will not magically produce the number of housing units Rhode Island needs. Good intentions and virtue cannot substitute for efficiency, good stewardship of public monies, cost controls, transparency and measurable results.

The real choice should not be framed as being between “compassion and efficiency.” We clearly need both. But Rhode Island should help its most vulnerable residents while also insisting that public housing dollars produce as many safe, durable homes as reasonably possible - that’s what the people of this state want, and should expect from us.

This is where June and I part company on the matter of housing. She views the complexity of these projects as a justification for their cost. I view that complexity as an alarm bell warning that the system has drifted too far from its primary purpose.

The goal is housing. The measure of success should be how many Rhode Islanders we actually house through these efforts. It’s a division problem: Public Dollars/Units Produced = Cost per Unit.

07/04/2026

Happy 250th America!!!

RI House Minority Caucus

Leaser Michael Chippendale
David J Place
Representative Brian C. Newberry
George Nardone
Bob Quattrocchi
Sherry Roberts
Richard Fascia
Chris Paplauskas
Marie Hopkins
Paul Santucci

07/02/2026

Celebrating America's 250th in RI!

06/29/2026

The Providence Journal: Washington is not the source of Rhode Island’s fiscal woes | Opinion

Rep. Michael Chippendale Guest columnist
June 28, 2026, 6:06 a.m. ET

I read the opinion piece by House Speaker Christopher Blazejewski and Majority Leader Katherine Kazarian ("New state budget built to support, protect RI families," Commentary, June 21). They are friends and colleagues – I like them both and respect their concern for Rhode Island.

But respect does not require agreement, and friendship does not require silence when the argument offered to Rhode Islanders is wrong.

Their claim is that Rhode Island’s $15.2 billion budget is a defensive response to “devastating” policies from Washington. They blame HR-1 and the Trump administration for putting Rhode Island in difficulty.

That may be politically effective in cobalt blue Rhode Island – but it is not honest.

Rhode Island’s budget is not bloated because of Donald Trump. Our dependence on federal money did not begin with HR-1. Focus on our spending habits did not suddenly appear because Washington started asking harder questions about eligibility, compliance, and accountability.

Democratic supermajorities have governed this state for generations. From Carter to Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, and Trump again, Rhode Island leaders kept expanding government, dependence, costs, and excuses when the math stopped working.

For decades, Rhode Island treated federal money as guaranteed income instead of taxpayer money sent with conditions. Federal dollars are not free. They come from taxpayers across the country, including Rhode Islanders, and are subject to federal rules.

Rhode Island understands this when it places conditions on municipalities. State leaders call that accountability. But when Washington places conditions on Rhode Island, suddenly it is cruelty? That is simplistic.

HR-1 is not the cause of this budget. It is the excuse used to justify it. It gives progressive leaders a villain and lets them avoid a harder truth: Rhode Island is vulnerable because Rhode Island chose dependence on federal funding.

That dependence is not compassion. It is weakness, and it is destroying our state.

No state can tax, spend, borrow, subsidize, and federally backfill its way into prosperity. Yet that is Rhode Island’s model. We expand programs, layer mandates, drive up basic costs, then offer another program, subsidy, bond, tax increase, and promise. That is not solving unaffordability - it is feeding it.

Their outrage that Washington expects states to ensure Medicaid and other federal benefits are limited to people who meet eligibility rules is revealing. Whether the issue is income, residency, work status, citizenship, immigration status, or compliance, eligibility should matter. The United States is charitable, but not a charity.

Medicaid is not a blank check, slush fund, or entitlement for anyone who fails to meet requirements. Asking states to verify eligibility and direct benefits to the legally entitled is stewardship of public money.

The real disagreement is ideological. Progressives believe the answer to nearly every problem is more spending, redistribution, central planning, and higher taxes on someone else. When that fails, they find a villain. Right now, the villain is President Trump.

But Trump did not create Rhode Island’s underperforming schools, unaffordable housing, energy policies, road/bridge decay, federal dependence, or budget growth workers cannot keep up with. Those are Democratic failures, built year after year by one-party leaders.

Now the majority party is doubling down with a tax on higher earners, pretending it will only affect “the wealthy.” But people can leave, capital can leave, businesses can grow elsewhere, and the burden shifts onto those who remain trapped here.

Rhode Island needs more honesty from Smith Hill. To protect vulnerable people, build a stronger economy. For better schools, demand accountability. For affordable housing, stop making it expensive to build. For independence from Washington, stop budgeting as a dependent.

Rhode Island families deserve more than a narrative built around fear of Washington. They deserve a state government willing to admit these problems were not imposed by one federal administration.

They were built here. And they can only be fixed here.