Open Source Letter to Bruce Ennis
I’ve drafted a letter to Bruce Ennis, but I thought I’d leverage the power of the internet tubes and make it an “wiki” style document that you lot could add to or edit. In the interest of time (and full disclosure) I should note that I’ve already borrowed from Dana Garrett.
Comment away.
Bruce,
As a constituent and supporter who walked with you while you knocked on doors in my neighborhood, I am writing to you to urge you to support pending legislation that would make nearly all records of state and school district expenditures accessible to the public by placing them online as well as a resolution to change Senate rules to open the public hearing process.
As you know, we Democrats are now playing catch-up and have allowed the Senate Republicans to steal the issue of good government from the Democratic Party. However, you now have an opportunity to correct the misperception that good government is a Republican concern by providing a co-sponsorship for the transparent reforms that have been proposed.
Thank you for your commitment to good government, and for providing leadership on this important issue.
Has anyone called Ennis’s office to find out his position?
He just campaigned on it, he’s for Open Government, no call is needed, right ?
If I’m proven wrong, great, but I’m not holding my breath on this one …
Yes, and since Dave knew Ennis campaigned on it, courtesy would dictate that Ennis be invited to help draft the bill before the public announcement.
You DID invite him, didn’t you Dave and Charlie?
Unless the motive was to put Dems on the spot by drafting the bills secretly. The News Journal called for Ennis to support the bills in what, 24 hours or so? Do I smell a coordinated PR campaign?
Note to Dave and gang: It is a lot easier to get something done if you don’t care who gets the credit.
Do you really think a crusty old state trooper is going to respond to your portrayal of him as being led to open government by Republicans twisting his arm behind his back?
Ennis should support the bill, but Dave didn’t even give him the chance to save face.
I thought that the immediate, combined pile-on by Burris , Garrett and the WNJ was ridiculous.
Ennis supports open government and we should expect that he will act on his promises. We should also ask if the Rebublican initiative ever invited bi-partisan support. I doubt it.
Regardless of the absurd dog-the-one-last-vote tactic devised by Dana during his fanaticism with J. Christian’s run, we should be holding all elected officials to their promise for open government, especially Thurman Adams who promised Karen Peterson that he would bring her bill out of his desk for a vote.
Well said Nancy.
Let me get this straight, Nancy. You believe that Dave Burris, Dana Garrett, and the News Journal have conspired to make Bruce Ennis look bad?
And anon, you think that a freshman Democrat Senator should have been brought in to consult the Republican caucus on a press conference?
I’m giving Sen.Ennis until Wednesday in hopes that all the opening he’ll do on Tuesday will carry over/into leg hall
No RickJ, a conspiracy implies premeditation toward a goal. I said pile-on, quite another thing.
You’re talking about two totally different things. The Amick resolution to change the House Rules is what Ennis was in the paper for, and that was before the transparency bills were released.
Somehow all 8 GOP Senators ended up on the Amick resolution and Sokola and Peterson ended up on it, so…..
And, the transparency bills were deliberately filed with one House sponsor and one Senate sponsor, in the hopes that no one would use partisanship as a means to defeat the bills. They will be circulated and anyone who wants to sign on, can.
“Note to Dave and gang: It is a lot easier to get something done if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
Note to House Dems: It’s easy to showboat and grandstand on legislation when you know exactly which drawer it’s going in when it gets to the other side.
Dave, Amicks is trying to change the Senate rules not the House.
Your point is?
Nancy, I can’t speak for the motives of anyone involved there but here’s my take.
Dave – Has made open government his high priority, and needs one more vote to make it possible. Campaigned for someone who supported him, lost to someone who said they would support this issue, and didn’t believe him then or now.
Dana – Supports open government so strongly that he has crossed the aisle on numerous occasions to support candidates who otherwise wouldn’t be in the same room as him. Is wildly disappointed in Ennis for his apparent flip-flop.
The News Journal – Ran out of crayons and were bored, so they cut-and-pasted a piece from FSP, Delaware Watch, and DelLib.
“Let me get this straight, Nancy. You believe that Dave Burris, Dana Garrett, and the News Journal have conspired to make Bruce Ennis look bad?”
Don’t be fooled, RickJ. Nancy is trashing the necessity of supporting these bills not because she gives a damn about Ennis but because her love object Harris McDowell hasn’t signed onto them as well.
“Somehow all 8 GOP Senators ended up on the Amick resolution and Sokola and Peterson ended up on it, so…..”
Bingo! Are those the only two Dem Senate Legs that know how to sign there name?
Dana, nothing more to add here than a well-rebutted slander of me? HAH!
RickJ, what most clear-headed people are seeing as wrong with Garrett’s premise is that he starts with a nothing event.
No flip-flop on Ennis’s part…being that the session HASN’T STARTED yet for the new Senator nor anyone else.
Peterson and Sokola had already signed on last year. Ennis and the rest of the DEMs have vowed to open government and will bitterly disappoint us all should they take a partisan tack and refuse to work as a body to realize their promise. Dana et al foster the divide on this vital issue, one that the Adams has promised to engage this year.
Do we need this kind of GOP partisan attack to be greased by a so-called DEM?
To see Dana pull out a pathetic McDowell-call on me shows how flummoxed he is to have been exposed here for simply being a tool of GOP one-up-manship. That’s no way to get something done in Dover. I say ramp down the rhetoric.
A blogger holding his wang in the corner isn’t the same as decent people lobbying the assembly for change.
I call on all of those who want open government to go to Dave’s blog and sign the petition. I sent the link around to more than 400 people on my personal email list yesterday and asked them to sign it, download it and pass it around.
Now I ask all of you to go to Dover on the eight of January to stand with me for change.
Come and stand together: DEMs, GOPers and Independents alike and ask for open government that was promised us last year.
The kind of shit pulled by Garrett and understandably echoed across the aisle is not helpful in the least, IMHO.
Nice letter to Ennis, Jason. I hope it works. I hope I was wrong about it him and he will be the vote to open the doors of government wide open in DE. I will HAPPILY eat crow in a public fashion if he is the vote that will allow my children to enjoy most of their lives in a transparent and a minimally adequate democratic government.
But I doubt he will sponsor these bills unless Adams gives him the thumbs up. If he does cosponsor them, he will never vote for them if Adams says not to and if his vote will decide it in a way that Adams doesn’t like. I don’t see it happening. Adams didn’t call up lobbyists telling them to contribute to his special election or else if he didn’t know well in advance that Ennis would play ball. Vaughn spent years vetting him to be his ditto. Moreover, if Adams didn’t know that Ennis would play ball, Ennis would have never been the candidate for the office. We all know precisely what happened to get Ennis through w/o the possibility of a significant challenge.
As for this, who gets credit business…well, this is another example of my party’s hypocrisy. If we Dems were proposing this legislation, we’d be tooting our own horns too and we should! OF COURSE, the Repubs are using these initiatives for political purposes. And they should too!
I have no problem w/ parties playing politics, trying to gain public favor, by proposing legislation that promotes the public good. And if praising them makes them promote the public good more, then I say to do it. In fact, I believe it’s our duty as citizens in a democracy to provide that kind of feedback in the two-way exchange that should occur in representational democracies. Our elected officials aren’t the only players responsible for making our system of government as successful as possible.
My constant theme all along has been to my fellow Dems, “Let’s be the ones getting the strokes for this and let’s stop letting the GOP get nearly all the credit.” Now what is wrong w/ that message? Let’s COMPETE w/ them in promoting the public good and EARN the public’s confidence. Just imagine how the public’s interest would be advanced if we had that kind of competition going on between the major parties.
Now my question is: who could possibly be against any of that? But it sure sounds like some of my fellow Dems are when they indulge meaningless questions about the GOP’s motives, or who should get credit (the one’s who EARN it is the obvious answer), or the GOP’s open govt bills stink because they stink on wind power, or engaging in empty mouthing of support for open government by saying “we should be holding all elected officials to their promise for open government” after we have have just killed it by defending our irresponsible candidate choices by saying beforehand, “Regardless of the absurd dog-the-one-last-vote tactic devised by Dana during his fanaticism with J. Christian’s run,”
Supporting open government is meaningless and hypocritical when it comes qualified w/ “As long as supporting it doesn’t mean I should vote for someone not in my party.” There is simply no escaping that conclusion. The only way to to AVOID that kind of dilemma is to work to make one’s party the party that supports open government so that one doesn’t have to make that kind of choice.
Excuses neither advances the interests of the people of DE or the DE Dem Party. It appears we will learn that lesson eventually the hard way. Unless the Dem Party changes, I suspect 2010 is the year we will see the DE GOP start to turn thew direction of election victories around.
“No flip-flop on Ennis’s part…being that the session HASN’T STARTED yet for the new Senator nor anyone else.”
Poor, Nancy. She tries but fails so miserably. Where is there a public statement from Ennis saying he will support these bills and vote for them? That’s all it takes. But the statement doesn’t exist, now does it?
LOL!!
It must be hard to know that your cultism often makes you wrong & foolish.
Wrong again Garrett.
Ennis has indeed made this public statement in writing , Dana, and reiterated it after he was elected, IIRC. Perhaps some good DEM at DE Lib will search it out.
Ennis is on record for supporting open government, Dana. I guess you were too broken-hearted by the loss of JC that you failed to notice that Ennis publicly assured his constituents of this.
Dana, did Ennis specifically support the bills that Burris and co. put together? I don’t think there is anything on the intertubes on it.
He says he will work to open government, however. That is verified all over the intertubes as you must have noticed.
One article on the subject at Newzap quotes Adams saying that “many people who say they will support it have come to me privately to say it is a bad idea”. That could, in effect, be any of those who signed onto ‘your’ bills, no?
We are going to have to work hard to lobby all 62 of the state house reps.
I am calling uncle so I can make it through the holiday without a war!