As with his pulling of Budget Article 18, another reason to praise Speaker Mattiello this week: he is not seeing why state taxpayers should be forced to step into the breach left by the drying up of federal funds.

The office responsible for protecting consumers from excessive health insurance rate increases stands to lose nearly its entire staff if the House on Wednesday approves a budget amendment passed by the House Finance Committee. The $1.03-million loss in funding for 9 of its 12 full-time staff would leave the Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner (OHIC) with only three employees …

Governor Raimondo’s budget included $1.03 million to replace federal grant funding for the nine staffers when the grant runs out on Sept. 30, but the House Finance Committee last week voted not to replace the funding. “When the money runs out the programs are off,” House Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello said during a budget briefing last week. “Every time a federal grant expires everybody wants the funding to continue. You have a government that Rhode Island cannot afford.”

If I understand correctly (let me know if I’m wrong here), these FTE’s are in ADDITION TO the staffing of Rhode Island’s (completely useless) ObamaCare exchange, HealthSource RI. Staffing levels of this department have fluctuated somewhat but have generally suffered as the tide of federal ObamaCare funds has receded (as scheduled).

There needs to be some thought before state officials agree to implement a federal program with funds that sunset. State taxpayers simply don’t have the capacity to take on the funding of ever more, new programs.

And if the sitting Governor (in this case, Governor Raimondo) feels that the program should continue with state taxpayers picking up the tab from the lapsed federal funding, he or she should make cuts elsewhere in the budget to find that revenue, not simply heap another burden on state taxpayers.