Applause, please, for Thomas Dwyer, for speaking up.

Rhode Islanders should pay attention to what Dwyer, a former top official in the financially squeezed Department of Children, Youth and Families, says.

I may not endorse each point. But I welcome seeing someone who spent a career working in state government on children’s welfare publicly question a governor’s tax-and-spending views. The whole citizenry needs to have this kind of dialogue.

In a Sunday Journal story by Steve Peoples, Dwyer said he felt compelled to retire recently because Governor Carcieri cares more about creating a business-friendly environment than protecting Rhode Island kids.

Dwyer said the prospect of further budget cuts threatens chaos. As he put it in announcing his departure to DCYF colleagues, “I can no longer participate in the choices being made, which fail to make our most needy and vulnerable children a top priority.”

Republican Carcieri is only the tip of what critics might call an iceberg of state indifference. Democratic lawmakers aren’t much better and, in fact, have led in giving tax breaks to the rich. But a governor is more visible, and Carcieri, a former business mogul, is easy to whack. Still, he concedes nothing.

Indeed, when I asked about Dwyer, Carcieri bristled that his criticism was “very unjust.” The governor declared, “To say I’m putting children at risk I think is an absurd thing to say.” If Dwyer “felt so strongly,” Carcieri said, he should have stayed and kept battling for improvement.

Carcieri said the DCYF has added social workers. He and his wife, Suzanne, have worked to recruit people to be foster parents.

He added, “We’re in a difficult budget. We’re trying to balance a whole lot of things. I put more money into education … I’m all about building families and futures for kids.” He said he is trying to consolidate functions such as finance and facilities management in order to put more money into delivery of services.

As for a business-friendly environment, Carcieri said reducing taxes is important to growing an economy. “That’s the way we’ll produce the revenue to do the things from a policy standpoint that we want to do.” (A nice vision, but do you see the economy here starting to zoom, even with the tax breaks for the rich?)

Now, also about kids: As promised, President Bush yesterday vetoed a bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Many Republicans backed the bill. Democrats — including Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts in a Monday statement — demanded he sign it.

Carcieri told me Monday that he thought the White House and Congress might yet work something out. But for now, he said, “I think I would support the president. This is designed for low-income children and that’s where it should stay. I’m not supportive of expanding and moving more and more toward a national health-care (program) … All you’re going to do is put it in the federal budget and you’re not going to get at the real issues which I think need to be dealt with first.”

He’d just told a conference of health-care regulators of his interest in wellness programs and computerizing medical records.

The New York Times editorialized recently, “Mr. Bush seems determined to … take a stand against what he calls ‘an incremental step toward the goal of government-run health care for every American.’ He would rather sacrifice the health of uninsured children than yield an inch of ideological ground.”

I appreciate ideology. But isn’t health care more important?

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com