brown e. providence

PROVIDENCE — The regionalization of public-safety and public-works services in seven metropolitan Providence communities is the goal of enabling legislation that Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline plans to submit to the General Assembly.

The legislation, drafted after discussions with the other municipal leaders, is aimed at clearing potential hurdles to regionalization that may exist in city and town charters, state law or regulations so that the seven communities — Providence, Cranston, East Providence, Johnston, North Providence, Pawtucket and Central Falls — could begin making plans for creation of metropolitan police, fire and public-works districts.

The goal of regionalization, Cicilline says, is to maintain services and to cut costs in difficult economic conditions.

“I think all of the mayors recognize that these are extraordinary times, and while we’re working very hard to grow our economies … at the same time I think we have to be willing to look at new models for the delivery of services … so that we can realize some savings because of the economies of scale,” Cicilline said.

Planning for exactly how the metropolitan districts would work in a region that represents some 43 percent of the state’s population would not begin in earnest unless the legislation is passed, the mayor said.

“It would give us the context,” he said, “to begin the hard work of designing what a metropolitan district would look like and dealing with the issues of governance and an operations plan and a resource plan and a work-force plan.”

In part, Cicilline’s proposal is the product of growing interest in regionalization in the Providence area. The mayors of Johnston, North Providence and Pawtucket have been discussing closer coordination of their fire departments to improve services. Johnston, North Providence and Cranston are among several communities that are participating in a cooperative arrangement for buying health insurance.

Cicilline was aware of those efforts in mid-September when he invited area mayors, as well as Richard Brown, East Providence’s city manager, to City Hall to discuss consolidation, with an emphasis on public-safety services in the region.

Now, Lombardi, Brown and Pawtucket Mayor James E. Doyle say they support the legislation. Cranston Mayor Alan Fung says he supports the concept of consolidation but needs to review the legislative language. He also wants to preserve any chance of cost savings through consolidation of services specifically with Warwick.

After schools, the police, fire and public-works operations are generally the largest departments in a municipality.

Cicilline provided few specifics in an interview on any particular vision of what the municipal districts would look like or how much money they might save.

He emphasized that local leaders, not state lawmakers, should be the ones who determine how the municipal districts would work and whether they would be worthwhile.

“I do think that, in the long term, there would be personnel savings and there would certainly be equipment and other resource savings, and we would be able to enhance the delivery of services,” Cicilline said. “But this legislation doesn’t presume all that.”

In his discussion of personnel savings, Cicilline talked about staff reductions through attrition, but said that any decisions would be based on a careful analysis of staffing needs.

Cicilline said that the municipal union leaders would be “a central part of the conversation” in the development of the districts.

“This isn’t a metropolitan district that can be created and imposed on the unions that are involved in the delivery of these services,” he said.

Cicilline’s call for input from labor leaders follows years of fractious relations with the Providence firefighters union.

His districting proposal provoked a nuanced reaction from Providence union leaders, who acknowledge the potential for certain cost savings, but they also warn of gargantuan operational difficulties, and question Cicilline’s ability to work with them on such a huge project, citing some of his previous management policies.

“I’M NOT OPPOSED to it,” says Paul A. Doughty, president of Providence Local 799 of the International Association of Fire Fighters. “I’m not supportive because I think there’s a lot of start-up costs.”

Such costs, he said, would include new uniforms and improvements that would allow firefighters to communicate with each other on the same radio frequency. Cicilline’s previous disinterest in saving money by participating with other municipalities in purchasing goods and services makes his latest proposal sound hollow, he says.

“This is nothing but political grandstanding,” he said.

Paul L. Vallotta Jr., president of Cranston’s fire union, Local 1363, also questioned the proposed legislation. “My first reaction,” he said, “is, once again, this is a suggestion from an elected official who’s done absolutely no homework. They have no idea if there’s going to be a savings.”

Mayor Doyle acknowledges the potential for numerous problems in regionalization, and the necessity of trying to solve them, especially in Pawtucket.

“My city is on life support,” he says.

“Nobody said this was going to be easy, no matter how you do it,” he says.

Said Lombardi: “The ideas are long overdue. You just need to have the political courage to put this in place.”

The leader of Providence’s police union, Kenneth M. Cohen, says he supports exploring the idea of consolidation, but not if it costs money for consultants.

He wondered how a regional police department would pay its employees who currently work under varying pay scales. Would police officers earning the highest wages continue earning at that level? he asked.

Meanwhile, the police union’s protracted contract negotiations with Cicilline in the past do not bode well for talks about merging police departments, Cohen says.

Doughty and Vallotta were quick to question Cicilline’s motives. They say Cicilline and other municipal leaders should gather the relevant information before they go to the General Assembly, instead of afterward.

Cicilline says local officials need to know they would have the legal ability to operate a metropolitan district before they invest substantial amounts of time, energy and money to develop a useful analysis and a good plan.

“To invest a year of planning to work out the governance issues and the operational issues and not be able to implement them seems to me not a good use of time,” he said.

Doughty said: “I think that’s disingenuous.”

Cicilline said that he expects some challenges in his efforts to reform government structures that have been in place for a long time, but he also feels that residents will see the value of exploring consolidation when faced with a difficult economic reality: the region’s municipalities have reached a point where they face the prospect of reducing public-safety services.

Teaming up and sacrificing the quaintness and intimacy of hometown departments might be a way to avoid a reduction in services, he said.

“We’ve done it a different way for several hundred years in Rhode Island,” he said. “Change is always hard. But if there is ever a moment that I think Rhode Islanders are looking for some new approaches and some new ideas as to how we might navigate through this very difficult economic time in our state, it’s now.”

mreynold@projo.com