The proposal affects some big companies who give their workers a parking subsidy.

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, June 18, 2004

BY BRUCE LANDIS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The Senate yesterday approved a bill that would require some large employers to offer transit passes as an alternative to a parking subsidy for employees, and it confirmed nominee Adelita Orafice as the new state Director of Labor and Training.

The popular Orafice, who took over the Department of Elderly Affairs temporarily last year, got a round of applause after the unanimous vote. Nominated by Republican Governor Donald Carcieri, she also enjoys support from organized labor, whose representatives say they expect her to enforce rules protecting working people.

The "parking cash-out" bill, sponsored by Sen. John J. Tassoni Jr., D-Smithfield, would affect employers of 50 or more people located within one quarter mile of state public transit service who give their employees a parking subsidy.

It would require those employers to offer Rhode Island Public Transit Authority monthly passes as an alternative to a parking subsidy it would otherwise pay to provide employees with parking spaces. It would apply only to employers who could reduce the number of parking spaces they maintain for their employees by offering transit passes, without suffering any penalty.

Barry Schiller, a Sierra Club official who specializes in transportation issues, said the environmental group supports the bill because it could help reduce both pollution and traffic congestion, and also help reduce "the rate at which our gasoline dollars flow out of state."

The bill also includes a provision aimed at protecting the employers' neighborhoods, requiring employee participants to certify that they would comply with guidelines designed by the employer to avoid neighborhood parking problems.