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By calling on legislators to return their raises of recent years, Governor Carcieri last week begged this question: is he going to return the 12 percent, $12,623, raise he received last January?
State Democratic party chairman Bill Lynch asked the question in a news release titled: “Governor Hypocrite Strikes Again.” But others also posed the question to Political Scene in e-mails and calls.
Said Lynch in a statement late last week: “I’d love to hear the governor explain why he believes it was acceptable for him to receive a $12,000 constitutionally mandated bump in pay, at the same time calling on members of the Assembly not to accept their $400 cost-of-living adjustment from last year. This is just the latest example of the governor saying one thing and doing another.”
The simple answer from Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal: No. The governor does not intend to return his first raise since taking office, in January 2003.
“Generally speaking,” Neal said, the governor “believes that cost-of-living adjustments should apply across the board.” But, “if the General Assembly does not believe that certain state employees deserve a cost-of-living increase after 6 years, then by the same token they themselves should be willing to forgo their own cost-of-living increases. He is holding them to the same standards they are applying to those 14 state employees.”
Carcieri was responding to what he characterized as the “inequitable and hypocritical” criticism of key lawmakers after it came to light last week that his administration sought raises of up to 19 percent — or $24,844 — for cabinet members in a May 24 memo to key lawmakers.
Two weeks before the memo went out, the state’s official revenue-estimators lowered their expectations for the year by about $90 million. Two weeks after it went out, Carcieri announced his intent to lay off 1,000 state workers to stem a major budget crisis. He also called on lawmakers, at the time, to freeze union-negotiated wage increases.
Asked last week why his committee did not provide money for the directors’ raises, House Finance Chairman Steven Costantino, D-Providence: “It was absolutely the wrong message you wanted to send in terms of the budget.” Echoed Senate Finance Chairman Stephen Alves, D-West Warwick: “We are looking at layoffs. He is looking at going back to the unions for concessions, changes in pensions. I certainly didn’t think it was appropriate.”
“The governor doesn’t particularly object to the legislature accepting yet another pay increase for itself,” Neal said. “They should either approve of the idea of pay increases for everyone, or reject them across the board. ... What the governor has said is that these approximately 14 individuals who have not received similar pay increases since 2002 deserve the same treatment as everyone else.”
As to why Carcieri did not seek pay raises for his directors earlier in his tenure, Neal said: “As you know, the state has faced serious spending shortfalls each and every year since the governor was first elected. In order to save money, the governor decided to delay recommending cost-of-living increases for department directors.” Why then did he seek cumulative increases this year? “You can’t delay forever,” Neal said. “You cannot ask these people not to receive pay increases year after year without end. At some point you have to provide them with equity.”
The governor — like the members of the General Assembly — receives raises under terms spelled out in law.
The state Constitution provides the lawmakers with annual increases tied to a federal cost-of-living index. Their latest 3.2 percent raise hiked their annual pay by $418, to $13,508.
Under state law, the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, general treasurer and attorney general are entitled at the beginning of each new four-year term to a pay increase equivalent to “the total percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers published by the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics for the Northeast Region for the four previous fiscal years, but in any event not to exceed 12 percent.”
As Political Scene reported in January, the last automatic pay raise for the general officers — no vote required — increased Carcieri’s pay by $12,623, to $117,817 a year; Attorney General Patrick Lynch’s pay from $94,121 to $105,416, and the pay for the jobs held by the state’s newest general officers — Lt. Governor Elizabeth Roberts, Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis and Treasurer Frank Caprio — from $88,584 to $99,214.
--By Katherine Gregg, Steve Peoples, Edward Fitzpatrick and Scott MacKay
Journal staff writers
