Drinking Liberally Open Thread
1) That band rocked.
2) Tommywonk had the most cogent explanation yet why Mike Castle will run for the Senate (if he runs).
3) We fell a little short of our goal to raise $1.5 million to buy Tom Carper’s vote back from the banks. (I did the math and if everyone brings 30,000 friends to the next Drinking Liberally and each of those 450,000 people donated a measly 5 bucks, we could sail past our goal.)
4) The “Over 40 – Delaware HS Wrestler’s Reunion Tournament” is sooooooo on.
That band did not rock. What was Tommywonk’s explanation?
Oh… I liked the band. It was a trip down memory lane! 😉 Mr. Pandora will be thrilled about the wrestling tournament – who’s attending?
HyJinx is now the house band of DelawareLiberal.
Tom points out that in the Senate, Castle’s ego would be stroked 24/7 by everyone in the chamber trying to be his buddy. (Of course he would vote solidly with the R’s, like he does right now in the House – but he would act like his vote is up for grabs.)
He gets nothing out of being a “moderate” minority member in the House right now.
I haven’t had coffee yet and I see how a bunch of 40+ year-old men are thrilled and excited about wrestling each other…no, not WWE style, but roman-greco style (scholastic-kind). Lots of love flowing there.
I need my coffee.
Briefly, here is the value proposition for Castle:
He can either stay in the House, where he has about zero influence in his caucus, or run for the Senate, where he would be seen as being in play as a swing vote. Instead of being shunned by his GOP colleagues and ignored by the majority, he would become a star whose vote could decide big issues like treaties and Supreme Court nominees. Even if he still mostly sticks with the GOP caucus, he could feel like his vote matters.
lead singer had a nice set of pipes
Boys,
You give love a bad name.
I’ll referee, as long as somebody takes on that Tyler Nixon. A cigarette smoking Republican….. Isn’t that like a Democrat in suspenders???
Guys, we have to take a look at this open and inclusive behavior we have. You know, if we could keep people named Nixon out, we might want to become more greedy and myopic like the Repub’s.
Tyler Nixon. A cigarette smoking Republican….. Isn’t that like a Democrat in suspenders???
I was thinking more of “Smoking Man” from the X-files…which makes him a modern day Repub, right?
I’m glad Tyler joined us. He added to the evening, and he did, as a Republican, walk bravely into the lion’s den! 😉
I’m a bit concerned about how subdued Donviti was. His drinking was moderate, his voice hushed, his body language calm.
He has a job now, nemski. Maturity abounds. Give it a week.
Enough with all this – why is it 2 days past the deadline of the IC contract negotiations and no updates have been made on their website, nor any rattlings done here?
re: IC contract – they got blogswarmed pretty good, and I know the Governor and the Auditor are aware of this issue. But it looks like they have some cover under the law, which does not require much transparency at all, and doesn’t even require an RFP. So it is a bit of a mystery why they even bothered to put out a half-assed RFP when they didn’t have to do one at all.
So the award will probably go through, and all we can do is examine the winner for conflicts, and watch carefully what they do.
Tommywonk #5 points out that Castle would be seen as a swing vote, but as bitter experience has shown, he would be the RNC’s butt boy when it counted.
But it looks like they have some cover under the law, which does not require much transparency at all, and doesn’t even require an RFP.
So what does this mean, exactly?
They don’t have to answer questions on an RFP?
The only reason I know to not issue an RFP is for a small dollar purchase or for a purchase of a catalog item. Is that what they were buying?
First of all, IANAL, I am just a guy reading the Delaware Code, so here we go.
It is a long story and worth its own post, but it appears Elliot’s point of view is legally justifiable, if ethically and politically repugnant.
1. First of all, we have the 2004 AG opinion that DOI does not have to follow state procurement law because it uses insurance company money (linked in a previous thread here).
2. If you manage to get past #1, the procurement law itself is weak. Procurement law is defined in Title 29, Chapter 69.
Contracts like construction or supplies, do require an “invitation to bid” (RFP). But procurement of “professional services,” which this DOI contract presumably is, is defined in Subchapter VI.
*
Within Subchapter VI § (6981) the requirements for professional services *bidding are laid out, and they are minimal, and do not require an RFP.
I don’t think there is a superseding law that says “If you are going to issue an RFP, here are the competitive bidding rules.” It appears that since no RFP is required, there is no law governing RFPs for this office, and therefore a half-assed RFP is perfectly legal. And since there are no rules, they don’t have to answer questions. The RFP itself invited questions, but DL missed the deadline.
3. The requirements for *selecting* a bidder, including the (very minimal) public disclosure required, are laid out in § 6982. For DOI, the applicable law is in subsection (b). It requires only a published notice of the winner 10 days after the award.
Subsection (b) actually appears to have a typo, since it says there are 5 requirements (paragraphs) but only three are in the code. If someone has access to a law library, you can look up the underlying law and see what’s going on here, and look for the backstory on how the procurement law got weakened:
Actually the 10-day notice is in subsection (a) not (b) – so it does not apply to DOI based on the exclusions defined in (a).