State Rep. June Speakman on Washington Bridge, the fight for affordable housing, and a political scientist’s view on 2024

Rhode Island Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti faced four hours of questions during a legislative Oversight hearing earlier this week. But after it was over, some key questions remained unanswered — including how the westbound Washington Bridge passed an inspection last summer and is now considered so damaged that it may need to be replaced. More insight into what happened is expected when additional engineering information becomes available within the next few weeks. So for right now, did the Oversight hearing really accomplish anything? Is Alviti the right person to lead the response to the crisis involving the Washington Bridge? And do state lawmakers have the technical expertise to run an effective Oversight process? I’m Ian Donnis and this week I’m going in depth with House Oversight Committee member state Representative June Speakman.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Ian Donnis: Welcome back to The Public’s Radio. 

June Speakman: Thanks, Ian. It’s great to be here.

Donnis: You were among more than two dozen lawmakers who took part in a joint oversight hearing Monday on the Washington Bridge. What was your top takeaway from that?

Speakman: Well, we have weekly briefings with the – East Bay legislators have weekly briefings with Director Alviti, which I can’t attend because I’m in class, but I get briefed by my colleagues. And so there wasn’t much new hard information for me at that briefing, it was good to hear the questions from the other senators and representatives. I still have more unanswered, unanswered questions than answered questions. 

Donnis: Do state lawmakers who are not bridge engineers, after all, really have the technical expertise to run an effective oversight process on something like the Washington Bridge?

Speakman: I think you answered your own question. Of course not. No, it would have been helpful to have an engineer sitting right next to me to help me understand what I was seeing. I think you may have heard me ask a question about the inspections and the fact that they found pigeon debris. And why was that not removed? And it, you know, that’s not even a technical question, but it would have been helpful for me to have someone there to help me interpret the report. 

Donnis: There’s a big spotlight right now on RIDOT director Peter Alviti. Do you support him continuing as director of RIDOT, or do you think it’s time for new leadership?

Speakman: Well, I think it’s time to get some real quick answers to what went wrong. It’s hard to know what responsibility he had. I liked representative Carson’s question about how do you manage seven different contracts and workers who appear not to be happy. That feels like a lot to manage. And I think we need a little bit more information to determine whether or not he is able to continue in his job.

Donnis: Right. And seven different contracts, that’s different agencies involved in looking at the bridge right now and what went wrong wrong with it. To me, one of the most noteworthy things was how director Alviti talked about the westbound bridge being built in 1968. It’s one of the main thoroughfares in the state. It carries about 100,000 people a day. And it was rated structurally deficient even before the emergency closing in December. Is it shocking to you that there was not more attention on scrutinizing the bridge before this problem developed in December? 

Speakman: Yes, it is. And for me, the biggest question is the look back and what is the process used and why, how could something have become so deficient, so quickly or again without notice. I hear from constituents about these thousand year old bridges in Rome and how they seem to manage to survive. So the idea that a bridge that was built in 1968 when I was in high school, I’m not that old, should, should be ready to fall down really strikes me as that there’s something wrong even way back then.

Donnis: Representative Speakman, you are a resident of Warren in the East Bay. How have you and your constituents been affected by what’s going on with the Washington Bridge? 

Speakman: Well, we hear a lot about difficult commutes to Providence, of course, and I have that myself when I go to the Statehouse. I’m lucky to work in Bristol at my other job, so I head the other way, but I hear all the time about the length of time it’s taking people to get to their jobs or to get to doctor’s appointments or other activities in Providence. And certainly one could imagine folks aren’t going to Providence to shop and to dine as much. I did speak to a restaurateur in Bristol who said his business went up immediately after the bridge closed because he thinks folks were staying home and not going into Providence. But that has since subsided. So I hear about it all the time for lots of different reasons. 

Donnis: Let’s switch gears and talk about some other issues. You are the head of a special legislative commission studying housing affordability. Do you think the state is acting with enough urgency now to confront its housing crisis?

Speakman: Well, I certainly am. We’ve, I focus on it all the time. I have extended phone calls and meetings about it many times a week. It’s hard to be, to use the word urgent when you’re talking about constructing housing. It takes a very long time to put the financing together and a very long time, obviously, to get the shovels in the ground and the construction going. I’d like to see faster timetables in both the financing and the building. Again, I’m not an expert in either of those, but I take the words of the experts that we have to be a little bit patient in terms of getting that money out the door and getting it spent. 

Donnis: You’re the house sponsor of a bill to make it easier to develop accessory dwelling units, sometimes called granny flats. Critics say that this could detract from neighborhoods by allowing ADUs on non owner occupied properties. Is that a valid criticism? 

Speakman: No, it’s not, and I’m delighted that we passed the bill in the House on Wednesday, so I look forward to my Senate colleagues developing their version of that. In my view, ADUs are gentle density as we call it. I don’t think they’ll have a negative impact on neighborhoods at all. It’s like having a garage on your property. And again, it helps with seniors having housing, college students having housing. I really think it’s a wonderful addition. And again, it doesn’t require major apartment complexes or entire new neighborhoods. It’s just taking the neighborhoods that we have and adding a little bit more density to them. 

Donnis: The accessory dwelling unit bill was the only one of 14 housing related bills backed by House Speaker Joe Shekarchi in a package last year. What will it take in your view to get the Senate, which did not support the ADU bill last year to support it this year?

Speakman: I know that senators did, as you mentioned, have concerns about the owner occupancy. We do not require that owners live in any other kind of dwelling in the state of Rhode Island. Right? Where who lives in your home is up to you, the owner of the home. And I do not want to burden ADUs with that. But it is important to understand that the neighborhood needs to be taken into account when you’re building these things. So I do hope that we can get, that the Senators can get comfortable with enabling legislation perhaps for ADUs, for owner occupancy. Let the municipalities decide if that’s something they want based on their market conditions. I know there are different concerns in coastal communities where you have lots of Airbnb issues. I understand that completely, so perhaps the community should be able to adjust that particular regulation to their own needs. 

Donnis: We know a big part of Rhode Island’s housing crisis is that for many years, just very little new housing was built in the state beyond increasing production of new housing. What do you see as the keys to overcoming the housing crisis and creating more housing affordability?

Speakman: Well, we need to make sure that zoning codes are not overly restrictive and they have been, the United States has a history across the country of using zoning as a way to minimize multifamily homes, for example, which help people in middle and lower income brackets. And we need to make sure that the zoning is not overly restrictive, and that makes it impossible for denser housing.

Donnis: As a resident of Warren, you have a front row seat on what it’s like coping with climate change in a coastal community we see now with heavier rainfall, even non coastal communities are sometimes having their sewers and storm drains overwhelmed by the amount of rainfall. What needs to happen for the state to do a better job in coping with climate change?

Speakman: Well, it’s great news that the governor has a chief resiliency officer. She’s just getting started as does the city of Providence now, and it’ll be great to see what kind of planning they do. I’m very enthusiastic about representative Spears’ Act on Coast bill. I certainly hope that passes this year. That adds an element of planning, which we need to get to right away about coastal resiliency and rebuilding and where you should rebuild and where you shouldn’t. So I think that’s a really important move in the direction to address those issues. 

Donnis: In your day job, you are a political science professor at Roger Williams University. You’ve been in the House of Representatives for a little more than four years now. What is your sense of how effective the legislature is in addressing issues of concern to Rhode Islanders?

Speakman: As a political scientist, I can tell you that what I’ve learned from my four years at the State House is very different from what you read in the state and local government textbooks. So, if I get the opportunity, I will rewrite that chapter in state and local government. It is much more, It’s much more difficult actually to get bills written and to get them passed. We’re a part time legislature. I didn’t realize how significant that was as a feature of legislatures. In the textbook it doesn’t really make mention of part time versus full time. But the fact that we’re a part time legislature makes it tremendously difficult. The workload is that of a full time legislature. And, we need to rely on advocates and staff to help us do our work. Thank goodness for them because they do help us with the work. But I have learned primarily that a part time legislature is a model that needs to be looked at. Let’s just say. 

Donnis: In as much as you can, if you can take off your hat as a Democratic state representative and wear your hat as a professor of political science, how would you describe the stakes of the presidential election in the U.S. this year? 

Speakman: Yeah, the stakes are very high. Obviously, my students tell me that they are deeply dissatisfied with both choices. And I have Republicans and Democrats and mostly unaffiliated students in my classes. They are deeply disappointed with the choices. Are Trump and Biden the best that we can come up with as the two contenders for the presidency? Why are they so old? Well, that’s a good question. They are old because they’re old, but why are we running such old people for president? As an old person myself, I tell them to relax a little bit with that. But it is, the stakes are extremely high. They’re very different, in their, leadership styles in their approach to government and in their policies. So, the winner of the November – that the stakes are really high for who the winner is. 

Donnis: As you say, many people are dissatisfied with the seeming choice of Donald Trump and Joe Biden as the candidates. What explanation do you offer as a political scientist for how we’ve gotten these choices that a lot of people are not very happy with?

Speakman: Well, we have the choice of Biden, because that’s the way you do it. If an incumbent is running, he doesn’t get a challenge from within his party, typically. And we know that to be true, in almost every case. With regard to Trump, I, as a political scientist, am surprised, I guess I shouldn’t have been, that he is running again. However, the hold that he has on the Republican Party is remarkable. I’ve studied political parties for a very long time, and it is very rare to see this kind of fervor for a particular leader. So that’s a surprise, and I think political scientists are going to have to spend a lot of time unpacking how the Republican Party came to be where it is today.

Donnis: Do you see a point in the future when America moves past the hyper partisanship that’s been growing in intensity for about 15 years? 

Speakman: Well, I don’t see anything wrong with political parties having clear agendas that are different one from the other that give voters a true choice. It is the negative, vibe in politics now. You can want big government or small government, right? You can want gun control or not. But you can argue about them in a civil way. We have done that for many, many years. Right now, we’re at a place where it’s not partisanship. It’s the tone, the negative tone and the absolute unwillingness to compromise. You saw President Biden last week develop a compromise on immigration, and at the last minute, it failed. So it really is a very toxic environment right now, unfortunately.

Donnis: State Representative June Speakman, a Democrat from Warren. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Speakman: It’s a pleasure to be here.

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Children in Rhode Island continue to suffer from lead paint poisoning, as my colleague Nina Sparling reports in a series this week on The Public’s Radio. Back in 1999, Rhode Island was the first state to bring the fight to lead paint manufacturers with a lawsuit. In 2002, a jury demanded that three paint makers pay billions of dollars to clean up contaminated homes. But the Rhode Island Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, threw out the jury finding in 2008. You can read more about that in my Friday TGIF column posting around 4 this afternoon on what used to be known as Twitter @IanDon and at thepublicsradio.org/tgif

That’s our show for this week. Our producer is James Baumgartner.

I’m Ian Donnis and I’ll see you on the radio.