PROVIDENCE — A Superior Court judge has told the largest state employees union that it is up to the Rhode Island Labor Relations Board — not the courts — to decide whether Governor Carcieri can, by executive order, force thousands of state employees who work for the executive branch to pay a greater share of their health costs, a move the governor has been counting on to save $10 million.

But the judge yesterday flatly barred Carcieri from imposing similar increases on state workers employed by the other branches of government: the courts and General Assembly.

In the 19-page decision she issued yesterday, Superior Court Judge Patricia Hurst criticized Carcieri for taking the position that he can disregard “the laws of the state when he deems it expedient,” and trying to deflect blame for the state’s current financial predicament.

“By allowing a deficit-burdened budget to become law while relying upon future revenues that he and the Legislature had dubious power to secure, the Governor embarked upon a perilous mission, fraught with constitutional and other legal difficulties that, unfortunately, may well cost the state more in time and litigation than it stood to gain,” she wrote.

But Republican Carcieri nonetheless declared her decision a “victory,” that will allow him to retroactively — and without further negotiation — require higher health-insurance contributions from thousands of members of Council 94, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — and several smaller unions — who soundly rejected the proposals in contract votes last month.

A statement from his office said: “We are looking forward to advancing our case before the State Labor Relations Board. I am hopeful union leaders will take the agreement reached with its leadership back to the members for reconsideration.”

It appears both sides will be back in court today, however, with Council 94’s lawyers asking the judge to clarify her decision and enjoin the governor from raising employee health-care contributions while the case winds its way through appeals and the Labor Relations Board.

“Our number-one goal is to stop the administration from taking money out of the paychecks of the people we represent without negotiations,” Council 94 president J. Michael Downey said.

While weighing the millions of state dollars at stake, Hurst also considered how the workers feel. “Although the actual dollar amounts to be taken from each employee’s pay might seem, to some, inconsequential, Council 94’s members viewed the anticipated pay cut as intolerable in the current economic climate of rising consumer prices, including sharply increasing food and energy costs, and higher property taxes,” she wrote.

The court fight was sparked by Council 94’s overwhelming July 24 rejection of a proposed contract, brokered in part by its executive director Dennis Grilli, that exposed a divide within the union and knocked the state’s already precarious budget out of whack. Among the highlights of the tentative agreement were: pay raises of zero this year, and 2.5 percent, 3 percent and 3 percent during each of the next three years; a one-day pay reduction in the current year that employees can recoup as a paid leave day; and escalating increases in the percentage of premium the employees will be required to pay for their health insurance that the members of 13 smaller unions and many other non-union employees are already paying.

Instead of paying 2.5 percent of their base pay — plus a tiny share of any other compensation, such as overtime that they receive — they would pay an increasing share of the premiums. By the final year of the contract, every state employee would be paying at least 15 percent of the premiums, but no more than 25 percent.

Union leaders hoped Carcieri’s negotiators would return to the bargaining table, as was the case with the Almond administration when Council 94 members last rejected a contract in 1996. But Carcieri refused. The union accused Carcieri of violating state law by refusing to negotiate a new contract, in a filing with the State Labor Relations Board.

Carcieri responded on July 31 with an executive order aimed at requiring the union members to pay the new, and for many higher, cost-shares that they rejected. Council 94 quickly went to court seeking to block the order.

Carcieri’s lawyers said he needed the increased health-insurance contributions to avert a deficit in an already tight budget year, by saving a potential $10 million in employee costs.

In addition to Council 94, the governor’s executive order was also aimed at the members of the Council of Budget Personnel, an arm of the National Education Association known as the Association of Clerical-Technicals that is based at the University of Rhode Island, a second that is known as the Association of the Rhode Island Department of Health; the Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers — professional unit; the Rhode Island Court Reporters Alliance, Local 4829; and the Rhode Island Probation and Parole Association.

The state contended that the union members’ failure to ratify new contracts left them without contractual protections after June 30.

The state lawyers also argued that the plan isn’t the raw deal it has been made out to be. According to their math, 20 percent of Council 94 members would actually pay less for health insurance than they do now, and none of Council 94’s members would pay more than 18 percent of the premiums. That is generous compared with the federal government, where most employees pay 25 percent of their premiums; and with Massachusetts, where state workers making less than $50,000 still pay more than any Council 94 employee, they argued.

But Council 94 lawyers denounced Carcieri’s attempt to change the employee benefit package without negotiation, a collective-bargaining violation that would hit the lowest-paid workers, including janitors and secretaries with family plans, the hardest. Seventy percent of Council 94 members earn $40,000 or less per year.

Yesterday’s ruling was silent on the allegations pending before the Labor Relations Board for an initial hearing on Sept. 10 that Carcieri violated state labor law by refusing to negotiate, or take any other possible route of remediation — such as mediation.

But Hurst described Carcieri’s approach this way: “the governor all but blamed the budget deficit on the state’s unions, accused them of violating the Constitution for failing to go gently into the night of a pay reduction.” Hurst suggested Carcieri went overboard.

“Distilled, it is the Governor’s contention that he has the authority to act free of any interference from the legislative and judicial departments, thereby de facto suspending or disregarding the laws of the state when he deems it expedient. Further reduced to its essence, it is the Governor’s contention that he is above the law. The Governor is plainly wrong. In fact, this is precisely the kind of abuse of executive power that our system of government was designed to prevent.”

But Hurst cited the separation-of-powers provision in the state Constitution as grounds for prohibiting the governor from imposing his executive order on the hundreds of state employees outside the executive branch, including court and legislative employees. He is required to abide by state law with respect to employees in his own realm, but Hurst said that Council 94 already “has an adequate administrative remedy” in the State Labor Relations Board for those of its members who work in the executive branch. She said the board — not the court — must first determine “whether the governor lawfully terminated Council 94’s collective bargaining agreement; refused to bargain in good faith; committed, or attempted to commit, an unfair labor practice” by issuing his executive order.

The governor’s spokeswoman, Amy Kempe, said she was unable to determine yesterday how many union and non-union state workers are already paying the raised health-care contributions, and how many more might be affected by the governor’s vow yesterday to retroactively impose the increases on the members of the resistant unions.

kgregg@projo.com