By Katherine Gregg
Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE -- Whoops.

After a closer look at the looming $589,218 deficit in Governor Carcieri's $4.7-million office budget, his apologetic spokeswoman, Amy Kempe, acknowledged apologetically that she was wrong when she attributed the lion's share of the deficit to the assignment, to the governor's office, of a team of people from elsewhere in state government who were assigned to the governor's office to monitor the spending of hundreds of millions of federal stimulus dollars.

A week ago, Kempe confidently predicted the deficit would evaporate because the governor's staff had gotten the go-ahead they were seeking to use some of the stimulus money to cover administrative expenses, such as the salaries of people assigned to the governor's new Office of Economic Recovery and Reinvestment.

They include Jamia McDonald, whose official title is associate director, Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals, $109,748; Gail Theriault, administrative and legislative support services administrator, Executive Office of Health & Human Services, $118,075.75; Laurie Petrone, another associate director at MHRH who previously worked within the EOHHS, $107,331.55; Wayne Hannon, assistant director Rhode Island School for the deaf, $110,000; newly hired lawyer Christian Jenner, $53,849; and Alicia Pomfret, an assistant financial analyst at the state Economic Development Corporation, $50,200.

With federal money to cover these salaries, Kempe said, the administration is "anticipating we won't have a deficit.

But after this appeared, Political Scene had a follow-up question: which state agency was actually paying the workers' salaries. In response, Kempe issued a rare mea culpa late last week in which she acknowledged that only one of the six -- Jenner -- was being paid by the governor's office. The others are still being paid by their respective agencies or the separate Office of Health & Human Services.

"I was incorrect in the assessment of the cause of the governor's projected deficit,'' she wrote in an e-mail. "I apologize for providing you with inaccurate information ... It was unintentional and believed, at the time, to be accurate.''

After a closer look, she attributed the deficit to the hiring of the accounting firm KPMG, at a cost of $268,000, to help oversee the stimulus spending program; the shearing by the legislature of $724,677 from the governor's budget as part of a statewide deficit-avoidance plan, and the imposition by lawmakers of an additional $38,891 savings requirement, equal to "two month's worth of personnel and operating [and] two months worth of contract services.'' Lawmakers applied the same percentage budget-cutting targets to agencies statewide.

"If the governor's originally recommended supplemental budget had been approved, the office would be projecting a surplus of over $125,000,'' Kempe wrote.
Asked if the governor considers the legislatively-imposed budget cuts unrealistic or unachievable, Kempe did not reply.