Kathleen McGuiness
Even though McGuiness is only nominally a Democrat, this kind of thing reflects badly on every Democrat. There is no way this should be allowed to continue and it shouldn’t just disappear without a public rebuke from the Governor.
h/t Nancy Willing
Took me a moment to figure what the affront was (there are so many to choose from). It’s putting her own name on the seal, which is supposed to just have the name of the office. Reminds me of Chip Flowers going around calling the Office of the Treasurer the “Treasury.”
Craven ambitious mediocrities are easy marks as puppets for oligarchs. It’s true!
She’s fucking insufferable.
I don’t see anything wrong with this. I mean she is the Auditor of Accounts so there’s nothing disrespectful about her having her name on the seal because she does reflect the office
There was a nice, long discussion on my facebook about this that is still ongoing. J Jacob Carter laid out the citation of where this is in fact ILLEGAL and then comments on the slender margin of work she’s done. What people are mostly noting is how active she is outside of her office, running up and down the state like a crazy person and also evidently ” She’s been spamming the hell out of state workers with stupid emails the last few weeks. Almost like she’s using state email as an arm of her eventual gubernatorial campaign. Kathy McGuiness”
From Carter copied below –
J Jacob Carter Section b seems pretty straight forward about restrictions of the use of the seal, and self advertisement seems to clearly be a violation.
Ҥ 2306 Use of Great Seal and Privy Seal; restrictions; reproduction of seals and other insignia subject to approval; penalties.
(a) The Secretary of State as the keeper of the Great Seal and the Privy Seal shall restrict the use of the Great Seal and the Privy Seal to documents, records, publications and other business transactions of the State.
(b) The seals, coat of arms, state flag, emblems and other insignia of this State may be used, reproduced or published with the written consent of the Secretary of State, provided that use is restricted to educational uses such as encyclopedias, reference books, historical publications or similar uses which do not involve advertising or other means of personal gain or which abrogate the rights of the citizenry of the State.
(c) Whoever violates or fails to comply with this section shall be fined not less than $100 nor more than $250.
(d) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any act enacted prior to April 17, 1961, authorizing the Governor, the State Treasurer and the Secretary of State to act as issuing officers in issuing bonds of this State or in any other law, the Secretary of State may, in executing said bonds on behalf of the State, cause a facsimile of the Great Seal of the State to be engraved or printed thereon and, in any such case, it shall not be necessary to affix to or impress on said bonds the Great Seal of the State.”
https://delcode.delaware.gov/title29/c023/index.shtml#2306
What I find incredible is how few audits have been performed by her office. Maybe she needs to work harder on performing her job instead of wasting time with self promotion. https://auditor.delaware.gov/reports/
McGuiness showed up off agenda at the recent RD16 DEM Committee meeting which was widely advertised as a special panel discussion on Civics 101. The chair kindly let her do her thing taking up the first ten minutes of the meeting with an intern in tow, camera in hand. Photo op city. We were all squirming in our seats. Sad.
And for the context, I had spotted the image on the RD 20 page
and so asked her there to remove it. She soon after put it up on Flip Delaware and ignored me altogether. https://www.facebook.com/groups/RD20DelDems/permalink/2413873085360843/
I just wrote this comment for Kathy McGuiness to explain herself on using a state seal in her own image, so to speak:
Nancy Willing > Kathy McGuiness: I have never in my life seen an elected official take possession of a state seal and plaster their name on it. Is that appropriate? The seal is a mark of the office not the office holder. Did you research whether or not this is even legal to do? I would say it is extremely inappropriate and I sincerely hope you reconsider the image and remove it.
She still has it on her State Auditor Facebook page. Along with pics from taking all her employees out for paintball. You voted for it Delaware!
We are so blessed that she insisted on serving the public, even after the public made it clear it didn’t want her kind of “service.”
Here it has ended, one would think. Secy of State Bullock has spoken.
https://www.wdel.com/news/sec-of-state-asks-delaware-auditor-to-refrain-from-using/article_074914a0-d8b9-11e9-9750-dfabc575a8fb.html
Has any other statewide official ever had to have a law passed telling him/her to do his/her job? Has any other statewide official ever had a Sec of State tell them to knock off the bullshit?
Just about the only useful thing to come out of the office since she’s been there is a report that was commissioned where a consulting firm did a findlaw search on the Delaware state code to see all the audits that the office is required to conduct by statute. It will come as no surprise that many of them are not being done. There was only one legitimate reason to vote for her; that she would use her connections in Leg Hall to restore funding to the office, but the AOA funding was reduced in this last budget.