Raptakis Responds to Gorman Deficit Explanation

1) That he refused to admit he works for the Central Coventry Fire District, preferring instead to say in his first campaign literature that he is a Fire Captain with the Town of Coventry. This suggests he is trying to distance himself from the controversies surrounding overspending and lack of transparency in the district's operations until Raptakis challenged him on not revealing his accurate job position. 

2) That the Central Coventry Fire District is running a serious deficit of more than $1M. Mr. Gorman's attempt to pass that off as a simple matter of unpaid taxes illustrates the point I made in my press release, that he is out of touch and unconcerned with the fact that people simply cannot afford to pay fire district taxes that have tripled in recent years. Collections are going to be a significant ongoing problem because the district's spending plan does not reflect the ability of ratepayers to foot the bill. 

3) That Mr. Gorman's union contract benefited employees at the expense of taxpayers. If that contract actually "saved taxpayers money" as he claims, Mr. Gorman has an ability to spell that out in detail. His failure to do so suggests that the facts don't support that argument.   

4) That Mr. Gorman filed his most recent campaign finance report more than two weeks late and has been fined by the State Board of Elections for doing so.  Saying that he "has filed all his reports" conveniently ignores his failure to file the report in a timely way and play by the rules, a failure which seems to be a track record with Mr. Gorman, given his failure to pay taxes to the Town of Coventry for his landscaping business since 2009.  Below is the link to Mr. Gorman's report where he is fined by the board of elections regarding his late report. 

http://www.ricampaignfinance.com/RIPublic/Filings.aspx