01:00 AM EST on Sunday, March 12, 2006

I AM AS SURPRISED as anyone to find myself calling for a Rhode Island discussion of world-trade policy. However, I believe Gov. Donald Carcieri has made the discussion of Rhode Island's place in world-trade agreements a state-policy discussion, of which I am very appropriately a part. We should all take part in this discussion.

Governor Carcieri's May 10, 2004, letter of commitment to the U.S. Trade Representative binding Rhode Island state-procurement policy to the constraints of a potential Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) could have various effects that should have been discussed before any commitment was made.

Imagine for a moment that Robinson Green Beretta, an architectural and engineering corporation in Providence, moved to the Dominican Republic. Energy, housing, office space and labor cost substantially less in that CAFTA country. Robinson Green Beretta would no longer pay corporate-income taxes in Rhode Island, and the principals, now living in the Dominican Republic for at least six months and one day of each year, would no longer pay Rhode Island income taxes.

Next, imagine that the State of Rhode Island decided to construct infrastructure and buildings at Quonset Point to attract business and jobs to Quonset. A request for proposals would be issued for design and engineering work. Robinson Green Beretta, now of the Dominican Republic, might submit a bid that was just 1 percent below a bid from an architectural and engineering firm based in Rhode Island. Robinson Green Beretta would then be awarded the contract, because Governor Carcieri, in his CAFTA-commitment letter, allowed for preference for Rhode Island bidders only in the event of a tie.

On a $750,000 job, that 1-percent saving would be $7,500. Many Rhode Island voters and taxpayers might rather forgo a $7,500 saving to keep $750,000 working in Rhode Island -- buying groceries and clothes, and paying mortgages, income, sales taxes and, most important, wages and salaries. Some of us might be willing to forgo even a 5-percent saving -- $37,500 -- to keep $750,000 working in Rhode Island.

I'll grant that after discussion, the consensus could be that Rhode Islanders believe that our tax dollars are expended most economically and effectively in the short and long terms by giving an advantage to local businesses only in the event of a tie. But there has been no discussion, no consensus reached.

More than a year before federal legislators approved CAFTA -- by the narrowest of majorities -- Governor Carcieri, in his letter to the U.S. Trade Representative, committed Rhode Island. The governors of Massachusetts, Maine, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey did not commit their state-procurement policies. Around the country, only 28 governors committed their states, and since then, nine of those states have rescinded their agreements, leaving only 19 states committed to the CAFTA rules for state purchasing.

I imagine/suspect that Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney declined to bind his state to CAFTA purchasing requirements because of recent trade-agreement trouble with an international trade tribunal. A Massachusetts human-rights law -- modeled on efforts to affect apartheid policy in South Africa and crafted in response to allegations of forced labor and cruel and inhumane treatment of workers in Burma/Myanmar -- was found to conflict with a pre-CAFTA trade agreement to which Massachusetts had been committed.

And there is an environmental angle that requires no imagination. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger felt compelled to veto legislation that sought to require reuse of U.S. auto tires in state highway-construction projects. Requiring the reuse of U.S. auto tires would have been disadvantageous to companies based outside the United States in the production of highway-paving materials -- a potential violation of an earlier trade agreement. California is one of the states whose governors did not send letters of commitment regarding CAFTA to the U.S. Trade Representative.

Paul T. DeRoche, Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce's vice president for government affairs, told The Providence Journal, "We have no position on it right now, because we haven't studied it" ("At the Assembly," news, Feb. 7).

That's my point. There has been no discussion, no study. There has not been, but there should be, a public-policy consensus developed among voters, taxpayers, business leaders and members of our community who are concerned about the environment, human rights and other issues.

I have introduced legislation (2006-H 6885 as amended) to require General Assembly approval before any commitment of state resources or policy could be made by this or any future governor of Rhode Island. The bill passed the House on Feb. 16, and I hope that it will receive similar support in the Senate. No commitment with such varied and serious ramifications should be made on the state's behalf without open and careful discussion.

Rhode Island state Rep. Edith H. Ajello represents part of the East Side of Providence.