Boston Globe — Property owners won’t take changes to R.I. shore lying down

Property owners erect fences and post signs marking their territory on Charlestown Town Beach. LANE TURNER/GLOBE STAFF

March 9, 2022

By Brian Amaral — Shoreline access group is already planning its fight against upcoming legislative proposal

When a House panel studying shore access in Rhode Island said last week it had reached consensus on a recommendation to change the law, the mood inside the State House hearing room was celebratory. There was even applause from the half-dozen or so shoreline rights activists who came out to watch.

Outside the room, along Rhode Island’s 400 miles of coastline, property owners saw something else: a faulty idea that they would oppose in the General Assembly.

“[W]e believe the proposed ‘consensus’ amounts to a clear unconstitutional taking of private property by the state to which the state taxpayers will be required to pay compensation,” Christopher Boyle, lobbyist for a group of shoreline property owners that has fought similar proposals in the past, said in an email. “The extensive amount of property in question is private property to which owners have been paying property taxes on for as long as property taxes have existed.”

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