By STEVE PEOPLES and KATHERINE GREGG
Journal State House Bureau
PROVIDENCE — Four months after vowing to cut 1,000 state jobs, Governor Carcieri yesterday announced the broad outlines of a plan to lay off 414 state employees, trim the state’s temporary employment rolls by another 115 workers and wipe 487 empty jobs off the state’s books.
The personnel cuts Carcieri announced at a 2 p.m. State House news conference are aimed at saving an estimated $100 million next year. They are the centerpiece of the governor’s plan to avert a projected $200-million deficit in the state budget year that begins July 1.
Extra
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Assembly plans to reconvene Oct. 30
PDF: Slides of the budget presentation, as released in advance by the governor's office
PDF: Letter explaining proposed changes in state worker health insurance co-pays
PDF: Read a transcript of the governor's speech
Your turn: React to the governor's proposed personnel cuts
The governor repeatedly refused to detail which state workers — and which state agencies — face job cuts. Carcieri would say only that the reductions would target “back office” workers, like those who work in “finance, accounting and a few lawyers.”
Layoff notices will go to the contract employees on Nov. 1, and full-fledged state employees on Nov. 15.
“This is going to be one of the hardest things that has ever been done in state government, but we must do it,” Carcieri told a standing-room-only audience that spilled out the doorway of the ornate State Room outside his State House office. “Either we do the hard work now, or, by doing nothing, we will pass on the burden to our children. They would inherit a nightmare.”
The carefully scripted news conference marks the attempt of a governor, with plummeting poll numbers, to take control of the Smith Hill spending debate three months before lawmakers return to the State House, and try to rehabilitate his image along the way, according to political observers.
The governor “is going to have to make the pitch of his life,” Brown University political science Prof. Darrell West said before the event.
Yesterday’s speech was not only accompanied by charts and graphs, but also stage directions to specifically reference the “6-inch binder” sitting on his deputy chief of staff J.R. Pagliarini’s lap. “I can assure you, over there is a binder 6 inches thick and that’s got all the details in it,” Carcieri said as Pagliarini lifted the binder for the crowd to see. “Every position has been identified by each department … but the particulars as to the individual people and positions affected will only be released as they have been notified. We want to be respectful to all who have been affected.”
Union leaders weren’t pleased, among them J. Michael Downey, president of the largest state employees union, Council 94 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, who said the governor — having served notice of his layoff plans in June — has waited long enough to notify state employees affected by his plans. “People want to move on with their lives. It’s hard,” he said.
Sen. John J. Tassoni Jr., the only Democratic lawmaker in attendance yesterday and a business agent for Council 94, was less diplomatic.
Calling yesterday’s event “a dog-and-pony show,” Tassoni asked: “Does he have a plan? ... If that’s what he has in those binders, he should have let everyone [affected] know.”
Richard Ferruccio, president of the prison guards’ union, was “just disappointed that we don’t have more facts.”
“While the governor says that 414 people will find out in November,” Ferruccio said, “There are 10,000 right now that are worrying whether they are going to have a job and what frustrates us, from Corrections, is that for years we’ve been contending there is an incredible amount of waste at the Department of Corrections … Let’s cut the waste first. Tighten our belts. We’re not doing that.”
The governor glossed over the other elements of his deficit-reduction plan yesterday: $50 million in cuts to social-service programs and another $50 million in “labor contract savings” by raising copays on health insurance premiums and lengthening the 35-hour workweek. Some would require a change in law; others a change in contract.
While details remain sparse on how Carcieri intends to achieve this $50 million savings, his administration has been trying, behind the scenes, to get Council 94 to agree to mid-contract arbitration on health benefits.
In an Aug. 8 letter, Administration Director Beverly Najarian proposed raising the emergency copays for state workers from $25 to $150, urgent care copays from $10 to $75, special copays from $10 to $25 and the current prescription-drug tier structure from $5/12/30 to $7/25/40, depending on whether the medications are name-brand or generic. The state’s private-sector labor lawyer, Michael F. Kraemer, formally requested the appointment of an arbitrator.
The union went to court to protest. Superior Court Judge Allen P. Rubine issued a stay on Oct. 4. Council 94 executive director Dennis Grilli said: “We have a collective bargaining agreement in place and until we sit down and renegotiate [a new contract] the figures we have negotiated are going to stay in place.” Briefs were due today from both sides, with a decision anticipated on Nov. 19.
After a public-opinion survey by Brown University last month found his job-approval rating had plunged since January from 59 percent to 44 percent, Carcieri suggested the numbers were a reflection of voter concern “about our financial status.” He said people seeing teachers on strike, preemptive union strikes against his layoff plans, and headline after headline about the people affected by the legislature’s adoption of his proposals to lop thousands off the state’s child-care rolls leave people “feeling as though the state isn’t running itself well because of the budget.”
But if he is counting on his job-cutting plan to change public perception — and rehabilitate his own image — West yesterday said that providing the nitty-gritty details is crucial.
“I think people want details at this point,” West said. “He’s kind of raised expectations about the crisis and people want to know what these Draconian cuts are going to lead to and if we don’t know what departments are being cut, it’s real hard to evaluate what the impact will be on the state.”
West continued: “What’s at stake is the level of public support he has.” Until recently, Carcieri’s “major political strength has been his popularity.” With his approval rating now below 50 percent, West said, anything that undermines that further “would be catastrophic for his governorship. He’s not going to get legislation passed because of his close personal relations with legislators.” Meanwhile, labor laws are expected to complicate the governor’s staff-reduction plans.
Carcieri will have no problem eliminating 115 contract employees, who have no union protections. He’s counting on another 400 employees to leave or retire. But laying off 414 state employees would trigger contractual seniority provisions. The worker who gets the layoff notice may have the right to move to a vacant position or replace someone less senior elsewhere in state government, a process known as bumping.
A year after former Gov. Bruce Sundlun issued layoff notices to more than 500 state workers in 1991 to close a $265-million hole, only 269 state workers had left the payrolls as a direct result of the layoffs because of rounds and rounds of bumping. With more than 1,000 current vacancies, Carcieri has a head start.
Nonetheless, Carcieri and his team say it may take four to five months to effectuate his layoffs and cost $7.5 million in unemployment and healthcare benefits for displaced workers. Acknowledging that “behind every job is a person,” the governor said he has created an “employee support team” to help displaced employees. “Our goal is to help place as many people as possible in new job opportunities,” he said.
Council 94’s Downey said he was heartened to hear the governor say he “cares about workers” when “usually it’s always ‘public employees … we’re ruining the state.’ ” He said he was also happy the governor was “at least looking at the contract employees,” but said he wished he would look harder at this $31-million pool of workers.
Carcieri’s chief of staff Brian Stern has acknowledged the governor may be using a “conservative” estimate for the projected 2008-09 budget deficit. While his Budget Officer Rosemary Gallogly pegs it at $211.3 million, the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council placed it at $306.5 million in June.
House Finance Committee Chairman Steven M. Costantino believes the governor has “underestimated the deficit by as much as $100 million.” He said the job cuts “may be more difficult to realize than it appears at first glance. When it comes to reducing the workforce by attrition, some of the employees may serve in essential roles and these positions will have to be filled.”
Even without details, Kate Brewster, executive director of Rhode Island College’s Poverty Institute, said the outcome is predictable and “slashing public services while not addressing the tens of millions of dollars that are being lost to some of the recently enacted tax cuts and tax credit programs is really not fair to the average Rhode Island taxpayer … Capital gains tax cuts, personal income tax cuts, movie picture tax-cuts. We have to ask ourselves whether these are affordable.”
kgregg@projo.com
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