Less than 24 afters after losing a bruising primary reelection battle, Gov. Dan McKee backed his rival, Helena Buonanno Foulkes for the Nov. 3 general election. Yet endorsements have not materialized in other heated primary matchups, including the Providence Democratic mayoral race. Mayor Brett Smiley declined to endorse his progressive challenger, David Morales, as first […]

For powerful lessons for improving student achievement more than protecting adult concerns, look to two states that begin with the letter M.  The 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act mandated that high school diplomas would only be granted to those who passed the 10th grade Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test — along with local district […]

An anonymous tipster named “Gold Piano” was among the first to come forward with a lead for Providence’s new whistleblower hotline: A retired city police officer whose ex-wife’s health insurance was still being covered through the city. The complaint became one of four full investigations in the first year of SpeakUp!PVD, the city’s whistleblower hotline […]

In her neon yellow shirt and pink hard hat, Ashlynn Jorge extended her arm and held her palm out to halt traffic approaching a sidewalk construction site on Kay Street in Newport shortly before 10 o’clock Thursday morning. But the 26-year-old union laborer can’t stop the bills.  Jorge earns about $4,800 a month. But rent […]

An arbitrator has ruled that the head of the union representing police and firefighters at Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport can return to work nearly two years after he was fired from the airport’s fire department. But the outcome still depends on the resolution of a lawsuit filed last year in Providence Superior Court. […]

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. If there’s one thing advocates, officials, residents, and experts can all agree on, it’s that Massachusetts’s Gateway Cities need more housing. A lot of it. What kind of housing needs to be built? That’s where the […]

Members of the press, government watchdogs and the merely curious all use Rhode Island’s payroll transparency portal for easy lookup of any state employee’s salary, overtime and other essential wage data. Anyone visiting the payroll portal to find out how much a certain state employee makes, however, will be looking at not-quite-fresh numbers. The online […]

Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore is facing another demand from the Trump administration to provide the state’s voter data, this time to preserve all documents related to the 2024 election. In a Sept. 4 letter, the U.S. Department of Justice directed Amore not to destroy records from the 2024 election because he is […]

Former Rhode Island Commerce Secretary Liz Tanner has joined the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI)’s leadership team after working a part-time summer gig at the community college. Tanner will serve as the school’s interim vice president for workforce and institutional advancement. She told Rhode Island Current on Wednesday that her new role gives her […]

Republican attorney general nominee Alan Gordon said he’s confident in his legal analysis of the 19-page plan he unveiled Tuesday in his campaign’s first press conference at the Rhode Island State House. “I ran it through three AIs,” he told the only reporter who showed up. His idea: to criminally charge men whose consensual sex […]

Gresh Laing’s 2024 Tesla Cybertruck gets plenty of attention on Rhode Island’s roads. Most of it isn’t friendly. “I get more middle fingers and thumbs-downs and just looks of disdain and hate, having this vehicle drive me around Rhode Island, than I have ever experienced in my entire life,” he said in an interview. The […]

A review of three close primaries by the Rhode Island Board of Elections morning did not change the winner in any of them, Miguel Nunez, elections board director, told the panel Tuesday. A rereading of flash drives holding vote totals from ballot counting machines concluded with identical margins of victory for Republican gubernatorial nominee Aaron […]

Rhode Island archery deer hunters started the season two weeks earlier in a larger portion of the state on Tuesday, a change supported by new data on the size of the deer population. The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) divides the Ocean State into four deer management zones for hunters. Archery season in […]

Five months ago, Lynn Blais stood shoulder to shoulder with suit-clad executives at a Friday afternoon press conference in March, smiling and clapping as they celebrated The Centurion Foundation’s long-awaited purchase of Roger Williams Medical Center and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital. On Wednesday, as Blais, president of the United Nurses and Allied Professionals, sat […]

The public has until noon Thursday to send written comments on the six candidates vying to become Rhode Island’s first inspector general to the five-member commission who will be interviewing them. But the search panel has yet to decide whether it will post those comments online. A decision is on the agenda for the Inspector […]

The close contest between Rhode Island’s Republican gubernatorial primary is not close enough to justify a manual refeeding of every ballot into a tabulating machine, the Board of Elections determined Monday. The unanimous vote by the election panel came after an hourlong back-and-forth with trailing candidate Elaine Pelino, who protested a lack of public notification […]

A new private contractor already well known in Rhode Island is on track to temporarily take over Woonsocket’s sewage treatment plant while city officials look for a long-term solution for the regionally vital but locally unwelcome incinerator. A resolution and accompanying draft contract on the Woonsocket City Council’s Monday night agenda call for a six-month […]

Rhode Island’s congressional delegation is demanding answers from the Trump administration over why the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) repeatedly denied the state’s request for disaster aid following the historic February 2026 blizzard. A Sept. 9 letter by U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse along with U.S. Reps. Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo asked […]

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. For decades, I’ve been showing my medieval history students the “autonomous collective” scene from the 1975 film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” The clip is funny because it features two medieval peasants haranguing King Arthur while using the […]

After a series of failed attempts to add more offshore wind power to Rhode Island’s energy portfolio, the state utility operator has turned landward. Rhode Island Energy announced Tuesday that it has tentatively agreed to buy 150 megawatts of wind-powered electricity from an onshore wind farm planned for northern Maine. The conditional agreement with project […]

David Lawrence Angell. Carol Marie Bouchard. Mark Lawrence Charette. James Edward Hayden. Amy Nicole Jarret. Kathryn L. Laborie. Shawn M. Nassaney. Renee Tetreault Newell. Jessica Leigh Sachs. Their names were read aloud by Col. Darnell Weaver, superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police, on Friday morning at the Rhode Island Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Exeter […]

That didn’t take long. The morning after Rhode Island’s Republican voters chose their nominee to take on Democratic U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner in the November general election, Magaziner launched the opening salvo against his 2nd Congressional District opponent, Vic Mellor. Joining Magaziner at a podium on the marble plaza outside the State House for a […]

In contrast to the stunning primary day upsets in which Democratic challengers dethroned Rhode Island’s governor and the mayors of Providence and Pawtucket, every sitting state lawmaker seeking reelection won Wednesday night. Incumbents typically hold an advantage, especially in Rhode Island, where the rigor of the job coupled with low pay and a dominant Democratic […]

Four federal election monitors were watching polling places in Pawtucket Wednesday to ensure city officials followed through on a Biden-era consent order to assist Spanish-speaking voters.  They found no significant problems, said Pawtucket’s top election official who anticipates their return in the November general election. “Everything seemed to go really well,” City Registrar Ken McGill […]

Trailing by 279 votes in preliminary, unofficial primary results, Republican gubernatorial candidate Elaine Pelino asked for a recount in her matchup against Aaron Guckian, the Board of Elections confirmed. In a Facebook post just after noon Thursday, Pelino said her decision to file the request was about “election integrity and respect for our voters.” “In […]