PROVIDENCE — Union leaders yesterday accused Governor Carcieri of trying to “frighten” 3,143 state workers eligible to retire into leaving state government before July 1 to avoid having to pay more — and in some cases, the full tab — for their post-retirement health coverage.

They hurled words such as “devastating” and “betrayal” at Carcieri’s attempts to cut the taxpayer cost of this retiree health benefit by $9.8 million.

They described his proposal to allow state retirees to return to the state payroll without giving up their pensions — a practice that was outlawed in the early 1990s — as a thinly veiled attempt to head off chaos across state government if Carcieri drives state employees out in droves. Within the Department of Corrections alone, union chief Richard Ferruccio said 173 employees are now, or soon will be, eligible to retire, which would “create a very serious situation” at the state prison if they all left at once.

During a four-hour televised hearing by the House Finance Committee, union leaders also described as “repulsive” the Republican governor’s efforts to shut off a program that provides $3,600 annual stipends — and free college tuition — to the families of police officers and firefighters who have been killed, injured on the job or stricken with cancer, to save another $165,000.

The proposals were contained in the deficit-avoidance plan that Carcieri proposed last week in an attempt to plug a $151-million hole in the current-year budget and lay the foundation for further cuts during the new fiscal year, which begins July 1 under the threat of a much larger potential deficit, estimated at somewhere between $384 million and $450 million.

While most of yesterday’s testimony centered on Carcieri’s attempts to cut employee benefits, the hearing also provided a forum for Carcieri’s top legal adviser, Kernan F. King, to argue for the repeal of what he characterized as an “anti-privatization” law passed last year.

Defenders say the new law simply requires the administration to do a detailed cost-benefit analysis before it hires a private company to do work now done by state employees, but King said the law would stretch a routine contract award out over three years and give new opportunities to sue to anyone potentially affected by a privatization.

“This legislation is a nightmare,” he told the lawmakers. “It will prevent a balanced budget. It will grind government to a halt and it will unleash an avalanche of litigation.”

“It would give anybody who’s under a drug-release program the opportunity to sue if they are getting treatment. It would give anybody at the ACI the opportunity to sue. It would give anybody at Zambarano hospital the opportunity to sue. It would give the fourth cousin of [Channel 10 reporter] Bill Rappleye the opportunity to sue, it is that broad ….”

Eventually, House Finance Committee Chairman Steven M. Costantino, D-Providence, cut him off, saying: “Can we reduce the hyperbole? Can we speak to the issues? I don’t think government is going to grind to a halt.”

King tried another tack. He likened the new law to Patriots coach Bill Belichick giving these instructions to quarterback Tom Brady for the Super Bowl: “You are going to have to wear a 20-pound brace on your left leg. You are going to have to throw not with your usual throwing arm, but the other one, and those four big guys who weigh about 300 pounds in front of you are not going to be there. Go Pats. Go win that game.”

But James Cenerini, lobbyist for Council 94, American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, told the committee that “Carcieri’s track record on privatization does not warrant blind trust or a blank check.” He cited, as examples, the state Department of Transportation’s payment of the equivalent of $102,000 a year to a typist provided by a private contractor, and the award of a state staffing contract worth up to $11 million annually to Smart Staffing Service under terms that were not offered to any other potential bidders: the state agreed to front the company the money to meet each payroll in advance.

Responding to King’s suggestion that the legislature restore the status quo, Costantino said: “I am not sure if I have complete faith in that process, as much as you have.”

DOT union leader Brendan Fogarty said his department was considering privatizing its real estate and materials sections, but the idea was scrapped after his director, Jerome Williams, did the kind of detailed analysis the new law requires and determined there were “no savings to be found.”

Recasting King’s football analogy, he said: “We’re not asking Tom Brady to throw left-handed, and we’re not asking him to wear a 20-pound weight. We’re asking coach Belichick not to film the opposing coaches.”

No votes were taken yesterday as the committee attempted to slog through Carcieri’s much more complicated and far-reaching proposal to lower — and in some cases, eliminate — the state subsidy for post-retirement health benefits.

For starters, the administration wants to impose minimum age-and-work requirements for the health benefit. After June 30, a retiree would have to be at least 59 and have worked for the state at least 20 years to qualify for the benefit.

The current subsidy is keyed to how many years an employee has worked for the state. Longtime state workers pay nothing toward their post-retirement health care. Others with shorter work histories pay up to 50 percent of the rate the state is charged for an “active” employee. The state not only pays the other half, it also pays the difference between that rate and the higher rate the insurer is actually charging the state for this older and presumably sicker group. Carcieri wants eligible retirees to pay 20 percent of the actual premium cost.

Altogether, the state expects the two moves to shave $9.8 million off the overall $33.3-million cost of retiree health care.

Here’s what this would mean to the 60-year-old who retires after working for the state for 15 years: before July 1, this retiree would be required to pay $2,714 for health coverage; after July 1, this employee would no longer qualify for a subsidy and would have to pay the full $8,461 cost to the state of an individual plan.

For the 60-year-old who put in 28 years with the state, waiting to retire could make the difference between paying nothing under current rules and $1,692 (which is 20 percent of that $8,461) annually.

The move would also have implications for newly retired teachers, who are currently allowed to buy coverage at the reduced “active” rate, with the state paying the approximate $3,000 difference between that and the actual cost.

State budget officer Rosemary Booth Gallogly told the lawmakers that the governor’s plan is aimed at bringing the benefits more in line with private industry, and starting to put enough money aside in a “trust fund” to make sure the state can keep its retiree health-care promises in the future.

Two recent studies show how increasingly rare, and costly, the benefit is. Retiree health care will cost state taxpayers $700 million over the next 30 years, a tab that must be disclosed for the first time because of new accounting standards, according to a recent study produced by The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Center on the States.

Nationally, only 28 percent of employers were expected to offer traditional medical coverage to employees under age 65, and only 26 percent to those over 65 who retired last year, according to a survey by Watson Wyatt and the National Business Group on Health.

kgregg@projo.com