Receiving almost $3 million in annual salary and benefits in each of the last two years, Lifespan CEO George Vecchione is the highest-paid health-care executive in New England. Vecchione collects almost $1 million more each year than his closet competitor, the CEO at Partners HealthCare System in Boston, although Lifespan is much smaller than Partners and the region's second-largest network, Caritas Christi Health Care, also in Boston. . .

"Most employees, and probably most Rhode Islanders, would be appalled to know executives of our nonprofit hospitals are being paid these kinds of salaries," says Rick Brooks, director of United Nurses and Allied Professionals, "particularly when health-care costs are going up [at] twice the rate of inflation and causing the number of uninsured Rhode Islanders to go up dramatically."

. . . Yet according to Karen Malcolm, executive director of the liberal advocacy group Ocean State Action, "It becomes very hard to make their case when they are paying their top executives so much money."

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Governor Carcieri's tax-reform panel last week proposed the elimination of the state's corporate income tax. . .

Ocean State Action, a coalition of 14 community and other organizations, opposes the tax-reform panel's business proposals. In a statement, the group said, "At a time when taxes have already been shifted too far away from large corporations and onto middle-class families, and when Rhode Island faces a serious budget deficit, this proposal is both deeply unfair and totally irresponsible."

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Their proposal: further shift the tax burden to people making between $30,000 and $110,000 (roughly the working and middle class) and give just about everyone above that a tax break.

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Gov. Donald Carcieri denies that the cuts to municipal and school aid contained in his supplemental budget proposal will force cities and towns to increase property taxes. He further denies that the legislative measures he put forward ostensibly to reduce state spending and help local communities eat the cuts amount to using the budget crisis to stick it to organized labor.

The facts, however, do not bear out his disclaimers.

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In case you have been living under a large rock and are somehow oblivious to what has been happening in the economy, Governor Carcieri went on statewide television last night to emphasize in the strongest way he could that Rhode Island and the nation are in dire economic straights.

Things are really bad in Rhode Island, Carcieri said. The state's budget is swirling in red ink, unemployment is kissing 10 percent, housing values have cratered and foreclosures are soaring. Times are very tough and everyone, especially state government, has to pull the belt even tighter.

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But even as Washington tries to rescue the economy, the nation will be reeling from the actions of 50 Herbert Hoovers - state governors who are slashing spending in a time of recession, often at the expense both of their most vulnerable constituents and of the nation's economic future.

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PROVIDENCE — State budget cuts to subsidized child- and health-care programs have left more families and individuals struggling to pay rent, put food on the table and pay for child care and health care, according to the 2008 Rhode Island Standard of Need, released by the Poverty Institute.

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