PROVIDENCE — The Carcieri administration will hold a public hearing today on proposed regulations requiring applicants for state contracts, state vendors and state grant recipients to screen new employees through the federal E-Verify program, an effort that is already the subject of an ongoing court fight with the American Civil Liberties Union, the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence and two social work professors at Rhode Island College.

The hearing comes a day after Superior Court Judge Mark A. Pfeiffer rejected a bid by the Rhode Island Affiliate of the ACLU and its fellow litigants for a temporary order to block the administration from enforcing an earlier “emergency” version of the regulation that was adopted without a hearing or opportunity for public comment.

The ACLU argued there was no demonstration of imminent peril to health, safety or welfare that justified the adoption of emergency rules.

But the Carcieri administration argued imminent peril indeed existed after it found itself plagued by a rash of no-show janitors supplied to a host of agencies, including the Department of Administration and the state college system, by the same two companies — TriState Enterprises and Falcon Maintenance — whose employees were the target of an immigration sweep at state courthouses.

The state’s lawyers also cited Rhode Island’s high unemployment rate as justification for making sure “those who are hired to work for the state are those eligible to work legally.”

The judge agreed there existed a sufficient “economic and security rationale” for the state to adopt the emergency rules.

The ACLU affiliate’s executive director, Steven Brown, said Pfeiffer’s decision sets “a terrible precedent. It allows state agencies to circumvent the entire public comment process for any reason whatsoever. If Rhode Island’s high unemployment can justify adoption of these rules, there isn’t any rule that can’t be justified on an emergency basis.”

New public-disclosure issues surround today’s 10 a.m. hearing at the Department of Administration building.

Notice of it could not be found on the state Web page where all other state and local meeting notices should be posted. Only a diligent searcher of state agencies’ Web pages would have uncovered it, as Brown did on the separate state purchasing division’s Web site.

In response to inquiries, Carcieri administration lawyer Peter Dennehy said he believed it had done everything required by the Administrative Procedures Act, but the governor’s spokeswoman Amy Kempe said the administration is now “seeking clarification” from the attorney general’s office.

“In an abundance of caution, and in the spirit of good government, [the Department of Administration] is going to post notice for an additional hearing in 30 days as well as continue to accept written comments during that time. The hearing tomorrow, which is slated for 10 a.m. at DOA, will proceed.”

Brown called the administration’s failure to post notice of today’s hearing on the central repository for all meeting notices — the secretary of state’s Web site — “a real problem.” He also called the after-the-fact hearing on regulations already in effect “a sham.”

Had he not been following the case closely, he said, he would not have known the state purchasing division had posted the notice on its own site.

A court challenge is still pending to Governor Carcieri’s executive order requiring all companies that do business with the state, “including grantees, contractors and subcontractors” to use the Internet-based E-Verify program, run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to verify their employees’ “eligibility to work legally in the United States.”

Brown said the regulations stemming from that order will “impose a significant burden on small businesses.” He contended the E-Verify system itself is “rife with inaccuracies” that, based on past experience elsewhere, will disadvantage job-seekers, especially “noncitizens who are authorized to work in this country.”

The proposed rules can be found at www.purchasing.ri.gov/Notice3.pdf

kgregg@projo.com