PROVIDENCE — Amid controversy over his attempt to win pay hikes of up to 19 percent — or $24,844 — for his cabinet members, Governor Carcieri yesterday called on legislators to return their raises and pay a portion of their health insurance.

“It is simply hypocritical for these legislators to criticize an effort to give department directors the same pay increases all other state employees received, while accepting their own pay raises and refusing to help defray their own health-care costs,” the governor said, responding to his legislative critics.

State lawmakers have received automatic pay increases since a 1994 amendment to the state Constitution stripped them of pensions and, in return, replaced their $300-a-year stipends with $10,000-a-year salaries. The amendment — approved 154,776 to 143,901 by state voters — guaranteed them annual cost-of-living increases “as determined by the United States government” for the previous 12 months.

With cost-of-living increases of 1.5 percent in 2002, 2.4 in 2003, 1.84 in 2004, 2.94 in 2005, and 3.5 last year, rank-and-file lawmakers are currently paid $13,508, up $418 from last year. The House speaker and Senate president are paid double.

While the state Constitution entitles members of the General Assembly to cost-of-living increases, Carcieri said, nothing requires them to accept the money.

House Speaker William J. Murphy’s reply: “Comparing a $418 constitutionally required cost-of-living adjustment for legislators to raises of $24,884 for his department directors is just another attempt by this governor to mask his inability to control the spending of his departments .… It’s time for Governor Carcieri to start looking in the mirror and stop blaming the General Assembly for the state’s fiscal woes.”

Sparking Carcieri’s news release was a story in yesterday’s Providence Journal about his effort last May to persuade legislators to add money to the budget to provide four years of cumulative raises to his directors and, at the same time, change state law to entitle the directors to the same percentage raise given other state workers in the future.

Carcieri has not explained why, earlier in his tenure, he did not seek the same 3- and 4-percent raises for his directors that went to other state workers in recent years. But he noted that the directors, as a group, have not received the same across-the-board raises as other state employees since before he took office in 2003. Contained in a May 24 memo from state Budget Director Rosemary Booth Gallogly to the chairmen of the House and Senate finance committees, his proposal would have provided raises ranging from $14,527 for the state’s $95,387-a-year Elderly Affairs Director Corinne Russo to $24,884 for W. Michael Sullivan, the $130,152-a-year director of the Department of Environmental Management.

“There is no doubt that we need to cut personnel costs in order to resolve the state’s budget problems,” Carcieri said. “But pay raises and health-care co-shares should be applied equally and evenhandedly to all state employees — including department directors and legislators. Right now, that’s not happening.”

Yesterday marked the first time, however, Carcieri publicly went to bat for the directors’ raises.

The governor in late January or early February of each year submits to the General Assembly and the public a book called the Personnel Supplement, which contains proposed and anticipated salaries of everyone in state government. But the book Carcieri submitted this year did not include the 18- to 19-percent raises his administration proposed in the May 24 memo. The memo came to light Monday, after the president of the largest state employees union talked about directors’ raises during a radio interview and General Assembly staff, responding to a Journal inquiry, provided a copy.

When asked during the final weeks of this year’s budget debate in late May and early June if the administration had proposed any final budget amendments, Carcieri’s press office did not disclose this one. (Asked why yesterday, the governor’s press secretary, Jeff Neal, said: “I was not aware we had submitted this particular document.”)

Budget negotiations between the Carcieri administration and lawmakers ultimately broke down. The raises never made it into the final version of the current budget. Two weeks after the memo went out, Carcieri announced his intention to eliminate 1,000 state jobs to stem a budget crisis and he called on the legislature to pass a law allowing him to freeze union-negotiated wage increases.

Asked Monday why lawmakers rejected the pay proposal, Senate Finance Chairman Stephen Alves, D-West Warwick, said: “We are looking at layoffs. He is looking at going back to the unions for concessions, changes in pensions. I certainly didn’t think it was appropriate to give [some of] the highest-paid people in the state of Rhode Island raises.”

House Finance Chairman Steven Costantino, D-Providence, said, “It was absolutely the wrong message you wanted to send in terms of the budget …. I think many of us thought he was looking for cover and didn’t want to actually go through the public hearing process.”

Carcieri’s response yesterday: “If those legislators really feel that strongly about the need not to grant pay raises, they should decline to accept the six pay raises they received since 2002. Those legislators should also begin paying a share of their health-care costs, like every other state employee.”

Whether to accept free health, vision and dental-care packages worth up to $15,404 a year — or voluntarily contribute to the premiums for those benefits — has become a political issue within the legislature.

At issue are benefits that, when the issue last bubbled to the surface in April, cost the state’s taxpayers $5,131.68 annually for an individual UnitedHealthcare plan, $14,385.72 for family coverage, for a state lawmaker. Delta Dental costs an additional $306 (individual) to $856.92 (family), and a Vision Service Plan (VSP) $76.20 (individual) to $161.76 (family). Together, these benefits represent $1.39 million of the General Assembly’s $36.6-million budget last year.

Of the 73 current House members, 47 receive family coverage, 10 receive individual coverage and 16 have waived their coverage. Of the 38 Senate members, 27 receive family coverage, 5 receive individual coverage, and 6 have waived their coverage.

A few voluntarily contribute. Others have opted to take a $2,002 “waiver bonus” for giving up their free UnitedHealthcare coverage, while keeping the free dental and vision benefits at a combined cost to the state — for the waiver and benefits — of $3,021 for a married lawmaker or $2,384 for an unmarried one, in addition to their legislative salaries.

Dismissing the governor’s call for mandatory contributions by lawmakers, Murphy said: “When you consider that the average cost of salaries and benefits for legislators is $27,457 compared to the average state employee cost of $90,269, it is a reasonable and acceptable compensation package that does not need to be adjusted.”

Most full-time state employees in Rhode Island are required to pay a portion of their salaries or a percentage of the premiums for their health benefits.

A majority -- 7,445 employees -- pay 2.5 percent of their base pay, and 0.5 percent of any other compensation they receive, such as longevity.

But the percentages went up on July 1 for the 42 percent -- 6,676 state employees -- who pay a percentage of the premiums. Roughly half of those employees are non-union, including legislative employees; the other half includes members of Local 580, Service Employees International Union which represents workers at the Department of Children, Youth & Families and other social-service agencies.

For them, the required co-share for UnitedHealthcare family coverage went from 6 percent to 8 percent for employees making less than $35,000; from 9 percent to 12 percent for employees making between $35,000 and $75,000 and from 11 percent to 15 percent for those paid more than $75,000, according to information provided today by the Department of Administration.

With the United premiums going up at the same time, the overall cost of the employees’ health, dental and vision package went from $15,404 to $16,233.48 annually. For the state employee making more than $35,000, but less than $75,000-a-year the required contribution increased from $53.33 to $74.93 per pay period.

kgregg@projo.com