STATE HOUSE – Gov. Donald A. Carcieri’s noon veto yesterday (READ MORE) of the state budget for fiscal 2008 was overridden hours later by both the House and Senate, allowing the General Assembly’s budget to take effect on July 1.
The measure – 2007-S 5300Aaa – was approved in the House by a vote of 58 to 12, and the Senate by 28 to 7.
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“The $6.98 billion spending plan closes a deficit of more than $450 million and restores services while still spending $32.6 million less than the governor’s original proposal, relying on fewer dollars from one-time fixes and without raising income or sales taxes,” the Assembly said in its announcement.
The budget – criticized by the governor for level-funding education aid, rather than keeping up with rising expenses – gives $865 million to the local school districts. Communities that host group homes receive a greater share of that money than in the past to help offset their higher education costs.
It eases the governor’s cuts in several social services programs. Legislators restored half the funding for the Department of Children, Youth and Families’ education and transition assistance to youths 18 to 21 who are moving from foster care to independent living, which Carcieri’s budget eliminated. They lowered the eligibility ceiling for the Child-Care Assistance Program to 180 percent of the poverty level, rather than the 150 percent the governor proposed. And they restored funding for the state drug court.
It makes broad cuts to personnel costs across state government and reorganizes several state departments – the DCYF, Human Services, Elderly Affairs and Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals – in an effort to achieve volume savings and pare costs.
The budget measure also establishes strict limits on the hiring of outside contractors to perform public services, such as housekeeping and food services at Eleanor Slater Hospital and the R.I. Veterans’ Home, which the governor had targeted for privatization. Under an amendment to the budget bill, “before any private contractor could be hired to perform a state service, the state would have to give verifiable evidence of the potential savings and prove that present state employees cannot perform the service just as efficiently,” the Assembly said.
And it includes language legalizing the sale of automobiles on Sundays, from noon to 6 p.m., in an effort “to level the playing field for Rhode Island auto dealer and increase sales tax revenues for the state.”
Additional information is available at www.rilin.state.ri.us.
