Alex Kuffner, Providence Journal
PROVIDENCE – When Catherine Robinson Hall was appointed to a seat on the Coastal Resources Management Council in 2022, she represented something different for the powerful state agency that controls development along the Rhode Island shoreline.
Unlike previous members of the agency’s voting council, which included a dental hygienist and the head of a chain of physical therapy offices, Robinson Hall, a professor of marine policy at Williams College and former lawyer with the state Department of Environmental Management, had 35 years of experience relevant to the position.
But Robinson Hall, who gave up her seat a year ago citing her busy schedule, told lawmakers Tuesday that any expertise that members may have “is thoroughly thwarted by the structure of the council.”
“Experience and background,” she said at a House hearing, “does not cure the fundamental broken pieces of the council.”
Speaking to the House Committee on State Government and Elections as a newly hired staff attorney for Save The Bay, an organization that for years has been calling for reform of the coastal council, Robinson Hall argued that a lack of transparency and accountability has set the scene for a string of dubious decisions by the voting members in recent years.
She was one among many to urge the committee to endorse legislation introduced at the request of the attorney general’s office that would do away with the council of appointees and put power in the hands of the agency’s professional director and staff, who have training as coastal policy experts, engineers and marine resource specialists.
There was so little disagreement at the hearing that Rep. Evan Shanley, the committee chair, told speakers to focus their remarks on how to fix the coastal council, not on whether it’s broken in the first place.
“I don’t think we’re going to hear from anybody that’s going to say that CRMC is functioning well as presently constituted,” the Warwick Democrat said. “I think all of us have the same impression that you all do.”
Long list of controversial decisions
It was around this time four years ago that lawmakers first moved to consider restructuring the coastal council, but little has changed since then with the controversial agency.
A slew of bills have come and gone, and still, the most important decisions that come before the agency are voted on by members who aren’t required to have any expertise in complex issues that can range from the environmental impacts of offshore wind development to the efficacy of seawalls in controlling erosion.
While there have long been concerns about the unusual structure of the agency, calls for a restructuring intensified after a closed-door decision by members of the council to approve a hotly disputed marina expansion on Block Island came to light in 2021. Attorney General Peter Neronha came out against the side agreement the council had made with Champlin’s Marina, and the Rhode Island Supreme Court eventually killed the pact.
More recently, another contentious decision made by the council – the approval of an expansion of a Jamestown marina – was also overturned. A Superior Court judge in January ruled that the council had failed to follow its own procedural rules in making the 2020 decision on the proposal by Safe Harbor Jamestown Boat Yard.
Questions have also been raised about the council’s rulings on offshore wind, including a decision to override staff advice on negotiating a lease for a transmission cable.
And even as Save The Bay and Neronha adjudged the council to have made the right decision recently against an illegal seawall built by a country club in North Kingstown, they questioned why its members even considered rethinking regulations and letting the wall at Quidnessett Country Club stand.
Critics say the CRMC’s structure, which puts so much power in the hands of a council whose members are nominated by the governor and confirmed by the Senate, is at the root of the problems.
The newest member of the council is podiatrist Michael Reuter. A Barrington resident who served on the town’s Harbor Commission, Reuter won Senate confirmation last month to fill the seat vacated by Robinson Hall.
Is the coastal council broken?
Several bills aimed at restructuring the council are on the table this session, but legislation once again introduced by Portsmouth Democrat Rep. Terri Cortvriend that would abolish the 10-member council and create a new Department of Coastal Resources, appears to have the broadest support.
The bill, written by Neronha’s office, is almost identical to Cortvriend’s legislation from last year that appeared to have some chance of moving forward after Senate leaders signed on as co-sponsors. But the measure stalled after the administration of Gov. Dan McKee put the costs of restructuring at up to $2.9 million a year.
The Department of Administration followed up with a more complete report in February that considered various restructuring options, with additional costs ranging up to $1.9 million annually to hire additional employees to do the work of the appointed council.
Alison Fonseca, legislative and policy counsel for the attorney general’s office, described the report’s estimates as “not based in fact or reality” and said the restructured agency would not need more staff beyond a new in-house attorney.
Rep. Teresa Tanzi, a South Kingstown Democrat who introduced one of the past council-reform bills, said the Cortvriend legislation would in fact lead to cost savings if power is taken away from the voting council, citing “legal costs that we’ve incurred as a state having to appeal these ridiculous decisions.”
Robinson Hall wasn’t the only former council member to testify in favor of restructuring the agency. Paul Beaudette, who served on the council for three years before being replaced in 2017, said he generally followed staff recommendations during his term, but said that wasn’t the case with all other members.
“How many times were assents against the staff?” he said. “I don’t know, but it was not uncommon.”
Jed Thorp, director of advocacy for Save The Bay, said it makes no sense to maintain the status quo.
“If you were creating a coastal agency today out of thin air, would you come up with a structure where decisions are made by volunteers with no experience on coastal issues, or would you come up with a system where decisions are made by experts, scientists, engineers, geologists?” he asked.
Robinson Hall pointed to the council’s response to the rock revetment illegally built by Quidnessett as the latest demonstration of the agency’s dysfunction. Staff recommended more than a year ago that the country club’s petition to let the wall stand be denied, yet the 600-foot structure still remains. Robinson Hall argued that the council’s structure has impeded swift action.
“That’s not orderly, that’s not fair, and no experience of any council member can fix that,” she said. “That’s broken.”