Rhode Island Current

2 months ago | rhodeislandcurrent.com | Alexander Castro

Nearly two months after state officials disclosed a colossal breach of Rhode Island’s public benefits portal and health insurance marketplace, a state rep is trying to strengthen laws surrounding data leaks of people’s private information. “We need to do something for data breaches. It’s just getting ridiculous,” Rep. Robert Phillips, a Woonsocket Democrat, said Tuesday during a meeting of the Rhode Island House Committee on Innovation, Internet and Technology.

2 months ago | rhodeislandcurrent.com | Alexander Castro

Timmons Roberts of Providence has a Ph.D. But someone pretending to be a federal marshal over the phone still ended up scamming him out of $2,200 last year. The scammer convinced Roberts to withdraw money from his bank, then feed the cash into a Coinstar machine. The supermarket fixture was once used to easily count spare change. More recently, the units have begun to double as cryptocurrency kiosks.

2 months ago | rhodeislandcurrent.com | Alex Brown

For states that are pursuing plans to build more wind and solar projects, the federal government has suddenly shifted from a powerful ally to a formidable opponent. State leaders are still scrambling to make sense of President Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders, funding freezes, agency directives and verbal threats about clean energy. It’s as if the teammate who had passed them the ball is now trying to block their shot.

2 months ago | rhodeislandcurrent.com | Janine Weisman

by Janine L. Weisman, Rhode Island Current February 11, 2025 The Rhode Island Ethics Commission voted Tuesday to pursue changing state rules to include lobbyists among those who are banned from giving gifts over $25 to public employees and officials. The 5-2 vote on part of a petition filed in December by Common Cause Rhode Island will begin the process of strengthening the “gift rule” in the state’s ethics code.

2 months ago | rhodeislandcurrent.com | Alexander Castro

Mia Tretta cared more about her Spanish grade and who was going to ask her to the school dance than advocacy as a 15-year-old growing up in California. That changed on Nov. 14, 2019. “An older student I had never met before entered my school with a gun in his backpack,” the Brown University sophomore told dozens of people gathered Tuesday afternoon in the State Room of the Rhode Island State House. That was the day Tretta was airlifted to a hospital where doctors removed a bullet from her stomach.