01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, June 11, 2005

Maybe such giveaways to special interests are to be expected, but it still seems curious that the Rhode Island General Assembly is roaring ahead with a very bad plan to unionize babysitters -- and send the gigantic bill to the taxpayers. The damage to Rhode Island -- in jobs lost, high taxes hiked further, and democracy eroded -- would be significant.

And, once it was in place, it would be almost impossible to reverse. The bill would create a new and very powerful special interest added to the one that often rules the roost on Smith Hill. In doing so, it would also create an astronomically expensive and permanent entitlement.

The plan, to be voted on in both the House and the Senate Tuesday, represents a very big present to the public-sector labor leaders who exert enormous influence in the legislature, and another assault on good government, the common interest and common sense. The only thing that will stop it is citizens rising up before Tuesday and saying to their legislators: Wait a minute, represent the public's interest!

Here is what the labor chiefs want the legislature to do: force the state to start negotiating pay and benefits with about 2,600 certified and non-certified "day-care providers" -- in some cases, no more than untrained friends and neighbors who babysit.

It would be an absurdity to treat such self-employed day-care providers as the near-equivalent of unionized employees, simply because they receive some subsidy from, and are licensed by, the state. Imagine all the money that would have to flow from the taxpayers to pay for the additional pay, health care, pensions and other benefits!

Babysitters would become a vast state monopoly and entitlement, wrapped in rigid and irrational rules.

And that would be just the start. What other people who sell some service to the state would be next in line for similar goodies? Nursing-home workers? Hair-dressers? Pizza deliverers? Anyone doing business with the state?

This has nothing to do with helping women and children. It has everything to do with further empowering the public-employee-union leaders and squeezing more money out of citizens.

If the union leaders get their way, millions of dollars in dues will pour into their coffers, and they will expand their armies of campaign workers, further strengthening the public-sector unions' power in state government.

We know where that has gotten the state to this point: skyrocketing taxes (to the point that Connecticut and Massachusetts are now tax havens for fed-up Rhode Islanders); unsustainably generous public-employee pensions, paid to many people who retire before 50; often unaccountable government and a culture of entitlement rather than one of rewards for performance; expensive but often second-rate public schools; crumbling bridges and highways, and an economy that tends to drive people out of this beautiful state to find work.

It has to stop.

Please call your state representative and senator -- immediately -- and inform them that you oppose unionizing day-care providers. Tell them you will watch their vote closely on Tuesday and act accordingly in the next election.

To find out who your legislators are, go to this Web site: www.sec.state.ri.us/elections/findyourofficials. Also, call these numbers to express your strong opposition: House Speaker William Murphy, at (401) 222-2466, and Senate President Joseph Montalbano, at 222-6655.