Carcieri seeks ruling on anti-privatization law

PBN Staff

03/19/2008

PROVIDENCE – Gov. Donald L. Carcieri has asked the R.I. Supreme Court rule on the constitutionality of the anti-privatization law approved last year by the General Assembly.
The measure was “included without hearings or debate as a last-minute, late-night amendment to the FY 2008 state budget that was approved in June 2007,” the governor said in announcing his request.
In a letter to Chief Justice Frank Williams, he argued that the new law could render the executive branch unable to reduce state spending, in the face of the greatest state budget emergency since the credit crisis. That, he said, could result in the disruption of scores of critical state services.
The law “makes it virtually impossible to privatize any governmental services or renew contracts of existing services being rendered by private vendors,” Carcieri wrote.
He said the measure also threatens the state’s existing contracts with private vendors, thus endangering payments to community providers for services to the disabled; payments for substance-abuse treatment; claim processing for welfare benefits; the repair of state bridges, overseen by the R.I. Department of Transportation; medical services at the R.I. Veterans Home; and the R.I. Department of Children, Youth and Families’ Children’s Information Service.
“The law’s applicability to renewal of contracts threatens to paralyze the state and disrupt existing services being rendered, in that many of the contracts involved are annual in nature and the long and arduous process outlined in the law will take well in excess of a year to complete,” Carcieri wrote.
He also argued that the law provides an inappropriately large number of people with standing to challenge any decision to award a particular contract to a private company. Those provisions “extend unreasonably to tens of thousands of programs recipients and state employees, potentially clogging the state’s judicial system with multiple frivolous lawsuits,” Carcieri wrote in his letter to Williams. “And since no award can be granted until the appeal process is complete, the process to privatize a service could take years, further paralyzing the executive branch in its ability to carry out its constitutional duties. Furthermore, capable vendors will be dissuaded from bidding on new or renewal contracts when faced with the possibility of enduring a process that could be held up for years in internal analysis and litigation.”
Carcieri asked that the court provide an advisory opinion, on an expedited basis, on whether the law “interferes impermissibly with the executive branch’s assigned function of administering appropriations and carrying out the day-to-day functions of the government, disrupting the governor’s constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
Specifically, he asked the high court to rule on whether the anti-privatization law violates Article V of the Rhode Island Constitution – the Separation of Powers clause – as well as exceeding the legislature’s authority under Article VI, section I; and transgressing against the authority of the executive branch outlined in Article IX, sections 1, 2 and 16.

News and information from the governor’s office is available online at www.ri.gov/governor.

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