PROVIDENCE – J. Michael Saul, deputy director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, who served as interim director for a year, is stepping down.
Saul’s last day on the job is Friday, according to EDC officials. He didn’t answer his office phone Friday afternoon.
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With the EDC’s “realignment and programmatic plan in place, he thought it would be a good time to pursue new opportunities,” said agency spokeswoman Judy Chong.
His future plans were not immediately clear.
Saul, a former banking executive, filled in as chief of the EDC after Saul Kaplan resigned in December 2008. At one point, Saul had expressed interest in seeking the job permanently but never applied.
Ioanna Morfessis, an Arizona business consultant, was hired as executive director in December 2009, but she withdrew from the position a short time later.
Keith W. Stokes, a longtime EDC board member, was appointed interim director by former Gov. Donald L. Carcieri in January 2010 and was kept on after Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee took office four months ago.
Chong said Saul, who returned to his role as deputy director after Stokes’ appointment last year, had promised Stokes that he would stay on through the transition and restructuring of the agency.
Saul had been with the EDC since 2007, when as executive director of the Urban Revitalization Fund, he was hired by Kaplan to manage the EDC’s finance programs the agency offered local companies.
A founder and former director of the non-defunct Minority Investment Development Corporation, Saul had been overseeing the agency’s capital programs such as the Small Business Loan Fund. His salary was $116,696.
Chong said the job would be posted soon, but likely would be renamed “managing director” of EDC’s finance programs, as opposed to deputy director.
Saul’s departure comes as the EDC is facing the prospect of a 15 percent cut in its appropriation from the state in Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee’s 2012 $7.66 million state budget plan.
The agency received $4.65 million this year, and Chafee – who acts as the quasi-public organization’s chairman – wants to give it $3.95 million next year.
That state contribution isn’t the EDC’s only source of income. Its $15.13 million fiscal 2011 budget included $3.66 million in federal grants and another $5.38 million in government aid, much from legislative grants and mandates for specific programs.
Still, according the governor’s budget proposal, the EDC would have to reduce its personnel expenses in fiscal 2012 by $143,000 and its operating expenses by $793,000.
