Rhode Island’s high cost of doing business prevents local expansion and deters new local and out-of-state investment. Fix what is wrong here and businesses will come.

Our economy is service-based and heavily dependent on jobs in healthcare, hospitality and government. This cannot sustain itself forever because the numbers do not add up.

The expertise of teachers is not fully supported to maximize their ability to identify children’s talents and to create and implement the innovative changes needed to prepare students for the workforce they will enter.

We are, and for years have been, in a healthcare crisis due to inaction by our leaders. Thirty thousand RI residents have lost access to their primary care doctor. Those who have a doctor may wait for months for an appointment because there is now one primary care provider for every 1,600 residents. Our residents deserve quality, timely care, and our doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals deserve fair reimbursement.

One in four homes in RI is bought by someone from out of state, mostly from Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York. Because Rhode Island wages cannot compete and there are not enough homes, out-of-state buyers have priced out RI residents, pushing them into rentals, causing that market to skyrocket and leading to increased homelessness. This problem was created by over a decade of kicking the can down the curb and cannot be solved quickly by a drastic crisis response that will hurt communities.

RI ranks fifth-highest in the United States in per capita spending for government administration. We are a high-spending, high-overhead state. In business, that is catastrophic.

With a $15 billion budget, there is plenty to go around. We do not need to tax our already squeezed residents and businesses more. We need to demand more transparency, oversight and efficiencies in the same way businesses do to remain profitable in changing times without sacrificing quality, quantity or service.

Too many of our retirees and seniors struggle to stay in the communities they helped to build, to access timely healthcare and to receive the services they deserve.

Rhode Island residents face some of the highest energy costs in the nation, driven in large part by our dependence on liquefied natural gas (LNG), with no relief in sight. Families and businesses should not have to keep absorbing these rising costs.

Elected leaders should set an example of how civil societies should function. Civil discourse is not a catchphrase; it is a requirement.