BY JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — With no Republican in the House of Representatives willing to sponsor Gov. Donald Carcieri’s 2010 budget, Chief of Staff Brian Stern was forced to carry out the constitutional responsibility of presenting the document to House Speaker William Murphy Wednesday.

But for now, the budget is still an orphan document. It must be introduced as a bill before it can go through the legislative process, but for the time being nobody wants to put his or her name on the controversial plan that Carcieri’s spokeswoman calls “one of the most significant budgets of our generation.”
Budget Officer Rosemary Booth Gallogly submitted amendments to the governor’s supplemental budget proposal directly to the House Finance Committee earlier this week, spokeswoman Amy Kempe said, because those amendments did not have a sponsor, either. Kempe pointed to Article IX, Section 15 of the RI Constitution, which states, “The governor shall prepare and present to the general assembly an annual, consolidated operating and capital improvement state budget,” as authorization for the governor to submit a budget without a legislative sponsor.
Larry Berman, spokesman for the House leadership, acknowledged that the administration delivered the budget “and we accepted it. But it still has to be introduced as a bill, and traditionally that is done by the party of the governor.
Because budget bills originate in the House of Representatives, it traditionally falls to the Republican leader of the House, currently Majority Leader Robert Watson, to introduce budgets submitted by Republican governors.
But Watson told The Times Wednesday that, “I don’t intend to sign the budget,” because it raises taxes, and, he claims, sets the stage for raising more taxes in the future. “I am not aware of anyone who is prepared to introduce the budget at this point in time -- which is not to say it won’t be introduced.”
Referring to the $1 per pack hike in the cigarette tax Carcieri proposed once again, after threatening to veto it when House Democrats pulled it out of his original supplemental budget to pass it as separate legislation, along with other motor vehicle fee increase and other revenue
enhancers, Watson said, “Today it’s cigarettes, but tomorrow the door is wide open to everything else.
“I vigorously disagree with the idea that he needs to include tax and fee increases in this budget,” Watson said Wednesday. “There isn’t a person in Rhode Island who thinks they haven’t been taxed enough.”
Looking ahead to an income tax proposal Carcieri put forward that would not begin to take effect until 2011, Watson said it, “leads me to conclude that the average taxpayer could expect to pay more in taxes.”
Asked what he would do to balance the budget without raising taxes, Watson suggested criminal justice reform that would send fewer people to prison. “We would save hundreds of millions of dollars if we stopped believing that the only way to penalize people is locking them up in jail.  We lock up too many people, we don’t make the state any safer. I think we should utilize our prisons for people we are afraid of. We lock up people we are mad at.”
“The problem is, nobody is happy with the budget, including the governor,” Warwick Republican Rep. Joseph Trillo, the deputy minority leader, said of the budget. “Everybody wants to run as far away from it as they have to. There is a lot of blood and pain in it.”
He said that how the budget will get introduced “is in the discussion process right now” among the House Republicans. But he added, “we do have to get it into the pipeline.”
Minority Whip John Loughlin said, “traditionally the minority leaders is the one who signs the budget, it doesn’t fall to the rank and file to sign. If he refuses, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Asked whose side he is on, the governor’s or the minority leader’s, Loughlin answered, “I am on the side of 14,500 people who live in Tiverton, Little Compton and Portsmouth (his legislative district) people who own small convenience stores and are trying to make a living who are going to see all their business go across the border to Fall River” because of the cigarette tax increase. “I’m on the side of middle class families who make between $30,000 and $90,000 who are going to see a tax increase. That’s who I’m on the side of.” 
Kempe answered “absolutely not” when asked if it is humiliating for the governor not to be able to find a Republican sponsor for the budget.
She acknowledged “there are a lot of things in the budget that a lot of people are not going to like. This is a very challenging, difficult budget.”
Kempe said House Republicans provide the most lively debate when bills are considered on the House floor “and we would expect them to be no less lively” in discussions about the budget.