PROVIDENCE — The bill has come due for the mass exodus of state employees in recent months: $16.5 million.

That is how much the state had to shell out in severance payments over the last month to the 1,521 state workers and college employees who retired in the five months before the price of health coverage to new state health retirees went up on Oct. 1, according to a rundown the Carcieri administration made public yesterday.

If all of the jobs were left vacant, the state would presumably save tens of millions of dollars in salaries and benefits. But first the taxpayers have to pay the retirees for unused vacation and sick days, the deferred pay they were promised as a concession for taking a pay cut during the financial crisis of 1991 and, in some cases, the early-retirement bonuses of $7,000 to $20,000 offered to state college employees.

While the average payout was a reported $10,500, former Rhode Island College president John Nazarian got a check for $129,158 on his way out the door. Over a half-century at the college, college spokeswoman Jane Fusco said, he built up a lot of unused time off to which he was entitled.

About 10 others got checks for more than $50,000, including former University of Rhode Island provost Beverly Swan, former state controller Lawrence Franklin, former Senate fiscal adviser Russell Dannecker and the former chief auditor at the Department of Transportation, James Choquette.

Many more got checks for $30,000, $40,000 and more. And a month after leaving, some new retirees have told their union leaders they have not yet gotten the payouts state law says they should get a pay period after leaving.

Governor Carcieri’s spokeswoman, Amy Kempe, said the checks are in the mail. But she said the Department of Administration has so far been unable to produce a report that would pinpoint how much of each payout represents the Sundlun-era deferred pay, a bonus or anything else, including unused sick time, which state workers receive that is less common in the private sector.

Kempe said she was also unable to elicit from the state’s personnel, budget and controller offices how many state workers are left after the rush of retirements precipitated by the looming health-care hike for new retirees that Carcieri proposed and lawmakers approved last spring in their shared effort to cut the state payroll.

But information compiled by The Providence Journal suggests the size of the state work force has dropped significantly over the last year, from 14,987 “full-time equivalents” in October 2007 to 13,301 during the same pay period this month, while the administration has stepped up its use of “temporary” employment agencies to fill gaps.

A hearing — now canceled — had been scheduled for Monday on the administration’s bid to hire — or continue using — more than 580 “temps” and consultants, making anywhere from $12.35 an hour to $192,000 annually working as teachers at the Rhode Island Training School; aides, nurses and pharmacists at the Rhode Island Veterans Home, in Bristol, and as clerks, data-entry operators and computer programmers across state government.

The Department of Administration has 90 clerical workers and top-dollar “technology” consultants — from private companies — on its rolls. The agency that runs the state hospital complex has more than 170 staff — including nurses, physical and respiratory therapists — from companies such as Adil Business Systems, Gleason Medical Services and PRO Temps in its offices and on its hospital floors, with notations alongside their job titles that say: “Unable to recruit based on pay scale; specific skills required.”

The notice for the canceled hearing said the 580-plus contract employees fall into one of several categories, such as having jobs tied to time-limited federal grants; having specialized medical or “information technology skills” that are not “readily available” or being genuine “temps” utilized on an as-needed basis to “augment staff” or fill short-term gaps. Some carry titles, such as “medical director,” that indicate they were recruited for more than a day or two.

So the state hasn’t stopped hiring, by any measure, but not all the hiring is being done through the state’s competitive civil-service recruitment and testing system. That situation irks J. Michael Downey, president of the largest state employees union, Council 94, American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees.

When his union members reversed themselves last week by approving a contract they had rejected once before that would require them to pay more for their health insurance and go a year without a raise, he said, they did so believing the state’s financial situation was bleak. “The state is supposed to have no money,” Downey said, “yet it looks like they are going to spend millions on contract employees.”

The Carcieri administration had no response when asked how much the state is spending on its army of contract employees, whose salaries were once posted on the controller’s Web site but are no longer. Among the other unanswered questions yesterday: are there state retirees among them?

At one point, Carcieri said he expected to be able to replace all but about 400 of the retired workers. But Kempe, his spokeswoman, noted yesterday that the state’s financial situation has worsened since then. State tax and revenue collections have plunged; the state’s unemployment rate is the worst in the nation. The state put the equivalent of “war bonds” on the market earlier this week to help raise $350 million in tax-anticipation notes to pay its bills.

At this point, Kempe said, it is not possible to say how many of the empty jobs will stay that way. Right now, “critical positions only are being filled.”

kgregg@projo.com