Bucks County’s Republican commissioners hit back at their Democratic opponents Friday, calling their ethics pledge “hypocrisy on stilts,” and characterized their campaign as based on “lies and distortions.”

“Our opponents want to congratulate themselves on an ethics policy they regularly violate,” commissioners Chairman Charley Martin said at GOP headquarters in Doylestown. “We hold to a different standard, that the first rule of ethical behavior is to tell the truth. And this they refuse or are unable to do.”

Republicans cited Democratic campaign mailings for Commissioner Diane Marseglia and business owner Det Ansinn as playing “fast and loose with the facts.”

Martin and fellow Commissioner Rob Loughery also said a fundraising letter for Marseglia and Ansinn was filled with errors and they showed photos of the Democratic commissioner candidates at a business expo in Newtown wearing a political button at the official county booth.

“Ethical behavior begins with personal behavior,” Martin said. “Distorting truths, smearing people and their businesses personally with baseless and inaccurate claims is wrong and low. And then to try and obscure these actions behind an ethics pledge is, as the saying goes, hypocrisy on stilts.”

Through an email response sent by Amy Fetherolf, a spokeswoman for Marseglia and Ansinn’s Bucks Victory 2011 campaign, Marseglia stated: “It’s rich for the Rob and Charley to call out Democrats for the way we are conducting our campaigns, when the Republicans have funded theirs with taxpayer money for years. Where was the outrage from Charley Martin when this was actually happening under his watch, and Republican county workers were stealing thousands of dollars from the taxpayers?”

Her comments referred to a scandal in the Register of Wills office, in which employees were forced to do political work for Republican candidates every Election Day and then rewarded them with “off-the-books” time off. Candace Quinn, who had been an office administrator, has pleaded guilty to felony theft and conspiracy, as well as official oppression, obstructing law enforcement, tampering with evidence and tampering with records.

“We have certainly not condoned or approved of what was happening there,” Martin said last week. “We’ve said that on numerous occasions.”

Last week Marseglia and Ansinn signed an ethics pledge with their party’s row office candidates. The pledge prohibits political activity in the workplace and the use of county property for political use; calls on county employees to refrain from any political activity in all official duties; protects employees who come forward with concerns of improper behavior by others; and removes Election Day as a county holiday.

Democrats claim the pledge is needed to help undo a “culture of corruption” in the courthouse.

At a Friday press conference, the Republicans documented ”lies and distortions” in the Democratic mailings.

Martin was particularly upset by a mailer from Bucks Victory, the campaign organization for Democratic commissioner and row office candidates, that described Loughery, co-founder of a real estate investment firm, as “lining his pockets” and “his company’s pockets” with $14.7 million in taxpayer money.

“He stands by his business partners, who certainly don’t deserve to be smeared by his opponents’ fabrications and outright lies,” Martin said.

Loughery identified seven projects that received $5.75 million in taxpayer money to go along with $61.1 million in private capital. The projects created 343 jobs and retained another 335.

“We want to campaign on the issues,” Loughery said. “That’s clearly something they don’t want to do.”

Another Bucks Victory mailer went after Martin for giving Quinn “a taxpayer funded pension” and “health benefits after termination.”

Quinn received her own money back from the county pension plan, not the employer match. When she left her job in March, her health benefits continued for the remainder of the month, as it would for all county employees.

The Republicans also said a Marseglia-Ansinn fundraising letter was wrong when it states ”the county budget has nearly quadrupled, funded by Martin’s 130 percent increase in property taxes.”

According to county numbers, the budget has grown to $465 million today from $205 million in 1996, Martin’s first year as commissioner. But the higher number includes $70 million for behavioral health services, which Martin said the state mandated be put in county budgets in 1999, even though the funding is supplied by the commonwealth.

Comparing apples to apples, Martin said the budget has just about doubled, not quadrupled, during his 16 years in office.

As for taxes, the increase during his tenure is 64 percent.

In a statement from Fetherolf regarding the fundraising letter, she stated, “The numbers were right, the phrasing was wrong. It should have read that since Republicans took office in 1988, property taxes have gone up 130 percent, and the budget has nearly quadrupled. Since Charley Martin took office, property taxes have gone up 70 percent, and the budget has more than doubled.”

Said Martin, “I think the question voters need to keep ask themselves is this, ‘How can the Democrats take an ethics pledge when they can’t even tell the truth?’ ”

Fall is only a few days old, and already the gloves are off between the Republican and Democratic candidates for Bucks County commissioner.

At a news conference in Doylestown, Republican Commissioners Charles Martin and Rob Loughery on Friday accused their opponents of making “grossly inaccurate, outright lies” in their public statements and campaign literature, and of violating their own promises.

That followed the news conference Tuesday by Democratic Commissioner Diane Marseglia and running mate Det Ansinn at which they signed an “ethics pledge” to prohibit political activity in their offices and shield whistle-blowers from retribution.

The “lies” that Martin and Loughery cited included Democratic claims that the county is in danger of having its bond rating downgraded and that a terminated employee kept her taxpayer-funded pension and collected unemployment.

Loughery challenged Marseglia’s claim that she had a letter warning of a possible bond-rating downgrade. “This is an outright lie,” he said. “There is no such letter.”

And he said the fired employee – Candace Quinn, who pleaded guilty to charges in a grand jury investigation of the Register of Wills office – “only got back money from the pension fund that she paid in, without any interest. She is not collecting any unemployment compensation from the county.”

The Democrats also have called for Election Day to be changed from a holiday to a work day for county employees, to keep them from being ordered to do political work on county time. That holiday is stipulated in union contracts and can only be changed through negotiations, Martin said.

In a statement, Marseglia and Ansinn stood by their positions. Marseglia said she had talked to the unions about the Election Day holiday but did not say whether they would agree to the change by Nov. 1.