Has Carcieri moved to the right? Although the nimble governor says he wants Rhode Island to realize its potential, critics find him more conservative as a chief executive than as a candidate BY BRIAN C. JONES
	Faith-based reasoning Do politicians defy the Bible by placing the poor behind other interests? AS DEBATE CONTINUES about Governor Donald L. Carcieri’s proposed budget cuts, one Rhode Island clergyman says no recent governor — Carcieri included — has taken a "Biblical view" of a leader’s obligations to the poor. The Reverend Duane Clinker, the pastor of Hillsgrove United Methodist Church in Warwick, says the Bible suggests that the first duty of a leader is to help the poor. But in actuality, he says, the needs of the poor come second to other interests, including those of wealthier taxpayers. "When our governor — not just this governor, but any governor — is presented with a budget deficit, that Biblical view is not on the table," Clinker says. "Their first priority is not the poor. Their priority is the poor if they can get the money to take care of them — that’s the best guy. The worst guy says, ‘I don’t even care about them.’ " Clinker was among a group of clergy that created a public relations disaster for Carcieri’s predecessor, Lincoln C. Almond, when there was a fierce debate in 2001 about Almond’s attempt to cut $5 million for affordable housing. Four ministers protested to the point where they were arrested by police and hauled out of the State House — a spectacle that forced Almond to compromise by offering to borrow the housing funds. More recently, Clinker was among the speakers at a State House rally that faulted Carcieri’s proposed $7 million in cuts in day-care services for low-income workers. Clinker said Carcieri seems to share the view of many politicians who see themselves as being "good," because they take steps to help low-income persons if there’s enough money, but don’t put the poor first when times are tough. The governor himself has said that he has made social programs, such as RIte Care health insurance, a high priority; that his proposed cuts have been modest compared to what is happening in other states; and his goal is to improve the efficiency of state government to protect the programs. Clinker observes, "The Biblical view is in the book of Psalms, for example, that the king, the ruler — their job is to look out for the poor and put down the oppressor." He quotes Psalm 72: Endow the king with your justice oh, God . . . he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help. He will take pity on the weak and the needy and will save the needy from death . . . Clinker envisions a meeting of the state Economic Development Corporation, where members take up not only a proposal to encourage a new hotel, but also one to further the job prospects of single mothers. "They are both economic development, aren’t they?" he asks. "Why do you tilt to one and not the other? Or why isn’t the one at the bottom the priority? If it was your family, the one at the bottom would be the priority." — Brian C. Jones

CORDLESS MIKE in hand, Governor Donald L. Carcieri is at it again: charming an audience.

This one has about 50 people, many of them local officials, in an auditorium at Roger Williams University in Bristol, where Carcieri is holding another in a series of his "town meetings" to touch base with constituents.

Casual as a next door neighbor, the former banker and corporate CEO reminds the audience of his roots — he’s a native Rhode Islander from East Greenwich, went to school here, taught school, as did his dad and high school sweetheart, Sue, whom he married. "It’s funny how this just takes over your life," Carcieri chuckles into the microphone, musing that he and Sue once were political neophytes, but now grab for the newspapers at 6 in the morning.

The 61-year-old governor boils down his mission to an easily understood metaphor: a school teacher’s dismay in watching as a talented student goofs off in class, just muddling along when it’s obvious the kid can get top grades. "That’s sort of the way I feel about our state — the way I’ve felt about our state for a long time — is that we should be an ‘A’ state," Carcieri says. But Rhode Island’s report card is bleak, the state excelling only as a nice place to live, pulling Cs or worse in such subjects as economic development and job growth.

This we’re-just-folks evening in early May had started on a slightly discordant note, however. Before the formal program, about a half-dozen women and some children had gone around the auditorium, shyly distributing yellow flyers protesting the governor’s proposed cuts to state-subsidized day-care. The women, who operate day-care centers out of their homes, retreated to the lobby to distribute flyers to the later arrivals, and left as the meeting began.

It was modest as political demonstrations go, unlike the larger and noisier rallies, marches and vigils that have beset the State House since winter. Yet those larger demonstrations also seem to have clashed with the governor’s sunny spirit a year-and-a-half into his administration. The governor’s critics contend he has turned out to be more conservative and fiscally stern than they had expected, given Carcieri’s nice-guy demeanor and the tradition of moderate Republican governors in Rhode Island. Robert A. Walsh Jr., executive director of the National Education Association Rhode Island, for example, says, "I think that most Rhode Islanders thought they were electing a Chafee Republican and are surprised to find they’ve elected a Bush Republican."

Not yet half-way through his first four-year-term, Carcieri has started fundraising for a second race, and remains popular, with a 63 percent approval rate in a Brown University poll conducted in February. Thus, one question is whether the steps he’s taken so far are simply a response to the state’s difficult fiscal problems, or do they illustrate an underlying political philosophy that could shape Rhode Island over eight years?

At the very least, Carcieri has proved himself to be politically nimble.

On Tuesday, May 25, the governor proposed restoring many of the budget cuts that had produced so much criticism earlier this year, saying revised estimates of state revenues gave him more money to work with than expected. Not only that, the governor proposed a brand new program, $19 million in tax breaks for middle- and lower-income taxpayers, who would be allowed to deduct up to $1500 in health expenses such as doctors’ office co-pays on state tax returns.

In making the announcements, Carcieri jumped ahead of the legislature, which was plowing through the budget and had not yet announced its take on the how to use the extra money found by budget estimators. For his own part, the governor says he dislikes labels, noting in an earlier interview, "Someone will call me conservative one issue and then call me liberal on another issue."

If anything, Carcieri portrays himself as a reformer, out to correct long-embedded problems in government, such as what he sees are too-generous state worker benefits and legislative powers that intrude on the executive branch. He also says the economy can perform much better, as can the state’s education system, and that he’s making progress on all fronts: "So the people that are saying that, ‘He’s this conservative’ or whatever description they use, I’m just trying to do what I think makes good public policy, good practical sense, in what we should be doing to run ourselves."

CERTAINLY, CARCIERI is closer to the president’s positions than is US Senator Lincoln Chafee, who has cast key votes against Bush tax and war programs. Carcieri heads the president’s reelection campaign in Rhode Island, while Chafee has been coy about even whether he’ll vote for Bush. Asked about this by the Phoenix last fall, Chafee said: "I’m a Republican, and that’s my answer. I’m a Republican." The governor, like the president, opposes abortion and gay marriage, and has supported the Iraq war.

But it’s largely on state issues that the governor will be judged, and liberal critics have said he’s more conservative than they had expected in several key areas.

• On budget issues, Carcieri favors spending cuts, which often impact the poor, rather than tax increases, which can disproportionately affect the wealthy.

• Early in his administration, the governor was faulted by civil rights advocates on a series of issues, including a lack of minority judicial appointments and changes in driver’s license regulations that were seen by some as anti-immigrant.

• Most notably, Carcieri has picked knockdown fights with labor unions, which make up a key component of the Democratic Party and have considerable influence at the General Assembly — where the governor hopes to improve the Republican Party’s anemic representation this fall.

Carcieri’s approach to taxes-and-spending is orthodox GOP — although one shared by many state Democrats. Any boost in the state’s income or sales taxes is off-limits, he says, and slowing spending is the only way to close the state’s budget gap.

Some liberals, by contrast, favor increases in the income tax during difficult budget years, because that levy hits the wealthy much harder than middle- and lower-income households. As the Phoenix reported last year (See "The kindest cost," News, May 23, 2003), reversing cuts that were phased in to the Rhode Island income tax during the economic boom of the ’90s would cost most state taxpayers an annual average of $35, compared to $600 for wealthier residents.

In the early ’90s, liberals succeeded in placing a temporary boost on the rates of the wealthiest taxpayers, something advocated this year by a little-known liberal religious group, Corpus RI, whose members include anti-poverty advocate Henry Shelton. Although the wealthiest taxpayers have most benefited from Bush-backed federal tax cuts, Shelton says, they make up a group that the governor has "not asked to sacrifice" in the proposed budget — since it’s mainly lower-income persons who depend on the programs cut by the governor.

In his May 25 budget moves, Carcieri seemed to respond to criticisms of some of his earlier budget choices — but without retreating from his no tax hike philosophy.

Carcieri’s initial budget choices, in fact, affected a range of programs that impact low-income residents. The most controversial proposals included taking away $50 a month from some welfare mothers; $7 million in savings from programs that provide subsidized child-care for low-income workers; $4 million withheld from welfare families who have missed work and education deadlines, and $425,000 cut for court interpreters for non-English speaking defendants.

The governor’s budget offered nearly $8 million less in state aid to local school districts, but a boost to public charter schools. He suggested the elimination of tax breaks intended to encourage businesses to locate in struggling urban areas, and proposed a $40 million cigarette tax hike that hits the poor harder than the wealthy. By contrast, Carcieri proposed capital gains tax breaks to owners and investors in growing companies that create higher-paying jobs.

But, jumping ahead of the General Assembly after budget estimators indicated more money would be available, Carcieri proposed restoring some of the day-care money, the school funds, some of the enterprise zone program, and half the money sought for court interpreters.

On civil rights issues, a coalition that included the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union harshly criticized Carcieri early in his term for a series of instances in which, they charged, he showed "insensitivity" to people of color. These included his foregoing the appointment of a black woman, Superior Court Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson, to the Supreme Court; his ordering last summer’s ill-fated state police raid of the Narragansett Indians’ tax-free tobacco store; his alleged failure to take a "leadership" role in the issue of racial profiling by police; and new rules banning the use of individual taxpayer identification numbers as proof of identity in obtaining driver’s licenses.

Carcieri has since appointed a black, William C. Clifton (Judge Thompson’s husband), to the district court, and an African-American lawyer, Jametta O. Alston, to the Judicial Nominating Commission. Carcieri’s budget provides funds to continue tracking racial profiling trends. Although he’s moved to mend fences with the Narragansetts, the governor’s strong anti-casino stance keeps him at odds with the tribe’s quest to establish a casino in West Warwick. The driver’s license issue remains unchanged.

It is with organized labor that Carcieri has been most at odds. Labor has generally been an important bloc of the Democratic Party and sometimes aligns itself with liberal and progressive causes.

At the outset of his administration, Carcieri targeted state employees’ pension and health insurance benefits as being an important contributor to budget deficits. Although he appointed labor representatives to an on-going pension study, he is at loggerheads with unions about whether state workers should contribute to their health insurance premiums. The governor also has attacked the head of organized labor, AFL-CIO President Frank J. Montanaro, demanding he step down as president of the board of embattled Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, and as a member of the State Labor Relations Board.