Legal action now seen as unlikely on $5.9-billion package

07:59 AM EDT on Friday, June 25, 2004

BY LIZ ANDERSON and SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
Journal State House Bureau

Journal photo / Connie Grosch Although Governor Carcieri threatened yesterday to veto the budget, legislators appear to have the votes for an override.

PROVIDENCE -- Governor Carcieri vowed yesterday to veto the $5.9-billion state budget headed to his desk, but said he believes that the House may have solved the legal issues surrounding its vote last week.

A veto would likely be overridden, given the votes for the budget in the House and the Senate.

"I seem to be the only one really interested in the public out here, and I'm going to be as outspoken and continue to be as outspoken, as forceful as I have to be, because that's all I care about," Carcieri said. "There's nothing in this for Don Carcieri. . . . I just want to see this state move forward, and I want to see our citizens get a fair deal."

Carcieri had suggested that he might take the General Assembly to court over a 49-22 vote to approve the budget in the House on Saturday morning, just after midnight. The governor had contended that the vote fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority required.

But the House appeared to address that issue yesterday by voting 62-12 to restore a $50-a-month payment to welfare families for whom the state collects child support. That bill also included a new version of Article 1, the appropriations section of the budget.

House Speaker William J. Murphy, D-West Warwick, said the case law on the constitutional question "distinguishes between public and private appropriations," suggesting that the two-thirds requirement might not have affected all approprations, but he said the House wanted to re-vote Article 1, "just in case there was any question."

Asked if the vote makes the budget constitutional, Carcieri said: "Our first judgment was that the way they structured it, it probably does, but we're still evaluating that."

The Senate yesterday easily approved the $5.9-billion spending package for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The longest debate came over the promise of new budget powers for the judicial branch.

Sen. Leonidas Raptakis, D-Coventry, moved to delete an article that would allow the judiciary to submit its budget directly to the General Assembly without revision by the governor.

Sen. Marc Cote, D-Woonsocket, said such a "serious and weighty issue" deserved more debate. "In my opinion this type of amendment and policy decision -- to have it incorporated into the budget is bad government," he said.

Sen. J. Michael Lenihan, D-East Greenwich, called the provision, "by any reasonable standard, a huge change in how we operate our budgets," and deserving further scrutiny.

But Lenihan suggested that the measure had other problems, including its allowing the courts to set up a separate purchasing system and exempting them from public procedures for establishing new regulations. He questioned how the governor could assemble a budget with "no idea what the package is going to ultimately cost."

A former Finance Committee chairman, Lenihan also said he knew "full well . . . just how generous the legislature has traditionally been to the court system." The fact that the Assembly will now be the only body reviewing the judiciary's spending, "quite frankly scares the hell out of me," he said.

Sen. James C. Sheehan, D-North Kingstown, had a different complaint. Sheehan suggested that the language violates the constitutional requirement that the governor present an "annual, consolidated operating and capital-improvement state budget."

But the change also had its staunch defenders, including Sen. Daniel Connors, D-Cumberland, and Senate President Joseph Montalbano, D-North Providence, a lawyer and municipal court judge.

Connors pointed to a March 2003 Providence Journal editorial that said the judiciary faced several problems, including the fact that both the governor and the legislature can "take a whack at judicial spending." The editorial suggested that state leaders "look into reforms that would better protect that branch's judicial independence."

Connors also said any colleague "who wasn't comatose" had heard state Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams raise the issue during his annual addresses to lawmakers.

"This is not a radical idea, folks," he said, listing other states with such budget procedures. "This is a true separation-of-powers issue."

Journal photo / Connie Grosch Lobbyists watch the budget debate via Capitol TV in the Senate lounge yesterday as Sen. Leonidas Raptakis, D-Coventry, presents a floor amendment to the state budget. From left are Andy Andrade and Francis McMahon, both with Trion Communications, and Guy Dufault, who represents the Narragansett Indian Tribe.

Montalbano complained that in the last three years, governors had repeatedly trimmed the judiciary's budget request by several million dollars, leaving the Assembly to restore needed items, such as six new foreign-language interpreters for the upcoming fiscal year.

Under the change, he said, "the governor will not be able to slash what the judiciary thinks it needs." But Montalbano said the Senate Finance Committee would scrutinize the spending.

"Let's recognize that separation of powers doesn't mean that all executive power is vested in the governor, because that's not what I meant when I put it on the ballot in November," he said.

The vote to defeat the amendment failed, 13-22. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Stephen Alves, D-West Warwick, who is waiting for a decision from the high court on an appeal of a $17,000 judgment against him, sided with the majority.

H. Philip West Jr., executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island, predicted before debate began that such a vote by Alves could draw a conflict-of-interest complaint.

Raptakis also attempted, unsuccessfully, to eliminate language that would set new Assembly controls on appropriations by the Board of Governors for Higher Education; drop a provision allowing the state to hold up the license renewal of a driver who owes taxes; and require Senate advice-and-consent for a new Superior Court drug magistrate.

Sen. Kevin Breene, R-West Greenwich, sought to reinsert into the budget a definition of what constitutes a state employee, but was sidelined when Senate Majority Whip Dominick J. Ruggerio, D-Providence, said the issue was not germane to the spending package.

The final vote on the budget was 29-7, with Sheehan and the six Republicans as nays.

Meanwhile, as the House passed the so-called "budget-trailer" bill, its minority leader questioned whether Democrats were offering favors to bring renegade members back into the fold.

"Make no misunderstanding, this is the budget again . . . and I hope you can get your 50 votes," said Rep. Robert Watson, R-East Greenwich. "But at what price is this budget back on our table? I look at the agendas and the calendars and I'm seeing an awful lot of legislation suddenly moving that we all know wouldn't move under normal circumstances, under responsible circumstances."

Rep. Rene R. Menard, D-Lincoln, interrupted: "The minority leader has just made an accusation without proof."

"One hundred and fourteen items on a calendar is plenty of proof," Watson shot back.

House Finance Committee Chairman Steven M. Costantino, D-Providence, maintained that the payment to welfare families was added due to "the faces in the gallery" of advocates who lobbied for it.

Watson was unconvinced. "I think it should offend any member of this chamber that we took an innocuous bill of maybe two pages and stuck the entire budget on it," he said. "The fact that you're bringing this vote back today recognizes the fact that you as a Democratic leadership failed last week to do your duty."

"So you come back today with a budget that costs more," Watson continued, "and I know that over the next several days we will be voting on legislation that was part of the wish lists of various and sundry legislators who . . . [are] suddenly being paid for their vote."

Murphy responded later: "There was absolutely no gift-giving." Referring again to allegations of Republican horse-trading during the budget vote, he pointed at Carcieri's office, declaring: "If there is any gift-giving, it's out of this office over here."

Journal staff writer Edward Fitzpatrick contributed to this report.