To the Editor,

This Friday past a story broke on WPRO's Dan York Show. Jim Hummel's Hummel Report indicated that Rob Cote, a known Warwick resident and "watchdog", filed an ethics complaint alleging that Mayor Frank Picozzi omitted important financial information on his financial reports in 2020 and 2021. Reports like this are required of all public officials and candidates. Hummel went on to highlight financial missteps by the Mayor and Mrs. Picozzi that spanned over the last 13 years.

Officially, though, the public first heard about this from the Mayor in a post on social media. Mayor Picozzi had posted first thing on Friday morning that Rob Cote, a narcisistic keyboard surfer with a penchant for causing trouble, as he has been called recently, was now after him with lies and rumors. Whatever you think of Rob Cote, he is a very thorough researcher and seldom speaks of what he is not sure. 

The Mayor went on to admit to his bad financial management skills and cited the economic downturn of 2008 as the cause of his problem with money. He stated that he was an average guy that, like many others, has had his financial ups and downs. In my mind, though, something was missing. The following morning after I was able to read a very detailed Projo article, what was revealed was that the Mayor's problems went way beyond 2008 and resulted in numerous no show court appearances and thousands in default judgments. Missing was any regret, no remorse and no apology for keeping this behavior from the voters and his supporters.

When I took to the social media sites to reply to the Mayor's numerous posts I had respectfully suggested that he be "contrite and be more apologetic". He had kept important information from the masses and he owed us an apology. He had promised during his campaign that he would be transparent and honest with the citizens of Warwick and he hadn’t been. He had lied to us by omission. He did not like my advice and proceeded to tear me down with an old political trick called deflection. This from a "non politician". He mentioned my ejection from a Pilgrim basketball game, unfinished paperwork from the Warwick Republican City Committee of which I am the Chairman and attempted to intimidate me with talk of suing me for suggesting he may have broken the law. 

I hear what may come from the State Ethics Commission is a dismissal of the complaint. It happens that the financial disclosure form requires mention of active revolving debt on credit cards and on not collection accounts. The defaults that went to collection are in the thousands of dollars. I went to the courts Tuesday to see the paperwork that supports all of this information for myself. I was very disappointed and feel more strongly that Mayor Picozzi owes us all an apology for his behavior. What he does not seem to get is I don't want him to apologize for being a terrible money manager or a person that admitted to "robbing Peter to pay Paul" by running up credit debt and defaulting on the payments only to run up another card or credit account and default again. I want him to apologize for hiding his bad behavior from us. We deserved to know this. The regular, honest, transparent guy he says he is would be humble enough to tell the truth about his background, all of it, and let the voters decide what to do with that information.

What stood out as I looked at the documents at the courthouse was that one of the accounts he had defaulted on was from the Coastway Credit Union. Coastway was born from the Warwick Credit Union a homegrown lending institution that has been led and staffed with Warwick residents for over 50 years. Members of the Coastway Credit Union are member owners. Mayor Picozzi's disregard for his indebtedness to CCU directly affected hundreds if not thousands of Warwick residents who do their banking there. 

It's no surprise to me that Rob Cote has said that Mayor Picozzi has no business having a hand in any of Warwick's financial decision making or that this level of wonton disregard for the truth in this matter should disqualify him from holding public office. Pointing out that the pattern of opening multiple credit accounts only to default over and again borders on criminal and should not be taken lightly.

In closing, this goes to a person's moral character, his sense of human decency. If you can't be honest with the people that think they know the real you then how dare you ask for their vote. 

And, how dare you threaten me when all I ask for is a simple "I'm sorry I let you down. I made a mistake. I hope you can forgive me." 

Rick Cascella

Warwick