Providence Mayor-Elect David Morales Announces Transition Team

“Providence voted for a city that they can afford and feel safe calling home,” David Morales said Wednesday. Less than 24 hours after his election victory, he announced the 11-member team that will steer his transition into Providence City Hall, WPRI reported. “Now that the election is over, the work of building a Providence for all is just beginning.”

The transition team will inform policy and develop recommendations for the incoming administration. Morales declined to say whether any of its members would eventually join his cabinet. Staffing decisions, he said, would be made in the coming weeks. “We’ll be communicating that out in terms of the decisions that we make when it comes to appointing department directors and those staff members within the mayor’s office,” Morales added.

A Bench of Eleven, from Law to Labor

The co-chairs span law, politics, community organizing, labor, and public safety: attorney Stephanie Gonzalez of GP Law & Consulting LLC; former state representative Aaron Regunberg; Dr. Chanda Womack, executive director of the Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education; Wole T. Akinbi, co-founder and chair of Smith Hill Partners’ Initiative; Providence City Council president and Ward 13 councilor Rachel Miller; Charlotte Abotsi, special projects manager at the City of Providence Department of Art, Culture and Tourism; Lisa Pina-Warren, executive director of the Nonviolence Institute; Uniform Division lieutenant Terrence L. Green of the Providence Police Department; Alex Moore, political director for SEIU 1199; Ward 3 city councilor Sue AnderBois; and Gonzalo Cuervo, chief of staff in the Office of the General Treasurer. June Rose, the Providence City Council’s chief of staff, is serving as the transition team’s executive director, while consultant Jenn Steinfeld serves as operations director.

The Commissioner Who Cannot Start Yet

In a bilingual interview with 12 News and 12 Informa, Morales laid out his early thinking on the Providence Police Department. He said he still wants to hire a public safety commissioner. The position will not be filled until at least the next fiscal year because it is not currently funded in the budget. The details of that person’s responsibilities and autonomy, he said, are yet to be fleshed out. “That’s certainly a shared conversation that we’ll have with our police chief, our fire chief, telecommunications director, and the director of PEMA,” Morales said.

Cameras, Data, and a Planned Crime Center Tour

The future of the police department and its Real Time Crime Center could also shift under the Morales administration. A proposal to ban automated license plate readers now sits with the Providence City Council — a debate already playing out across Rhode Island, where more than 200 Flock cameras are in use as some towns pull the plug. Morales said he plans to tour the Real Time Crime Center to learn more about the technology police have described as invaluable. “I look forward to learning more, because our priority is to always keep our neighbors safe, but also be mindful in terms of how sensitive data is collected and thereafter stored, and who the respective companies are, or respective contractors are, to have access to such information,” Morales said.

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Academy Funding Left Unresolved

On staffing, the mayor-elect said he has already had discussions with the police department’s labor union about staffing levels, but stopped short of committing to funding a police training academy. “We want to make sure that we’re being mindful of that, especially when it comes to setting forward future budgets,” Morales said.