Peter Neronha: The 'Goal' Of New Legal Action Is To Reinstate Education Funding 'Quickly'

During a press conference on Monday, Democratic Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha answered a question about backfilling the budget.

Transcript

00:00Next question comes from Eric.

00:03Eric, you are now unmuted.

00:07Hi, I wanted to follow up on a prior question.

00:10I know A.G. Bonta answered about the perhaps backfilling this in the state budget and how hard it is.

00:16I'm curious from the other A.G.s in your states how the budget picture is shaping out

00:22and whether you would like lawmakers to maybe revisit and backfilling funding that has been cut.

00:30Well, I'll jump in here and just comment in this fashion that we have a part-time legislature here

00:40and they just concluded their session.

00:43It was a very difficult budget year.

00:47And, you know, choosing at the end, for example, between health care,

00:52shoring up Rhode Island's health care system, which badly needs it,

00:55against other issues of need and the need to raise fees on Rhode Islanders and others to meet those needs.

01:07So I can't speak for my fellow states, but I can say that in Rhode Island in the last several years,

01:13it's always been a challenging time for the legislature.

01:16My hope is that before they come back or are scheduled to come back on January 1st,

01:23far, far, far before then, we'll have this resolved.

01:26I really am hoping and expecting that this will be resolved in our favor.

01:31Not, you know, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves and I don't obviously want to speak for the court.

01:35We have to make our points there as well.

01:37But based on the track record, because it really is, as I said earlier,

01:41we've seen this story before, we've been in the ring before with these sorts of cases,

01:46and we've had great success because the violations of the law are so obvious.

01:51So my hope is that with respect to these funds, there won't be a need to call our legislature back

01:57because we will have the funds reinstated in short order.

02:01That's the goal. That's our expectation.

02:03We have to make the arguments in court, of course.

02:06But based on the track record, based on the fact that we've seen these violations,

02:12the same violations of the law and other funding contexts,

02:16it's my hope and expectation we'll have this money restored very quickly.