By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — While the paper on which some specific budget articles were printed was still warm from the copy machine, House Finance Committee members voted 12-0 with three abstentions to approve a supplemental budget bill that leaders say closes a $168 million deficit for the budget year ending June 30.

Although top-ranking finance committee members say the budget adopts about 95 percent of the recommendations made by Republican Gov. Donald Carcieri last February, all three GOP members of the panel abstained from voting at the end of the nearly hourlong meeting.
Rep. Carol Mumford, a Republican from Scituate, said the trio, which also includes East Providence Rep. John Savage and Coventry Rep. Victor Moffitt, agreed to abstain because they only learned what would be in the document at a briefing a couple of hours before the vote. “I am not going to vote for something that has my name on it that I haven’t read.”
Under the House plan, cities and towns will lose the $10 million in state revenue sharing and other aid as Carcieri proposed.
The remaining $55 million that had been budgeted for such aid was sent out at the
end of March, the usual time for distributing revenue sharing funds, but the Carcieri administration held back the $10 million that the governor had proposed cutting in anticipation that the supplemental budget would make that reduction official, as will be the case if the committee budget is passed by the General Assembly and signed by the governor.
Also, the state will pay only 98 percent of the value of vehicles for reimbursement under the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax law, where they had been receiving 100 percent.
There are no new taxes proposed as part of the supplemental budget, and no increase in existing broad-based taxes, as both the governor and legislative leaders insisted there should not be.
Cuts in social programs also went through largely as Carcieri had suggested.
Welfare cash assistance to children would be cut off after their parents have been on the Family Independence Program for a total of five years. That change would take effect August 1. The only exceptions would be for “hardship conditions,” such as disability, homelessness or domestic violence, which had been allowed by regulation but now would become part of the law.
Also, children who are not citizens of the United States would be wiped from the RIte Care health insurance rolls as of May 1. Such youngsters have been ineligible for the program under federal rules right along, but the state has been picking up the full tab for their coverage for years. Last year, the General Assembly voted not to allow any more non-citizen children to join the program, but “grandfathered” those who had already been enrolled. Now those grandfathered kids would also be eliminated.
House Finance Committee Chairman Steven Costantino said an agreement is in the works to provide grants to health care centers where those children are likely to be brought when they are sick.
A Carcieri proposal to reduce RIte Care eligibility to parents from the current 185 percent of the federal poverty level to 133 percent was not adopted by the committee, but will become part of the discussion for the 2009 state budget. That doesn’t mean the idea is in or out, Costantino said, only that it is not part of the supplemental budget. The federal poverty level is $20,650 for a family of four.
Retirees from state government service would also have to pay more toward their health insurance. The bill calls for a 20 percent across-the-board co-share of premium costs that used to be calculated on a sliding scale depending on the retirees age and years of service. Also, retirees must be at least 59 years of age before the state pays a part of their health insurance costs and there is no state share for any employee with less than 20 years of service.
George Nee, secretary treasurer of the RI AFL-CIO said after the committee vote, “there is a lot of speculation that this could impact 2,000 people who would be in a position where it might be to their benefit to retire before they were planning to retire” to maintain the benefit they were anticipating. “That could have an impact on the state work force.”
Union officials are going to continue to argue for changes in the retiree health benefits before the final vote, Nee said. “We understand there have to be some changes, but these changes go too far.”
While there is no specific article in the supplemental budget to carry out Carcieri’s call for state workers to take six unpaid “furlough” days off, because the administration is still negotiating with state employee unions on the issue, Costantino said the $14.8 million dollars that was to be saved by the furloughs has been removed from the supplemental budget.
Also left out of the supplemental budget by the House is the so-called 75-day rule proposed by the governor that would let retired employees return to state service for 75 days a year without jeopardizing their pension benefits. “At this point there is no consensus on the 75-day rule,” Costantino said, noting that the practice has been “extremely controversial and abused” in the past before it was abolished several years ago.
Inmates at the Adult Correctional Institutions would get expanded opportunity to earn time off their sentences for good behavior, provided that the parole board use public safety risk assessments in making release decision. That change, largely as recommended by the governor, is expected to save about $1 million in next year’s budget but with no savings in the current year.
By far the biggest change from the original supplemental budget proposed by the governor has already passed both chambers and been signed into law by Carcieri in the form of Historic Tax Credit legislation. The plan calls for current projects already underway to be funded by bonds. Projects certified before the start of this year will continue to receive a 30 percent credit, projects approved after that will receive a net credit of 22 percent of the total project cost. Also, developers must now pay a processing fee for the credit to the state at the start of the project, rather than when it is completed, as used to be the case.
Among the more minor changes included in the committee budget, bottled water will now be included in the taxation on beverage containers to the tune of .04 cents per case. That is expected to bring in $600,000 a year. Carcieri had proposed starting that tax July 1, but the committee moved the start date to May 1.
Also, the House panel did not include a Carcieri proposal that drivers who have speeding fines dismissed because they maintained a good driving record for three years would have to pay an amount equal to that fine in court costs. The committee also did not include the governor’s revenue estimates for a proposed fine for using a cell phone while driving. Costantino said there are bills under consideration to ban cell phone use by drivers and if one or more of those pass, revenue estimates will be included in the 2009 budget.
The committee went along with Carcieri’s plan to “scoop” $26 million from the RI Housing and Mortgage Finance Corp. and transfer that money to the general fund.
“While we have not had a chance to analyze it in detail, the revised budget plan presented today by the House Finance Committee appears to include many of the tough spending decisions I advocated in January,” Carcieri said in a written statement.  “When I introduced my supplemental budget plan several months ago, I said that we needed to make difficult spending reduction decisions in a host of areas and that tax increases were out of the question.  The House Finance Committee appears to agree.”
The supplemental budget has been scheduled for a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives Friday at 2 p.m. House rules adopted nearly a decade ago call for budget bills to be held for seven days after leaving the committee before a floor vote to give members time to read and digest them, but House Speaker William Murphy told reporters Tuesday that is not the case for a supplemental budget.
Costantino said this would probably not be the last modification of the current year’s budget. After the annual revenue and caseload estimating conference in May, changes will likely be necessary to the bill that was voted out of committee Tuesday to reflect changes in the state’s economic circumstances.