The sparks that had been flying for a few days between Governor Don Carcieri and AFSCME Local 94 have died down for the moment.
A recap for those not here in RI: At the end of June, the union's contract with the state expired. Negotiations had been ongoing for a new contract, but just over a week ago Council 94 (along with a few other smaller unions) overwhelmingly rejected the latest potential agreement because of a change in how much they would pay for health insurance - a change that Carcieri pushed to help close the state's budget deficit).
In response, Carcieri passed an executive order that would have forced the union to use the changes in place of no agreement. Council 94 and the other unions filed suit in state superior court claiming there were no negotiations. Last night the judge said a ruling would be issued in two weeks; the governor stated his executive order was on hold pending the ruling.
Link to story in Projo: http://www.projo.com/...
Now first off, let me just say that I think that Local 94 is partly taking the wrong angle on this one. They're arguing that the governor didn't negotiate with them - which is obviously not true since there was a vote to approve a negotiated contract. The obvious approach to this (which they're also using) should be that the Governor has no constitutional or legal authority, on either a state or federal level, to just impose his will on a legally unionized group of state workers. Carcieri's approach is just as heavy-handed as his nugatory attempts to force the Providence Police Department to run blanket illegal immigration checks on anyone they encounter, and just as hypocritically Republican considering how Carcieri has claimed to be working for the Rhode Island taxpayer and trying to navigate difficult financial times for the state while he's shifted around his executive branch employees to plush state jobs paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
You'd think he were trying to get attention from someone.. maybe John McCain's vice-presidential search committee? Then again, I don't think he'd mesh with McCain's love of Native American money after that whole smoke shop raid thing a few years back...