The Senate Finance Committee votes to pass the bill to the floor. Meanwhile, accusations abound about Friday's House vote.

08:17 AM EDT on Wednesday, June 23, 2004

BY LIZ ANDERSON
Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE -- As stories continued to emerge about the tumultuous House budget session, a Senate committee quickly gave its stamp of approval last night to the $5.959-billion spending package.

Meeting for a scant two minutes, the Senate Finance Committee voted 10-2 to pass the bill to the Senate floor for an expected vote tomorrow. The two nays came from Republican Senators June Gibbs of Middletown and Mary Parella of Bristol.

Parella said her objections were to items that give new budget powers to the judiciary and impose new Assembly controls on appropriations by the Board of Governors for Higher Education, as well as the failure to include language defining who qualifies as a "state employee."

Gibbs cited the judiciary proposal, which would allow the court system to submit its budget directly to the Assembly and bypass review by the governor, as the reason for her vote.

"Much as I love the courts and I think they're doing a great job, to have them have a separate budget is totally against the way things should be put together," she said. In the extreme, the courts would ask for everything they wanted and "the governor is left with what's left," Gibbs said.

From 1996 to 2005, under the current system, the judiciary's budget has risen 64.3 percent, from $51.1 million to $84 million. As the number of overall state employees has decreased, the number of court employees has grown, from the equivalent of 690 positions in 1996 to 743.5 in the new budget year.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Stephen Alves, D-West Warwick, voted on the budget yesterday despite the fact that he is asking the high court to overturn a judge's ruling that he illegally tried to silence a Republican critic through legal action. The judge had ordered Alves to pay $17,000 in legal fees.

Asked this week if he had any concerns about whether supporting a budget that gives new powers to the courts could conflict with his pending case, Alves responded: "Absolutely not."

"It's two different things -- one's the state budget, the other is something in my private life," he said.

In a budget briefing before the vote, Alves and other senators walked colleagues through highlights. Among them: a $2.3-million grant program for five community hospitals -- including Alves' local Kent County Hospital -- that are not eligible for other, federal, aid for uncompensated care.

Alves also took note of a new sales-tax exemption, effective Jan. 1, on sales of airplanes and airplane parts. The $200,000 half-year cost is in the budget, but the tax change needs separate legislation. The budget also counts on $1 million in sales taxes from the expected approval of Sunday liquor sales statewide.

Lawmakers showed no signs yesterday of taking Governor Carcieri up on his offer to sit down and negotiate further changes to a budget he contends fell one vote short in the House of proper passage.

Carcieri has said if the Senate sends the bill to his desk he might veto it or challenge its legality in court.

MEANWHILE, accounts of Friday's House intrigue that resulted in the 49-22 vote continued to swirl.

The governor's office confirmed a report, first given by Senate President Joseph Montalbano, D-North Providence, that the governor continued to personally try to negotiate budget changes after a Friday morning meeting with House and Senate leaders.

Carcieri went to House Speaker William J. Murphy and made this offer: If the Assembly included four more items, he would not veto the budget.

Montalbano said those changes were amendments to the Jobs Development Act to benefit Bank of America; state support for a new headquarters for Hexagon AB, which absorbed part of Brown & Sharpe; a tax credit to draw Investors Bank & Trust into the state; and restoring the $750,000 cut from Carcieri's "contingency fund."

But Montalbano said soon after that offer was made, several lawmakers told Murphy that members of the governor's staff had approached them to try to get them to vote against the budget.

"And the rest is history," Montalbano said. "I think that infuriated Murphy and I think that's what happened."

"At the end of the day, I think [Carcieri] owes Speaker Murphy an apology," Montalbano said, "because he wasn't really serious when he said he would support not vetoing the budget."

Carcieri's spokesman, Jeff Neal, categorically denied that either the governor or members of his staff had approached Democrats in the House looking for votes against the budget. Neal said Carcieri did offer Murphy the no-veto deal, but never heard back from the speaker.

"Instead, when the [House] went into session shortly after 2 p.m., their first act was to strip out, from the budget, one of the governor's biggest priorities," the definition of state employee, Neal said.

"The real disappointment here is the General Assembly refused to discuss the budget with the governor until 7:30 a.m. on the day they planned to approve it," he said.

Meanwhile, Rep. Edith Ajello, D-Providence, said one of the 11 Democrats who voted against the budget -- Rep. Peter Palumbo, D-Cranston -- did offer her, at about 10 p.m. Friday, "the opportunity to avoid a Republican opponent in the election in the fall" if she voted with the dissidents.

House Majority Leader Gordon Fox had charged during the budget vote that Governor Carcieri was offering to ensure a Democrat did not have a Republican opponent if the Democrat voted against the budget. Carcieri has denied making any such promises.

Ajello said the offer Palumbo made to her was "vague," and he didn't say it came from the governor or House Republicans.

"I didn't ask for proof," she said. "I was really disgusted by the effort and was not interested in discussing it further with someone who was hoping to advance it."

Palumbo responded: "It's not true that I guaranteed anything, [but] I told her I would try to do something if I could."

"I was going to see if I could get the Republicans to do that," he said. But, when Ajello wasn't interested, "I never pursued it." He denied making such an offer to anyone else.

"They were trying to make deals and we were trying to make deals," he said of House leaders. "It's politics. We were doing whatever we could do to get the people we needed, and they were doing the same thing."

Rep. Robert Lowe, D-North Smithfield, confirmed a report he had gone to the governor's office Friday night during the budget debate, but would not discuss it further. Lowe is not seeking reelection; he plans to run for North Smithfield town administrator.

Two other lawmakers, Rep. Melvoid Benson, D-North Kingstown, and Rep. Anastasia P. Williams, D-Providence, said they also had been approached by members of the rebel Democrats.

Benson, who is also retiring from the House, said the dissidents told her they knew she had been dissatisfied with the tenor of the House this year, which is true. But Benson ultimately left about two hours before the final vote; she said she was "sick of the bickering" and needed an allergy pill.

Williams said the dissidents suggested ways they could help her, but she would not give specifics, other than to say they were not election-opponent related. "Let lying dogs lay," she said.