Let’s Discuss Ruth Ann Minner
I have to admit that I don’t know much about Ruth Ann Minner or her administration. I moved to Delaware in 2007 and Minner was already on her way out. I know she is not beloved but not hated either. Yesterday, the News Journal published a second article on what seems to be a very cosy relationship between Ruth Ann Minner and Christopher Tigani of N.K.S. Distributors.
Former Gov. Ruth Ann Minner’s administration helped push through what commercial agents say is a “sweet deal” for a lease on land owned by the state. The deal was done for one of Minner’s friends in the state’s powerful liquor industry.
Christopher Tigani, who ran N.K.S. Distributors Inc., signed a 66-year lease on 10.3 acres of land on the east side of Milford for $1,500 a month in 2006, just two months after a state appraiser set the rent at $84,125 a month, public records show.
…
Although the land needed to be rezoned from residential to commercial when Tigani signed the lease, his company made only one payment until the property was annexed by Milford as commercial two years later. So far, N.K.S. has paid $79,200 in rent — $3.96 million less than it would have paid at the rate the state land appraiser originally proposed
The earlier NJ article detailed a trip to a conference in Quebec by Minner that was paid for by Tigani but was not reported to the state.
So reading this article as an outsider it certainly looks bad for Minner. I wonder if further digging will find other deals for her cronies or if this is the only one. However, I don’t think there will be much fallout for Minner. She’s no longer an elected official and I really think most people are looking forward and aren’t that interested in rehashing the previous administration but I could be wrong about that. What do you think? Is this going to lead to something more or will everyone just shrug their shoulders and move on?
ed. note: I changed the post to correct my misspelling of Mr. Tigani’s name.
Tags: Delaware, Ruth Ann Minner
I think, years after she left office, it’s remarkable the NJ suddenly has an interest in Ruth Ann while John Carney is running for Congress. How….. providential for the RNC.
Minner was perhaps the most useless governor of my lifetime (40+ years) whose only significant contributions were the indoor smoking ban and the SEED program. She was inaccessible and at home only with the political insiders. For all of her reluctance to appear in public, she sure didn’t mind flying all over the world on someone else’s dime, claiming it was all in the name of economic development.
I’m sure as time passes more stories about her corrupt nature will spill out. She stinks like raw sewage, and that’s the nicest thing I can say about her.
You are right Brooke.
Actually, it’s a double bonus for the News Journal. They don’t have to invest much reporter-time in this because it is coming out as part of the Tigani lawsuit. And, they can use it to imply guilt by association for John Carney.
This almost certainly came out of the Tigani trial, which Maureen Milford also covered.
“it’s remarkable the NJ suddenly has an interest in Ruth Ann while John Carney is running for Congress.”
An interest?! An interest?! This is outrageous and borderline bribery. You guys were all over Vance Phillips for the appearance of the appearance of a possible future conflict of interest. This is actual pay-to-play where a business got nearly a million dollar handout! None of it ever would have been revealed if not for the Tigani lawsuit.
And you’re playing the partisan politics card? I assume by your failure to comment otherwise that you condone bribery. Bet you’ll get a LOT of votes.
“they can use it to imply guilt by association for John Carney.”
Really? And where in this fairly long story does John Carney’s name come up? And why isn’t anyone here calling for a full investigation?
No, I don’t pass judgement on what would be a legal issue when my information is coming from report of a nasty civil proceeding as covered by the newspaper.
See, that’s the basis of our LAW, that people are innocent until proven guilty. If Ruth Ann was convicted of a crime, I would comment on that. UNTIL and UNLESS that happens, I merely observe that the NJ wasn’t exactly nose to the ground looking for trouble when it might have mattered to the taxpayers of this state, and that their choice to devote space to it now is conveniently timed for the RNC.
I feel comfortable observing lazy reporting. I’m not in a position to assess criminal guilt on this data. If you want elected officials who have different standards, by all means elect them.
I am no fan of the NJ, but I wonder how the NJ cold have found this sweetheart deal when it bypassed all possible opportunities for open bidding or even transparency of the deal before it closed. Part of the point of this story was that this happened outside of the usual procedures and done pretty much on the QT.
That said, I think that people will have a hard time making this stick to Carney. Lt. Govs here don’t have much power or authority and no one is going to be able to make the case that John Carney would have been able to oversee any part of this deal.
“If Ruth Ann was convicted of a crime, I would comment on that.”
Unless she was a Republican.
If you need a conviction to be outraged by this story, you have a very questionable moral compass.
I also agree that the only effect this has on Carney is it reminds people of how bad Minner was.
I understand you don’t have any reason to trust me, or my moral compass. That’s probably healthy. However, since I’m more fully informed on my moral compass, I’m more comfortable with it. And if you knew me better, you’d know that, whatever my other faults may be, being morally ambiguous isn’t among them. 😀
I think this whole thing is infuriating myself. Why do we have to wait to find out what shenanigans lawmakers are up to after they leave office? I find it’s the same thing as the Republican House scandal – no one is doing oversight or there’s some prohibition to oversight in our laws. I think you could include the IC’s office in this as well.
There is obviously a problem here, and we need to fix. I don’t care who the governor is and what party they are. It’s really bad.
IMO, Minner was trying to hide this. Why else would she not report it? As to whether this will go any further, I think it depends on whether more revelations come out. If it’s just one deal, probably people will shrug it off. If we start seeing a pattern, that’s a different story.
I don’t blame commenters here for having a knee-jerk negative reaction to the Mike Castle News Journal, either.
Important question: How much money did Tigani Inc give to the Milford Library’s Minner Center? And, for that matter, how much did NRG give after the Minner Administration stopped the Citizens for Clean Power lawsuit by fining NRG $1 per instance of pollution?
We often see people with ethical clouds or poor personal decisions. Rarely do we see out-and-out pay-to-play.
If only we had an Attorney General.
If the AG’s office has ever investigated an incident of political corruption in Delaware, I am unaware of it.
In most states, the opposition party does a good bit of the watchdogging the party in power. That’s a more attainable goal to wish for.
I also wonder why our auditor doesn’t catch things like this? Isn’t this the kind of thing that a real auditor would find, especially if he is from the other party?
This is almost certain to have come up from the Tigani family trial that has been defecating all over the news lately. I can’t wait until we find out that there is a Minner/Tigani sex tape. /shudder/
sorta one those makes you thank god you don’t have what you used to have articles.
at least Markell blatantly kneels to big business while our education system further crumbles in an open way.
you didn’t know when minner was fucking you over. At least with Markell he does it right in the open and tells you that you will like it.
Before you get too carried away with your assumptions about journalism, go back to the facts and the realities:
The reporting about Tigani paying for Minner’s trip to Canada came out of the trial. There was no reason for either of the Tiganis to bring up this real estate deal at the trial. Far more likely that, after the trial, the NJ started looking for the payoff and found NKS/Tigani name in real estate records.
Unless you believe there’s a conspiracy under every stone, there’s no reason to think this is an effort to tar John Carney. If there was any evidence that this involved Carney, it would have been played prominently in the story. Carney’s biggest problem was that he waited until 2 months before the ’08 election to reveal that he was capable of making any sort of public statement that differed from the governor.
If there is any inquiry, I will cooperate fully and while I do not speak for NKS, I would strongly encourage the company to do the same. There was nothing improper with Gov. Minner’s involvement, NKS’, nor the dozens of others who worked on the lease. The fact is the numbers that were reported are simply incorrect. No one would ever lease ground for $1,009,500 per year for 66 years that is only worth just over a $1,000,000. $66,627,000 for 10 acres of ground? This is politics, pure and simple. I hope Mr. Ross and the News Journal are as vigorous in reporting all the facts when the truth comes out. Again, I fully support the public’s right to know and will do anything I can to facilitate the process.
Chris Tigani
This story hinges on how much the land is worth, that’s an important detail. Also, I apologize for getting Mr. Tigani’s name wrong, that’s just slopiness on my part.
Anon2: Chris Tigani said on WDEL that he brought it up at trial as evidence of the good deals he made while running the company. He also said he thinks the figure should be $84,000 per year, not per month, in fair market rent.
I suspect that $84,000/year is about the windfall that NKS got from unredeemed bottle deposits.
Based on the NJ reporting of the civil trial, if Chris Tigani stays out of jail, it will be a miracle. If Delaware had an AG, CT would be indicted as soon as the civil trial ended. I suspect it will be the IRS that sends him to the big house.
Schwartz: On what basis do you make that claim?
If this was real “economic development,” it should have gone through regular channels. Instead, it is a sweetheart side deal and then Tigani doesn’t even pay the token rent for almost two years. If it was through regular channels, the rent would have been collected by Del DOT. That shows it was out of the norm.
Also, Tigani claimed if they had shut down the Milford and New Castle site and consolidated to Dover, they would have lost 10 jobs.Ten jobs???? And the state bent over backwards for a supposed ten jobs. It’s amazing what sipping Milford Mojitos on a private jet plane will do to a Governor’s judgment.
In other states, with real law enforcement, they would be measuring an orange jumpsuit and getting a space ready in the women’s prison.
Oh I forgot, that’s not the DELAWARE WAY!!!!!
Gee, from today’s GOP email :Ross Calls for Immediate Investigation of Minner ‘Sweetheart Deal’ by Federal Law Enforcement
Republican State Chairman Thomas Ross called for an immediate investigation into the Minner- Carney Administrations’ reported sweetheart land deal to liquor distributor Christopher Tigani, as outlined in Sunday’s News Journal expose.
“The alleged evidence outlined in the story paints a clear and serious prima facie case public corruption,” said Ross. “When appraised state land is rented for pennies on the dollar to a close friend of the former Governor that is not sloppiness that is an outright crime.”
“Between this alleged sweetheart land deal and other reported failures of properly filing lobbyist disclosure reports, the Minner- Carney administration seems to have had little respect for the rule of law and the public trust,” added Chairman Ross. “Nothing less than a full and swift investigation by federal authorities is warranted in this matter.”
I cannot IMAGINE why I thought Carney would be dragged into this. Yeah, my bad. 😀
Your bad was attributing that thought to the News Journal rather than Tom Ross. You should also note that Pete Schwartzkopf is saying the same thing.
Yeah, tying Democrats to Minner worked real wonders for Bill Lee. John Carney is going to win his election by 10 points. And there was no reason for him to ever have known that this was going on, no matter what Tom Ross says. Tom Ross ought to be worried what it says about his party that nobody in it had the common sense to FOIA DelDOT’s land deals. His party was asleep at the switch.
Geezer – it is not like the Gov goes around with a big checkbook and a credit card swipe. Someone, some body signed off on this, no?
From the News Journal account, she’s the one who signed off on it. Sounds like she gave it to Brainard and said, “Git ‘er done!” so he did it, using the DelDOT employees named in the story. The GA has no input on DelDOT’s real estate section. The legislature controls spending, not revenue.
Nice racket until is gets blown by someone tearing apart their virtual monopoly cash cow in court because they’ve gone loco from an overdose of cash.
It is now time for everyone to accept the fact that Ruth Ann Minner was the WORST Delaware Governor of the last century, and stop making excuses for her cronyism and incompetence.
She remains a huge albatross around John Carney’s neck, or else he would be Governor today.
Not so fast, Chris. She’s tied with Sherman Tribbitt.
Ruth Ann, however, may win the tiebreaker. One-term Sherm was a product of his times. Minner is a throwback to that era.
why does the state own this property and why can DelDOT lease it out for 66 years?
The state purchased the land for a future Del. 1 interchange. No idea why the lease was so long, but if and when the interchange is built, I’m pretty sure the warehouse disappears and the lease is voided.
you can’t simply void a lease. you can buy it out, but you cant simply tell the tennant you’ve changed your mind, time to move. (A lease can have a cancelation clause, but I doubt this one does)
sounds like a repeat of the Kermit Justice scandal. Condeming more land than needed for road building and then making sweet-heart deals with friends and supporters.
I am always against abortion because it is a sin to kill an innocent child..`;
^^^^ Morgan wins the total non-sequitur spam o’the week award!!!