How odd: Governor Carcieri has removed Ellen Nelson as director of the Rhode Island Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals and will not name a new director. But he will keep Ms. Nelson on in the same ($127,000) salary as an adviser on hospital acquisitions and mergers. The governor has not told the public why he made the change but does say that the new position is temporary.

That’s nice because the governor has no statutory authority over hospital acquisitions and mergers! That’s left to the director of health (who, it is true, is named by the governor) and the attorney general. (Everyone is thinking these days about the huge proposed merger of Lifespan and Care New England, which is intrinsically controversial.)

So what’s the point of keeping Ms. Nelson around, other than to keep her employed? The governor’s spokesman, the long-suffering Jeff Neal, says it’s because the governor will have an “important voice” in these matters. Really? But why does he need a $127,000-year official to help develop and express his opinions over something in which he has no legal role?

This seems an exceptional waste of money in these fiscally fearsome times.

Anyway, the two MHRH division heads (the very able John Young and Craig Stenning) will report to the deputy director of the Health Department, Adelita Orefice. And indeed MHRH probably should be merged into the Department of Health, to achieve economies and implement the synergies associated with merging what are, after all, health functions. But employing Ms. Nelson doesn’t speak to that policy change, or much of anything else, except the income needs of Ms. Nelson.

Then we have John R. Pagliarini, the happy recipient of a $115,000 job as associate commissioner of higher education. The amiable Mr. Pagliarini was dismissed from his job as the governor’s deputy chief of staff in February, but the administration takes care of its own, yea unto generations. So Mr. Pagliarini is now associate commissioner for education. That’s comic enough, given J.R’s résumé. But wait! There’s more!

One of his projects will be, says Higher Education Commissioner Jack Warner, “coordinating” a “very complex pandemic flu plan.”

The pandemic we have to worry about is of patronage and palship in the Carcieri administration — during a budget crisis.