Steve Kass’ salary has been cut nearly in half.

The governor’s former director of communications –– who was recently “loaned” to the state Emergency Management Agency after being replaced in the State House –– will now earn $66,919 a year. His former salary was $126,541.

“After reviewing the scope of his responsibilities at EMA, Steve Kass offered to take a pay reduction,” Governor Carcieri’s spokesman, Jeff Neal, told Political Scene on Friday evening.

Kass became Emergency Management’s “communications coordinator” about a month ago as part of a number of high-profile staffing changes in the governor’s inner circle. The agency already had a part-time spokesperson.

Kass’ former salary was $50,000 more than Emergency Management’s former executive director and nearly three times as much as the previous spokesperson, Britton Bates, makes. Kass was the highest-paid employee in the agency.

The move came as Carcieri was seeking to cut the state’s payroll by 1,000 positions to stave off a massive budget deficit. And critics cited Kass’ lack of emergency management experience.

The governor did not order Kass to take less money, Neal stressed, “he volunteered.”

Carcieri named a new EMA director last week. J. David Smith will now be the highest-paid Emergency Management employee, earning $89,351 a year.

House leaders’ fundraiser

As has become tradition at the State House, this week’s legislative committee-action deadline was preceded by last week’s House Democratic leadership fundraiser.

The event drew an estimated 150 lawmakers, lobbyists and other interested observers to the Roger Williams Park Casino for a $100-per-person fundraising event for the leadership committee that pays for the lawmakers’ holiday parties and contributions to favored candidates.

With a few notable exceptions, the price tag is such that donor names need not be reported.

As of Dec. 31, 2007, the leadership account had $13,060 left after paying $7,988 in what are described as “campaign expenses” during the previous quarter.

That included payments totaling $6,788 to the Hotel Viking, in Newport, for the lawmakers’ “holiday party,” a $1,079 payment to Barrington Liquors, in East Providence, for refreshments, and $500 donations to J. Clement “Bud” Cicilline and Ed Ladouceur — unsuccessful Democratic candidates in last year’s special elections to fill the seat of the late Paul Crowley in Newport and former Rep. Peter Ginaitt in Warwick.

An event during the same week last year drew a string of contributions of between $200 and $500 from the political-action committees — or PACs — affiliated with many of the lawyer-lobbyists, corporate and union players at the State House, including the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, National Education Association Rhode Island, the R.I. Laborers Political Action League, the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, Newport Grand, Bank of America, Cox Communications and the Providence Chamber PAC.

The way the state’s campaign finance law works, fundraising reports are not due until 30 days after the quarter ends, so donations made to the lawmakers between April 1 and June 30 do not come to light until a month or so after the legislative session ends each year.

D.C. group says R.I. is youngster-friendly

This morning’s release of the annual Kids Count report was not the only good news for Rhode Island children in recent days.

Last week, a report by the “Every Child Matters” Education Fund, a nonprofit agency based in Washington, D.C., ranked Rhode Island fourth in the nation at creating a healthy environment for youngsters.

Percentagewise, the state has the fewest uninsured children, the fewest deaths for children under 14, the fewest births to women receiving no prenatal care and the lowest per capita child welfare expenditures. It has the 16th-fewest children living in poverty, according to the report. “It’s a national context that really reinforces a lot of what we’ve found here,” Elizabeth Burke Bryant, executive director of Rhode Island Kids Count, told Political Scene.

“Every Child Matters” –– which focuses on the ramifications of public policies on the lives of children –– ranked the 50 states on a variety of indicators, nearly all of which placed Rhode Island in the top 20. Overall, Vermont came out on top as the safest state for children, with states like Mississippi and Louisiana ranking at the bottom.

“I think this study gives evidence that Rhode Island’s investments in children are really paying off in terms of positive outcomes for children,” Burke Bryant said.

Perhaps most significant is the state’s top ranking in the area of health insurance. Ninety-four percent of children in this state are insured, 64 percent of them having employer-based coverage from a parent’s place of business, Burke Bryant said.

But the governor’s proposed budget, including a plan to remove roughly 2,800 noncitizen children from the state’s RIte Care insurance program and the projected elimination of state money for the Head Start program could curtail those gains, she said.

Ethics Commission likely to OK Kerbel for panel

As the long, and sometimes mind-numbing, pension reform hearings got under way at the State House, it struck one of the commission members — Providence Mayor David Cicilline’s director of administration, Richard I. Kerbel — that he is one of many across Rhode Island with a stake in the outcome of this latest effort.

Launched by House Speaker William J. Murphy, this latest study is aimed at reining in the exploding cost of public employee pensions or, at the very, least, finding a new way to finance them.

As Kerbel explained in a March 6 letter to the state Ethics Commission in which he asks advice on whether he can continue: Prior to joining the Cicilline administration early this year, his 13 years as town manager in North Kingstown made him a vested member of the state-run municipal retirement system. He is currently eligible for a potential $25,884 pension when he turns 58, in July.

“I do not currently collect a pension from the system but will be eligible on my 58th birthday,” he wrote. “In light of the fact that I am eligible to collect a pension from a system administered by the state, I am seeking an advisory opinion on whether there is a conflict of interest with my serving on a commission that is studying the state’s pension system.”

Kerbel is not the only one on the 19-member study group with a potential stake. State police and judges were not touched by the last round of pension changes, but now there is a representative of each group on the study group deciding what, if anything, can and should be done this year to curb the state and local costs of providing the state’s retired public employees with pensions and health-care benefits unavailable to many — if not most — of the other taxpayers paying the tab.

Other public employees on the panel include state General Treasurer Frank Caprio, Cumberland Mayor Daniel McKee and longtime University of Rhode Island employee Michael Downey, the president of Council 94, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

The Ethics Commission plans to formally address Kerbel’s query — which arguably will set the standard for the other potentially conflicted members — tomorrow.

But Kerbel said Friday he was pleased that a draft opinion that Ethics Commission staff sent him in advance would allow him to continue as a member, knowing how concerned the mayor and city are about the future of the pension system. He made public a copy that noted there are over 60,000 members of the state and municipal pension plans, and at least 1,800 are like Kerbel — former municipal employees who are entitled to, but not yet collecting pensions.

Beyond that, it said: “It does not appear that the petitioner’s mere participation as a member of this advisory body will result in a direct monetary gain or loss to himself.”

NEARI leader Crowley to Political Scene: Gotcha!

Not every April Fool’s Day joke went quite as far and wide as Pat Crowley’s.

But the deputy director of National Education Association Rhode Island — who is as famous for his appearances in a Bush mask and “mission accomplished” flight suit as he is for his online oratory — even had us folks at Political Scene going last Tuesday when he announced on RIFuture.org that he was leaving Rhode Island to write a once-a-week blog for the New York Times.

Believable? In this era of new and emerging media, why not?

So we asked: when are you leaving your day job? How did you and the Times find each other? To whom are you donating the Bush mask? His answers:

“I’ll be donating the mask to Ed Achorn so he can have a permanent reminder of life on the left in Rhode Island!

“Happy April 1st!”

Chafee book gets noticed

There was a wait of an hour and a half at the Barnes & Noble bookstore on Bald Hill Road last Thursday when former U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee signed his new political memoir, Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President.

“It was very gratifying,” said Chafee, whose mother, Virginia, was among those who waited in the long queue to get their books signed.

The book, remarkable for its candor, is a window into how Republican and Democratic members of Congress took the U.S. to war in Iraq without questioning the Bush administration’s premises for the military action. Chafee was the only Senate Republican to vote against giving President Bush the authority to invade Iraq. He was joined by 22 Democrats, including Rhode Island’s Jack Reed.

Chafee’s book is starting to gain national traction. The Nation, a liberal antiwar weekly, featured a review praising the work and the former GOP senator is scheduled to talk about the book on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show on Wednesday. And Chafee will be signing books tomorrow evening at the Brown Bookstore, on Thayer Street in Providence; the C-SPAN cable network will cover that event, he said.

Infections-reporting bill on track for passage

A much-publicized proposal requiring hospitals to report all hospital-borne infections continued to breeze through the General Assembly last week, winning unanimous passage in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, even stood to thank sponsor Hanna M. Gallo, D-Cranston, for working to make hospitals cleaner, safer places.

“She has been aware of the seriousness of the spread of resistant and deadly viruses and has highlighted the importance of this issue for all of us,” Paiva Weed said.

A similar bill is expected to pass the House Committee on Health, Education and Welfare in the coming days with several language changes that committee members hope will make it more palatable to Rhode Island’s hospitals.

Committee Chairman Joseph M. McNamara, D-Warwick, told Political Scene he will probably recommend passage. “I think this would be beneficial to reduce hospital-borne infections,” he said.

speoples@projo.com