Mayor David Cicilline had a press conference today to announce the final details of the "student impact fee" legislation being put before the House. The new details outline that the schools will be charged for every full time student they have registered, instead of taxing the students directly. The idea, as Mayor Cicilline discussed on the Helen Glover Show today, is that these schools can distribute these costs however they want. So for instance the school can absorb this "fee" with their endowments or by attaching the fee to students tuition. There are some problems with this new idea.
Now that the school is given the opportunity to distribute these fees however they want, who do you think is going to pay them? Not only the out-of-state students, thats for sure. Every student, whether they live in Bristol, Tiverton, or California is going to have to pay extra money for this fee.
Why are these schools tax-exempt? Now that they are being charged a fee for every student does that remove this status? What are you going to do with the tax-exempt hospitals? Tax the emergency room patients? Tax the intensive care patients? Just a few questions I would have liked to ask the good Mayor of Providence today at the press conference he had.
Legislators of Rhode Island, I would like to tell you just one thing: Don't blame your mistakes and fiscal irresponsibility on the students of these colleges. Don't talk about "responsibility" and how these students have to be responsible and pay extra taxes. How about you be responsible and balance a budget? How about you be responsible and do what your elected to do, run the state. Not into the ground, we do know you do that well, but in the right direction.
I urge everyone to go to the State House on June 10th to protest this fiscal irresponsibility and to say to these legislators, we've had enough. Enough of your blame game. Enough of your hypocritical talk of responsibility. Enough of your getting re-elected every cycle while we, as a state, continue to spiral downward.
