Editor’s Note: As we face huge deficits and proposals to restructure government, understanding how Rhode Island arrived at its current government organization, financing and services is important. This is the fourth part of a five-part series by Kenneth Payne on how we got to where we are.

The election of 1950 brought Dennis J. Roberts to the governorship. In Governor Roberts’ first year, the Department of Administration was established by adding the personnel (civil service) function to the Department of Coordination and Finance; the Home Rule amendment, which gave cities and towns the power to define their government, was approved in a June special election; an economic development agency — the Rhode Island development council — was created; the board of education was reorganized, and a resolution was passed to prepare a new version of the General Laws.

The transformation of Rhode Island government, which began with the “Bloodless Revolution” of 1935, had been completed. Up to 1935, state government was by commission. Between 1935 and 1950, the administrative state was put in place. Governor Roberts, arguably the most powerful Rhode Island governor in the 20th century, made the administrative state operational.

THE DEPARTMENT of Administration became the heart of state government. The war effort showed that it was effective to separate staff and line functions. The department collected the state’s revenues, taxes, fees, and other income, and managed the state’s budget. It provided central purchasing for state agencies and oversaw the personnel system, taking over the duties of the independent Department of Civil Service.

Confidence was placed in modernization. The Roberts administration made unprecedented commitments to highway building and higher education. The economy of the state was still urban and industrial. Unemployment was comparatively high, the textile industry continued to decline. Industry had to modernize, and cities needed to be renewed. A justification for highway construction was that it was needed for industrial development. The Rhode Island development council promoted industrial parks, which for the most part were built in the communities surrounding Providence.

Baby boomers were entering school. Old forms of school aid were insufficient, and a new was adopted in 1955. The old method was based on defined flat grants for specific things, $300 per school up to five schools, $1.50 per student in average daily attendance, up to $1,000 toward the salary of a superintendent, and $600 per teacher as a salary grant. The new system used a formula with an equalizing index.

In 1951, the state college in Kingston became the University of Rhode Island. A two-decade period of growth in higher education was underway. In 1956, construction began on new campus for Rhode Island College of Education, now Rhode Island College. Rhode Island Junior College, was authorized by statute in 1960 and opened in 1964, with an initial class 60 percent larger than was planned. New campuses were constructed in Warwick, which opened in 1972, and in Lincoln, which opened in 1976.

The 1951 Home Rule Amendment to the Constitution launched a movement in the adoption of local charters. In the 1950s, eight communities adopted home rule charters; in the 1960s another eight did; in the 1970s another eight; in the1980s, five more; and in the 1990s, seven. In 2000, only Hopkinton, Richmond, and Scituate, had not gone the route of home rule.

The Home Rule Amendment was not, however, a broad grant of local autonomy. Self-government was confined to “local matters.” And in Rhode Island what matters are purely local? Charters could pertain to the “property, affairs, and government” of the community.

Since the adoption of the Home Rule amendment there has been only one significant expansion of local government powers, those pertaining to planning, zoning, the subdivision of land and building. The growth in government activity continued to be at the state level; in 1964 the state absorbed local responsibilities for public health and public assistance.

At the local level what was modernized was administrative structure and the operations of various municipal functions, such as the finance, tax assessing, and the activities of city and town clerks; professionalism had become a standard expectation. But as towns gained ground in administrative capacity, they lost it in functional and operational autonomy.

First, in the 1960s public sector collective bargaining was approved by the General Assembly for firefighters (1961), policemen (1963), teachers (1966), and other municipal employees (1967). Because of the critical public safety responsibilities of the services, firefighters and policemen were given compulsory binding arbitration to avoid the possibility of strikes.

Second, education, the largest area of local government spending, became more and more a state and federally regulated activity.

Third, traditional public works functions, such as water supply, sewage treatment and solid waste disposal were subject to federal and state regulation, especially after the major federal environmental laws of the1970s.

Fourth, by the 1960s, Rhode Island’s industrial cities, which had been rich and powerful through the 1920s, became poor as industry declined and retail trade moved to the suburbs. Local power was impaired by declining fiscal capacity.

In the presidential election of 1960, John F. Kennedy carried the state with the largest plurality to date. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson’s plurality was larger still. Kennedy’s New Frontier initiatives, were followed by the sweeping Great Society programs of Johnson. A war on poverty was declared. Rhode Island government expanded, predominantly at the state level.

Establishing the Department of Community Affairs in 1968, the General Assembly declared, “that one of the most serious areas of present concern to the people of the state is the necessity of achieving quickly improvement in the quality of the urban environment and in the living condition of urban dwellers.”

Medicaid, the federal program established by the Social Security Act to provide medical insurance to welfare recipients, required state administration. This obligation placed Rhode Island in the medical insurance business.

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962, catalyzed environmentalism. At the federal level numerous measures were enacted. The state followed suit by expanding the responsibilities of the Department of Health and by creating the Department of Natural Resources, which replaced the Department of Agriculture and Conservation and assumed parks functions of the Department of Public Works.

At the federal level, the National Historic Preservation Act was adopted in 1966. In 1968, the Rhode Island Historical Preservation Commission was established as free-standing body in the executive branch of state government. Rhode Island had a strong interest in its Colonial heritage, including its architecture; in Antoinette Downing it had a leader of national stature.

At the local level new entities were created to implement federally funded “model cities” and community action programs. Community action agencies, which are not a branch of city or town government, remain a feature of government in the state.

DURING THE Johnson administration, hierarchical government reached its zenith; policy directions were established in Washington and administered by the executive branch of state government.

President Nixon sought a clear break with Great Society liberalism. Nixon endeavored not so much to reduce the federal commitment to domestic priorities but to change the character of that commitment and make the system of federal-state relations more efficient. Areas of broad, national commitment would be federally defined and supported, decision making with regard to how to meet the commitments would be made at a state level, where specific conditions were better understood and increases in efficiency might be achieved. Nixon’s New Federalism sought to consolidate categorical programs into block grants.

The federal government remained activist, especially as a fiscal partner. Federal financing of programs such as Food Stamps, Medicaid and housing assistance more than tripled between 1969 and 1974. Rhode Island became more deeply dependent on federal support. Federal General Revenue Sharing took the New Federalism principle of federal funding to its purest form: the federal government would provide money by formula, and states and localities would decide what to do with it.

The concept of efficiency was alive at the state level. In 1969, the General Assembly authorized the governor to reorganize the executive branch. The purposes were: “(1) to promote the better execution of the laws, the more effective management of the executive branch of the state and its agencies and functions, and the expeditious administration of the public business; (2) to reduce expenditures and promote economy, to the fullest extent consistent with the efficient operation of the state; (3) to increase the efficiency of the operations of the state to the fullest extent practicable; (4) to group, coordinate, and consolidate agencies and functions of the government, as nearly as may be, according to major purposes; (5) to reduce the number of agencies by consolidating those having similar functions under a single head, and to abolish such agencies or functions thereof as may not be necessary for the efficient conduct of the state; and (6) to eliminate overlapping and duplication of effort.”

The governor was to submit a reorganization plan to the General Assembly, and unless the Senate or the House passed a resolution objecting to it, it would go into effect.

By the means of such a reorganization plan, social service agencies were realigned in 1970. The unwieldy Department of Social Welfare was divided into the Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services and the Department of Mental Health Retardation and Hospitals. A second departmental reconfiguration during the Licht Administration was the establishment of the Department of Transportation in 1970.

A unified administrative structure of the judicial branch was authorized in 1969. As the governor was the administrative head of the executive branch, the chief justice of the Supreme Court would be the administrative head of the judicial branch. The chief justice was empowered to appoint a court administrator and assistants to the administrator.

During the period, 1935-1972, an executive-branch- centered administrative state was created and made operational and expanded. During period , 1973-2000, power and capacity in state government dispersed, in a sense the administrative state disintegrated.

IN 1973 the Nixon administration dramatically reduced the Navy presence in Rhode Island. The ships and planes left, and Rhode Island reeled. Governor Noel responded, pushing hard for the creation of the Department of Economic Development and the Rhode Island Port Authority and Economic Development Corporation, a quasi-public corporation chaired by the governor. The Port Authority had sweeping powers for the redevelopment of former Navy lands, which were mostly in North Kingstown.

Rhode Island was in a two-decade period of growth in the number, size, and importance of quasi-public corporations. A quasi-public corporation is an entity, with a distinct legal existence and not constituting a department of state government, established by law to accomplish a public purpose.

QUASI-PUBLIC corporations are their own realms. They may sue and be sued in their own name and have their own corporate seal. They can enter into contracts. Typically they can borrow and invest money and own property in their own name. They can hire and fix the compensation of staff, who are not state employees.

A few quasi-public corporations, the Turnpike and Bridge Authority, the Health and Education Building Authority, the Public Building Authority and the Industrial, Recreational Building Authority were created in the 1950s. The RI Public Transit Authority was added in the 1960s.

The Rhode Island Housing and Mortgage Finance Corporation was created in 1973. The Port Authority and Economic Development Corporation, the Lottery Commission, and the Solid Waste management Corporation (now the Resource Recovery Corporation) were created in 1974, and the Higher Education Assistance authority in 1977. The Narragansett Bay Water Quality Management District Commission was created to take over the substandard Providence sewage treatment plant and to make investments in the system to improve water quality in upper Narragansett Bay.

The Watergate break-in, cover-up and ensuing crisis, which resulted in President Nixon’s resignation, brought good government reforms off the back burner and made them a hot political concern. Principles of accountability, accessibility, and transparency had freshness and vigor; smoke filled rooms and decisions made behind closed doors by political wheelers and dealers were a source of dismay and a cause of alarm.

The Commission on Judicial Tenure and Discipline was created in1974. The 1912 Progressive era statute for the registration of lobbyists was replaced in 1975. The Open Meetings law was passed in 1976, and the Access to Public Records law came in 1979. A Conflict of Interest law, with a commission charged with providing for its administration and enforcement, was enacted in 1976. A decade later, its basic concepts were made of the Rhode Island Constitution, an independent, powerful Ethics Commission became part of the structure of Rhode Island government.

Advocacy for rights and interests also became a feature of state government.

The Human Rights Commission had its origins in the 1940s, as the Commission for Fair Employment Practices to mitigate discrimination in the work place based on color or race, ethnicity, and religion. Its functions were expanded in 1965 to include housing discrimination. The name was changed in 1968, and proscribed activities were extended over the years to include discriminatory practices based on sex, marital status, handicap (disability), age, or family status.

The Governor’s Committee on Employment of the Handicapped was created in 1970, with advocacy as a core mission. In 1985, the committee’s mission was broadened and its status was changed to a commission within the executive department. .

A State Planning and Advisory Council on Developmental Disabilities was created in 1972 and its duties were expanded1976 and again in 1979. In 1989, the council was designated as the sole agency “to develop and, as approved by the governor establish a plan for improving services for individuals with developmental disabilities.”

The Commission on the Deaf and Hearing Impaired was created in 1978, the commission was to “be primarily a coordinating and advocating body,” and was charged, with coordinating, “a professional centralized sign language interpreting unit….”

The position of Mental Health Advocate was created in 1974 and the Child Advocate in 1980.

Congress adopted major environmental statutes commencing in 1969, with the National Environmental Policy Act. Rhode Island participated in the spirit of the times. Proposals to build oil refineries and nuclear power plants on the shores of Narragansett Bay caused a surge of environmental activism willing to challenge federal and state government and powerful business interests. The Coastal Resources Management Council was established in 1971, predominantly as a creature of the General Assembly.

The 1977 act creating the Department of Environmental Management combined environmental regulatory functions from the Department of Health with the resource management responsibilities of the Department of Natural Resources. To achieve environmental protection goals, standards had to be promulgated and enforcement actions had to be taken against individuals, businesses, and municipalities.

PRESIDENT REAGAN’S federal agenda brought a big change. In his 1981 inaugural address President Reagan said, “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”

This had an impact on Rhode Island. The federal government ceased to be a reliable source of across-the-board incremental growth in financing.

Edward DiPrete was elected in 1984; his first budget was responsive to Reagan Revolution dynamics. The Department of Community Affairs was dismantled. The Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services was renamed the Department of Human Services, and the catastrophic health insurance functions were moved into it from the Department of Health.

By the middle 1980s, Rhode Island’s economy accelerated with the enormous increase in late Cold War defense spending and a real estate boom. State revenues were growing. Governor DiPrete sought to reduce property tax burdens in cities and towns and to increase school aid to 50 percent of elementary and secondary education costs.

When the defense buildup ended and the real estate boom collapsed, Rhode Island went into a deep recession. And as Bruce Sundlun assumed the governorship, the system of credit unions, many of them community and ethnically based, imploded. Shaky deals and favoritism were revealed. Outrage was pervasive. Ethical scandal brought down the chief justice of the Supreme Court and the court administrator.

The House and the Senate, by resolution placed constitutional amendments before the voters in 1992 and 1994. The terms of general officers were increased to four years; state spending was capped at 98 percent of general revenues and a budget reserve account was established; judges, including supreme court justices, were to be nominated on the basis of merit; and the General Assembly was reduced in size by 25 percent, compensation of members was increased from the 1900 amount of $5 per day, legislative pensions were phased out, and commencing in 2003, the Senate would elect its own presiding officer, a pesident.

In 1995, Lincoln Almond was inaugurated as the first governor with a four-year term.

Over the prior 30 years the power of the General Assembly had been increasing. For the first two thirds of the 20th century, state legislatures were generally viewed as malapportioned realms of small time politics and marginal competence. Charles Tantillo, of the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers, in his 1968 report, Strengthening The Rhode Island Legislature, wrote: “the legislature should be one of three equal branches of state government, working with, but never subservient to the executive or the judiciary. The legislature should be an important force in developing and implementing state policy through the legislation it introduces, enacts, and either enacts or defeats.”

The U.S. Supreme Court decisions in apportionment cases, precipitated change in the Rhode Island General Assembly. Previously, each city and town regardless of population size had a least one senator, henceforth Senate districts would have essentially the same population. This meant that towns with small populations would be aggregated into Senate districts. Furthermore the population and political alignment of the towns changed with suburbanization. Reapportionment and migration from the cities made Democrat super-majorities in the Senate, as well as the House, the rule rather than the exception.

In 1996, the governor contested the General Assembly, principally the House, over budget issues. When the enacted budget arrived on his desk, he vetoed it. The General Assembly simply overrode the veto in a vivid display of the institutional power.

Sensitive to his perceived lack of comparative power, Governor Almond decided to pursue a separation of powers line of reasoning that would eliminate General Assembly involvement in boards, commissions, and quasi-public agencies. The issue was placed before the Supreme Court. The Governor’s argument was with Rhode Island history, and the court rejected it.

The administrative state was still in place, but over 25 years power had dispersed. As the 20th century closed, times were good, the economy was humming, unemployment was low, and the separation of powers issue was very much alive.

Kenneth F. Payne is principal of Systems Aesthetics LLC and adjunct professor of marine affairs and senior policy adviser to the College of Environment and Life Sciences at the University of Rhode Island. He has held policy positions in state, federal and local government.