State government may be awash in red ink, but Rhode Island taxpayers are still paying the rent on an empty office in Washington, D.C., that was once occupied by Governor Carcieri’s Capitol Hill lobbyist, a position that has been vacant for more than three years.

The office space, in the coveted Hall of the States Building, at 444 North Capitol St., NW, costs the state about $2,000 per month.

Republican operative and Carcieri policy director Tim Costa was the governor’s last Washington-based lobbyist. Costa left the job in 2005 to return to Providence to serve in the governor’s administration, where he still works.

Carcieri decided not to cancel the office lease because if the state did that, future Rhode Island governors would not get a chance to use the office, which is conveniently situated, said Jeff Neal, the governor’s spokesman.

“That office is in a building that is prime real estate, near the Senate office building [the U.S. Senate’s Dirksen Office Building], Union Station and the Capitol,” he said.

The state’s budget difficulties mean that the lobbying position is not likely to be filled before Carcieri’s term ends, in 2011, Neal added.

Many states have lobbying operations in the nation’s capital, according to the National Governors Conference. The NGA’s headquarters is in the Hall of the States Building.

The state is tying to negotiate a sublease with an entity that needs capital office space, Neal said. “In that way we could keep the lease in the long term and recover some of the costs in the short term,” he said.

Speaker Murphy quashes rumors, will run again

In the waning hours of the legislative session, House Speaker William J. Murphy worked fast to alert colleagues of his plans to seek reelection by putting notices in State House mailboxes. Rumors had been swirling that Murphy, one of state government’s most powerful figures, would not run.

If he keeps his House seat, Murphy will also seek support in January for a fourth term as speaker, according to a news release. He’s been the speaker for six years.

The West Warwick Democrat was first elected to the House in 1992. His District 26 also includes parts of Coventry and Warwick.

“There is no finer calling than public service, and it is a great honor to be able to represent the constituents of my district and to bring their collective voices to the State House,” Murphy, who is also a partner in a law firm, said in the statement released Thursday.

Run that by me again?

It’s typo season on Smith Hill.

With bills and budget amendments changing on the fly, grammatical mistakes are everywhere. Your high school English teacher would cringe.

Some of the errors are innocuous, while others have serious implications for the substance of the legislation. And then there are those that are just plain funny.

Just one example: A bill proposing the creation of a scholarship program to encourage participation in the area of early-childhood development says the scholarship would go to educators “who work with children from birth to age five who have an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in early childhood education.”

Five-year-olds with college degrees? Pretty impressive, we think.

Reed, ex-Pentagon figure clash in Senate hearing

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed had a sharp exchange with a former Pentagon official during Senate testimony on the continuing revelations about the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Cuba by U.S. military personnel.

The former Pentagon legal counsel, William “Jim” Haynes, appeared Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee as the panel aired more dramatic findings alleging official tolerance of abusive interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba, and elsewhere.

At one point in a long and tense exchange about the direction of the soldiers who conducted interrogations of suspected terrorists, Haynes said, “They were supposed to stop if anything came up. There were all sorts of conditions” on their questioning techniques. He referred to a memorandum.

“Where in this memorandum is the reference of conditions?” the Rhode Island Democrat demanded.

Haynes replied in part that Reed’s questions “malign” the “training and the integrity of the soldiers.”

West Point graduate Reed shot back: “I object strenuously to that. You did a disservice to the soldiers of this nation. You empowered them to violate basic conditions which every soldier respects, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Geneva Convention.

“Here’s what soldiers do. You said the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply, and they ask: What does apply? And the only thing you sent them was: These techniques apply — no conditions, nothing. So don’t go around with this attitude of you’re protecting the integrity of the military. You degraded the integrity of the United States military.”

Singleton changes political stripes, again

State Rep. Richard Singleton, a Republican turned independent, has switched parties again so that he can lead “Democrats for McCain.”

Having already announced that he is not running for reelection, Singleton, of Cumberland, went to Town Hall Tuesday to register as a Democrat so he could “head up a committee” to elect the Arizona Republican president.

“I think the state of Rhode Island can get behind John McCain. I think he can win this state and I think there are a lot of Democrats in this state who like him, so I think they need somebody to put together an organization to let them know it’s okay to vote for John McCain.”

Asked if he was targeting disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters, he said: “They and many others. I already have about a dozen state legislators who are on the committee … They are not Republicans. They are all Democrats.” He would not name them.

Asked if he is at heart a Democrat, he said, “You know what, I really am tired of party affiliation quite frankly. I think I’m Rick Singleton. And I’m an American and to me that’s the only thing that should matter. This state has gotten too enveloped in party affiliations and I think that’s why I am running this committee. Let’s look at who is best qualified to be the president of the United States and stop worrying about whose party it is.”

For the record: “Whether I am a Republican or a Democrat doesn’t matter. What I am is a conservative, quite frankly,” he said.

While Rep. Charlene Lima, a Democrat, welcomed him, albeit briefly, to the majority caucus, House Minority Leader Robert Watson, a Republican, welcomed him to what he called “the winning team.”

Role reversal

While TV cameras videotaped the governor at a press conference, the governor videotaped the press.

Carcieri’s office enlisted a state employee to shoot Tuesday’s event, or more precisely to shoot the reporters as they asked questions of the governor.

Carcieri’s communications director, John Robitaille, said his office plans to do media training for the handful of public information officers in state government and wants to give spokespeople an idea of how to answer questions from reporters.

He said the administration has not yet figured out how to structure the training or when it will be.

“Corporations do it, nonprofits do it, there’s no reason why government can’t do it,” Robitaille said, adding that there’s no expense involved.

A spokesman could not immediately answer questions about whose video camera was used or whether the camera had been purchased for this use.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com