Denise Robinson’s role at the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) has changed dramatically since she started 36 years ago. New technology and updated government regulations require constant expansion of her job as a record keeper on state construction projects.
But her job classification, “engineering technician IV,” has never been upgraded to reflect her growing workload — a problem faced by many of her coworkers and fellow members of the RI IFPTE Local 400, she said.
“They constantly create new things for us to learn; just expect us to adjust with no compensation,” said Robinson, president of the union representing about 300 engineers at RIDOT and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. “And because our pay grades are so off from surrounding states, we can’t attract people to open positions.”
The union began negotiating in January 2024 with the Rhode Island Department of Administration to reclassify some of its members at higher pay grades based on seniority, performance and expanded duties. But the required public hearing needed to make merit-based changes for classified state workers — separate from annual cost-of-living adjustments —- has been on hold for nearly as long.
The state administration puts the blame on a major state software transition that includes its payroll system as reason why it can’t hold the hearings, and in turn, grant raises. The planned upgrade to a cloud-based system does not reflect any serious technical problems with the existing payroll software.
It has also not prevented 11 state department heads from receiving proposed raises within a month (barring formal action from the Rhode Island General Assembly to stop it). Among the cabinet members, Gov. Dan McKee wants to give a raise to is RIDOT’s Peter Alviti Jr., whose 2% increase would put his annual base salary at $192,000. That’s more than double the $93,000 Robinson earns, according to the state’s payroll database.
A March 26 public hearing on cabinet raises drew opposition from local union leaders who represent state workers, including Robinson.
“I am not against anybody getting a pay raise, I just want it to be fair and equitable,” Robinson said in a later interview. “Why do my members have to keep suffering because you people don’t have your sh*t together.”
Robinson estimated that “hundreds” of classified state workers spanning the state health, education, health and human services departments were not able to negotiate for and receive merit increases for the last year due to the software upgrades. She was unsure of the exact number.
Bad timing
Karen Greco, a spokesperson for the Department of Administration, confirmed in an email that the administration “paused” public hearings on large job classification and pay grade changes during the transition to a new, cloud-based software system. The pause began in May 2024 — directly following annual cabinet-level pay raises — and was lifted in March, just in time for the 2025 hearing on department head raises.
Hearings for raises for lower-level state employees like Robinson will happen “later this spring,” Greco said. She did not give a specific date.
Asked how many people were affected by the delays, Greco answered, “Public hearings are held to evaluate job classifications to determine if occupational standards have evolved over time. It is about evaluating positions, not people.”
She declined to say how many positions were affected, noting agencies and local unions were still submitting requests.
Matthew Gunnip, a case worker with the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth, and Families and president of SEIU Local 580, called on the directors slated for raises not to accept them until their employees also received merit-based increases.
“It’s not about who deserves an increase or not, it’s about timing,” said Gunnip, who represents 850 state workers across DCYF, the Department of Human Services and the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, among others. “It feels contradictory that the priority of a director’s salary be more important than frontline workers.”
It’s not about who deserves an increase or not, it’s about timing. It feels contradictory that the priority of a director’s salary be more important than frontline workers.
Greco said that proposed raises for department heads can happen only in March of each year under state law. Public hearings for classified state workers in any agency can happen at any time, and there is “no statutorily prescribed cadence.”
Meanwhile, the cost and time to complete the long-awaited modernization of state payroll, finance and other software systems — referred to as the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project —- are growing. McKee proposed revising the state’s current year, fiscal 2025 budget to include $15.8 million more for the project, bringing state spending on the project to $84.5 million, according to a March 21 budget amendment. McKee’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal allocates another $6.7 million to the project for a total cost of $91.2 million.
Transitioning the payroll system from a smattering of individual programs and, in some cases, paper timesheets, to a universal, cloud-based system is now expected to happen by September — nine months later than the original January target. The state plans to return to a regular public hearing schedule for state worker reclassifications once the transition is completed, Greco said.
The explanation puzzled Patrick Crowley, president of the Rhode Island chapter of the AFL-CIO.
“If they didn’t need the software for department head raises, why do they need it for the rank and file?” Crowley questioned. “I don’t understand that.”
Embracing the modern era
Rhode Island Department of Administration Director Jonathan Womer explained during a March 25 hearing before the Rhode Island House Committee on Finance.
“This is about the time it’s taking us going through 50-plus collective bargaining agreements and rules and regulations around payroll, primarily for employees and how complicated it is to document and put in the system,” Womer said.
Womer insisted it was still a worthwhile and long overdue project, despite repeated increases in the bottom line and completion date.
“We don’t have enough modern controls over our finances and financial transactions,” Womer said. “We have been relying on typewriters and carbon papers for a long time.”
The state’s Division of Enterprise Technology Strategy and Services in a 2019 report called the software transition “less of an opportunity and more of a necessity.” At the time of its strategic plan laying the framework for the transition to a universal cloud system, Rhode Island was one of 12 states that lacked a modern cloud software system, six of which had already begun to implement one, according to the report.
The report highlighted benefits for efficiency, transparency and security, the latter of which was compromised by the aging and uncoordinated systems used by various agencies to track spending, contracts and other financial information.
“The more touchpoints, the more opportunities for malicious actors to exploit weaknesses,” the report stated. “A breach of HR, payroll or financial data has massive economic and reputational costs and consequences.”
Sage advice, especially on the heels of a December 2024 cyberattack on the RIBridges public benefits system, which compromised personal information of up to 650,000 residents.
An audit of the state’s fiscal 2024 financial statements published on March 26 found 28 “material weaknesses” and “control deficiencies” across state agencies deemed of “critical importance” to address by the state auditor general. The administration in its written response to these findings said the ERP system would address many of these deficiencies, according to the report
Of the increasing price tag for the ERP project, Womer said it was “mostly due to having contracts there longer.”
We don’t have enough modern controls over our finances and financial transactions. We have been relying on typewriters and carbon papers for a long time.
A bulk of the funding, $55.5 million with McKee’s proposed budget adjustment, comes from a state account reserved for IT projects based on revenue from selling state land and buildings. A separate restricted receipts account using revenue derived from Division of Motor Vehicles service charges also covers part of the project costs.
Even so, Rep. Alex Marszalkowski, a Cumberland Democrat and second vice chair of the House Committee on Finance, questioned Womer about the rapidly rising cost amid a $250 million forecasted budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year.
“Now, more than ever, we need to be able to control the controllables,” Marszalkowski said in a later interview. “That’s why you’ll hear me say over and over that projects need to come in on time and on budget.”
Especially because lawmakers had the same discussion with the administration last year during budget deliberations.
“We asked them then, ‘What are we doing to ensure this is being rolled out on time?’” Marszalkowski said.
When government IT upgrades fall flat
Delays and rising costs plague government IT projects, including for ERP systems. And completing the software transition doesn’t guarantee results; as few as 13% of large government IT projects succeed, according to a field guide by the U.S. General Services Administration.
In Idaho, a $121 million transition to a similar cloud-based software system called Luma led to payroll issues and failure to properly distribute $100 million in interest payments to state agencies. Since Maine debuted a $30 million software upgrade for its child welfare system in 2022, case workers continue to criticize the program as cumbersome and laborious to use.
Many of the reported problems related to state workers’ abilities to understand and use the new system, a challenge Rhode Island tried to head off by hiring a contractor to train state workers on implementation and usage. The $6.2 million purchase order with Houston-based IT consultant Precision Task Group Inc. was awarded through a competitive bidding process in 2022, the same time as the primary $37.6 million purchase order to Boston-based Accenture LLP, which is providing the subscription to software called Workday, according to state bidding award documents.
The existing contract for Accenture runs through Sept. 30, while the agreement with Precision covers through the end of 2025.
A third purchase order based on a bid awarded last summer to Deloitte Consulting LLP allocates $600,000 for the consultant to “support the existing payroll team” in transitioning from the current payroll program, ADP, to the new cloud program, Workday, according to the bid documents. Deloitte is the same vendor hired to administer the RIBridges program hacked last year.
Greco sought to separate the work Deloitte was hired to do for the ERP system from its role as the administrator of the RIBridges contract.
“They are not building or managing the system; they are accountants helping with the transition,” she said of the new software contract. “RIBridges is a wholly different project with a completely different scope of work. It’s inaccurate to conflate the two.”
Senate Finance Chair Lou DiPalma, a Middletown Democrat who works as a technical director for Raytheon, was unconcerned by Deloitte’s involvement in the software project.
But he was not assured by the state’s explanation that the ERP project was the reason why state workers’ pay raises had been put on hold. DiPalma was not aware of the situation prior to being interviewed by Rhode Island Current.
“That should not be the case,” he said. “If they need to do something with regards to appropriately compensating somebody, technology should not be the means by which it is delayed.”
Marszalkowski was similarly uninformed about how the project was affecting public hearings for worker reclassifications.
“If I had known that would have been one of the first questions I asked during the hearing,” he said.
Robinson has asked leaders of the Department of Administration, multiple times, she said.
“They’re not willing to give an answer,” she said.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
