Dave Cote, Republican candidate for State Representative in District 36 (Charlestown/New Shoreham/South Kingstown/Westerly), believes that improving the quality of life of all Rhode Islanders depends upon voters taking a stand against Rhode Island government’s predisposition towards monopolies…
I’ve seen all the monopolies we have in the state of Rhode Island. There’s a workers compensation monopoly. There are public health care monopolies. In South Kingstown, they tried to create a trash hauler monopoly – and we fought it. They were going to put up to 10 local businesses out-of-business, because the town wanted its own monopoly. It cost us $10,000 to fight it, but we fought it because it was the right thing to do.
When South Kingstown changed from fully insured to self-insured — where we saved a million dollars — we showed that it could be done. We need to make sure that where this change proves positive, like in organizations with over 300 employees, that we do it automatically in the other towns.
We have competitive bidding. 98% of the towns have Blue Cross Blue Shield. Why is that? We can’t have these monopolies. We need to bring in Tufts, and look at United Healthcare. We have to break the monopolies to help private enterprise in Rhode Island. Since when do we assume that government-created monopolies are better are doing things than private enterprise?
Everyone knows the quality of education in Rhode Island is dying. Too few of our students are proficient in math – we have to change that. We have environmental issues. The fishing industry in this area, in Galilee, is getting killed by over-regulation – there’s a lot we can do to help the fishing industry.
Everything happens locally. We have pushed for changes locally in South Kingstown that can impact the state of Rhode Island. I’m running for State Representative in District 36 because South Kingstown is a microcosm of what we can do throughout the entire state and improve things for all of Rhode Island.