Rhode Island
Already #1 in Debt Per Capita: Smith Hill Still Wants Rhode Islanders to Rubber-Stamp $600 Million More in Bonds
What happened
On the Nov. 3 ballot, Rhode Island voters will face five general-obligation bond questions totaling $600 million in new borrowing. The Secretary of State’s official voter guide estimates that, with interest over 20 years at 5%, the full tab is about $962.9 million—principal plus roughly $363 million in interest.
The package, certified when Gov. Dan McKee signed the FY 2027 budget (H. 7127) in June, breaks down as: $275 million for higher-education facilities (URI integrated health building, RIC library/career center, CCRI workforce center); $120 million for housing and homeownership; $100 million for economic and infrastructure development (including Quonset and I-195 district work); $50 million for a State History Center and preservation grants; and $55 million for green-economy and environmental projects. Each question is a separate Approve/Reject vote. The House passed the budget 65–10 and the Senate 31–7, with Republican opposition in both chambers.
Rhode Island Current’s Matt Ulricksen notes that over the last 20 years Rhode Islanders have approved 34 of 35 Assembly-put bond questions—more than $2.26 billion in taxpayer-backed debt—by a median margin of 66%. The last rejection was a $4 million Fort Adams bond in 2006. Census-based rankings put Rhode Island at $10,259 in state debt per capita, first among the 50 states (Massachusetts second at $9,230).
Original reporting
Read the underlying sources:
Rhode Island Current — Bonds. More bonds. (Matt Ulricksen, Oct. 14, 2026)
Virtue Forge commentary
Borrowing is not free enterprise. It is deferred taxation with interest. Rhode Island already owes more state debt per resident than any other state in the country, and Smith Hill’s answer is five more bond questions totaling $600 million—nearly a billion dollars once the coupons are paid. That is not stewardship. It is habit.
The political economy is familiar: package popular capital projects, put them on the ballot as separate questions, watch them pass by two-to-one, and call the result the will of the people. Ulricksen’s point that a middling, part-time legislature can look “safe” to bond markets because it moves slowly is interesting academic color—and beside the civic point. Markets price predictability. Taxpayers price the bill. A state that rubber-stamps 34 of 35 bond asks while ranking first in debt per capita is not proving competence; it is proving that the check on borrowing is weak.
None of this requires pretending every project is worthless. URI’s health building and CCRI’s workforce center may be good investments. The question is whether a government that already leads America in per-capita state debt should keep treating the full faith and credit of Rhode Islanders as a standing line of credit for whatever the Assembly packages into the budget. Free enterprise builds with capital that has been earned or honestly priced. Statism builds with tomorrow’s taxpayers—and Rhode Island has already borrowed more of that future, per person, than anyone else.
What to watch: whether any of the five questions fails (history says no), whether candidates for governor treat the state’s debt stock as a competence issue rather than a ribbon-cutting opportunity, and whether the next budget cycle arrives with another bond package before the last one is even sold.