Rep. Newberry: 2025 H6162 - Levy and Assessment of Local Taxes / City of Providence (52725)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You know, every year, I think even last week was an example, we pass these bills to exempt property from taxation for nonprofits, and it's always for some good cause, or at least it appears to be from the legislation. And every time we do, I always think, well, that's more money off the tax roles. Uh, it's going to be made up somewhere. Um, I I don't know if these are disproportionate to urban areas either. I don't remember ever putting a bill in for North Smithfield to remove a piece of property off our tax roles. We don't have a lot of commercial property in the first place. Cities like Providence, Wick, Cranston have a lot more buildings that nonprofits are willing to take over. And um this bill today, I know there's a lot of things that led to this legislation, but one of the reasons is because the city of Province in particular lacks taxable property. I think there's two conversations here. Number one, we need to stop removing property from the tax roles in this state, which is not what this bill is about directly, but it is indirectly. We need to stop it. And as we've learned, not to talk about national politics, but let's be honest here. We learned from Doge, we know a lot of these nonprofits are funded tremendously by government tax dollars. And I know in this state, because I used I used to spend a lot more time looking through the budget in detail years back looking for things to cut and maybe have to go back to that this year. There's a tremendous amount of money that this state government floods into nonprofit organizations in this state through department grants and other things. So with one hand, we are taking tax money from citizens through income taxes or whatever and we're giving it to so-called nonprofits and then we're also exempting them from the tax roles. They pay less in tax. We need to stop doing that. A lot of these nonprofits do good things. Most of them probably do do good things. Some of them do things I don't like, but they can fund themselves. They're not really nonprofits. And that really gets to the big elephant in the room and that's Brown University, Johnson and Wales and the universities in the state because let's face it, they can talk all they want to, but Brown University is not going to pick up and move. And that's true of these universities all across the country. I used to sponsor, there may be a bill this year, if there is, I haven't seen it, but I used to co-sponsor bills from Providence reps every year to tax Brown University and their property and their endowment with the amount of tuition they charge at that place. And I'm I'm picking on Brown, but it's not just about Brown. It applies to Brian University in Smithfield, which is not my district, but it's right down the street from my house. Same thing applies to all these other colleges. They need to step up and start paying, not just pilot money, not pilot money, which is like a fraction of what they should be paying. And they need to stop buying up land. I mean, it's great that they're buying a putting a medical school and buying property in downtown Province that maybe somebody else doesn't want, but what good does it do this city of Providence in this state for Brown to buy a building and we take them off the rolls, never mind all the residential property they buy, too, and they use it for housing for their employees and their professors and everything else. At what point do we just say enough? Because the actual private property tax holders and the property owners in this state in every city and town are taxed enough as it is. So, I don't fault the current city mayor and council for putting this bill in front of us. I suspect if I recall the reasons, I'm not in this committee anymore. I think there were specific reasons that this year, I think it was a court finding, they need to come up with the money. I don't fault them for putting this bill in front of us. But there are better ways to do this. And this should be something everybody in this room, liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat, should be able to get behind. Enough is enough.