PROVIDENCE — On a drizzly Wednesday night, a crowd packed into the House Finance Committee hearing room.

About half were there to speak on behalf of bills that support multimodal transit, including legislation that would put a $100 million transit bond on the 2026 ballot; modify and increase the proportion of the gas tax the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority receives; and allocate $32 million to the agency to address its deficit.

The other half, consisting mostly of business owners or the people representing them, were there to argue against a proposed wealth tax (H6290), which would place an additional 1% tax on intangible financial assets over $25 million. The bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Brandon Potter, D-Cranston, estimates it could raise $300 million in revenue annually.

Although the transportation bills and wealth tax are not directly related, at several moments during the hearing, the separate interest groups appeared to be at odds.

Some of the first speakers of the night included RIPTA riders voicing support for the RIPTA-related bills.

“If we don’t get the funding, I’d be isolated,” RIPTA rider Zack Gauthier said to the committee. Gauthier uses RIPTA’s RIde paratransit service for people with disabilities. RIPTA has said that if the deficit isn’t resolved, it will have to lay off about a third of its staff, cutting significant services, including fixed-route buses and the paratransit rides that operate in the same corridor.

Several of the advocates used wheelchairs, including Gauthier. As they spoke, Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce president Laurie White, sitting in the front row, was overheard saying how “sad” it was for them to be “parading” the people with disabilities before the committee.

“It’s wrong,” she said, as a person who is blind spoke about how RIPTA helped her maintain full-time employment.

White was at the hearing to testify against the wealth tax bill.

“I would describe the bill as draconian, confiscatory and arbitrary, and also punitive,” White said. “Individuals of wealth do leave the state and they do take their wealth with them.”

When asked later about why she had made the comments about the people testifying on behalf of RIPTA, White backtracked.

The person’s “story was very painful, to see him come up and exert a tremendous amount of effort,” she told ecoRI News. “I was worried about, you know, the trouble of coming up to the Statehouse and doing this in a way that seems difficult.”

When I asked why she said it was “wrong,” White replied, “I don’t think it’s wrong, but I think it’s up to the leaders of the advocacy associations to share the voices of their constituents in ways that allow them to answer questions.”

Another early piece of testimony, during what turned out to be a five-and-a-half-hour hearing, came from Cheryl Merchant, CEO of the northern Rhode Island company TACO, who spoke in opposition to the wealth tax.

Merchant spent her time discussing the hundreds of jobs that her company has created in Rhode Island, the charity the company gives back, and her own struggles working her way up the corporate ladder as a woman. Many of her points drew cheers from people in the audience.

“If you look up ‘discrimination,’ you will see, ‘the prejudice against a category of people,’” she said. Because fewer than 1% of Rhode Islanders would be impacted by the proposed tax, she said the bill was “selective targeting.” “And that’s discrimination.”

Several members of the audience outside the anti-wealth tax contingent laughed.

She also argued that people with the level of wealth targeted by the tax could be pushed to leave Rhode Island, hurting the tax base — a point repeated by several other business owners throughout the hearing.

Several people who spoke in favor of RIPTA after Merchant, referenced her testimony in their own.

Zack Mezera, of Working Families Power, spoke in favor of all the RIPTA bills and the wealth tax, criticizing Merchant and others who had spoken against it for not coming to the committee with solutions.

“I really wish that those folks had stayed until the end of the night here to see all of the testimony from the RIPTA riders, folks who are struggling with … the opposite kind of challenges than those people making over $25 million,” he said.

Joanne Rich also spoke in favor of RIPTA and the wealth tax, saying, “my stomach has been in knots” since Merchant spoke.

“And all I can say is that I have a disability. I take the bus. When I look around, a lot of the bus riders look tired. Maybe you’re tired,” she said to the committee, about five hours into the hearing. “Imagine how much more tired you’d have to be if you had to do everything you do on the bus.

“If it seems hard to fund [transit], tax the 1% and tax the wealthy. These are robber baron times. I don’t have much sympathy, and I told them so out in the hall.”