Controller Franklin stepping down in June
9:17 AM Mon, Apr 21, 2008 | Permalink
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Longtime State Controller Lawrence C. Franklin, one of the true linchpins of Rhode Island government, is retiring. After 34 years of state service, Franklin, 57, has served notice that the week ending June 21 will be his last in state employ. While several issues contributed to his decision, he acknowledged the looming threat of benefit cuts for state retirees “weighed heavily on my decision.” He began his career in the bureau of audits, joined the controller’s office as a staff accountant and was slowly moving his way up the promotional ladder when “someone called from the State House one day out of the blue” to ask if he would be willing to take over from the ailing state controller on an acting basis. That call came 23 years ago. He has been there ever since, through the installation of a series of supposedly new and better computer systems that have not always lived up to their hype, including the infamous RISAIL “that people used to call RIFail or RITitanic,” according to Franklin. “And now we are into RIFANS.” In his first week on the job, Franklin said, he got a call from a union president at the Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals who threatened to “literally shut down all the hospital buildings in the complex unless the state paid them a retroactive pay settlement [they had won] that very day.” “Well, I couldn’t pay them that day,” Franklin said, “but I did mobilize the computer people to get them the payment by the end of the week.” While no one since has confronted him with a threat to shut down state government, Franklin, who currently makes $132,134 annually, has been putting out brushfires of one sort or another ever since. Franklin said his decision to retire now — and at least think about an unsolicited offer to take a comparable job in a Southern clime — was, in part, prompted by one of Governor Carcieri’s budget proposals and the potential the lawmakers will dig even deeper into retirement benefits. Under Carcieri’s proposal, state workers who retire after June 30 may no longer qualify for state-subsidized health insurance, and even if they still do they may have to pay more than is currently required toward the premiums. After June 30, a retiree would have to be at least 59 and have worked for the state at least 20 years to qualify for the benefit. As it stands, longtime state workers pay nothing, after they retire, toward their health-insurance premiums. Other retirees pay up to 50 percent of the rate the state is charged for an “active” employee. The state not only pays the other half, it also pays the difference between that rate and the higher rate the insurer is actually charging the state for this older and, presumably, more illness-prone group. From July 1 forward, Carcieri wants new retirees to pay 20 percent of the actual $8,461 anticipated cost to the state of a single health plan, which equates to $1,692 a year. Altogether, the two moves would shave an estimated $9.8 million off the overall $33.3-million cost of retirees’ health care. While the General Assembly has not yet approved the proposal, it has nonetheless led scores of people who weren’t thinking about retiring so many years before they qualify for Social Security to give it a second thought. The state retirement director, Frank Karpinski, says the volume of workers calling his office for counseling on their financial prospects has doubled to about “20 to 24 a day.” Meanwhile, the state has posted notice of an opening for a new state controller at an annual salary ranging from $97,377 to $109,748. Franklin’s deputy, Wayne Hannon, is believed to have an inside track. The application period runs through tomorrow. 
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