First, go look at WDEL’s story on this. The story as currently released alleges that an employee of the county (and husband of Bethany Hall-Long) took confidential records of low-income housing residents in order to run his own personal phone bank for his wife.
A confidential source implicated Hall-Long’s husband, Dana Long, in allegedly using his position as a Section 8 housing property inspector–a contract position within New Castle County government–to lobby for his wife’s state Senate re-election bid.
A confidential source told WDEL that Long took the county’s protected contact list of low-income housing residents and cold-called them–on his own time–urging residents in his district to vote for his wife when she faced Republican John Marino in her 2014 re-election bid.
Long’s contract position involves investigating whether residents of subsidized housing are in compliance. Some residents apparently felt intimidated by Long’s phone calls, with one even lodging a formal complaint with the county. The source said Long admitted to taking the list, and that Long’s actions could potentially hamper the county’s ability to administer U.S. Housing and Urban Development programs.
And Tom Gordon’s reaction to hearing about this abuse from a county employee:
New Castle County Executive Tom Gordon, who’s also running for re-election, found out about the alleged abuse of power four to eight months after the November 2014 election and didn’t fire Dana Long. In recorded conversations exclusively obtained by WDEL, Gordon is heard admitting Long should be fired, but his wife is “too valuable.”
“I don’t want him fired, that’ll cost us $12 million–(Bethany Hall-Long’s) one of the ones I was counting on,” said Gordon. “We’ve got to find a way around that…here’s the problem, if you’re going to fire someone you do it when it happens, you don’t wait a f—— year.”
When it looks like WDEL was going with this story based on the recording they got, they started with the threats:
“If the alleged recordings are, in fact as you say they are, being a conversation between two county employees and the content is about a county employee…the content would be privileged as a personnel matter,” Timothy Mullaney Sr., New Castle County chief administrative officer threatened through a spokeswoman. “(WDEL) have been put on notice that if you knowingly release privileged protected material you could be liable for the breach of confidentiality of the personnel matter, which could result in legal action.”
I’m not a lawyer or an HR person, but this doesn’t seem to be a personnel matter when all you are doing is covering up for this misbehavior. Still, Mr. Long was in trouble over his wife’s campaign previously, having been caught stealing signs (and how did he keep his county job after that, really?).
Tom Gordon is failing in his duty to the county here. He shouldn’t be covering up this kind of misbehavior with county resources, no matter the cost. Because now people are now confirmed in thinking of his administration as an utterly corrupt one and BHL gets painted with that same brush. And if BHL is OK with her husband cutting these corners on her behalf, she shouldn’t be Lt. Governor, either.