Rhode Island

Rhode Island has a plural executive of five statewide elected officials: the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the General Treasurer. The Governor and Lieutenant Governor are elected separately rather than as a ticket, so the two can come from different parties.

Historically the governorship was strikingly weak. Under Rhode Island’s tradition of legislative supremacy, the General Assembly held powers that elsewhere belong to the executive, including appointing many officials and sitting on boards that ran state agencies, leaving the governor with little independent authority. That began to change only in the 2000s; today the Governor appoints the heads of the executive departments not separately elected, a power the office did not fully possess before the separation-of-powers reforms.

The Rhode Island General Assembly is bicameral and, for the nation’s smallest state, surprisingly large: a 38-seat State Senate and a 75-seat House of Representatives, all serving two-year terms with no term limits. It is a part-time, citizen legislature, with low pay (about $20,392 a year as of July 2025, with no per diem), so members keep outside careers.

For most of Rhode Island’s history the General Assembly was the dominant branch by a wide margin, the purest example of legislative supremacy in the country, exercising executive and even quasi-judicial functions. The General Assembly convenes each January and typically adjourns by summer, with no hard constitutional cap on session length.

A bill is introduced, referred to committee, and, if it advances, voted on the floor of each chamber, with differences reconciled before final passage. The Governor can sign a bill, veto it, or let it become law; Rhode Island’s governor has no line-item veto, and a veto override takes three-fifths of each chamber, a comparatively low bar that, combined with the Assembly’s historic dominance, has kept the legislature firmly in control.

Rhode Island has no statewide citizen initiative for statutes, voters cannot place ordinary laws on the ballot themselves, though proposed constitutional amendments are referred to voters by the General Assembly. The state’s constitutional history is itself distinctive: Rhode Island governed under its 1663 royal charter far longer than any other state, not adopting a formal state constitution until 1843, after the Dorr Rebellion forced the issue of expanding suffrage.

The modern Rhode Island governor proposes the budget, appoints department heads, can call special sessions, holds emergency powers, and grants reprieves and pardons, though pardons, distinctively, require the advice and consent of the state Senate, but lacks a line-item veto and faces a low three-fifths override, so the office is weaker than many. Crucially, much of the governor’s current authority is recent: until a landmark Rhode Island Supreme Court ruling and a 2004 constitutional amendment, the General Assembly had packed executive boards and commissions with its own members, blurring the branches.

The 2004 separation-of-powers amendment, adopted overwhelmingly by voters, barred legislators from also serving on executive bodies and gave the governor genuine appointment authority for the first time. The main internal checks remain the independently elected Attorney General, Treasurer, and Secretary of State, and the still-powerful General Assembly.

Rhode Island’s judges are appointed, not elected, through a merit system adopted in 1994 after years of judicial scandal. A nonpartisan Judicial Nominating Commission screens candidates and sends the Governor a list; the Governor appoints, and the legislature confirms. Supreme Court justices then serve for life (during good behavior), while lower-court judges serve to a set retirement age. The Rhode Island Supreme Court sits at the top, above the Superior Court and other trial courts, and it was that court’s rulings that helped force the separation-of-powers reforms reshaping the rest of state government.