Twenty-three years offers abundant time to perfect the details of how a Rhode Island inspector general’s office would work. And Rep. George Nardone, a Coventry Republican, thinks this year’s edition is his best yet.
“Taxpayers expect and deserve transparent stewardship of their money,” Nardone said, at a press conference at the State House Wednesday. “If we cannot track how public funds are spent, we cannot expect the public to trust us with their funds.”
An hour later, his bipartisan legislation, which has 23 co-sponsors, had its first vetting before the House Committee on Finance. The perennial proposal dating back to at least 2002 aims to root out waste, abuse and fraud through an independent Office of the Inspector General empowered to review, audit and investigate state and local public agencies and officials. Nardone has been the primary sponsor for the last six years.
“I’m exhausted,” he told lawmakers Wednesday.
This year’s edition offers a few revisions, reducing the number of state general office holders who get to appoint the inspector general while extending the maximum tenure from a single five-year term to two, five-year terms. Nardone’s bill also seeks to head off recurring pushback from those who consider an inspector general unnecessary, duplicating legal and financial reviews performed by the state attorney general, auditor general and the Rhode Island Office of Internal Audit.
Nardone’s bill would fold the auditor general’s office into the inspector general. And, it gives the inspector general oversight over subpoenas and investigations by the Office of Internal Audit.
The auditor general now reports to House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi as head of the Joint Committee on Legislative Services, while the Office of Internal Audit is controlled by the executive branch.
“We think an office that is more generally responsible to the entire state would be much more efficacious,” House Minority Leader Mike Chippendale, a Foster Republican, said at the press conference.
A majority of Rhode Islanders agree: 75% according to a June survey conducted by the Pell Center at Salve Regina University. Support among registered Democratic voters surveyed topped 70%, with higher levels among independent and Republican voters.
However, when voters were asked in the Nov. 5 election whether they wanted to hold a state constitutional convention — an alternate route to create a state inspector general — the ballot measure failed by a 25 percentage point margin.
President Donald Trump fired 17 federal inspectors general after taking office in January. Chippendale said the majority of the 100 federal oversight agents still had their jobs; those whose positions were eliminated were let go for failing to perform their duties, he said.
The Massachusetts model
Rhode Island doesn’t have to look far to find an example of the proposal in action. Massachusetts created the first statewide independent inspector general’s office in 1981. Eleven other states have since followed suit.
Jeffrey Shapiro, the fifth inspector general for the Bay State, returned to the Rhode Island State House basement Wednesday to describe his office’s work. Shapiro made his debut on Smith Hill to speak on Nardone’s legislation in May 2024.
This year’s visit took much less time — he came from a different part of Massachusetts and was able to avoid Washington Bridge traffic, he said in an interview prior to the hearing.
In the 11 months since Shapiro last visited Rhode Island lawmakers, he’s resolved three criminal cases that ended in a combined $311,000 in restitution, plus prison time. Then there was the 138-page September 2024 report detailing how the Commonwealth wasted $60 million on a “sham” procurement and subsequent 20-year lease for the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth “Star Store” campus in New Bedford. The downtown arts campus abruptly closed in 2023.
Less easily calculable, but no less impactful, were the illegal and improper procurements that never happened thanks to a citizens training school Massachusetts created, which helped 2,000 people learn about state procurement laws in 2024, Shapiro said.
He declined to comment on Rhode Island’s proposal, instead focusing on the general merits of a state inspector general.
“I come to you in support of independent government oversight,” Shapiro told lawmakers.
Proponents say Rhode Island’s government operations and spending offer ample opportunities for similar savings and prevention: the Washington Bridge demolition and rebuild, the data breach of the RIBridges public benefits program, and a March 21 state audit flagging 22 examples of poor financial reporting, including misstating $83.6 million in the state’s general fund in fiscal 2024.
For Chippendale, proof of the need for a state inspector general came days earlier, when Gov. Dan McKee’s aides called various lawmakers pressuring them to take their names off an anti-bid-rigging bill, the Providence Journal first reported.
“The executive branch, in my position, is not in the position to meddle into legislative affairs to this degree,” Chippendale said.
McKee’s office did not immediately respond to inquiries for comment Wednesday.
Nardone’s bill includes 13 Democratic co-sponsors, as well as the chamber’s lone independent, Rep. Jon Brien, of Woonsocket.
“This is not a political issue, this is a good government issue,” said Brien, who crowded into Chippendale’s office alongside the 10 House Republicans for the press conference.
Bills abound
Brien is also co-sponsoring a separate inspector general bill led by Cranston Democratic Rep. Charlene Lima. Lima’s bill is less than half the length of Nardone’s and details similar fraud, waste and abuse powers for a state inspector general. But it leaves the appointment to the governor based on a vetting process led by a 14-member commission with representation from Rhode Island State Police, Common Cause Rhode Island and a seat reserved for former U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin, among others. It also gives the inspector general the power to employ police officers to help with investigations, modeled after similar policies in the state of Georgia.
Lima’s arguments for an independent investigator echoed Nardone’s comments.
“If you can save a minimum of $100 million by spending $1 million, c’mon, who wouldn’t take that deal?” Lima said to lawmakers during the hearing. “You know it. I know it. We have to do this for the people, for our people who send it up here.”
Former Rhode Island Rep. Frank Fiorenzano, who quipped he was “better known as Rep. Lima’s husband,” also spoke in support of her bill.
“I did a lot of research for her, and she said if you’re doing the research, you should also testify,” Fiorenzano said. He considers various spending by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, including on the Washington Bridge demolition contract, as potentially wasteful or fraudulent. “You could probably get away with half or three-quarters of the employees at DOT and it would still run the way it does now.”
Both Nardone and Lima said they were willing to merge their separate proposals into a single piece of legislation.
Across the rotunda, two similar, though not identical bills, have been introduced by Senate Minority Leader Jessica de la Cruz, a North Smithfield Republican, and Sen. Leonidas Raptakis, a Coventry Democrat. Hearings on the Senate bills have not been scheduled as of Wednesday, according to Greg Paré, a Senate spokesperson.
Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, who was absent from State House sessions this week, declined to comment in an emailed statement, saying he is awaiting the bill hearing.
But Shekarchi signaled hesitancy in a statement Wednesday, noting the lack of necessity and the cost of “millions of taxpayer dollars” when the state is already facing a projected $250 million structural deficit and threats of federal funding cuts.
Nardone estimated the new state office would cost $1.5 million a year, based on similar programs in other states. He suggested repurposing $1.2 million included in Gov. Dan McKee’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget to create an “office of program integrity” within the Rhode Island Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
“Wouldn’t that money be better spent on a statewide inspector general?” Nardone said.
He also cited a 2019 report by the National Association of State Budget Officers showing that per-capita spending in the 11 states with independent inspector generals was lower than in the states without them. Rhode Island’s $9,146 spend per person, based on fiscal 2017 spending, is more than 45% higher than the $6,279 federal average in the same year, according to the report.
Andy Manca, chief of the state’s Office of Internal Audit, countered in an April 9 letter to lawmakers that the state would do better to continue its investments in existing audit and investigation functions, including the four new employees to staff an office of program integrity.
Nardone’s bill also drew written support from the Association of Inspectors General, while the Narragansett Bay Commission opposed both Nardone and Lima’s bills, citing the cost to the 350,000 residential customers served by its two wastewater treatment operations if forced to comply with additional oversight regulations.
Public access in question
Steven Brown, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, did not take a position but offered several revisions meant to ensure that records, reports and other information kept by an inspector general’s office be subject to the state’s public records law. Both Nardone and Lima’s bills, as written, would keep the inspector general’s records confidential and not public “unless it is necessary for the inspector general to make such records public in the performance of their duties.”
Lima, however, said her intent was to only keep records confidential while investigations and audits are being conducted; any finished work should be subject to public review, she said in an interview after the hearing.
“The whole point of this is that the public wants transparency,” she said.
Both Lima and Nardone’s bills were held for further study on Wednesday, the standard practice for an initial vetting by lawmakers.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
