Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

PROVIDENCE -- In what has become an annual tradition, the House Finance Committee held an impromptu meeting on the State House balcony outside the House lounge to approve a newly filed bill to extend pension cutbacks to a group of state judges who were left out as a result of a misunderstanding.

The state budget is headed for a vote in the state Senate, and any change to that bill would have required it to make another run through the House, which debated it for more than 11 hours earlier this week. So House Finance chairman Steven Costantino, D-Providence, opted to make the necessary change in a separate "budget trailer bill.''

For all other judges hired after July 1, there would be a cutback in benefits from a maximum of 100 percent of pay for the longest-serving judges to either 65 percent or 80 percent of their five-year average, depending on their age and years of work.

Costantino said he was told that District Court judges were already at this reduced level, but on closer look this did not turn out to be true, so the newly filed bill makes sure the new rules apply to them, as well.

House Minority Leader Robert Watso, R-East Greenwich, said: "I am more and more right as we go along about the sloppy way this budget was put together with all these changes and corrections and mistakes and errors.''

The bill is headed to a vote by the full House.

 Tags  general assembly judges pensions Providence RI

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