While the beauty and value of our coastal waters and shoreline is well known to all Rhode Islanders, the state agency that regulates activities along the shore, the Coastal Resources Management Council, largely flies under the radar.

CRMC’s work and the decisions it makes are extremely important to the future of our state, but years of questionable decisions by CRMC’s politically appointed council have eroded public trust in the agency. It’s time for the General Assembly to make meaningful reforms.

CRMC’s staff of engineers, geologists and policy analysts are experts in their field and respected nationally for their work in coastal planning. Staff review thousands of applications each year from property owners along the coast for compliance with state and federal laws and potential impacts to our coastal resources. But their decisions are only recommendations to a council of volunteers who are not required to have any experience in coastal law, science or policy.

When the CRMC was first created in the 1970s, the appointed council was composed of state legislators and local elected officials who often placed the political influence of applicants above the best interests of our coastal resources. While legislators no longer serve on the council, the culture of unequal application of the law and due process remains, with a series of poor decisions recently laying bare the shortcomings of the CRMC’s decision-making structure.

In 2022, the RI Supreme Court overturned the CRMC’s approval of a closed-door negotiation between council members and a Block Island marina that sought to circumvent a previous agency decision denying the marina's expansion proposal. In its ruling, the court admonished the appointed council for its lack of an “open, traceable process.”

In a more recent case in January involving a proposed dredging project in Jamestown – the Dumplings Assoc. v. CRMC (2025) – the RI Superior Court noted CRMC’s incorrect interpretation of its own rules, adding “it defies logic that CRMC’s council doesn’t understand or correctly apply its own rules.”

And in North Kingstown, Quidnessett Country Club is now approaching two years of being allowed to maintain an unauthorized 600-foot rock wall that has buried coastal habitats and blocked public access along the shore. While a cease-and-desist order was issued to remove the illegal wall, the council chose to entertain a petition from the country club to change the rules after the fact. The council’s actions foster a climate of “seek forgiveness, not permission,” and in the case of Quidnessett, damage and lack of public access to a 600-foot stretch of coastline is allowed to continue.

Currently, three of the 10 seats on the appointed council are vacant, and it’s been over five years since all the seats were filled. It is difficult to find people willing to serve on the council, and meetings are frequently cancelled due to a lack of quorum. Aquaculture permits sometimes take five or six years to approve, and there are rights-of-way to the shore that have been under review for two decades. The current structure is inefficient, which is bad for business and bad for the people of Rhode Island.

Rhode Island’s volunteer council decision-making structure is an outlier among coastal states, and an outlier among Rhode Island’s regulatory agencies. Despite having been admonished by the courts for poor decisions and a failure to follow its own rules, the appointed council has yet to be held accountable. Supporters of the council’s “business as usual” approach have put forward bills that nibble around the edges of these persistent problems but do not fix anything.

This is why the state’s attorney general, Save The Bay, the RI Saltwater Anglers Association and others are calling for the passage of a bill that would abolish the politically appointed council. This legislation would bring Rhode Island in line with most of the other coastal states and bring our coastal agency in line with other state agencies such as the Department of Environmental Management, where decisions are made by a director appointed by the governor with advice and consent of the Senate.

At a time when our coastal agency is dealing with increasingly complex issues like sea level rise, coastal erosion, public access and offshore wind, it’s time to modernize the CRMC to deal with these challenges more effectively. Eliminating the politically appointed council would lead to better decisions, increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve transparency and accountability. It’s time for the General Assembly to act.

Topher Hamblett is executive director of Save The Bay, a local nonprofit dedicated to protecting and preserving Narragansett Bay. Since 1970, the agency’s vision has been a fully swimmable, fishable, healthy Bay, accessible to all.