Over a dozen bus Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) drivers packed into a State House basement hearing room Tuesday evening to watch their new CEO make the case for state lawmakers to plug a $32.6 million deficit facing the agency in the upcoming fiscal year.
If RIPTA doesn’t get the funding, those drivers may be out of a job, CEO Christopher Durand warned the House Finance Subcommittee on Environment and Transportation.
“We don’t want to be doing that,” Durand said. “We want to grow, we want to do more, we want to really play a good role in the economy of the state.”
But state leaders are waiting on RIPTA to submit an independent efficiency study of its operations, as mandated in the state’s fiscal 2025 budget. The report was initially due March 1, but the agency is still searching for a vendor — a bidding process is set to close Thursday — with work likely to begin in April. The earliest a final report would be ready would be mid-June, according to a timeline in the Request for Proposals.
Following the resignation of Scott Avedisian from the CEO role last April, RIPTA’s board of directors suspended the procurement process until it could find a permanent leader.
“We understand the need for the General Assembly’s need for that information to make their decision to help understand where we really are,” Durand told the subcommittee. “We are working hard to deliver as much (of) that as possible as soon as possible.”
Gov. Dan McKee said when he released his proposed fiscal 2026 budget in January that an efficiency study must be completed before any discussion of more funding for RIPTA would happen. RIPTA projects $159.1 million in expenditures, but McKee’s recommended budget only allocates $126.6 million.
Durand told lawmakers the agency has started to deliver since he took on the CEO role.
“We’ve really kind of changed the direction of what we’re able to do as an agency,” he told the subcommittee. “At this time last year, we were missing trips — we just didn’t have enough drivers to cover all the work and were in a difficult position.”
Now RIPTA is hiring drivers. The agency’s board of directors in February 2024 approved a 16.7% starting wage hike for new drivers, a decision that — along with a paid CDL permit training initiative — led applicants to line up outside RIPTA’s Melrose Street headquarters in Providence. As a result, the agency avoided having to suspend or reduce any routes.
Since the new wage increase took effect last winter, Durand said RIPTA has hired 44 new drivers.
He also highlighted the launch of express service routes to the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Johnston, in which the company has agreed to purchase $90,000 of fare annually over the next 10 years to encourage workers to take a public bus to and from work. RIPTA is also considering establishing similar agreements with employers in the Quonset Business Park, a plan commended by subcommittee member Teresa Tanzi, a South Kingstown Democrat.
“If we’re going to do anything to subsidize any business moving into the state of Rhode Island, they should similarly be subsidizing our public transit system,” Tanzi said.
RIPTA board member and Rhode Island AFL-CIO President Patrick Crowley told the subcommittee that the agency has transformed for the better since Durand took the helm, first as interim CEO in April 2024 and then as the permanent leader in November. Any progress made, Crowley said, would be undone if the state doesn’t fill the agency’s budget deficit.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to fill this gap,” Crowley said. “RIPTA is a vital public service — it’s part of our social infrastructure in the state and we should be enhancing it.”
Christopher Bove, a bus rider who is legally blind, expressed his disappointment that McKee declined to allocate any funding toward RIPTA.
“Those cuts aren’t going to come to the C-suite, they’re going to come out of drivers, they’re going to come out of customer service agent salaries, they’re going to come at a cost to riders,” Bove told the subcommittee. “If the legislature is concerned with how RIPTA is spending its money, then the legislature should make structural changes to how RIPTA exists and operates instead of punishing passengers like me for the agency’s misfortune.”
So where could RIPTA get funding from? Some legislators have floated bills that can boost funding without drawing from the state’s general revenue fund, but advocates have also pointed to resolutions introduced in the House and Senate in late February that would appropriate the full $32.6 million to keep the agency afloat for another year.
But House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi said such an allocation is not on the table as the state looks to reduce its own $223.3 million budget deficit.
“There is no extra money,” he said in a recent interview.
Providence Streets Coalition Board President Liza Burkin acknowledged the state faces a tough budget year, but told the subcommittee that plugging RIPTA’s deficit would only represent 0.23% of the state’s proposed $14.2 billion spending plan.
“We can find that money and we’re going to find that money,” Burkin said.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
