Thoughts from the Reality Check Town Hall March 9

This is the one in Wilmington held Monday night. There were perhaps 50 people in attendance and lots of politicians — Councilwoman Shabazz and Councilman Wright from the City; Representative Plant, Representative Johnson, Representative Keeley from the House and Senator Henry. No Senator Marshall, which was really strange. Governor Markell was late, so the pols and the students at the school did what they could to vamp until Jack arrived.

He gave his Powerpoint presentation (which you can see here) and here are a few points:

1. After their next meeting (next week) , DEFAC will tell us that the budget shortfalls Governor Markell has been talking about will be even bigger.  This is not just a bigger budget hole, but also an indicator of just how fast the Delaware economy is slowing down.
2. In comparison to our immediate neighbors, Delaware has the biggest shortfall (in percentage terms only).
3. There is a committee of state employees and outside executives (working as volunteers) working on identifying waste and inefficiency in State Agencies.   Their work won’t come close to covering the shortfall.
4. He will present his budget in 2 weeks to the Legislature.
5. They are trying to be as compassionate and responsible in looking to make cuts.
6. He hinted very strongly that sports betting is going to be part of the revenue package.
7. He spent a long time talking about reducing the number of people behind bars, looking at the kind of offenders who could be better dealt with outside of the traditional prison system.  He talked about this not just as cost cutting, but also as better sense.  He did note that this is not going to happen by June 30.
8. Another topic discussed was the consolidation of school districts.  He was really clear that there are many good financial reasons to do this, but also clear that this savings could be neutralized by the need to normalize teachers’ salaries across the districts after consolidation.

The final message — State Government will look very different on July 1.

He was honest and unequivocal about delivering this news and I was really struck by the massive amount of trust and respect this guy had in the room.  Afterwards, I spoke to a number of people who were plainly worried about what the cuts and increased revenues would mean to them, but who greatly respected the fact that he was willing to talk to us directly about difficult choices.  It was also interesting to note that the rest of the political crew in the room greatly suffered in comparison.  Which I’d agree with.

There was another meeting in Wilmington last night — were you at either of these meetings?  What were your impressions?