What new RI laws go into effect on Jan. 1? From minimum wage to plastic bags, take a look
PROVIDENCE – Come New Year's Day, Rhode Island's minimum wage will rise by $1 to a new high of $14 an hour, in the next-to-last step before reaching a long-sought $15 an hour in 2025.
From health care to housing, elections to employee rights, the 21 laws taking effect on Jan. 1 cover a lot of ground, including the creation of a new state holiday, known as “Juneteenth National Freedom Day," on June 19 each year.
In all, the state's part-time lawmakers passed 915 of the 2,670 measures introduced during the 2023 session that ended in June, including 398 new laws and scores more resolutions and "local" authorizations.
Some took effect immediately and some – dating as far back as 2021 – were given delayed effective dates to allow those responsible for administering or following the laws a bit of time to gear up. Here's what is changing in Rhode Island as of New Year's Day:
New health care laws:
Insurers must cover pre-exposure (PrEP) and post-exposure (PEP) medications to prevent HIV infection, as well as screenings "deemed medically necessary" for individuals with dense breast tissue and "biomarker testing" to identify changes or abnormalities in patients that may indicate cancer.
Nurses with multi-state licenses will be allowed to practice in Rhode Island without having to get a Rhode Island-only license.
New landlord/tenant laws:
Property owners cannot require prospective tenants to pay a rental application fee, with a narrow exception for the cost of obtaining a credit and/or criminal background check if the applicant does not provide one on request.
Tenants may deduct an aggregate of $500 from their rent payment for repairs, up from $125.
New election laws:
Seventeen-year-olds can vote in a primary election as long as they are registered to vote and will be 18 by the time of the general election.
New laws about the environment:
A ban on the sale, in most instances, of mercury-containing fluorescent lightbulbs, with a long list of exceptions that includes, for example, lights used in sunlamps or for photocopying, film and video projection, disinfection, generation of ozone, medical or veterinary diagnosis or in the manufacture or "quality control" of pharmaceutical products.
A requirement that the Department of Environmental Management put in place a plan for a statewide investigation of potential sources of contamination by a large group of human-made chemicals – known as "PFAS" – that have been used in industrial and consumer products worldwide since the 1950s.
New transportation laws:
Require any new or existing parking lots expanded by 50% or more to provide designated parking spaces – and charging stations – for electric vehicles.
Allow the Division of Motor Vehicles to provide "Rhode Island state identification card(s)" to people unable to establish lawful presence in the United States who can produce proof of identity, residency and verification they filed an income tax return as a resident of the state, or were claimed as a dependent on one, in the previous year.
New labor laws:
Increase the penalties for employers who engage in "wage theft and for misclassification of workers as independent contractors" to the actual value of the improperly withheld wages, a potential three years in prison and a potential fine of $5,000.
Raise the state's minimum wage from $13 to $14 an hour.
New housing laws:
Allow the Department of Housing to parcel out an unspecified amount of reward money from a new fund to cities and towns that have created special zoning districts around high-frequency bus lines where developers can build denser residential projects than would normally be allowed under local land-use rules.
Legalize the conversion of schools, churches, mills and other commercial buildings into homes; preventing municipalities from requiring more than one parking space per apartment in these adaptive reuse projects and letting developers build extra units if they are available at below-market rates.
Eliminate one step in the permitting process for building subsidized affordable housing projects, providing a "density bonus" to those affordable projects – meaning more units per acre than would otherwise be allowed – and stopping municipalities from requiring more than one parking space per unit and less than three bedrooms.
Send appeals of local land-use approvals directly to Superior Court instead of making them go through a local appeals process first.
New education laws:
Require the state colleges and the University of Rhode Island to adopt polices that would allow students to earn credits toward a bachelor’s degree with apprenticeships.
Making Juneteenth a state holiday in Rhode Island:
The new June 19 state holiday commemorates the 1865 date when enslaved African Americans in Texas were told they were free, and, more broadly, the end of slavery.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: New Rhode Island laws for 2024: Plastic bag ban, $14 minimum wage
