PROVIDENCE — Governor Carcieri yesterday assembled a team of legislative, labor and business leaders to tell him what’s broken at the state economic development agency and how to fix it.

“What we’re seeing is a continuing decline in traditional manufacturing jobs and finding challenges in attracting higher tech new industries to the state,” a spokeswoman for Carcieri, Amy Kempe, said in an interview.

Carcieri said in a statement that the panel will examine the “mission, organizational structure, leadership, governance, and staffing” of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, the state’s economic development agency, which is chartered as a public corporation created by the General Assembly.

“There are no expectations, and there are no limitations,” Kempe said. “This is the time to be thinking big and thinking out of the box.” Recommendations as drastic as abolishing the corporation are possible, she said.

The panel is to report back in 90 to 120 days.

In the last two weeks, the corporation’s executive director and a top deputy resigned to work for a private company with ties to the agency.

The review panel will be chaired by Al Verrecchia, chairman of the board of directors of Hasbro and the company’s former president and chief executive.

Other panel members are: Ed Cooney, vice president and treasurer of Nortek and chairman of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce; Paul Choquette, chairman of Gilbane Inc.; George Nee, secretary-treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO; and Stephen Lane, cofounder and chief executive of Item Group.

Additionally, House Speaker William J. Murphy and presumed Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed will each appoint one person to serve on the panel.

Recently, the Economic Development Corporation has placed an increased emphasis on “innovation” and building an economy around new ways of doing business. Kempe said the fact that more-traditional companies are represented on the review panel is not a sign that Carcieri wants to move away from the innovation economy.

“We need to capitalize on our strengths, improve on our weaknesses, and have a defined economic development plan that is clear, consistent,” the governor said in his statement. “We need an economic development policy that creates jobs, engages the business community, and accelerates the state’s economic transformation.”

Kempe also said it is coincidental that everyone the governor named to the panel is male.

pparker@projo.com