From left, Brian Stern, chief of staff to Governor Carcieri; Jerome Williams, director of the Department of Transportation; and Maj. Gen. Robert T. Bray, Rhode Island’s adjutant general, take part in a State House news conference yesterday.

PROVIDENCE — At his first news conference since returning from a weeklong trip to the Middle East, Governor Carcieri yesterday acknowledged his administration did a “poor job” of communicating with the public during last week’s paralyzing snowstorm.

Carcieri said he knew nothing about what was happening back in Rhode Island because he was flying from Kuwait to Afghanistan — and probably sleeping — while the storm and the epic traffic jam it created choked most of the state’s major arteries, stranded Providence grade-schoolers on school buses until late at night, and left motorists struggling for three to six hours, in many cases, to get home on gridlocked roadways.

He said it was early morning in Kabul when his chief of staff, Brian Stern, first briefed him on the storm. From reading newspaper accounts when he got back, “it was pretty clear we had a real mess.”

But he said: “I would not expect them to track me down in Afghanistan or Iraq for a 6-to-10-inch snowstorm. Would you? I wouldn’t expect that … I got notified that the thing got turned into a really tough day after it was over.”

After his return on Saturday, he said, he was assured by his advisers that: “The team that is responsible for getting the job done was doing everything that had to be done. What was missing? There was no single voice communicating what was going on. That’s what was missing. That’s what I would have been doing had I been here.”

In his absence, he said, Adj. Gen. Robert T. Bray “was responsible for doing that.”

With Bray looking on at yesterday’s State House news conference, Carcieri said: “What did not happen here is that General Bray was not in that position, wasn’t doing that … From now on, he will.”

This was his answer, however, when asked if he blamed anyone within his administration for the chaos, confusion and gridlock that led drivers, in scenes reminiscent of the ’78 blizzard, to abandon their cars on major roads: “Not necessarily.”

“You may not like to hear that,” Carcieri said, but “if I get in my car and get on [Route] 95 with snow coming down at 3 inches an hour … that’s a decision I make. To expect that somehow we’re going to miraculously clear the snow off the highways, alright, and get you through that with no headaches, I don’t think is fair, frankly.”

Contrary to reports from the roadways, Carcieri — and his Department of Transportation Director Jerome Williams — insisted the DOT had radio alerts and warning messages about road conditions on its electronic roadside message boards.Bray was unable to explain why the media was never apprised of a memo he said had alerted area businesses to the growing intensity of the approaching storm. He said the memo went out from the state’s emergency-management office before noon on Thursday. Carcieri said DOT crews could have extricated the Providence school buses or in some other way helped the stranded children get home well before 11 p.m. had they known about them.

“My understanding is that … nobody really knew that kids were still on those buses late at night. That’s completely unacceptable,” he said. But, “it’s a Providence issue” he said. “We had all kinds of resources available at any time … that would have been there to get those kids off the buses and get them home.”

Did anyone in his administration drop the ball? “No, I don’t think so at all,” he said. “You can plow snow, you can’t plow cars.”

Yesterday’s news conference marked Carcieri’s first public comments on his administration’s performance during the first major snowstorm of the season.

Carcieri returned from Afghanistan, via Germany, on Saturday after a weeklong trip to the Middle East, sponsored by the Department of Defense, that also took him to Iraq and Kuwait. He told reporters he did not regret the trip and felt the show of support for the troops was important.

Asked what he would say in response to the comments of angry radio talk-show callers who, in the storm’s aftermath, questioned the need for the trip, he said: “What am I supposed to do, stay here every day, never leave the state? C’mon… Governors travel … I’ve been wanting to go visit our troops for a couple of years. They don’t do these [kinds of trips] often … and I made the decision that I thought that it was important. We’ve got almost 400 of our National Guard men and women and air Guard people deployed.”

Carcieri, a Republican, said he saw no reason to inform Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts, a Democrat, that he was heading overseas for a week.

The state Constitution only requires the lieutenant governor to take charge “if the office of the governor shall be vacant by reason of death, resignation, impeachment or inability to serve.” Carcieri said, in his mind, he was never unable to serve. Until 1992, the Constitution barred a governor from exercising his powers while out of state, and put the lieutenant governor in charge — at least technically — even when the governor crossed the border into Massachusetts. But this provision became an issue — and voters removed it — after then-Gov. Bruce Sundlun’s wife at the time, Marjorie, was seriously injured in an accident. Sundlun spent considerable time with her at a Rochester, N.Y., hospital, and when then-Lt. Gov. Roger Begin went to Europe on a trade mission, House Speaker Joseph DeAngelis was designated to sign official papers.

As it now stands, Carcieri believes: “What the Constitution says is that the governor’s authority travels with the governor wherever he or she is. So the governor is the governor and the fact that he or she is out of the country or anywhere make no difference in that.”

Asked why he did not at least notify Roberts that he was going overseas, he said he was barred by Department of Defense ground rules for the trip from telling anyone where he was going, but beyond that: “I didn’t think it was relevant.”

“From my perspective, unless I am run over by a bus and I am incapacitated there is no role for the lieutenant governor,” and if he were in fact incapacitated, “I’m sure she’d be notified,” he said. Asked yesterday what he had to say about Carcieri’s reading of the Constitution, current House Speaker William J. Murphy said he will ask the House’s Separation of Powers Committee to hold a hearing, after the legislature reconvenes on Jan. 1, on “whether there should be a mechanism for the lieutenant governor to be in charge if the governor is out of state for a period of time longer than 48 hours.”

Asked yesterday who was in charge of the state in his absence, during the snowstorm, Carcieri pointed to state police Supt. Brendan Doherty and DOT Director Williams.

“All the issues that we needed to deal with at that point were the accidents, the breakdowns, clearing the highways. That’s what was happening. That’s their job,” he said.

Looking ahead, Carcieri said he has asked his advisers to come up with what he called a “more robust” rush-hour plan for getting people home in the event of another midday storm, without a repeat of Thursday’s gridlock. He said he has asked Williams and others to look at the potential for using the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce blast-FAX capability to alert businesses; adjusting the length and time of plowing routes and possibly, “staging” tow trucks at key points ahead of the storm so they can be activated relatively quickly if, for example, a tractor-trailer again blocks traffic.

Carcieri suggested the best advice might be: “if you can’t get out by noon,” don’t try. He said his administration has also asked state education officials to come up with “clearer guidelines” on when it makes sense to cancel school, and take “the risk” the storm may not be as bad as predicted.

“I know you want to lay blame,” Carcieri said. “I’m trying to get at what we can do better.”Rhode Island Constitution

Section 9. If the office of the governor shall be vacant by reason of death, resignation, impeachment or inability to serve, the lieutenant governor shall fill the office of governor, and exercise the powers and authority appertaining thereto…

kgregg@projo.com