Meconi Gets Gig in New Castle County Gov’t
As RSmitty mentioned in our comments yesterday that Vince Meconi has gotten another gig, this time working for Paul Clark in New Castle County. Yes, that Meconi who headed up Delaware’s Department of Health and Social Services last decade. I’ll let the News Journal explain.
The News Journal, in more than 100 stories, chronicled allegations of rape, assault and other forms of patient abuse, as well as retaliation against staff who reported the abuse. The stories led to two federal investigations, a state probe of excessive overtime at DPC and the introduction of 16 bills and resolutions designed to overhaul hospital management and increase independent review of patient care.
Many were unhappy when the Markell Administration hired Mecconi as a consultant in 2009. Many are unhappy again that Meconi get another well-paid government gig after his not so stellar history. How bad is this hire? So bad I find myself in agreement with State Rep. Greg Lavelle (R):
“This shows Paul Clark’s commitment to recycling, and I don’t mean that in a good way. This hire shows no creativity at all.”
Tom Sheldon, Democratic candidate for council president, summed it up the best:
“As a county official, I didn’t have much contact with him, so I can’t really say much about him one way or the other. All I know is what I read in the newspaper about how he really fumbled the ball. I don’t know much about him, other than that he has a beard.”
Grrr, Meconi gives beards a bad name.
Tags: New Castle County, Paul Clark, Vince Meconi
If all you know about something is what you’ve read in the News Journal, then you are wise to assume that there is a lot you don’t know.
The News Journal HATED Ruth Ann Minner, and the coverage of Meconi read like a tainted witch-hunt to me.
I agree with Jason. Vince fell on the sword repeatedly for the Minner administration. He is a brilliant man and I am glad Paul Clark had the guts to hire him.
Meconi may be ‘brilliant’, but he is totally devoid of human empathy. He was a horrible DHSS Secretary b/c he consistently failed to stand up for those who need the services the Department provides. His willful refusal to enforce Delaware’s nursing home laws and his continuous siding with the nursing home industry, which, at its worst, practices legalized elder abuse and collects tens of millions of state and federal dollars for its sloth, illustrates this. And, while there are intractable institutional issues with DPC, he kept them buried rather than try to actually do something about it.
He wasn’t a ‘fall guy’, he was an enabler, for Minner. His insistence that everyone be a ‘team player’ in the sense that nobody dare question the ‘brilliance’ of Minner, Brainard, Meconi, et al, is his calling card. Dissent wasn’t, and will not be, an option.
He will ‘do’ for Clark what he ‘did’ for Minner. The operative News-Journal sentence will be “(fill in the blank) was unavailable for comment.”
This is a disastrous, but in no way unexpected, appointment.
It simply reinforces that we must do what we’ve already been preparing to do: To scrutinize every move of this ethically and morally bankrupt administration.
And, speaking of beards, does THIS raise ‘Separated At Birth’ questions for you? Could this ‘Fox Democrat’ be Meconi’s twin brudda?:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://edsdailyrant.blogspot.com/caddell.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/is-it-possible-to-be-a-democrat-but-be-against-big-government/question-932285/&h=350&w=450&sz=22&tbnid=5fItQxfSNCrqSM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpat%2Bcaddell&zoom=1&q=pat+caddell&hl=en&usg=__KM62i6OXs6mHTpBqTa1tDqumpUA=&sa=X&ei=xrUUTbXDJMG78gbag6WLAQ&ved=0CEAQ9QEwBA
Brilliant? He was and is a hack. Who hired hacks . . . to run facilities and programs in which, if you screwed up because you were a hack, human beings suffered. He is the Peter Principle, Delaware Way style, in full throttle.
Most of the knives out for Meconi have nothing to do with Farnhurst, but rather vengeance for what Meconi has done to Republicans and goon Democrats over the years. I’m no Clark fan, but I’d rather have him advised by Meconi than the many actively bad folks who would be dying to do so. Markell, Carper, Carney all respect Meconi, whose talents are many.
…all respect Meconi, whose talents are many.
http://www.boardgamers.org/yearbook/gbgpge.htm
Talented indeed! (Scroll down a little)
Seriously, I met Vince when he was driving the bus over at Administrative Services. He struck me as a very focused individual.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Foll me 3 times I must be PC! I liked the line where PC said the fact that Meconi worked with Minner, Carper and Markell spoke “eons”. Can anyone tell me how ones speaks ‘eons’?
He could have done much, much worse. I’m sure he proved his value to Clark with his behavior during the DPC hearings, when he wouldn’t say “shit” even though he had more than a mouthful.
Belinsky would be wrong although I get where he’s coming from. Yes, Meconi helped dethrone the noxious Gene Reed as County Party Chair. However, as we soon learned, it was only so Carper could collect huge tainted bucks from the banking industry instead of meager tainted bucks from the construction trades.
Meconi, regardless of whatever his intellectual credentials might be, proved to be a disaster both as Admin. Services Secretary (he whined that he should’ve been Carper’s Sec’y of State instead of Carper’s ‘brain’, Ed Freel) and as perhaps the worst Secretary of Health & Social Services (which would make him even worse than Greg Sylvester) in the past 25 years.
He continues to get jobs b/c he’s a political consigliere in addition to being an undistinguished bureaucrat. He did some pretty good work in the ’80’s although that’s so 1980’s by now.
Which reminds me. People, meaning us, will have to make sure that Meconi doesn’t run Clark’s election campaign from his county offices. I have no doubt that Meconi was hired as Clark’s political aparatchik. Council, the press, the blogosphere, et al, will have to do due diligence to ensure that New Castle County residents aren’t forced to pay for Clark’s political campaign with our tax dollars.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. Meconi was very good in Admin Svcs. The vanquishing of Reed was an unambiguous blessing, and it led to the election of a Democratic governor, which would not have happened otherwise. And by the way, Carper was a good governor.
“And by the way, Carper was a good governor.”
And so were DuPont and Castle and now Markell. The only two lousy ones in my time in Delaware were Tribbitt and Minner. See what happens when you let downstaters run something?
lol Geezer….
Belinsky, please explain how Carper was a good Governor. What are/were his signature accomplishments? Education reform? We’re having a ‘do-over’ right now. He hired an oil lobbyist’s husband to run DNREC (Christophe Tolou), who ran DNREC as you’d expect an oil lobbyist’s husband to run it. Which insane cost overruns weren’t Meconi’s fault? The courthouse? The Carvel renovations? So, explain how he did a ‘good’ job as Admin Svcs. Secretary.
I also remember that Carper’s aides walked around Leg Hall as it they were slumming and were simply marking time until ‘TC’ returned to DC.
The only vision I saw from Carper as Governor was his vision of what he was going to run for next.
The only way I could see describing Carper’s tenure as ‘good’ would be if the only alternative was ‘unmitigated disaster’, which aptly describes the amateurish and corrupt Minner Administration, also featuring one Vincent P. Meconi.
Governors in office during the Clinton Boom tended to benefit politically and be well regarded. Many of them were Republicans; ours just happened to be Carper.
Besides – haven’t you been following DL lately? Carper’s Third Way politics are now “in.”
That’s not DL, that’s the ‘conventional wisdom’, which is almost never wise.
Som: To borrow from Matthew,”Ye have education reform always with you.” Carper cleaned up after Castle, who cleaned up after du Pont. Every governor’s aides [except Peterson’s] are young and obnoxious. Carper didn’t plan on running for Senate until WJC convinced him to do so in late 1999.
Carper returned competence and integrity to the Cabinet. Anne Canby, Karen Johnson, Darrell Minott, Carmen Nazario, Harriett Smith, Bill Remington, Anne Jackson, Bill Quillen. Many overdue initiatives, including ramped-up public transportation. DEDO stopped being a dumping ground and actually got jobs for the State. GM plant saved. Tax cuts tilted toward middle and lower classes. Other areas, such as environmental policy, are fair topics for criticism.
Uh, Castle’s Admin didn’t need ‘cleaning up’. Carper didn’t restore ‘competence and integrity’ to gov’t. It hadn’t left. Of course, you have crooks like Kermit Justice and Mike Harkins, but they were part of DuPont’s inner circle and holdovers in the Castle early years. They were long gone by the time Carper took over.
And, trust me, not every Governor’s aides are young and obnoxious. And Carper’s aides weren’t even that young. I’ll take Jeff Dayton over Jeff Bullock any time. I spent over 20 years in Leg. Hall, and many other staffers will tell you that Carper’s people were the most standoffish they’d ever seen.
As for Carper not planning to run for Senate–please. He may not have planned to run against Roth that year, but do you believe for a minute that he didn’t have his sights set on going back to DC? If Roth had retired and Castle had run for the seat, you can bet that Tom would’ve run for his congressional seat and bided his time until a Senate seat opened.
Belinsky: A lot of people don’t share your high regard for Anne Canby, though I think her sins were more in not knowing what some of the lifers there were up to. Markell apparently doesn’t either. DelDOT has needed cleanup with a high-pressure fire hose for a long time now. And I agree with El Som about Bullock, though it must be said that compared with Mark Brainard, Bullock was Adlai Stevenson.
I liked Carper a lot more as governor than I like him as a senator.
Yep, DELDOT is one of those agencies where the career bureaucrats figure they’ll just outwait whomever is Governor. And they basically dare you to do anything about it. I always liked Anne Canby as well, but she had it hard trying to make headway with that kind of culture in place.
Carper was at best a caretaker governor, regardless of the spin that Ed Freel will try to put on it. As I said earlier, he was by no means the disaster that Minner was. Plus Bullock/Brainard =Ethical/Unethical.
Elsom. Your dead on right about Merconi. He was a numbers man which is why he destroyed DHSS. He refused to give private providers a raise even though the disabled were and are living in poverty. His administrative abilities were all about the numbers never about people. Rita Landgraff is doing a remarkable job because she came through the ranks. She has empathy, sympathy and knowledge of what needs to be done, unfortunately she is having a helluva time managing the medicaid system with all the high numbers signing on. The Merconi peter principle is and always has been pushed by Carper.
I have heard that Carper brought Canby here after immense failures up in New England –including the Big Dig.
But her legacy is definately Ralph Reeb – the stooge who still sits on WILMAPCO Council and runs the corrupt realty office in the bowels of DelDOT. Canby brought him to Delaware with her and he’s conducted his sleaze at the behest of Governor’s since with high regards from whomever sits as Secretary, it would seem.
The machinations in the DelDOT land use office long predate Reeb. He’s just the latest in a long line of fixers.
Reeb was connected to the UD gang that features ‘Professor’ Ed Freel. He had hung around Leg Hall for years lobbying on behalf of the University. Canby did not ‘bring him to Delaware’, he was already here. And his selection was straight from Carper, Freel, Inc. If you consider him a disaster, and the NKS deal makes a strong argument in your favor, it’s on Carper, not on Canby.
My bad if Reeb predated Canby.Of course, it is possible that he got involved with the UD Public Policy Institute as a Master’s candidate when he got to Delaware.
My friend, Kim Burdick, was a study mate of his when they were in the program together. Most state bureaucrats go for a masters STAT and evidently Reeb did just that. Freel is still teaching in that college dept. where you can view his extensive bio online.
I am not at all convinced that Reeb didn’t arrive with Canby just because he also enrolled at the UD and hung out with Freel. Carper’s people are as network hungry as any, I guess. I will double check with my source.