faucher

PROVIDENCE — The uncertainty is always there.

It is the topic of conversation in the elevator, in lines at the cafeteria, and on the wooden benches in the smoking area.

Governor Carcieri’s $100-million workforce reduction proposal has essentially put the lives of thousands of state workers on hold.

The governor on Monday announced a broad plan to lay off 414 state employees and terminate another 115 temporary contractors. While he laid out the numbers, he refused to say which specific positions would be eliminated, or even how many jobs in each department would be cut.

Department heads will begin to notify the affected state employees on Nov. 15.

William Finocchiaro fears he may be one of the casualties.

The 42-year-old North Kingstown man is a health policy analyst for the state Department of Health. A father of two, he has depended on Rhode Island’s largest employer, state government, for a paycheck for the last 14 years. Finocchiaro, a “middle manager,” doesn’t have union protections that will save many senior staff.

He says his wife is “too concerned” about the situation.

“She wants me to start looking at other [career] options,” he said yesterday while on a break outside the Department of Administration. “I think she’s overreacting, but nobody knows what’s happening. We don’t know who’s on the list. We’re waiting like everybody else. … My kids know. They ask me about it. I tell them not to worry.”

Chantal Faucher has worked in financial reporting for the state Department of Administration for the last 8½ years. A single mother who lives in Cumberland, Faucher doesn’t like to talk about it with her 13-year-old daughter. “I don’t bring it home because I can’t do anything about it,” she said, sitting with a few coworkers in the smoking area on her lunch break yesterday.

Governor Carcieri said Tuesday that he’s waiting to release the details of his proposal to ensure that employees are treated with respect.

“I appreciate the anxiety. People are concerned as to who’s going to be impacted. We’re trying to do this as fast as possible,” he said in an interview. “I would like to do it sooner, but I want it to be done properly. I want those people to hear from their supervisors, their directors. I don’t want them to read about it or hear about it somewhere else. I think that’s a common courtesy that anybody would expect and I want to do that for our employees.”

Faucher, however, doesn’t appreciate the delay.

“The information he’s giving is too vague,” she said. “Nobody knows what he’s targeting. I don’t think somebody should have to wait four weeks to know if they have a job.”

And while some employees are worried, others are simply angry.

“They’re putting pressure on us while they’re going on a wild spending spree,” said 28-year state veteran Terrence Lyons, referring to the governor’s use of contract employees and renovation costs that he said include “paint made with crushed pearls” inside the governor’s office.

“I know. I paid that bill,” said Lyons, who works in accounts payable for the Department of Administration’s controller’s division.

Records regarding the paint used in the governor’s office were requested, but not immediately available yesterday.

The governor’s spokesman, Jeff Neal, said that dÉcor in the governor’s office is controlled by the State House Restoration Society. “It may be, in some cases, more expensive than paint that one might use on a non-historical building,” he said. “But it certainly does not have crushed pearls, nor does it have crushed diamonds or crushed rubies.”

Most state employees are union members, a protection that gives laid-off workers the right to move to a vacant position or replace someone less senior elsewhere in state government — a process known as bumping.

That gives the governor authority to eliminate a specific position, but generally not a specific employee. The employee occupying an eliminated position is allowed up to three “bumps” under most union contracts.

That’s down considerably from the early 1990s, when employees were afforded as many as seven bumps, which complicated former Gov. Bruce Sundlun’s effort to lay off more than 500 state workers.

A year after Sundlun issued layoff notices to close a $265-million budget hole, only 269 state workers had left the payroll as a direct result of the layoffs because of rounds and rounds of bumping.

Even with fewer bumps, Carcieri acknowledged it could take four to five months to determine which specific employees would be unemployed. The time frame allows the governor to have staffing reductions in place for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2008.

Until yesterday, the governor would only say that his staff reduction plans would target “back office” workers, like those who work in “finance, accounting and a few lawyers.” But Carcieri provided an insight yesterday into the jobs he thinks the state can do without during an interview on WHJJ’s Helen Glover morning radio talk show.

Asked by a caller why the state needs interpreters in the courts and other state agencies, Carcieri said: “Amen to you, buddy.”

In the hunt for expendable jobs, Carcieri said he found one department with eight Spanish-speaking interpreters, and “I said why are we, at taxpayer expense, providing interpreters for people who want benefits from us? It seems completely illogical to me because you’re right,” he told the caller. “My grandparents immigrated from Italy. My grandmother didn’t speak English. She learned it…”

“But the point is if they needed somebody … they got somebody, a friend or relative who spoke English, right? So why in God’s name [are] we providing, at taxpayer expense, staff whose sole job is to interpret English for people who apparently have no friend and no relative that can speak English. I don’t think we should be doing that.”

Meanwhile, Finocchiaro simply hopes for the best.

“I’m as vulnerable as anyone, maybe more,” he said. “We still do our work. We try to stay positive, but around the water cooler people are talking.”

— With reports from Katherine Gregg of the Journal State House Bureau

speoples@projo.com