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The Providence, Rhode Island mayor’s proposal to slap a “student municipal impact fee” on the city’s college students is being introduced as legislation in the RI state legislature.

The student tax, which I discussed here last month, would be an assessment of $150 per semester for all undergraduate and graduate students at the city’s four private universities. It’s intended to help close a multi million dollar municipal budget deficit.

Mayor Cicilline also put forward an alternate funding mechanism — a bill that would allow the city to collect fees directly from its largest tax-exempt institutions (the four universities plus five private hospitals). That bill would permit the assessment of such fees up to twenty-five percent of the taxes that the institutions would pay if they were not exempt.