Onbrookline.com, which first blogged about Debs false calms about adding more fire fighters as Chair of the Board of Selectmen, points out that Deb is also claiming that SHE increased the amount of police also. This is true if you count nine new parking meter attendants as police.
Goldbergs documentation for her claims is pathetically dishonest. Parsing words carefully, the Goldberg campaign contends that 28 fire fighters were hired while she was chair of Brooklines Select Board. But no evidence was produced that shows there was a net increase in fire fighters, as Goldbergs 2 million dollar media blitz is contending. In fact, onbrookline offers links that prove there was no increase in fire fighters, just replacements.
Should any of this matter? Doesnt everybody embellish their facts? Sure. But there is a big difference between embellishing facts and making them up.
So far evidence points to Deb Goldberg making facts up and so far Goldberg has offered NOTHING to back up her claims.
If Deb Goldberg wins the primary, she will be a real liability for the Democratic ticket in November: rich heiress that makes things up. We dont need that. (The millions she could potentially bring the campaign will be offset by the amount of bad press she will bring.)
I can see the ad Healey would run about Deb’s claim about putting more cops on the street and there is a parking meter attendant writing a ticket and the tagline is, “Democtrats Plan for Public Saftey: Write more parking tickets…taxing you one more time”
From the budget documents, it does appear that new positions weren’t authorized during the relevant time period. My question is: do we know for a fact that all those positions were filled at all times, so that the only thing that happened was replacements? Or had some authorized positions gone unfilled for some period of time (to save money), and the town was able to fill them while Goldberg was the chair? To me, the latter would plausibly constitute “adding firefighters.”
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Anyone?
They were quick to issue a wordsmithy legalese press release when these questions were first raised. Why don’t they simply document the claims in the ad and end this?
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Here’s a crazy idea:
1) List the # of Firefighters employed in Brookline when Deb became Chair of the Board
2) # when she left
3) some kind of municipal budget that proves her claim.
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I agree with Frank, she better have this stuff available.
It’d put the questions to rest, and, should she win the Primary, avoid an embarassing start to the General.
Two things.
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1. In my four years of covering Town Hall, I can’t recall a time where the fire force was understaffed. The bigger problem in Brookline is police and fire overtime busting their budget lines. If we were saving on salaries, this wouldn’t be a problem.
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2. Here’s a quote from Chet Riley (former local pres.) in Goldberg’s April 4 release: “When she learned Brookline needed a new generation of young firefighters she worked to hire them.” Sounds like attrition to me. And maybe a bit of ageism.
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The issue is with her claim that she “increased the number of firefighters” at a time when other towns cut them. This means she increased the size of the force while other towns reduced theirs. It can’t be read any other way. And it’s wrong.
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Jim Conley
Publisher
http://www.onbrookline.com
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e-mail: jim@onbrookline.com
One with a half of brain knows that Goldberg’s remarks about increasing firefighters and now, even police officers is a bunch of baloney. Hopefully,people in other surrounding cities and towns will start scratching their heads and figure her nonsense out. When times were tough and budgets were bare everyone had to make cuts, and yes even in publice safety!
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It’s Goldbags lack of understanding on the process “really” works is what gets blood boiling. We all must be stupid to think that Deb Goldberg could not have made all these financial decisions when the whole state was getting hit hard.
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At least Tim Murray understands these issues and yes made hard decisions that effected the daily operations of a big city and the residents. And, yes at times they were unpopular ones, but that is what real leadership is all about !Right now all we are getting from Goldberg is her record of greatness, well I can not believe anyone but Deb can think the citzens of this state will fall for it.
Unlike a lot of you, I am just a regular guy without any background in politics. However, I do vote. It would scare the hell out of me if Deb Goldberg could buy her way into a state office. I got a call from a pollster who asked me what two words came to mind when I thought about Deb Goldberg. What came to mind was: rich and stupid. That lady just isn’t smart! Then the pollster asked what three words came to mind. Rich, stupid, elitist. Rich, stupid, elitist, and arrogant would be the 4 words. It doesn’t impress me that she went to Harvard Business School. Didn’t W go there too? I think what you need to go there is a rich daddy and connections. I am not impressed.