PROVIDENCE — Judges and state police escaped the last round of retirement-benefit cuts, aimed at reining in the soaring taxpayer cost of public employee pensions. But not this time.

The new $6.9-billion state budget imposes new eligibility rules — and benefit cuts — on all state judges and troopers hired after Jan. 1, 2009.

For the next generation of troopers, it will mean working 25 years, instead of 20, before they get a pension that pays them 50 percent of their final salary in retirement.

And unlike today’s judges who can retire at age 65 with a pension that pays them up to 100 percent of their pay, judges hired after Jan. 1, 2009, will have to make do with 90 percent of their former salaries — plus 3-percent annual cost-of-living increases — in retirement.

These unheralded moves were aimed, in part, at curbing the cost of two pay-as-you go pension systems that went up each year as the payrolls to which these pensions are directly linked went up. Between 1997 and 2007, the state police payroll increased by an average of 11.4 percent annually and the judicial payroll by an average of 8.6 percent.

To make good on their pension promises, the state police and the judiciary are paying their retirees an amount equal to approximately 30 percent of their payrolls: a projected $3.5 million directly out of the state police budget, $2.3 out of the court budget this year alone.

Republican Governor Carcieri shocked the Rhode Island court system last winter with a far more dramatic pension-cutting plan than the Democrat-controlled General Assembly was willing to go for.

Carcieri proposed slashing judicial pensions by the amount of Social Security benefits each judge is scheduled to receive.

The proposal led the Rhode Island Bar Association’s president-elect, Richard A. Pacia, to predict the “devastation” of the state’s judicial system in letters to House Speaker William J. Murphy and Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano, both lawyers.

“We believe that these bills would have significant, immediate and long-term adverse effects upon the administration of justice in Rhode Island,” Pacia wrote. “If these bills are signed into law, we would expect many simultaneous judicial retirements before the effective dates of these bills. The result would be an immediate and devastating impact upon the Rhode Island judiciary’s ability to address cases in a timely manner, seriously impacting the administration of justice in Rhode Island.”

Under existing law, judges may receive pensions equal to 75 percent of their annual salary if they have been on the job for 20 years, or have served for 10 years and reached the age of 65. Judges may receive pensions equal to 100 percent of their annual salary if they have been on the job for 20 years and have reached the age of 65, or have served for 15 years and reached the age of 70.

When asked for comment on the Bar Association letter, then-Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal said, “In the final analysis, the governor believes this is an issue of fairness. At the governor’s urging, Rhode Island has already enacted reforms to the pension system for the vast majority of state employees … Why should judges — many of whom enjoy much more generous pensions than other state employees — be exempt from these reform efforts?”

Asked yesterday for the lawmakers’ own rationale for this year’s moves, House Majority Leader Gordon Fox said: “The reforms in the judiciary and state police pension systems are consistent with the House leadership’s goal of long-term cost containment. “There is a lot of pain that needs to be spread around and we believe that everyone should be doing their share to help resolve the budget crisis.”

Neither the state police — nor the judiciary — have complained publicly.

A 65-year-old judge who, under current rules, could retire after 20 years with a pension equal to 100 percent of his or her annual salary at retirement, would get 90 percent instead. The judge stepping down after 10 years who today could get a pension equal to 75 percent of pay, would get 70 percent instead, and judges would have to elect a reduced benefit in their lifetime to ensure their surviving spouse gets a portion of their pension after their death. For judges, unlike other state employees, there is currently no such reduction.

Another wrinkle: for those judges hired after July 2, 1997, the word “salary” no longer means what they were making when they retired, but an average of their three highest years’ pay.

Asked for comment yesterday, courts spokesman Craig Berke said, “The judiciary did not have a hand in the pension change,” but “we accept that changes in the pension system for judges are the General Assembly’s prerogative,” and “we maintain — and the General Assembly has recognized — that judges’ pensions are different for the right reasons.”

He explained: “Our judges’ average age is 47 when they take the bench, meaning they come on board with 20 years or more in legal experience. The pension helps to attract and keep good candidates to serve our citizens at that stage of their careers. Bennett R. Gallo just took the bench last month as a Superior Court associate justice at the age of 63. He will have to work till age 73 before he is eligible for a judicial pension,” Berke said.

“It remains to be seen whether the changes to 70 percent and 90 percent will affect the quality of judicial candidates, but this is not the first time that a change has been made to the pension system,” Berke wrote in an e-mail. “Judges began contributing to their pensions in 1990. Good candidates continued to come forward then.”

The state police are concerned about the impact the new pension rules may have on the number and quality of the recruits who sign up for the first training class in more than a decade. Scheduled for next June, the class is expected to graduate 30 to 35 candidates.

Troopers can currently retire after 20 years, with a pension that pays them 50 percent of their pay. They are required to retire after 25 years on the job. At that point, they leave with a pension paying 65 percent of their “whole salary” at retirement.

Under the new rules, they will have to work 25 years to get the same pension today’s troopers get after 20 years. A bump in the mandatory retirement rules will allow them to work 30 years. And they would have to work that long to retire with 65 percent of their pay.

Maj. Joseph R. Miech, the chief administrative officer for the state police, said the five-year hike in the mandatory age is “a double-edged sword” because police work “is a young person’s job … We’d be keeping troopers with more experience for longer periods of time versus having a younger work force.” He said a 25-year work requirement may lead some trooper candidates to look for better offers at the local police level.

In 2005, the General Assembly raised the age-and-work requirements for a state pension for most other groups of state workers. Early this year, House Speaker William J. Murphy impaneled a 19-member study group to weigh the pros and cons of much bigger changes, including a shift from today’s defined-benefit-plan to a public employment equivalent of a 401(k).

But the legislative session ended late last month without any such sweeping changes or even a recommendation by the panel, chaired by Rep. Timothy Williamson, D-West Warwick.

At its last meeting, however, the panel asked the state’s actuarial consultants at Gabriel Roeder Smith & Company how much they would charge to evaluate several possible moves, among them: extending to most state employees the new benefit formula and COLA limitations imposed in 2005 on new and not-yet vested state workers.

The actuaries offered to do the analyses for $52,500. The panel’s next tentatively scheduled meeting to decide what to do next is next Wednesday.

kgregg@projo.com