PROVIDENCE — The hub of state government — the pink-hued Department of Administration building across the street from the State House — is one of at least eight state buildings that have been plagued with no-show janitors since Tuesday’s roundup by immigration officials of 31 suspected illegal immigrants as their workdays ended at a half-dozen state courthouses.

All work for the two companies whose workers were targeted in the courthouse sweep: TriState Enterprises, whose owner is the brother of a state legislator, and Falcon Maintenance. The companies have won at least 45 and possibly as many 48 state cleaning contracts during the Carcieri administration.

The governor’s office acknowledged yesterday that the attorney general, the University of Rhode Island and the Community College of Rhode Island are not the only ones scrambling to get their floors swept and mopped, their carpets vacuumed, their bathrooms cleaned and their wastebaskets emptied.

In a late-day statement, the governor’s office said: “In addition to URI, [the Department of Administration] is aware of 8 buildings out of approximately 48 with lower janitorial service or no janitorial service. … As for what is being done to ensure full janitorial service, the Department of Administration has taken immediate steps on multiple fronts to ensure that janitorial services are being maintained at all state buildings.”

The number of no-show janitors across state government went unstated, the full nature of the state’s “contingency plans” went unexplained and neither the governor’s office nor DOA Director Jerome Williams responded to follow-up inquiries about what specifically they are doing to make up for the absent janitors, aside from asking one or more full-time maintenance workers to pick up the slack at an unstated cost in potential overtime.

Asked to fill in these blanks after issuing the late-day statement, Carcieri press secretary Amy Kempe said: “I do not have this level of specifics at this time, and I don’t expect to have it until Monday.”

A crackdown on illegal immigrants has been one of the signature issues that Republican Carcieri has hammered on both local talk radio and the national airwaves on The O’Reilly Factor and Lou Dobbs’ show.

“When I look at our little state, when I see what’s happening in our schools and the influx in our schools, and our hospitals, our law enforcement, it’s crystal clear the impact that illegal immigration is having, and we need to deal with that,” Carcieri said on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight last spring. “And if Congress isn’t going to act, I feel as a governor I’m responsible for enacting and following the laws of our state and our nation.”

While there was no evidence yesterday that any of the no-show janitors provided by TriState and Falcon are in this country illegally, Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch deduced as much when one of two of the janitors in his own office stopped coming to work after the raid.

“She used the name Josselin Vasquez … on her application for Falcon, but obviously we believe that it’s an alias,” Lynch spokesman Michael Healey said earlier this week.

According to the governor’s office, the no-show janitors have affected the following state buildings: the William Powers Building, One Capitol Hill, Providence; the Oliver Stedman Center, 4808 Tower Hill Rd, Wakefield; the Bicentennial Building, 150 Benefit St., Providence; Motor Vehicle Control, Howard Avenue, Cranston; the “US Prop & Fiscal Office,” 330 Camp St., Providence; the Quonset Air National Guard 143 Airlift Wing, Quonset, North Kingstown; Army Aviation Support, Airport Street, North Kingstown; and the Armory of Mounted Commands, 1051 North Main St., Providence.

The Carcieri administration has said it does not know the names, pay levels or anything else about the workers sent into these buildings by TriState and Falcon.

Asked why the state would place people about whom the state has no information in such sensitive places as E-911, the Quonset airbase and DMV offices, the governor’s office provided this answer: “All vendors that the state contracts with must comply with federal and state laws, which include the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. In addition, the Governor’s Executive Order requires vendors to use E-Verify, another tool to confirm vendor employees are authorized to work in the United States.”

It is not clear how suspected illegal immigrants slipped through, with access to keys to state buildings. (This is how URI spokeswoman Linda Acciardo said the university realized it had no-show janitors: the keys hadn’t been picked up by the overnight crew.)

DOCUMENTS PROVIDED by the judiciary list Anthony DeSimone Jr. as the contact for TriState Enterprises at 1270 Mineral Spring Ave., North Providence, and Vincent D’Elia as the contact for Falcon Maintenance at 160 Winsor Ave., Johnston.

DeSimone’s father practiced law with the late Joseph Bevilacqua, a former chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court. His brother is state Rep. John DeSimone, the Providence Democrat who tried to unseat House Speaker William J. Murphy in 2004-05 with the backing of House Republicans.

While denying that Carcieri instructed the House Republicans how to vote, the governor’s then-spokesman Jeff Neal acknowledged the governor urged them to “support whichever candidate is willing to work” with him. On that basis, Neal said: “Governor Carcieri supports the House Republican decision to endorse Representative DeSimone. From all accounts, Representative DeSimone is willing to work with House Republicans on Governor Carcieri’s reform agenda.”

Asked last night if the Republicans’ one-time political allegiance with DeSimone had any bearing on TriState’s successes in the state contract arena, there was no immediate response from the governor’s office.

As of yet, however, there has been no detailed explanation — or documents provided — that explain how TriState and Falcon won contract after contract, when they were first hired by the state to provide cleaning crews, who else bid, and why contracts were yanked away from Falcon and given to TriState in recent years, even when it was not the lowest-price bidder.

In the year that ended June 30, the court system paid TriState a total of $493,325 and Falcon $261,643. The state paid TriState an additional $732,891 and Falcon $579,456 under the non-court cleaning contracts, according to DOA director Williams.

The investigation that led to the courthouse raid was sparked by a freakish event: a courthouse clerk notified the Capitol Police after coming to work at the J. Joseph Garrahy Complex and seeing a paper reproduction of some sort of identification on the floor next to a copy machine.

On Thursday, Carcieri announced that he had ordered an “internal” review of the dozens of contracts the state has with two janitorial companies whose workers were arrested in the immigration raid, and he said he would not tolerate “this type of illegal activity by unscrupulous employers.” (To date, no criminal charges had been filed against the owners of the two companies or against any of the 31 suspected illegal immigrants working for them, although the workers all face administrative charges of being in this country illegally.)

Carcieri also said the Department of Administration was taking “all necessary steps to ensure the cleaning and maintenance operations are not disrupted at the buildings contracted to the two companies,” while reviewing the companies’ “compliance with state and federal employment and immigration laws and contract service levels.”

Elaborating yesterday on the governor’s statement, his office said: “A contract can be terminated if a company is found in violation of federal law or if they are not in compliance with the terms of the contract. No decision has been made or can be made to terminate any state contracts with any companies until the ICE investigation is complete and the DOA internal review is complete.”

At this point, “both Tri-State and Falcon have been contacted regarding the State’s expectations regarding service levels and credits for non-performance. In addition, state staff were utilized in the interim to ensure proper cleaning.”Missing janitors

William Powers Building

The Oliver Stedman Center

Bicentennial Building

Motor Vehicle Control

“US Prop & Fiscal Office”

Quonset Air National Guard 143 Airlift Wing

Army Aviation Support

Armory of Mounted Commands

kgregg@projo.com