The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

PROVIDENCE — State government will open on Friday after all, as a result of a temporary stay issued by Supreme Court Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg that put the kibosh on the first of Governor Carcieri’s 12 government shutdown days.

State workers in matching green T-shirts cheered outside the courthouse. But the celebration was short-lived.

Little more than an hour after the judge ruled, Governor Carcieri said the judge left him “with no option but layoffs.”

He said layoff notices would go out within a week to the last 1,000 union and non-union people hired, which presumably would include the state’s new Medicaid director and education commissioner. “It should greatly disturb every state employee and every Rhode Islander that labor leaders are willing to sacrifice people’s jobs so they can maintain their stranglehold on the citizens of this state,” Carcieri said.

J. Michael Downey, president of the largest state employees union — Council 94, American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees — called the layoff threat “an attempt to bully the working men and women that make up the state work force into accepting a reckless and irresponsible government shutdown.”

He said the union remains willing to sit down and negotiate, but the governor’s “strident” remarks signal “that he is not open to negotiations; he is just spoiling for a fight. And when it comes to fighting to keep state services in place for those that rely on them, we will not back down.”

Added Philip Keefe, president of Local 580, Rhode Island Alliance of Social Service Employees: “I think calmer heads need to prevail. He [Carcieri] needs to come back to the bargaining table and we need to sort this out.”

The 12 shutdown days are a key part of Carcieri’s response to the $67.8 million in unspecified savings that lawmakers directed him to produce in the new state budget they adopted in June. While leaving the actual cost-cutting decisions to him, they required “reductions of 6.25 percent of recommended salary and benefits.”

Thursday began with lawyers for the Carcieri administration and the eight unions seeking to block the shutdowns anxiously awaiting a decision by Superior Court Judge Michael A. Silverstein.

Both sides agreed to expedited arbitration, but the unions wanted a temporary restraining order to avert no-pay days in the interim. Given the state’s financial straits, George H. Rinaldi, the governor’s chief of legal services, said the state could not wait that long.

After hearing dueling arguments a day earlier, Silverstein granted the state’s request to put the unions’ bid for a restraining order on hold until an arbitrator rules on the threshold issue: Whether the shutdown days constitute a violation of the wage, work week and no-lockout provisions in the contracts the Carcieri administration signed as recently as last fall, as alleged by the unions.

The unions raised other issues, but Silverstein said those issues are so “inextricably linked with factual determinations that will be made by an arbitrator … [that] it would be inappropriate to continue the litigation while arbitration goes forward.” The union lawyers raced to file their appeals, and in the wake of the short-lived victory, Department of Administration Director Gary Sasse remarked: “It is not a good situation. The state has a fiscal crisis. [So] we don’t view this is as a win-lose situation.”

In mid-afternoon, Goldberg, sitting as the duty justice for emergency matters, met privately with more than a dozen lawyers for the state and the unions. The outcome became evident when Council 94 lawyer Gerard Cobleigh emerged with a thumbs-up, and said: “People are working Friday.” The full court will consider the case on Sept. 11, at its first fall conference.

A small but boisterous group of state workers rejoiced on the courthouse steps.

“It’s huge,” said Council 94’s acting executive director Joseph Peckham. “Our people were going to lose a day’s pay beginning tomorrow.”

“I had said all along that Labor Day weekend was not the week to send workers to the street without their pay,” chimed in Downey. “I’m happy that workers in Rhode Island tomorrow are going to get paid, and that a contract means something.”

As a mother helping her laid-off son “save his house,” 30-year state worker Lynn Loveday, 57, said she was relieved, gratified that a court recognized that “we have a contract,” and happy that “I get to go to work and serve the public, which is what I like to do.”

But with the ensuing threat of massive layoffs, the victory-celebration did not last long.

Carcieri said Goldberg’s decision “may just be the straw that broke the camel’s back, sending this state down the path to financial ruin, as it gives greater weight to union and special-interest demands rather than the fiscal reality of the state and the employment of state workers.”

He served notice that 1,000 of the most recent state hires would get layoff notices, and blamed the unions for refusing “to help our state through this extraordinarily difficult time.”

The administration expects each shutdown day to save $1.4 million. Asked why the delay of one shutdown day would require so many layoffs, Carcieri spokeswoman Amy Kempe said: “It is not about the one day. The administration needs to prepare for the possibility that we can not move forward with the shutdown days … [so] we are doing the analysis and hope to have the notifications out by next week.”

Speaking with reporters a short time later outside the State House, the governor said: “I don’t want to do this. It could be much smoother, much easier and much fairer if everyone could just agree to take a very small pay reduction this year.” But “every day that goes by, the situation gets worse, not better. I have to start now to effect any kind of savings this year.”

Carcieri said workers facing layoffs should blame the General Assembly. “The legislature didn’t appropriate the money to make salary payments, so now I’ve got to come up with a way to do it, and I’ve got few tools to work with.”

But Downey labeled the governor’s move a “sour grapes” reaction to what happened in court. “To then go say ‘I’m going to lay people off,’ that’s not right.”

redgar@projo.com