A long time ago I organized a study group to read the whole RI state budget. We were lucky to get Tom Sgouros to guide us through this massive document. At the time there was no online version so we got printed copies. I remember struggling to carry the weight of multiple copies of its multiple volumes as I walked to my car. One of the things we learned was that DOT has almost no debt service. How can a $981M department that is responsible for roads, bridges, etc with lots of bond money projects have only $330K of debt service? It achieves this by hiding it within the Department of Administration. Most of the DOA's $211M debt service is actually DOT's. DOT costs Rhode Islander's well over a billion dollars a year. I honestly don't know if this cost is outrageous, or if it is money well spent. But it is useful to know the scale of the effort to build and maintain the road infrastructure.
