More on the War on Women in NCCo County Council
The NJ picks up on our question about the NAACP bullying Councilwoman Lisa Diller and writes about the War on Women that Councilwoman Diller believes is being waged by Tom Gordon on the women in NCCo County Council. This is a good article by Adam Taylor, that adds some interesting history of NCCo folks flying off of the handle:
In January, county Pension Board member Dace Blaskovitz wrote Gordon and asked for an apology for Grimaldi’s “rude and unprofessional” conduct at a board meeting. Grimaldi apologized via email three days later.
In 2011, Street screamed at county Auditor Bob Wasserbach. Earlier this year, Smiley yelled at Grimaldi. Also this year, Hollins and Councilman Bob Weiner – ages 71 and 63, respectively – cursed at each other in a council hallway and talked about going to the garage to fight it out.
Diller yelled at no one in particular during a 2011 council meeting when she was frustrated about the financial condition of the county’s PAL Centers. In 2012, she raised her voice at Kim Hoffman, a white land-use attorney.
“We have some civility issues on the council,” Bullock said. “That’s how we handle our business sometimes.”
Smith and Nichols said the NAACP hasn’t received the meeting it requested to discuss the Diller-Pepukayi incident. Bullock said that meeting could take place soon, and he encouraged Diller to apologize to Pepukayi.
We’re all human, and flying off the handle at friends, family, co-workers for reasons real and not is something we have all done. NCCo Councilpeople are just as human and are routinely engaged in intense deliberations with pretty high stakes. Someone with more than one incident of yelling at people in Council is Councilman Jea Street:
(This one is from a few weeks ago, when Street lit into Penrose Hollins.)
(These two are from a couple of years back — when the PAL centers were being audited and Street was unhappy with the analysis that the centers just didn’t have the fiscal discipline that they should have. In an ironic twist, David Grimaldi joined the PAL Centers board and helped them fix a bunch of their fiscal problems.)
There’s also audio I am trying to put my hands on of Mr. Street screaming at NCCo staff person Carrie Sawyer Casey to where she had to run from the room.
And seriously — it isn’t so important that he is yelling at people (even though he is famously short-tempered), because for all I know he could have apologized profusely and bought these folks drinks afterwards. But if Jea Street (whose public style is Get Mad First) is calling Councilwoman Diller’s behavior Outrageous, one wonders whether the NAACP has been pushing for Street himself to take Anger Management and Diversity Training courses, or even threatening to watch his behavior so their members can do whatever. Because Mr. Street is a serial offender in the temper department and I can’t find campaigns to try demand apologies, cut him out of information loops, to spin up public pressure to force him into some submission.
But this isn’t about Jea Street. This is about the Boy’s Club Rules. And in the NCCo Boy’s Club, it is well within bounds for Councilman Jea Street and the rest get to show anger, be rude and disprespectful — but Councilwoman Diller is supposed to show shut up and know her place. David Grimadi runs around hitting and shoving people without having to publicly apologize or be subject to NAACP intimidation tactics, and other NCCo Councilpeople have also raised their voices when the going got tough, but the only person being targeted is Lisa Diller. This is also about the atmosphere that Council President Chris Bullock allows to persist. Because think about it — if Bullock had been in the lead in helping Councilwoman Kilpatrick to get her (rightful) briefing, none of the rest of this would have happened. And why Council President Bullock doesn’t think it is important to stand up for the rights of his branch of government is beyond me.
This also looks like the Boy’s Club Rules have invoked a bump in the road for the Pike Creek lawsuit that Councilwoman Kirkpatrick wanted the briefing for:
Pepukayi’s reasoning for not engaging in a legal strategy session with council – which prompted Diller’s anger in the first place – could impact the Pike Creek lawsuit. Pepukayi said the county, not the council, was his client in the case, and that’s why he said he couldn’t discuss legal strategy with council members. Those comments led the developers that want to build houses on the golf course to file a brief questioning Pepukayi’s argument that the council is not represented in the case. County attorneys responded in a brief saying the developer’s new filing is frivolous.
So Pepukayi’s argument to the Finance Committee (the one effectively disposed of by Diller, Kirkpatrick and Council Lawyer Dulin) that Council is not party to this lawsuit is now being used against him by the developer’s in this lawsuit. The filing claiming that this position is frivolous is admission that Pepukayi’s mansplaining to these ladies was, in fact, stupid mansplaining and they want the court to disregard that.
Lastly, this also looks like the Gordon Administration trying to isolate some parts of the NCCo Council who hang together (in the main) on some budget issues (especially forcing changes to this year’s budget) — including Cartier, Diller, Hollins, Kilpatrick, and Smiley. The two that have been targets so far are Diller and Kilpatrick — the women in the group.
I think that it is right that both Kilpatrick and Diller have constituencies that include a great many professional women — women who intuitively get the kind of targeting being done here and who are pretty unhappy seeing this happen in NCCo. So you wonder what it is that the Gordon folks think they are getting by trying to intimidate these two. Who clearly aren’t having any of it.
Tags: Featured, Lisa Diller, NCCo, Tom Gordon
All the yelling isn’t normal. It speaks to a distinct lack of effective leadership.
So, rumor has it Gordon and Bullock are planning to run together for Governor and Lieutenant Governor. Wonder how they plan on appealing to female voters?
Where is Nancy Willing to defend Gordon, Grimaldi & crew? She bashed the ever loving hell out of Taylor & claimed he was “spinning” the Grimaldi/Rockwood story. IMO, Taylor presented a neutral story & let the reader decide who was wrong.
And why in the hell is there a PAL center in Hockessin of all places?
Oh, that’s right…it’s Tom Gordon’s monument to Tom Gordon. Seriously. Visit the Hockessin PAL. Take a good look around the lobby & you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
Councilwoman Diller doesn’t have a prejudiced bone in her body and is one of the fairest people I know. Things must be pretty bad for her to lose her cool. I hope she continues to speak out and not cave in to all this pressure.
Councilwoman Diller has a Delaware Voice Column published yesterday in the NJ. It is reprinted here by permission of the author:
auntie dem, that’s the reason I got interested in this bit of business in the first place. Lisa Diller is a fairly even-keeled person who works hard at some fairness. The screaming harpy image being spun up for her in certain quarters didn’t square with that. And after listening to the audio, you can tell she’s incredibly frustrated by the “let me say any damn thing” explanation provided by Pepukayi on why Kirpatrick did not get her briefing. A bullshit explanation that came back to bite him in the ass.
Cassandra does a service in tracking down a good number of the uncivil moments….but she is missing quite a few from what I am told. She’s listed all the recent outbursts but those of George Smiley.
Wonder why that is?
Is it because nobody sends Smiley’s outbursts in to the reporter for a story? And if so, does that mean that Smiley is the reporters’ source for most of these stories…..hmmmmmmm.
When I was told about what Lisa Diller did to Bernard Pepukayi it was in the context of ‘this is happening all the time to our staff’. I thought it meant Diller was doing it all the time. But I was corrected the other day – Smiley is also on (digital) record being nasty with raised voice with Gordon’s team members Grimaldi, Prado, Guy and others. I have a feeling Sam Guy keeps a record of things like this so I’ll ask him for the source time and date for George doin’ the nasty in public.
For the record, I have never maintained that Diller’s crappy behavior was racist. She screams at people because she gets away with it. Like others on council are getting away with it. And it is against the Council’s own rules to behave like that.
It is not noted in the post above, but Bullock has, while Chairing meetings, cautioned Council members about civility.
Diller has gone into that high shrill gear in public meetings at least once a year since taking office. The first time she did, that I know about, was a tirade aimed at ME and my colleague Chuck Mulholland in the presence of her then aide Renee Bensley. She ended a meeting we were having in a room in the Newark library by screaming and throwing her notebooks across the room.
She had had ENOUGH she said. She didn’t want to hear any more about the flaws we were discussing in Chris Coons and Paul Clark’s recovery zone maps and their Workforce Housing Ordinance. Ask Renee. She was as shocked as we were. (Google the phrase – Lisa Diller recovery zone maps – to read more about it.)
So by now, this out of Diller is expected. It is expected from Jea Street. But never so horrible as what was heard on Sept. 10th. And it is up to the Committee Chair – Cartier – not Bullock in that case – to chastise the rude behavior.
All of council needs to rein in their crappy behavior.
For those who missed it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG4KvXBXl1E
The funny thing is, that what was rude was Pepukayi doing his mansplaining of why he didn’t need to do the briefing. If you offer up the stupid sometimes you get people who are angry that you think that you *are* that stupid. Nancy is likely accustomed to this kind of thing, by the fact that she thinks that county staff using a dumbass excuse to blow off a reasonable request by a councilmember is AOK. A dumbass excuse he is being jammed up by in court now.
I agree with Auntie Dem and Cassandra- about Councilperson Diller and her comportment. This situation has been blown way out of proportion to her sharp comments-and there has been a “double standard” from some her male counterpart actions and antics – and the public silence from too many from these proclivities. I also agree with Nancy – in the general sense of the public civil discourse – has become strained- at different levels of governance. Too often the megaphone with public office or appointed officials with social media- seems to require immediate responses- with little or no thinking attached to these pronouncements. Well- that is why we have elections-