Facts Don’t Lie: On Fire District Issue, Raptakis Lying to Coventry Voters

Hoping to clear the air on unfair and inaccurate campaign propaganda from the Raptakis campaign, State Senate candidate David Gorman has answered false charges made by his primary opponent in advertising and letters mailed to voters.

Gorman is the endorsed Democratic candidate for District 33, representing Coventry, East Greenwich and West Greenwich. In a week that featured the release of Gorman’s plan to help struggling small businesses, Gorman said he's disheartened that he has to spend time responding to "outrageous lies". "It’s unfortunate that my opponent has resorted to negative and misleading tactics – the voters deserve better. They deserve to know what our plans are to fix this struggling economy, create jobs, and how we’ll things moving in the right direction for District 33. These are the issues that I am passionate about and have been at the heart of my campaign."

• On pay raises and benefits for firefighters: Gorman crafted a fair and equitable agreement that saved taxpayers a considerable amount of money. When health insurance premiums changed, Gorman worked to increase the employee co-share and the deductible. Gorman said that the misleading "65 percent pay raise" in Raptakis’ ads is unfairly calculated by comparing the pay a new hire receives from their time in the fire academy to when they become a sworn firefighter. "This is a total and blatant disregard of the facts," Gorman said. “New firefighters enter the fire academy getting compensated at minimum wage and without benefits, it then takes five full years for a new employee to achieve a desirable and just pay,” Gorman explained.

• : The fact is that Gorman was the person that called for an immediate audit of the fire district and even offered to have the union fund that effort when the district could not afford it. Raptakis’ deficit allegations fail to take into account the nearly $1 million in uncollected taxes. “The deficit that Raptakis claims simply does not exist. Raptakis added all existing loan liabilities together to arrive at his deceitful claim,” Gorman said.  “That is not how you post municipal debt. There are many items, such as fire trucks and ambulances that have been purchased by the fire district that have long-term payments attached, just like a home mortgage.  Any accountant will tell you, you cannot post that as a deficit and to apply it as such in a single budget year, but that is what Raptakis has done here, and that is an absolute misrepresentation of the figures”.

• On Fire District tax increases: Gorman helped introduce a tiered taxing system, common in most communities, that changed the tax rate for some commercial properties. But none of those changes represented a tripling of taxes, Gorman said.

• On failing to file a campaign finance report: Gorman has filed all of his campaign finance reports. The report is available on the Secretary of State's Web site.

“Throughout this campaign I have focused on the issues that matter to the people of District 33 - to be the better man and ignore my opponent’s mudslinging. But the record needed to be corrected and now it’s time to focus on what really at stake in this election: change versus more of the same.”