PROVIDENCE – Seeking to address a budget shortfall that ballooned recently by another $100 million, Gov. Donald L. Carcieri today said he would eliminate 1,000 state jobs and ask the General Assembly to temporarily freeze all state wages.

Carcieri also said he would renegotiate the health care benefits of remaining state workers and would put out to competitive bid every state service that could be performed by the private sector.

Reducing the state payroll would save taxpayers $26 million in fiscal 2008 and another $40 million in fiscal 2009, he said. That savings combined with Carcieri’s other proposals would save Rhode Island $55 million in fiscal 2008 and more than $70 million in the next fiscal year, he said.

“I am fully aware that I am placing the burden of resolving our state’s financial future on the shoulders of our employees,” Carcieri said, speaking at a State House press conference. “But my responsibility is to the average Rhode Island tax-paying family out there that put me here.”

Calling his own plan an opportunity for “fundamental reform,” he strongly criticized a proposal in the General Assembly to plug the hole in this year’s budget by borrowing against the last available future payments from Rhode Island’s settlement with tobacco companies.

“Next year, that money will be gone, and we’ll still have the same expenses,” the governor said. Moreover, he said, by not using the tobacco money to pay for state transportation projects as he had proposed, “the state will lose another $270 million in federal matching money which [would] be used to improve our roads and repair our bridges. This is terrible budgeting and planning.”

Carcieri’s announcement comes one day before Democratic leaders in the General Assembly are expected to unveil their own budget proposal.

Additional information about the governor’s budget plan is available at ri.gov/press.