ecoRI News — Study Commission: CRMC’s Budget is Insufficient

Concerns about rampant growth crowding the shores of the Ocean State, and near approval of industrial coastal projects such as an oil refinery in Tiverton, led to the founding of the Coastal Resources Management Council in 1971. (istock)

Mar 3, 2022

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News contributor

PROVIDENCE — State officials should be investing more in coastal protection and management, according to the legislature’s study commission on reorganizing the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC).

Chief of staff Antonio Afonso presented Gov. Dan McKee’s proposed budget to the commission last week. Under the plan, CRMC would receive an additional $367,742 from the general fund. The money would be used to hire a full-time position at $124,769, and a part-time hearing officer at $15,000, with the remaining $206,481 slated for cost-of-living adjustments for existing staff. 

“My issue is the agency has a $5 million budget,” commission chair Rep. Deb Ruggiero, D-Jamestown, said. “$2.5 million from the state, $2.5 million from the feds and now our state is getting $1.1 billion in federal dollars and there has not been one dollar appropriated or allocated for CRMC.”

The governor’s budget includes a coastal-analyst position that would work on offshore wind permitting and help the agency manage its shoreline public rights of way. CRMC expects to have five offshore wind facilities in different stages of development over the next two years.

 “The proper policy goal, it seems to us, is a balanced approach which carefully takes into account all legitimate claims to natural resources,” Afonso said.

The part-time hearing officer position is required under state law. The agency in the past has relied on pro bono lawyers to work as hearing officers during controversial applications or to handle enforcement issues. Under the governor’s plan, the hearing officer would work part-time while retaining the ability to practice law in a private practice, something disallowed for similar positions at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

The current CRMC workload is not enough to support a hearing officer full time, according to Afonso. While commission members welcomed a shift away from volunteer lawyers, Rep. Laura Carson, D-Newport, called the position “woefully insufficient.”

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