Congressman David Cicilline is supporting his successor Mayor Angel Taveras’s push to wring more money out of Providence’s retirees and tax-exempt institutions.

“David believes the mayor is absolutely right that the 4%, 5%, and 6% compounded COLAs given in the 1990s are completely unsustainable,” Cicilline spokeswoman Nicole Kayner told WPRI.com in a statement.

Those COLAs, “coupled with the increasing share of property owned by non-profits and exempt from taxation, continue to pose major challenges to the city,” she said.

Kayner didn’t comment directly on Taveras’s warning that Providence is “on the brink of bankruptcy,” but defended Cicilline’s work as mayor from 2003 to 2011, saying he “made progress on both of those issues but there is more work to do and he has great confidence the mayor will get it done.”

Cicilline, who graduated from Brown University, signed a deal with Providence’s private colleges in 2003 that required them to contribute to the city budget for the first time. Taveras wants the schools to increase the size of those payments and to begin having the hospitals make payments, as well.

Kayner’s remarks came shortly after businessman Anthony Gemma issued a statement saying Cicilline “must be held accountable for his incompetence and dishonorable self-service.” Gemma placed second to Cicilline in the 2010 Democratic U.S. House primary and has strongly hinted he will challenge him again this year.

Brendan Doherty, the Republican former state police superintendent who is trying to win Cicilline’s House seat, has not commented yet on the latest headlines about Providence’s financial crisis. Taveras is one of the only prominent Rhode Island Democrats who has declined to endorse Cicilline for reelection.

Update: In a statement, Doherty described the situation in Providence as evidence of why he thinks Cicilline should be replaced at the federal level, saying his U.S. House seat gives him “a larger stage for the same performance.”

“He should share in the outrage of average Rhode Islanders over the reckless and wasteful spending of our hard-earned tax dollars,” Doherty said. “Instead we hear a steady chorus of empty partisan rhetoric from him.”

“Throughout my career in public service, I have effectively fought against the type of fraud, waste and abuse that has crippled the City of Providence,” he said. “In Congress, I will fight even harder against the reckless spending and special interest giveaways that threaten to bankrupt our nation.”

(photo: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development)