DeLuca Caves?
The News Journal is reporting on Twitter:
Several other tweets follow (reverse chronological order):
DeLuca: “when I come to Dover or go to the Carvel Building to work on Senate business, these records show that I’m not on the clock” at DOL.
1 minute agoDialogueDel Dialogue Delaware
The News Journal has not yet obtained DeLuca’s timesheets. It appears his office handed them over to other reporters first. #netDE
2 minutes agoDialogueDel Dialogue Delaware
…”private and public, how their employer handles their pay when they are doing the people’s business,” DeLuca said.
3 minutes agoDialogueDel Dialogue Delaware
DeLuca: “citizens should have full disclosure from not only legislators but from all statewide elected officials who work at outside jobs..”
3 minutes agoDialogueDel Dialogue Delaware
DeLuca to propose a bill requiring legislators to file monthly income reports with the Public Integrity Commission & disclose time sheets.
3 minutes agoDialogueDel Dialogue Delaware
The News Journal does not yet have DeLuca’s time sheets. It appears his office turned them over to other reporters first.
4 minutes agoDialogueDel Dialogue Delaware
DeLuca will introduce legislation requiring lawmakers to disclose all income earned outside of the Legislature in public & private sector.
7 minutes ago
Here is a longer story by NJ’s Chad Livengood:
DeLuca also proposed legislation that would require all lawmakers and statewide elected officials to disclose all income earned in the public and private sector, when and if they had their pay docked for time missed for serving in the Legislature and documented time records.
Under DeLuca’s Senate Bill 4, the 62 members of the General Assembly and the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, auditor, treasurer and insurance commissioner would have to file financial disclosure reports on the 15th of each month with the Public Integrity Commission showing:
All income earned outside their elected office.
Disclosure of whether an official’s outside pay was reduced on days they were performing their duties or a written declaration that their pay was not cut on those days.
Documented time records showing the hours an official worked at an outside job on session days or other days while performing their official duties.
I don’t know about you but this feels a bit like a cop-out. DeLuca thinks people are picking on him so he wants all work records released. Plus, he played games with the NJ by letting all media outlets but them look at the records.
What do you think? Does this go far enough for transparency?
Tags: Anthony DeLuca, Delaware Senate
LOL. Sounds like Tony D is trying to wreck everybody’s sweet deal.
We must insist on the DOL card swipe information! Those are the critical documents. Without them, the leg hall records are useless.
Need date and time worked in both jobs and pay records.
DeLuca could have been persuaded by the DEM revolt led by the Progressive faction.
Also, this email was forwarded to me early yesterday:
From: Jerry Grant
Date: June 6, 2011 10:40:35 PM EDT
To: Erik Schramm
Cc: “Baumbach, Paul”
Subject: statement
Erik,
The 23rd District Democratic Committee unanimously adopted the
following statement at their regular meeting tonight:
The 23rd District Democratic Committee respectfully requests that all
Democratic state legislators who hold an additional state job release
proof of their work records to the appropriate authority, in order to
confirm that they are performing both jobs. We feel that this will
provide additional accountability and assurance to state taxpayers
that lawmakers are carrying out both their legislative and state
employee obligations.
Jerry Grant
Vice-Chair
23rd RD Democrats
Plus, Terry Schooley approached me in the House chamber yesterday to say she was unsettled to have heard that I had blogged that I wanted to see her time sheets for her University of Delaware job. (I had commented on several blogs). I told her that she shouldn’t take it personally but as my representative, I did want transparency on how she was spending her time collecting the two state paychecks.
Schooley first complained that other legislators had day jobs at DuPont, for instance, and no one was asking for their time. I had to remind her that the issue was about double dippers –those who are taking two publicly funded pay checks.
It turns out that Terry Schooley’s position at Kids Count at UD is ‘professional’ and she isn’t required to keep a time sheet. She is paid, not through the state, but through a foundation but admitted that her office overhead is purely paid for by the UD. She also said that she has to spend a great deal of time fundraising to pay for the salary of her staffer. Evidently, a foundation pays her salary and the costs of the materials produced from her office.
Bottom line: no time sheets will be forthcoming from Terry Schooley because she does not consider herself a double dipper. I told her that Chad Livengood said he didn’t even bother submitting FOIA to the UD because they refuse to honor FOIA requests. The old public-private higher ed. institution and all….Schooley is evidently inbedded in the private side. The UD insists that because they make employees like Terry turn over 10% of salary to the UD, for time spent in leg hall, the question of double dipping should be moot. Long-Hall is also paying back 10% of her salary to establish this….
Kudos to Livengood for staying on this issue, and to citizens who spoke up to insist on proper disclosure. When the people lead, the leaders will follow!
Good work on this Paul. I didn’t even have time to bring it to my committee.
Jason 330 wrote: “LOL. Sounds like Tony D is trying to wreck everybody’s sweet deal.”
I hope that you’re right. Talk about turning over some rocks.
Anything that exposes the Delaware Way is, IMHO, good. And this would REALLY expose the Delaware Way.
I think that one reason why so many legislators were PO’d at DeLuca was and is b/c they feared precisely this injection of sunlight into their sweetheart deals. We must keep hammering at this until it’s all exposed so that people can make informed decisions based upon what’s REALLY going on in Dover.
One has to wonder if this is a cynical attempt to cover his ass with a bill he won’t let out of committee.
The timesheets are not enough, because they’re presumably filled out by DeLuca and signed off on by the guy in DOL who’s got Tony’s back. That’s why the card swipes are essential. THERE IS ACTUALLY AN ACCURATE RECORD OF DELUCA’S COMINGS AND GOINGS. Ya gonna believe an easily-manipulated timesheet or the actual record?
If you go back to the last days of Richard Nixon, he released the ‘transcripts’ of what he claimed was on those inconvenient White House tapes. It was a vain attempt to get the investigation stopped there.
However, once the courts ordered the release of the tapes, which Nixon had fought tooth-and-nail, it turned out that the transcripts were phony and that the tapes proved that Nixon had been lying all along, and that he had indeed participated in a cover-up.
We’re not idiots, Tony. Release the card swipes. The truth shall set you free (or not).
If Schooley is not delivering time sheets, she must be salaried. How many hours is she actually working on fundraising? Is she using her position at Kids to get funds for the UofD, that pays her? Its time to unelect every legislator who holds a second job no matter where it is. If these legislators cant live on the State salaries, free health care, and all the perks that go along, plus working part time…get out. We have plenty of smart, brilliant people ready to take those jobs and work for the citizens not the corporate state.
I have a problem with expecting employees of private companies to release their records. If their employer is ok with what they are doing it is not the public’s business. And, what about legislators who own their own businesses? Are we going to expect them to publicize that information to their competitors?
Anon, get over yourself. You sound like every blowhard out there, all bluster. Basically, your contention is that we should only elect independently wealthy or unemployed people to office. If someone has a career, they have to quit to serve in office. How many employers do you think would go for their workers quitting when they get elected?
More than that, if we all followed anon right over the cliff, we’d be ruling out a lot of qualified people from even RUNNING for office because they’d have to give up the security of their job for the uncertainty of running every two years — and then being accused of treating their legislative office as a job and not public service (not ironically by the same people who say they shouldn’t hold a second job).
So anon, which is it: Is being a legislator a job or public service? You can’t have it both ways.
Could it be that he has had enough time to fabricate what looks like a viable accounting? I don’t think so. I don’t quite know what smoke and mirrors game he’s up to, but I feel pretty safe in remaining pessimistic about anything he might produce….
I wonder how Simpson will handle this – he meets with constituents, lobbyists, and anyone that will come to him in his “UD office”. That will be very interesting.
Hello-o-o-o. Terry Schooley is employed by Kids Count, NOT the University of Delaware. Her funding comes from places like the Pew Foundation, fer cryin’ out loud.
She may be the most ethical person in the Delaware General Assembly, as well as one of the most progressive. Wanna drive her away? Keep spouting the ill-informed drivel that Anon posted this morning.