Can Carcieri deliver a reduction in the state workforce?

Talking politics

August 1, 2007 4:08:08 PM

Will the next legislative year be a time when Governor Carcieri and the General Assembly find common ground on reducing the size of the state workforce?

For now, as we head into the lazy dog days of summer, the answer is far from certain.

Carcieri, who was easily rebuffed by the legislature earlier this year after announcing a plan to cut 1000 state workers, has since treaded lightly on the subject, offering this message to the ProJo’s Katherine Gregg when she wrote about a related July 24 brain-storming “retreat” at URI’s W. Alton Jones’ campus in West Greenwich: “You say layoffs. I never used the word. What I said was there would be a workforce reduction and personnel savings.”

As Gregg reported at the time, the governor emerged from the closed meeting by saying that he aspires to have a plan by this fall that “identifies how to operate state government more efficiently, with fewer people.”

The governor’s layoff plan earlier this year was marked by a lack of specificity, and it didn’t help that he pulled it out of his hat at the last minute. The issue quickly became grist for the partisan mill when state Republican Party chairman Giovanni Cicione briefly pursued an ill-advised lawn sign campaign characterizing the cut of 1000 state workers as “a start.”

Yet the fiscal implications of the state workforce pose a concern for all Rhode Islanders. While many states are enjoying surpluses, the Ocean State — after this year’s budget included some dubious cost-saving measures — faces projected budget deficits for the next few years.

Some observers steadily point to how New Hampshire, a far larger state than Rhode Island, operates with a much smaller number of state workers.

Yet the issue of bringing more efficiency to the state workforce is more complex than just reducing the numbers. As the Phoenix’s Brian C. Jones found a few years back, some important posts in state government — including those of food inspectors and probation officers — were understaffed, in contrast to the public image of a bloated state workforce.

Is it too much to expect bipartisan support for a rational effort to put Rhode Island on a better long-term economic footing, in part through personnel savings?

With Carcieri moving toward lame-duck status, the General Assembly remains the wild card. Although a significant number of state jobs might be cut through attrition, we’ll have to wait to see whether the Democratic-dominated legislature, and the unions in its constituency, will go along with job cuts, and if so, to what degree.

A request for comment on this matter from House Speaker William J. Murphy went unanswered by our deadline.