PROVIDENCE — Three weeks after abruptly firing two state cleaning contractors suspected of using illegal immigrant workers, the Carcieri administration has hired temporary replacement crews at nearly 50 buildings across the state.

The 90-day “emergency procurement” contracts went to 15 separate vendors, including two minority-owned companies, and CranstonARC, a nonprofit organization that provides vocational training to developmentally disabled Rhode Islanders.

Starting today, those crews will clean facilities from the University of Rhode Island and the Division of Motor Vehicle registries to the main state administration buildings on Capitol Hill.

They will take the place of TriState Enterprises and Falcon Maintenance, whom the state terminated after 31 of their employees were arrested last month by federal immigration authorities as they left work at six state courthouses.

Since then, the state has depended on in-house janitors working overtime shifts, providing what the administration calls “minimal maintenance” to keep the buildings tidy.

An unscientific look at a handful of bathrooms and work areas in the affected buildings last week suggested orderly, though not quite pristine conditions.

Carcieri spokeswoman Amy Kempe said with the new contracts in place, the state expects to save more than $14,000 each month of the combined $121,000 it was paying TriState and Falcon. That’s partly due to the fact that the new contracts are temporary, meaning some require less-extensive services than might be necessary over the life of a longer agreement.

The administration says it hopes those who won the new contracts will bid on the longer three-year deals when that process kicks off in the coming days.

CranstonARC chief executive officer Tom Kane said his organization went after the state cleaning jobs because it believes they offer a good opportunity to train the developmentally disabled while helping the organization become financially self sufficient.

This wasn’t its first attempt. The ARC previously bid on seven state contracts, eventually losing out to either TriState or Falcon, Kane said.

But when the state then terminated those agreements, CranstonARC decided to try again, winning temporary jobs at the Schofield Armory in Cranston and also in a nearby Pastore Complex building.

Kane noted that the number of companies bidding this time was significantly higher than what ARC officials saw in the past. The last round produced just four or five bidders for a handful of contracts. This time, there were as many as 100, he estimated.

Kempe could not confirm how many bids were submitted for the temporary jobs or how many of the chosen vendors had previously bid on state contracts. The Carcieri administration has not yet responded to an open records request from The Providence Journal listing all the bidders for the prior TriState or Falcon contracts.

The spokesman suggested that the upsurge in bids may be connected with the tight economy. In attempt to drum up work, more businesses may have “sharpened their pencils and made their bids more competitive than they have before,” Kempe said.

She also attributed the spike to the media attention surrounding the termination, saying maintenance firms may have paid closer attention to the process.

Massachusetts-based cleaning services firm Hurley of America was one such company. Its finance director, Paul Kinch, was driving home one night when he heard about the Rhode Island contract problems on the radio and resolved to enter a bid. Hurley, which already provides cleaning services for Providence College and Textron, saw the state contracts as a good way to expand business in Rhode Island, Kinch said.

The 1,100-employee company won the rights to clean the Community College of Rhode Island’s Warwick campus, though Kinch said the state hadn’t confirmed that it is to begin servicing the building today.

Several other new vendors could not be reached for comment yesterday. According to the administration, not all of them are Rhode Island-based companies.

URI facilities director Jerry Sidio said he was not familiar with H&M Building Services, the firm that’s scheduled to begin cleaning 15 university buildings today.

The Department of Administration says it is depending on each new company to conduct background checks on employees who will work in state buildings. Federal law however prohibits them from running E-Verify immigration status checks on any employees but new hires.

Kempe said the DOA is currently “looking into whether they can use E-verify for current employees.”

Kinch, of the Massachusetts cleaning firm, said his company regularly uses E-Verify checks on new employees and has done so for some time.

The state courts meanwhile will continue using TriState and Falcon with new conditions imposed. Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch has said he too will stick with the one TriState custodian he has left.

TriState is co-owned by Anthony E. DeSimone Jr., the brother of state Rep. John DeSimone, D-Providence.

Last month, a Superior Court judge refused to stop the Carcieri administration from canceling the TriState contracts, despite a request from DeSimone, who said the state was required to provide 30 days’ notice of termination.

Since then, the 48 state buildings have relied on overtime work from staff janitors, many of them members of Council 94, the state’s largest employee union, which is currently embroiled in its own contract dispute with the Carcieri administration. Council 94 has declined to comment on the cleaning contract matter. Newest contractors

cneedham@projo.com