PROVIDENCE — Two weeks before he first wielded his now-famous vow to eliminate 1,000 state jobs to head off a looming deficit, Governor Carcieri quietly sought four years of cumulative raises — ranging as high as $24,884 — for members of his cabinet.

In a previously undisclosed May 24, 2007, memorandum to the chairmen of the House and Senate finance committees, Carcieri’s Budget Director Rosemary Booth Gallogly recommended page after page of “final adjustments required to address the projected deficit.”

At the same time, the memo proposed the inclusion in this year’s big spending bill of a new law requiring the Department of Administration to automatically “provide cabinet directors cost of living increases that are comparable to those accorded other non-union state employees in the executive branch.”

The state department directors, in one fell swoop, would have been given the same cumulative raises — starting at 4 percent and leveling off at 3 percent — that the state’s unions bargained for and won, and which Carcieri, the legislature and the courts extended to non-union workers over the last four years.

Translated: the proposal would have provided immediate 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.

While the administration has from time to time bumped up the pay of individual directors, such as Transportation Director Jerome F. Williams a few months after he replaced former DOT Director James Capaldi late last year, the directors — as a group — have not gotten the same across-the-board raises as other state workers since June 2002.

Asked yesterday why Carcieri chose this tumultuous budget year to recommend raises of this magnitude, his spokesman Jeff Neal said the directors were “the only employees not to receive an offsetting pay increase” when they started paying a share of their health-insurance premiums last year. Beyond that: “Governor Carcieri believed that it was appropriate to enable department directors to receive the exact same pay increases that are granted to nearly every other state employee,” Neal said.

But soon after the May 24 memo went out, the Carcieri administration’s behind-the-scenes talks with legislative budget writers broke down.

Carcieri vowed at a June 7 news conference to eliminate 1,000 state jobs, replace union employees with private workers for “every state service that could possibly be performed more efficiently by the private sector.” He also called on the General Assembly to pass a law allowing him to freeze union-negotiated wage increases.

Neither the raises sought for the directors nor the new automatic pay requirement made it into the final Assembly-passed spending bill. And key lawmakers and the president of the state’s largest state employees union — Council 94, American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees — yesterday questioned Carcieri’s timing and motivation.

Calling the pay request “unbelievable,” Council 94 president J. Michael Downey said: “The nerve of them to even throw it about the halls of the State House when they are talking about sending home cooks’ helpers, sending home cleaners, sending home janitors and laying off hundreds of state employees.”

Asked yesterday why the proposal was not included in the big budget bill, 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, called the request “one of the more unusual I have ever seen, particularly in light of a major, major budget deficit.… It was absolutely the wrong message you wanted to send in terms of the budget…. You’d have to ask him his motivation: why are you coming to us when you can do this yourself?”

“I think many of us thought he was looking for cover and didn’t want to actually go through the public hearing process,” Costantino said.

Denying the governor was driven by either motivation, Neal said Carcieri simply wanted to “regularize” the process for awarding raises, and “at the time, believed these increases would be affordable.” He said “the governor’s perspective” on the state’s fiscal situation changed dramatically two weeks later when an “unacceptable” version of the spending plan he proposed started moving through the Assembly. Among his objections: the use of one-time tobacco bond revenue for operating-expenses, instead of capital projects as he proposed.

“Their decision to use the tobacco money to plug the operating deficit required the governor, in his view, to initiate the reduction in the state workforce,” Neal said.

The law regarding raises for department directors has changed since lawmakers in 2005 disbanded the Unclassified Pay Plan Board which, until it was abolished at the urging of separation of powers advocates, provided a public forum for the airing of pay proposals.

The law then and now said: “Directors shall receive such annual salaries as may be from time to time established by the unclassified pay plan board.…”

While this law was never repealed, the General Assembly in June 2005 created a new procedure that requires the Department of Administration to conduct a public hearing in March each year to set directors’ salaries. It requires the administration to take into consideration the “salaries paid executive positions in other states and levels of government, and in comparable positions anywhere which require similar skills, experience, or training.” At the end of this process, the Department of Administration is required to make a recommendation to the Assembly by the end of April, to take effect automatically unless rejected by the House and Senate within 30 days.

According to the state personnel office, these are the current salaries paid the department directors in Carcieri’s cabinet, including any longevity and educational incentives to which they are entitled under the law: Administration Director Beverly Najarian, $110,321; Adjutant Gen. Robert T. Bray, $94,769; Business Regulation Director A. Michael Marques, $101,598; Children, Youth & Families Director Patricia Martinez, $127,501; Corrections Director A.T. Wall, $142,609; DOT Director Williams, $143,000; Elderly Affairs Director Russo, $95,387; DEM Director Sullivan, $130,152; Health Director David Gifford, $134,975; Human Services Director Gary Alexander, $115,837; Labor Director Adelita Orefice, $113,883; and Mental Health, Retardation & Hospitals Director Ellen Nelson, $126,582.

Carcieri has not yet announced the details of his $200-million deficit avoidance plan.

kgregg@projo.com