A week ago the News Journal ran a front-page article on a confidential report on the state Auditor’s Office and the performance of Kathleen Davies, who was second-in-command to elected Auditor Tom Wagner. Davies apparently ruffled a lot of feathers in her six years on the job, enough so that people under her command clearly had it in for her.
The report cost more than $100,000 and, at least in the form acquired by the News Journal, wasn’t worth the time or money spent, as it found nothing beyond some chickenshit failure-to-follow-the-rules infractions. For example, she failed to use a state credit card for expenses, instead using her own and filing for reimbursement — actually a much better deal for the state. Ask Chip Flowers what happens when you give someone a state credit card. You can judge how limp-dicked this report was by the fact that Davies won her case against the state for her treatment, despite the report’s findings.
When someone handed a copy of the report to the News Journal, though, the paper played it as if they had performed an act of journalism, which is laughable. Only eight copies of this document are known to exist, and Wagner refused to produce one even under subpoena. So who gave their copy to the News Journal, and why?
Those questions were raised by Reps. John Kowalko and Kim Williams, who pointed out that releasing a confidential report could be a crime. The newspaper’s new executive editor, Tom Feeley, reacted with sanctimonious bullshit about “transparency,” proving he doesn’t understand the term. He’s also demonstrating that, like all News Journal executive editors, his lack of familiarity with the players prevents him from doing a decent job.
As Davies herself has pointed out, Wagner dragged out this process for almost two years, during which Davies was under suspension and would have forfeited her complaint about her treatment if she had talked about it. Now, with Davies threatening to foil the plans of Delaware’s Fake Democrats to install Republican-pretending-to-be-Democrat Kathy McGuiness to the position, suddenly the report appears.
This has happened before in Delaware politics. In 1996, an obscure right-wing outfit in Virginia released the divorce deposition in which Tom Carper’s ex-wife said under oath that he hit her. In typical News Journal fashion, that part of the story was ignored while editors sought to tie the release to Carper’s opponent, Janet Rzewnicki. When Valerie Helmbreck tracked down the connection — the Virginia outfit had gotten if from the ex-wife’s new husband — it completely failed to follow up on the wife-beating.
Here we have the exact opposite situation. There was no journalistic digging involved here — the report was handed to the newspaper, which did no further reporting other than asking for comment from Davies.
But the story here isn’t what’s in the report, it’s how the report — which Davies herself has never seen — found its way to the newspaper just in time for the primary election. I think we can all figure that out, though of course the News Journal can’t, for the simple reason that nobody who works there has any background or familiarity with the state of Delaware.
There are countless other stories bound up in this sorry episode. Why was Tom Wagner allowed to keep his job despite his inability to perform it? How did he come to designate Davies second-in-command? I was unaware that there were political appointees in the auditor’s office — people Davies says were doing political work on the clock, a bigger violation of state law than anything in the report they’re so breathless about. Who are these appointees, what are they doing there, and why are taxpayers paying for them?
All of those are worthier stories than the one that was printed, but they would require someone to do more than cut-and-paste the report and act sanctimonious about it afterward.
The biggest question of all, one that seems to point to the Department of Education: What did Davies find that scared the Delaware Way Caucus so badly they had to destroy her?
Don’t expect the News Journal to ask that anytime soon — or ever.