comment By Katherine Gregg
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PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- State lawmakers took a paycut, while the vast majority of state employees received a 2.5 percent raise on July 1.
For the part-time lawmakers, this year brought the downside of having their annual raises tied by the state Constitution to the Consumer Price Index the previous December.
In 2008, that linkage netted lawmakers an automatic 4.3 percent raise that boosted their pay to $14,089 from $13,508 on July 1, 2008, with the House speaker and Senate president getting twice that. But in December, the CPI dropped by 0.5 percent.
The upshot: Lawmakers' salaries dropped to $14,018 in their July 24 paychecks, with their top leaders again getting twice that, according to House spokesman Larry Berman.
At the city and town level, where communities are wrestling with tens of millions of dollars in state-aid cuts, the news has centered on wage and benefit concessions. In Cranston, for example, the City Council this past Monday approved a package aimed at saving $300,000 over the next two years by delaying the 2.9-percent increase that laborers were to receive on July 1 until July 1, 2010, and a 3-percent raise due July 2010 until 2011.
But Republican Governor Carcieri and the Democratic leaders of the General Assembly decided to leave untouched the wage promises made to state workers in their last round of contract negotiations, despite the price tag: a projected $30.4 million over the course of this year, including $15.6 million in state general revenues.
A few pockets of state workers missed out, including the state's general officers, who receive raises once every four years under state law; the members of the governor's cabinet; and the prison-guards union, known as the Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers, which remains locked in a contract dispute with the Carcieri administration.
"It was a conscious decision not to seek pay raises for Cabinet members because of the state's fiscal situation and the uncertainty at that time of revenues,'' said Carcieri spokeswoman Amy Kempe in response to inquiries on Thursday.
But most other workers -- including state judges -- received a 2.5 percent raise.
Asked how the governor would explain wage hikes for one group of public employees to others in the public and private sector who are going without, Kempe noted that under current labor agreements, "state employees did not receive a pay raise last year and started to pay increased (health insurance) co-shares, in addition to the one day (built into the contract) pay reduction. In essence, state employees took a pay cut.''
That pay reduction is the payless workday imposed on most state workers in mid-June, with the promise of an extra paid day off down the line.
Kempe noted that the governor went "on record'' recently on the likely need for more no-pay days for state workers to help produce the $70 million in unspecified savings the current state budget requires. She said the anticipated "furloughs and shut-down days'' will translate into more pay cuts for state workers. By one calculation, it would take six furlough days to compensate for the 2.5 percent raise.
She also referred to the graduated increases, each year, in how much state employees are required to pay toward heir health-insurance premiums. Since July 1, the average state employee has had to pay between 13.5 percent and 25 percent of the premiums for their health, dental and vision care packages, in amounts ranging from $37.13 to $172.95 biweekly, depending on how much they make and whether they choose individual or family coverage.
In allowing the wage hike to go through, Kempe said the administration also factored in the "significant pension reform(s) passed this year,'' that will affect future state retirees, at an estimated taxpayer savings this year alone of $58.6 million. The law made age 62 the new "target'' age for retirement for state workers who could retire previously at any age after 28 years work.
Kempe said the governor's repeated statements about the need for cities and towns to make do without $55 million-plus in state aid is a" a general statement on the need for cities and towns to tighten their belt, find savings wherever possible and not pass the cost onto property owners.''
