Carcieri to fill 92 vacated positions in administration
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By Katherine Gregg Here's a bright spot in the state employment picture. The Carcieri administration plans to fill 92 of the 169 vacancies in the Department of Administration that were created, in large part, by a flood of retirements during summer and fall. One state department after another has bemoaned the loss of staff, including the Department of Health, which raised warning flags in its annual budget request about its shrinking ability to perform "critical public health functions." Take, for example, the impact of lost employees in the division that analyzes food, drinking water, wastewater and air for "toxic environmental contaminants." "As a result, customers are receiving delayed test results. The scope of food testing services no longer supports routine surveillance or fraud investigations and we are exploring outside agency options for testing when the public health is threatened," state health administrators wrote in their budget request filed on Dec. 3. It remains unclear how many jobs the Health Department will be allowed to fill. But a "steering committee" -- meeting outside the public view -- has approved the hiring of dozens of new Department of Administration staff, including carpenters, janitors, more than two dozen "systems administrators" and "technicians," a new associate director for central services, a new chief employee-relations officer and five deputy sheriffs. The Carcieri administration won't disclose who routinely sits on this steering committee or provide a list of all other state jobs approved or rejected for "refill." It would be a tricky question to answer in light of a January 1999 ruling that required then-Gov. Lincoln C. Almond to open the meetings of the emergency hiring council, which was created in 1991 by then-Gov. Bruce G. Sundlun amid an earlier budget crisis to curb spending. No vacancy could be filled, no job created, or no one promoted without the council's permission. The hiring council included the director of administration, the governor's executive counsel and a rotation of department directors. Because of its makeup, the state's lawyers argued that its sessions were comparable to the routine meetings of the governor's senior staff. If such meetings were subject to the requirements of the Open Meetings Law, they argued, the executive branch would be crippled. But Superior Court Presiding Justice Joseph F. Rodgers Jr. disagreed. Because the public "is entitled to firsthand observation with respect to the [government] decision-making process," Rodgers wrote, the council must abide by the Open Meetings Law. Asked again last week who sat on Carcieri's closed-door version of this emergency hiring council, spokeswoman Amy Kempe said: "There is no formal committee. There is an ad hoc group, led by [deputy chief of staff] Bev Najarian, that helps departments and agencies ...reorganize and prioritize functions." She said departments still "submit requests for positions ... to the budget office for review and approval." A request for minutes of the meetings of the Najarian group has gone unanswered. 
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How do I find the website to apply to one of these positions?
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Web site for State jobs: http://www.dlt.state.ri.us/webdev/JobsRI/statejobs.htm
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They'll need to hire another staff member at the unemployment office if everyone on the current unemployment rolls (over 50,000 at last count) applies to these positions.
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Now there is a name that might stick "Ad hoc Najarian". The "Dons" hoc in charge of the family hen house. What a foreseeable new year.
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