In the same week Governor Carcieri proposed a budget containing furlough days -- days off without pay -- for state workers to save money, he signed off on new jobs and raises in the upper echelons of state government.

The changes proposed by the administration were aired at a hearing on Jan. 23. Carcieri signed off on them Jan. 31, the day he released his budget.

The personnel changes include five new positions and three changed job titles or duties, with an accompanying pay increase in each case. They are nonunion positions that pay between $45,000 and $130,000 a year. And the raises range from 6 percent to 32 percent.

At the same time, Carcieri was proposing to close state government for 7 days over the next 16 months to save $8.4 million this fiscal year and next.

The labor unions that represent state employees have objected to both initiatives.

J. Michael Downey, president of Council 94, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, called the new jobs and pay raises “ludicrous” in light of the 3-percent annual pay raises his members -- about 5,000 state employees across several departments -- accepted.

And he called the government shutdown proposal “the most mean-spirited thing I’ve seen in the 27 years I’ve been around.”

But Carcieri says he needs the shutdown days to help counter a projected budget deficit of $360 million this fiscal year and next.

Rather than justifying the eight raises and new positions with a single explanation, Carcieri’s spokesman explained each individually. For instance, in the case of Steven Feinberg, head of the Rhode Island Office of Film and Television, the administration acted on the General Assembly’s instruction to raise Feinberg’s salary by nearly a third to compensate him for job performance -- under his tenure, there were 14 proposals to film productions in Rhode Island to take advantage of the state’s motion-picture production tax credit program -- and to keep Feinberg from defecting to Massachusetts, where he was being considered for a similar job.

--By Elizabeth Gudraisand Scott Mayerowitz

Journal State House Bureau