News Releases

Today, the Rhode Island Public Interest Research Group (RIPIRG) Education Fund released an analysis which gives Providence a grade of “D+” when compared to spending transparency in the nation’s thirty largest cities. This Providence analysis follows a national report, released in January, which evaluated each city’s progress toward comprehensive, one-stop, one-click budget accountability and accessibility.

With Congress scrambling to agree on ways to reduce the deficit, RIPIRG released a new analysis pointing out a clear first step to avoid the “fiscal cliff”: closing offshore tax loopholes. Many of America’s largest corporations and wealthiest individuals use accounting gimmicks to shift profits made in America to offshore tax havens, where they pay little to no taxes. This tax avoidance costs the federal government $150 billion in tax revenue each year.  RIPIRG released new data illustrating the size of this loss with 16 dramatic ways $150 billion could be spent.