The Economic Progress Institute has been a cornerstone in Rhode Island’s efforts to address economic equality and foster economic growth for 25 years.
For the last 25 years, the institute has spearheaded numerous initiatives aimed at improving the well-being of Rhode Islanders and advocating for policies that support equitable economic opportunities.
In this episode of “Generation Rising,” host Anaridis Rodriguez explores the state of economic equity in Rhode Island with Nina Harrison and Hector Perez-Aponte, from the Economic Progress Institute.
Harrison joined the Economic Progress Institute — commonly known as EPI — in February 2023. She is the organization’s policy director and oversees its legislative agenda.
Perez-Aponte is the EPI’s racial justice policy analyst. He works with community partners to further equity in the state and close the racial wealth gap.
The full interview can be found here.
Characterizing the EPI as a jack of all trades but a master of many is “a very fair description,” Harrison said.
She said the EPI’s focus covers many topics, including health care, childcare and pre-K.
“We have an access to justice focus in terms of making sure we champion things that improve democracy and make it easier to vote,” she said. “We have a tax and budget policy area where we try to make sure that taxes are fair and we’re raising enough revenue to fund all of the necessary programs and infrastructure in Rhode Island.”
‘Big wins’ came out of 2024 legislative session
Harrison and Perez-Aponte were part of the team that recently published a review of Rhode Island’s 2024 legislative session.
There was a “big win” involving the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA),
Perez-Aponte said that $15 million in ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funding was allocated toward RIPTA’s maintenance budget.
“That is to maintain the services that many communities were concerned were going to be cut,” he said. “But through campaigns, such as the Save RIPTA campaign, folks came together and really pushed to make sure that the services that our community needed, such as these routes and bus maintenance and so on and so forth, that that was kept.”
Harrison added that lawmakers did not allocate enough funding for expansion “but that’s something that we’ll be back advocating for this year.”
Still, she said the RIPTA funding was a great win — one of several.
“There were a lot of great wins this year and I think it’s not only great for my work, but I think if more Rhode Islanders knew how many great things got passed, they’d feel a little bit more encouraged and hopeful about the state of politics,” Harrison said.
Other positives included the General Assembly expanding the Rhode Island Works program, which provides cash assistance for needy families in the state. The benefits were increased and children were the biggest beneficiaries. The Childcare Assistance program was also expanded so that more parents would be eligible.
“We also expanded paid family leave so that if you have a new baby or if your mom or dad or child gets sick, you can now take up to eight weeks of time off to care for them instead of six weeks before, and that will be implemented incrementally until 2026,” Harrison said. “So a lot of great things happened this session.”
Harrison said another win was more funding for multilingual learners. Rhode Island ranked on the low end of funding for those learners, adding that one out of every eight students in Rhode Island is a multilingual learner.
“So it’s a really important population that we need to make sure is getting educated properly,” she said.
“I would say that a lot of the things that I’ve come across in my experience are just needs legally, things that, for every immigrant, the immigration process is just extremely complicated and legal needs don’t come, they come far in between,” Perez-Aponte said. “For individuals and the cost of legal expenses can be pretty high.
“And then of course for folks that come from other countries, resettlement of course is a big problem with housing being a very big issue and something that, at EPI, we are going to be work working on and focusing coming into the next legislative session along with the many things that Nina has brought up as well.”
Payday lending reforms remain a goal
Payday lending was one of the issues that the EPI has been fighting for approximately 15 years. It was not resolved during the 2024 legislative session.
“Payday lending wasn’t permitted in that way before about 15 years ago, at which time they created essentially a loophole for payday lenders to be able to charge interest rates that effectively are in the triple digits, about 260% APR,” Harrison said. “And so we have been fighting against that for those past 15 years.
“There’s a strong coalition, there’s strong support among legislators in the Senate and the House. So it’s really hard for me to say why votes haven’t been allowed, with the exception of in 2023, the House did vote to end payday lending or to end the carve-out allowing them to charge that triple-digit interest rates.”
Harrison said the measure passed in the House but was unable to advance in the Senate.
“So it seems like it’s a little bit of a bottleneck in terms of being stuck with leadership in the Senate President and Speaker of the House,” she said. “The Speaker (Joseph Shekarchi) has worked with us in the past to call a vote.
“And so we’re hoping to continue to applying pressure, uplifting stories from the community, which we had a lot more success with this year, and highlighting just how harmful this practice can be.”
Another issue is a shortage of affordable housing in Rhode Island.
“I don’t know that that’s just driven by inflation per se, but Providence did experience the highest rent increase in 2023 in the whole country,” Harrison said. “So we have really high rent that people are struggling to afford.
“The cost of groceries and out-of-pocket health care costs has really risen rapidly in the past few years. And so we advocate for policies to try to address all of those things.”
Perez-Aponte said that advocating for issues is filled with wins and losses. But the idea of promoting change and seeing it happen is a motivating factor.
“I think it’s a combination of wins, but you don’t always win. And I think that’s important to keep in mind whenever you’re an advocate of any kind,” he said. “You have to be mindful of the fact that you will have disappointments and you will experience defeat.
But I think it’s more of the beauty of seeing communities come together to make that kind of change and that determination and grit that folks put on when they have to go and be brave enough to sit in front of their legislators and speak about something that’s very personal to them,” he added. “That right there is something that makes you proud about your community and that makes you ever, that makes you want to wake up the next morning and keep going.”
