PROVIDENCE – Gov. Donald L. Carcieri and the leaders of the state House and Senate today vowed to work together in overseeing the state’s $1.1 billion share of stimulus money, heading off what had appeared to be a looming dispute over who will control how it is spent.
“This is going to be a cooperative process as we move through this,” Gov. Donald L. Carcieri said during a news conference this afternoon at the Statehouse, where he officially certified that the state will accept the stimulus funds provided in the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. “We are in this together,” he said.
House Speaker William J. Murphy and Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed joined the governor as he signed the certification papers – The ARRA statute requires that each state provide such certification no later than April 3 – moments after the trio spoke of the spirit of cooperation between the Democrat-controlled legislature and the Republican governor.
“This idea that there’s been bickering over who is going to spend the money is nonsense,” Murphy said. “We will work cohesively with the governor.”
Leaders in Rhode Island, as in other states, had appeared to be at odds about who would decide how the money will be used.
Earlier this month, Carcieri formed a new R.I. Office of Economic Recovery and Reinvestment (READ MORE) and appointed his deputy chief of staff, Beverly Najarian, to run it. His executive order creating the office spelled out that it would recommend infrastructure improvement projects to the governor, who would then “certify and approve” them.
But the governor appeared to back away from that idea today, instead saying that the new office would track expenditures and aid in transparency. Decisions on stimulus spending will be made cooperatively between the executive and legislative branches, he said.
At the National Governors Association conference early this week in Washington, D.C., Carcieri said, he and other state leaders had the impression they were being held accountable for the stimulus spending. “Every governor came away with the feeling that our necks are on the line,” he said.
Today’s joint announcement was short on details about how Rhode Island’s $1.1 billion will be spent. But that, Paiva Weed, Murphy and Carcieri agreed, is because state officials are still wading through the 1,500-page act and getting new information out of Washington.
“You should all appreciate that a lot of things are happening very fast,” Carcieri said. “A lot of clarity we would like to give is still not there.”
All three state leaders stressed that neither local officials nor the public should think that the stimulus money will solve the state’s or communities’ fiscal woes. “This does not eliminate the need to make difficult decisions on the state and local level,” Paiva Weed said.
Likewise, Carcieri cautioned that much of the stimulus money is dedicated to specific areas – such as the $25 per week “Federal Additional Compensation” that will be provided to people already receiving unemployment benefits (READ MORE) – so there won’t be any “pot of gold” left for discretionary spending. “There are very small amounts to go into people’s wish lists,” he said.
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News and information from the R.I. Governor’s Office are available at www.governor.ri.gov, while information from the new R.I. Office of Recovery and Reinvestment (ORR) is available at www.governor.ri.gov/recovery.
Information about the federal government’s financial stabilization efforts – including the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, signed Feb. 17 (READ MORE) – is available at Recovery.gov.
