PROVIDENCE — State court administrators, and the Carcieri administration, are poised to hold first-of-their kind hearings on the “continued need” for more than 600 consultants and contract employees for whom the state is paying anywhere from $11,780 for a part-time job at the Arts Council to $280,000 a year for a project manager at the Division of Motor Vehicles.

They include doctors, lawyers, constables, marine researchers, respiratory therapists, typists, janitors, an “instructional barber” at the state Training School and page after page of computer programmers and information-technology consultants. One out of 10 makes more than $100,000 a year, according to a report the state Budget Office gave House and Senate leaders last summer.

The judiciary’s hearing on the need for the 47 contract employees in its ranks is set for 2:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Licht Judicial Complex. The Department of Administration called and then, late yesterday canceled at the request of Governor Carcieri its public hearing on the need for hundreds more such employees.

Spokesman Jeff Neal said the governor asked the hearing be delayed until after notices go out Nov. 1 to 115 contract employees targeted for layoff.

“While the governor was aware of plans to hold a hearing, he was not aware of the specific date,” Neal said. “When informed today that the hearing was posted for Friday, the governor asked that it be postponed until after November 1…[when] notices will be sent to a significant group of contractors…From his perspective, it makes more sense to hold this hearing after those notices have been sent.”

The impetus for the hearings was the inclusion in this year’s state budget of new General Assembly-imposed requirements on the use of contract employees.

After months of Senate hearings last winter on the administration’s award of a no-bid contract worth a potential $11 million to a private company to supply hundreds of state workers, the lawmakers set new rules. House Finance Chairman Steven Costantino, D-Providence, said the hearings raised enough concerns about the state’s growing reliance on consultants to do state work that lawmakers wanted to create “a public process to determine why you need so many contracted employees.”

They required the state Budget Office to provide House and Senate leaders and their fiscal advisers with, at minimum, the overall number of contract employees across state government. They banned the further use of any contract employee — and especially those “replacing work done by state employees” — without “a determination of need” by the director of the Department of Administration after a public hearing.

Costantino said the Carcieri administration did not object, as it did to another late add to the budget setting new rules for the privatization of activities currently being performed by state employees. Neal concurred.

The agenda for tomorrow’s postponed hearing said public comment would be sought on “categories of services,” such as the services provided by on-call contractors who are only used “as needed” and those “skills that are not readily available at an agency,” such as “highly-specialized information technology skills.”

A widely circulated memorandum from the Budget Office said those who fall within these categories “are more likely to remain as contractors for the state because of certain characteristics, i.e. the contractor provides a specialized service,” but others working both full and part-time under the general heading “staff augmentation” may not be so lucky.

The memo said: “It is presumed that individuals in these categories will be phased out over the rest of this fiscal year starting immediately through June 30, 2008. Contractors in categories 4 and 5 should either be terminated and their functions delegated to existing staff, or replaced when a vacancy occurs,” although “appropriate justification will be required to fill any position.” The list of jobs in these “on-going review” categories included a 20-hour-a-week database administrator in the Department of Administration making the equivalent of $227,560 a year, a $109,950 “school accountability” supervisor and a $132,400 “school reform interventionist” in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Asked yesterday how she expected the hearing to unfold, Department of Administration Director Beverly Najarian said only: “Public comment will be received, recorded and submitted to me with the agenda items by the personnel administrator and the budget officer. After reviewing their recommendations, a decision will be forthcoming.”

In response to questions about why the notice for tomorrow’s anticipated hearing wasn’t posted electronically on the secretary of state’s Web site 48 hours in advance, as state law generally requires, personnel administrator Tony Bucci said the department believed the requirement applied to “public meetings,” but not hearings of this kind. The judiciary posted its public hearing notice electronically.

kgregg@projo.com