Projo Politics Blog

While Governor Carcieri is demanding belt tightening at all levels as he tries to close the state’s budget gap, he’s created a $119,000 job for a longtime colleague.

Adelita Orefice, the former director of the Department of Labor and Training who this month was named deputy director of the Office of Health and Human Services, did not assume a vacant position, as the administration said.

The classified position was established for her.

The governor’s office apologized for what it called an error in characterizing the appointment.

In her new job, Orefice will oversee Rhode Island’s Medicaid program, which Carcieri said in his State of the State address he plans to “transform … from one centered on institutions and agencies to a system that focuses on the people who use it: our children, the elderly, and those with disabilities.”

A Carcieri spokesman offered no details other than to say Orefice will play a key role in overseeing the program.

“Given what is coming in the governor’s budget, he believed it was important to move Adelita Orefice into that job as soon as possible,” his spokesman, Jeff Neal, told Political Scene.

And while she’ll be working with all five agencies grouped in the Office of Health and Human Services, Orefice will be paid by the state’s troubled Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals. That agency now lists her as its executive director, serving under agency director Dr. Ellen R. Nelson, a Department of Administration official told Political Scene.

A four-year veteran of the Department of Labor and Training, Orefice found herself in the middle of a political battle last year, with the governor withdrawing her name for reconfirmation after learning that she faced an almost certain no-confidence vote by a Senate committee. Her job remained in limbo in the months that followed.

Back at the Labor and Training Department, Orefice’s replacement, interim Director Sandra Powell isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Neal said the governor hasn’t yet started looking for a permanent director. He named Powell to the job “because he did not want to make a snap decision about Orefice’s replacement.”

Powell, Neal said, is “a strong candidate” for the permanent job.

--By Cynthia Needham, Katherine Gregg and Brandie M. Jefferson
Journal staff writers

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