By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — Amid demands that the General Assembly take action to fight the twin dragons of sky-high unemployment and a yawning budget deficit, the House Finance Committee will meet three days this week to take the measure of the problem.

The full General Assembly likely won’t return to act on the state’s financial situation without a supplemental budget proposal from Gov. Donald Carcieri, legislative sources say, and Carcieri’s office has said it is working to get a supplemental budget plan written by mid-December, but probably won’t formally present it to lawmakers until the new legislative session starts in January.
“We want to know the steps the Administration is taking to strengthen the budget accountability process,” Costantino said in a written statement. “We will meet with the Administration to discuss how we can help people during these hard times, such as getting their unemployment benefits faster and getting people back to work by expediting our capital projects.” 
Today, finance committee members will get a staff presentation on the expenditure side of the budget — which departments are on a course to spend more than they were budgeted and by how much.
In late November, the committee got a similar briefing on the revenue side of the budget.
House Fiscal Advisor Michael O’Keefe warned during that session that “the state is in severe economic distress,” with a current-year deficit of $366.8 million, which has to be brought into balance by June 30, and a looming fiscal 2010 deficit of $486 million to potentially $770 million.
He said the “low-hanging fruit is long gone” and cautioned that the economic situation is more likely to get worse rather than better.
On Tuesday, House spokesman Larry Berman said, committee members hope to have administration officials present to explain why the spending overruns have occurred and whether there have been any failed initiatives. “They will be looking to get some questions answered,” Berman said Friday.
The third session on Wednesday will look at “low-cost/no-cost” options for recession relief.
For instance, are there capital projects for which funding has been allocated and bonding approved, but hasn’t started yet.
It may not be that such projects aren’t moving slowly, but at a normal speed, Berman said, “but the Finance Committee would like to get them to move a little faster. Maybe they can speed it up.”
He said O’Keefe will advise the panel that moving capital projects more quickly “will put people to work, because that brings money into the economy, it gets people off unemployment, it’s a cycle.

Another example, Berman said, is: “Are unemployment checks getting out on time? If not, how can we get more money into people’s hands faster? Do they need more people there?
“Speaker Murphy has said that he’s not going to have a special session come in unless there have been hearings and we have a plan,” Berman explained. “Why would you call a special session when it is up to the Finance Committee to vet out ideas first and bring issues to the table and bring ideas to the forefront. That has to be done first. It doesn’t do any good to have a special session without a plan.”
The upcoming hearings are a way to scrutinize the issues and examine the options, according to Berman. “Chairman (Steven) Costantino said he wants to hit the ground running” when the assembly does convene again in January. “We have to.”
The reason for urgency, O’Keefe explained, is that there are already only seven months left to achieve the needed savings or bring in the additional revenue to solve the current year’s deficit problems. If a law has to be passed, the time is cut to five months; if new rules or regulations required, there is less time than that.