Ruth Ann Minner: Tone Deaf to the End.

Ginger Gibson sounds like a raving Delaware Liberal lunatic in her News Journal story this morning about one of RAM’s “last gigs” as Delaware’s chief executive.

Last week […] Ruth Ann Minner told a room of politicians from eastern states and Canada about a meeting in Philadelphia with President-elect Barack Obama.

The only problem is, she didn’t attend the Dec. 2 Philadelphia meeting.

But she did fly to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands last week to tell the Council of State Government’s Eastern Region executive committee about Obama’s visit with governors from around the country.

Minner squeezed the business trip to St. Thomas, which cost Delaware taxpayers $1,120, in between a vacation there, her spokesperson said Monday.

Neither the vacation nor the speech was listed on Minner’s weekly, publicly released schedule.

Now, it is not clear here if Minner was saying that she attended the meeting (which of course would be a lie) or if she was just relaying reports of the meeting.  But yes, she did not attend.  Nor, in my opinion, should she have attended.   Her term ends in a month.   The meeting with Obama was about planning for the future.  RAM, thankfully, is not the future.   So it was appropriate for Governor-elect Jack Markell to attend in her place.

Just as it is inappropriate for her to have taxpayers pay for a trip to the tropics to attend a meeting of the Council of State Government’s Eastern Region executive.   She has one month left.   She is just manning the store until Markell takes over.   And in these hard economic times, would it have killed her not to go?  Or if she had to go, could she not afford to pay for it herself?   Ginger Gibson goes into the details of Minner missing budget meetings on the budget deficit.   That does not concern me, since, again, I’d rather Minner not interfere in the final hour in something Markell will be dealing with.   What does concern me is her tone deafness.