Rhode Island plans to use information from the Internal Revenue Service to track down employers who are failing to properly pay state unemployment insurance taxes.

The Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training has signed an agreement with the IRS to share information that will allow the state agency to identify businesses that should be paying into the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund but are not, said Raymond A. Filippone, who heads the state’s unemployment insurance program.

“It is very important for us. I think it’s a step in the right direction,” Filippone said in a telephone interview yesterday from Nashua, N.H., where he is attending a conference for state unemployment insurance directors.

Based on a statement issued by the state agency yesterday, and on comments by Filippone, the new agreement’s focus would include the following situations in which state unemployment insurance taxes are not being properly paid:

•A business may be registered with the federal government, but not with the state government.

•A company may be registered at the federal level as a business with employees, but at the state level as a sole proprietorship without employees.

•An employer may misclassify employees as independent contractors.

The agreement will help the state agency identify such employers and notify them about the requirement to pay the tax, Filippone said.

Under the current system, businesses that fail to properly report their situations and pay the required unemployment insurance taxes are not caught until after employees file for unemployment insurance benefits.

With the IRS agreement, “Now we can catch them before an employee contacts us with a claim,” Filippone said in a statement.

Adelita Orefice, director of the state Department of Labor and Training, said in a statement that, “Prevention, detection and elimination of abuse in the unemployment insurance program are top priorities for our department. We want to ensure that employers are paying only their fair share of employment taxes and are not subsidizing any dishonest employers.”

The state does not have an estimate of how much in additional unemployment tax revenue it might collect as a result of the agreement, Filippone said in the phone interview.

Nevertheless, he said it is bound to result in some additional collections. This, in turn, could benefit existing employers who currently pay unemployment taxes — they might wind up paying less in tax, or pay less of an increase that would otherwise be due, he said.

If a business has employees, “It has to pay . . . unemployment insurance tax,” said Patricia A. Thompson, former president of the Rhode Island Society of Certified Public Accountants.

The unemployment insurance program is run through a federal-state partnership and is designed to partially replace lost earnings of individuals who become unemployed through no fault of their own. It is also intended to stabilize the economy during downturns.

The program has been a key component in ensuring the financial security of America’s work force for more than 70 years, according to a report issued last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress.

For the year ended Sept. 30, 2006, the unemployment insurance program covered about 130 million workers and paid about $30 billion in benefits to about 7 million workers nationwide who lost their jobs, the GAO report said.

The program is paid for through state and federal employment taxes. In general, the taxes that employers pay are deposited into an unemployment insurance trust fund.

From that fund, the state pays benefits to workers who lose their jobs and qualify for benefits. The fund has a balance of about $192 million, Filippone said.

Broadly speaking, the tax that an employer pays is based, in part, on how many people have collected unemployment benefits in the past based on that employer’s account, said Thompson, tax partner with Piccerelli Gilstein & Co. LLP, a CPA firm in Providence.

Rhode Island is one of 29 states that will sign a memorandum of understanding with the IRS on Nov. 6. Besides Rhode Island, other New England states in the agreement include Massachusetts and Maine, Filippone said.

A spokesman for the IRS was not immediately available to comment about the agreement. Thompson said that the IRS could benefit from the information-sharing agreement in a number of ways.

For example, if an employer misclassifies a worker as an independent contractor, the employer does not pay federal payroll taxes that would otherwise be due, such as unemployment tax, Social Security tax and Medicare tax.

If the agreement uncovers such situations, the IRS could seek payment from the employers.

That means that as of Jan. 1, Oregon will join eight other states that have approved spousal rights in some form for same-sex couples: Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maine, California, Washington and Hawaii. Massachusetts is the only state that allows gay couples to marry.

Later this week, word is expected on whether opponents gathered enough signatures to block a gay-rights law that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation — though that effort, as well, appears to be lacking sufficient signatures.

Social-conservative and church groups mounted the signature-gathering drive after the two gay-rights laws were approved by the Democratic-controlled Oregon Legislature with strong backing from Gov. Ted Kulongoski, also a Democrat.

The state's largest gay-rights group called Monday's announcement a "proud day for Oregon."

"In refusing to sign these petitions, Oregonians showed that they aren't interested in rolling back our anti-discrimination laws," said John Hummel, executive director of Basic Rights Oregon.

Sponsors of the referral effort had conceded in recent days that they probably hadn't gotten enough signatures. But they vowed to take another avenue to try to derail the laws — an initiative effort to repeal the laws outright. They would have until next July to collect 82,000 valid signatures to repeal each of the two laws.

AEP, based in Columbus, Ohio, maintains it never violated Clean Air Act rules to curb emissions, and had already spent or planned to pay $5.1 billion on scrubbers and other equipment to reduce its pollution.

Scott Cowger, spokesman for Maine's Department of Environmental Protection, said the settlement should have an impact beyond acid rain control. It will limit regional haze and ozone, and very possibly reduce mercury in the environment, he said.

Cowger acknowledged Maine was not in the suit, but not due to a lack of interest. Maine is involved in acid rain litigation against the EPA already, said Cowger, adding that the state must aim its resources where they are going to have the greatest effect.

Matthew Davis of Environment Maine said he hopes the settlement sends a message that power plant operators no longer can disobey the Clean Air Act and get away with it.

In Vermont, Attorney General William Sorrell said the new pollution control devices will reduce a lot of particulate matter that causes pollution, helping people with asthma and other conditions.

"This is a major victory for the environment in the northeastern part of the U.S.," said Sorrell. "Acid rain is a huge problem in the Adirondacks, the Green Mountains and the White Mountains."

New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte and Environmental Services Commissioner Thomas Burack said the settlement will open the door to the largest emissions reductions ever.

"This settlement represents a huge step toward reducing the impact that Midwestern coal-fired power plants have on New Hampshire's air quality," Ayotte said.

The case against AEP began in 1999 when New Hampshire, Vermont and six other states, as well as 13 environmental groups joined the Environmental Protection Agency's crackdown on energy companies accused of rebuilding coal-fired power plants without installing pollution controls as required.

"I asked if I could go into the bathroom because they didn't have a privacy screen and no women security officers were available," Plato said Wednesday. "They said, 'No.'

"I wasn't carrying a shank in my bra. If it's so dangerous, why did they give it back and let me put it on?"

Patrick McDonald, the U.S. Marshal in Boise, said appropriate security protocols were followed in the Sept. 20 matter, and guards suggested she simply remove the bra in her car outside, or find a restaurant bathroom.

"She's inflating it," McDonald said. "All of a sudden she just took it off. It wasn't anything we wanted to happen and it wasn't anything we asked for her to do. She did it so fast."

Plato, of Bonners Ferry, said she was parked on a busy street and wasn't familiar with downtown Coeur d'Alene businesses. So her husband held up his coat to shield her from the rest of the people in the courthouse lobby while she removed her bra underneath her shirt.

Generally, McDonald said, undergarments aren't considered a danger to security.

"I don't think they're considered a weapon, really, the last time I looked," he said.

He declined to discuss other ways the federal courthouse guards could have screened Plato for weapons.

Plato wants the Marshals Service to apologize and stop forcing women to disrobe.

"It was very humiliating," her husband, Owen Plato, said. "They could have handled it with a much more professional attitude."