DL Open Thread: Friday, July 12, 2024
Karl Baker Deconstructs The Bond Bill. It’s not pretty:
Signed into law June 30 by Gov. John Carney, Delaware’s billion-dollar bond bill is sending tens of millions of dollars to downtown Wilmington through a litany of curious appropriations, some buried deep within the epilogue section of the omnibus spending legislation.
There’s more than $18 million to renovate an office building the state purchased in January from Alpha Technologies.
There’s $10 million more for a renovation of a building within the expansive and largely vacant Bracebridge complex, planned as a future home of Widener University’s law school, and other college’s operations.
And, there are unspecified millions of dollars more to fund the pharmaceutical company Incyte’s move into still another of the Bracebridge complex’s office buildings.
The Incyte money adds to $14.8 million that Delaware’s economic development office awarded the company in May for its long-planned relocation of its Pennsylvania satellite office into Wilmington.
Officials from Carney’s administration did not respond to emailed questions for this story. (They never do.)
Despite the significance of it all, state lawmakers did not reveal details about the bond bill’s curious Wilmington appropriations in a celebratory press release issued last week.
Oh, man, I’m pushing fair use. There are so many more hinky appropriations that Baker has flagged. If you want to know about the Delaware Way, you need to read this article. Oh, lest you haven’t figured it out, the Delaware Way has become so sophisticated in that the Bond Bill is designed specifically to prevent people from figuring out all the dirty deals snuck into it. Without the likes of Karl Baker and Cris Barrish, we’d never know about them.
Might have to drop Daily Kos from my list of places I scour every day for items for the Open Thread. Much like they did in 2016, where they circled the wagons around Hillary, they’re doing the same now for Biden. Two headlines from today’s edition: “Biden Delivers Strong Insightful Performance In Closely-Watched Press Conference”, and “Wanting Biden To Step Out Is No Longer About Concern Over His Health, It’s Anti-Democratic”.
Leaving the Democratic Party in, well, let’s let the Neville Brothers set the scene:
There wasn’t a better live band in America in the mid-eighties to the early-nineties than the Neville Brothers. But, I digress.
Nike Big-Foots Promises To Reduce Carbon Footprint:
Eight years ago, the world’s largest sports apparel brand made a bold commitment. Nike was embarking on what it called a moonshot: doubling its business while halving its impact on the warming planet.
To get there, then-CEO Mark Parker said the Oregon-based company’s innovations in environmental sustainability would become a “powerful engine for growth,” a catalyst capable of changing industries. The company’s chief sustainability officer at the time, Hannah Jones, said achieving the goal would take “innovation on a scale we’ve never seen before.”
Nike’s Sustainable Innovation team embodied the commitment. It looked for environmentally friendly new materials, like leather made from kelp and foams made from plants, that could replace some of the hundreds of millions of pounds of rubber, leather and cotton used in traditional Nike products. It assisted in testing and refining the foam in the new Pegasus 41 that Nike says cut the carbon footprint of the shoe’s midsole by at least 43%.
So it came as a surprise one Sunday night in December when the dozen or so people on the team got summoned to a mandatory meeting the next morning. In a Zoom call before sunrise, they learned why. The team was being eliminated. The vice president who ran the team was gone. The call lasted less than 10 minutes.
It was the first in a series of deep cuts that one former Nike employee called “the sustainability bloodbath.”
Rethug Voter Suppression Continues Apace:
Tennessee’s top election official asked more than 14,000 registered voters to prove their citizenship in a vaguely worded letter last month in what voting and immigrant groups say is an attempt to intimidate voters.
The office of the Tennessee secretary of state, Tre Hargett, a Republican, sent the letter to 14,375 voters on 13 June, weeks before early voting was to begin for the state’s August primary. “Our office has received information that appears to indicate that your voter information matches with an individual who may not have been a United States citizen at the time of obtaining a Tennessee license or ID card,” the letter says.
It goes on to remind the recipient that illegal voting is a felony in Tennessee punishable with up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine. It requests that any person who received the letter who is a citizen provide proof, such as a US passport, birth certificate, naturalization papers, or other document.
Jeff Preptit, a staff attorney with the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said his organization had heard from “countless voters” who were concerned about the letter.
“It is all new Americans who have received this letter,” he said. “It’s had the very distinct effect … of not only just confusing people, but causing fear, intimidating them, and making them feel as if they have done something criminally wrong for exercising their constitutional rights for registering to vote.
“I think that this is a classic example of targeting a constitutional classification of individuals to discourage them from exercising their constitutional right to vote,” he added.
A feature, not a bug.
If I haven’t pissed anybody off with this Open Thread, just wait until I unveil (unleash?) the final Delaware Political Weekly of the season in just a short while.
What do you want to talk about?
Saw the Nevilles at the Stone Balloon in the late ’80s. There were barely a hundred people in attendance. My wife and I danced to “Tell It Like It Is” with Aaron singing directly above us. We went on to see them a dozen times in and out of New Orleans and you’re right, always a great show.
Saw ’em at the Chestnut Cabaret. One of the best concerts ever!
I dropped down to NOLA in November to participate in a second line for WWOZ. I got to meet Cyril and Charmaine (I reported back to my family that I got to hug 2 Nevilles that day) 🙂
$50 million tucked away in bond bill for realestate repair or development? Didn’t Corporate Carney get campaign contributions from developers?
No wonder he doesn’t want an inspector General?
Isn’t he the guy that believes corporations are public private partners? Isn’t Carney the one that believes “YOU HAVE TO THREAD THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE?” $50 million is a lot more than threading an eye or any type of partnership? It’s not in an open process of governmental function?
It is real sleazy way of political back scratching looks like to me? Also interference in the pension process when one has the most government pensions in state government is a conflict? Just asking. Yes an inspector General isn’t welcome in the first state?
The Carney Administration will go down as one of the most corrupt administrations in Delaware history. He has created taxpayer funded PAC’s to benefit his campaign for Mayor with the Prosperity Partnership, and the Bond Bill corporate giveaways. He has spent his entire eight years as governor orchestrating Chamber of Commerce and Fortune 500 corporate welfare payments while deliberately failing to fund State worker pay and benefit packages. The entire General Assembly has contributed to this willful abuse of taxpayer funds by turning a blind eye to the obvious. Many of the General Assembly members have actively and deliberately ignored this thievery to trade for local projects/murals in their district to “impress” their constituents. I spent most of my sixteen years in office trying to expose this corporate corruption but save for a few individuals, no one either cared or gave a shit about the taxpayers. This has been a “Bi-Partisan” willingness to empty the taxpayers wallets. The “Grant-in-Aid program is another fertile field being harvested by special interests. Creation of an independent Office of Inspector General would be the first logical step to investigate this “Delaware Way” criminal enterprise aided and abetted by Secretary of State Bullock and Secretary of Finance Geisenberger in criminal conspiracy with Wilmington’s Mayor to be John Carney.
Rep. (retired) John Kowalko
And yet, not a negative word passes your lips, or your desktop, concerning Carney’s co-pilot in corruption, Bethany Hall-Long.
Why, John? Can you at least assure us that neither you, your wife, or her day care business have benefited from BHL’s largess?
Or is your outrage over ethical misbehavior merely selective?
Neither I nor my wife nor my wife’s former daycare business ever benefited in any way shape or form from Carney or Hall-Long. Not that it’s any of your business you pretentious ass. John Kowalko
Your calling someone a ‘pretentious ass’ is like Trump calling someone corrupt.
My “outrage” over ethical misbehavior has been consistent and honest for more than a decade of public and honest service. Certainly unlike your unhealthy obsession with BHL, that seems to manifest itself with a delusional regurgitation of hate spewing rumor mongering. Yes! “pretentious” suits you to a T. I also directly answered your question about benefiting from others, so I guess you’ll use your censorship powers to remove that frank and “honest” post.
I, of course, haven’t. And you HAVEN’T answered why, despite your purported moral rectitude, you have said nothing about someone who has committed admitted campaign violations, has refused to even release the ‘audit’ she claims has cleared her, and has screwed up the distribution and accountability of millions in opioid funding. You’ll note that my ‘unhealthy’ obsession is shared by the best reporters operating today. Or, as you call it, ‘hate-spewing rumor mongering’. I call it great investigative reporting with, what’s the word I’m looking for, ‘facts’.
Yet you remain curiously incurious. Selective moral outrage. Your specialty.
BTW, John, I’m heading out to Chicago for the weekend, giving you plenty of time to explain why BHL passes ethical muster in your eyes.
Kos stands firm, but Biden’s lost George Clooney and Pod Save America. For those who don’t know, Pod Save America is run by former Obama aides—Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor—making it the ultimate DC insider/centrist/DNC podcast, conceivable. I mean, unless and until Hillary Clinton starts one with Donna Brazile and Chris Coons.
FYI,
The latest from the Delaware Coalition for Open Government on the Unemployment Insurance theft coverup:
Embezzlement from Delaware Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund
The Delaware Coalition for Open Government – a nonprofit organization that promotes transparency and accountability in government – believes that it’s about time some elected and appointed Delaware officials provide forthright answers about the embezzlement problem at the Department of Labor’s Division of Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund.
“Transparency” and “trust” are the operative words here: the citizens of Delaware have the right to know how, and how well, state and federal funds are managed by our state offices and agencies in order to have full confidence and trust in our state government.
We need more transparency because things don’t add up.
Here’s a timeline of the embezzlement:
1. January 2023: Embezzlement of $181,000 in state and federal funds occurred at the Division of Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund.
2. March 2023: The embezzlement was discovered by a Department of Labor employee.
3. April 2023: The Department of Labor reported the embezzlement to a few state offices and to the US Department of Labor’s Inspector General.
4. August 2023: Law enforcement concluded its investigation.
5. March 2024: The Division of Accounting and the Office of the Auditor of Accounts had yet to mention the embezzlement either in their 2024 written reports (published on the Office of the Auditor of Accounts website) or as a separate item, as required by the Delaware Code.
6. May 6, 2024: For more than a year, facts of the embezzlement had been kept under wraps by the Department of Labor, the Department of Finance, and the Office of the Auditor of Accounts. But when a whistleblower came forward, the embezzlement was disclosed in a May 6 WHYY news article, the first time the public and the entirety of the General Assembly learned about the crime.
7. May 29, 2024: The Delaware Coalition for Open Government requested an investigation by the General Assembly.
8. May 31, 2024: The Republican Senate Caucus called for an investigation.
9. June 4, 2024: a letter to the General Assembly, signed by the State Auditor, stated the news media had caused “misunderstandings amongst the Delaware public.”
10. June 4, 2024: A letter to the leadership of the General Assembly, signed by the Secretaries of Labor and Finance, pointed fingers at the news media for causing “confusion” by “conflating” the outside auditor’s inability to report “appropriate audit evidence” (because of deficient internal controls in the Division of Unemployment Insurance) with the failure to report a crime: the embezzlement of $181,000.
11. June 5, 2024: The Republican House Caucus called for an investigation.
12. June 24, 2024: The Civic League for New Castle County requested an investigation by the Public Integrity Commission.
The only “misunderstanding” and “confusion” seems to be on the part of state officials who don’t seem to get the point. The news media, the members of the General Assembly, and the public clearly do understand the difference between written reports about the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund’s deficient accounting practices and our not having been informed about embezzlement of state and federal funds.
Yes, embezzlement is a sensitive matter. Yes, time was needed for law enforcement to mount and complete an investigation. Yes, it was important to try to recoup the stolen funds. And yes, it is important to institute proper procedures to get on top of the poor internal controls and lack of proper accounting in the Division of Unemployment Insurance.
But regardless of the timeline, the actions taken, and recent calls for further investigation, two questions remain unanswered:
Was it merely coincidental that, for more than a year after the theft was known, state officials in three separate offices – Labor, Finance, and Accounting – failed to specifically report the embezzlement of $181,000 to the General Assembly and to the public?
Why would state officials ignore the Delaware Code, which requires the disclosure of illegal activity?
The Secretaries of Labor and Finance (appointed by and directly reporting to the Governor), and the State Auditor (elected to serve the people of Delaware) each swear or affirm the Oath of Office to act in the public interest. Yet, their failure to report the theft of funds, especially after law enforcement ended its investigation in August 2023, does not enhance the public’s confidence or trust in our state government.
With numerous calls for investigation, it seems that failure to report the embezzlement was a big mistake.
It’s time for a full accounting by all concerned, including the Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Finance, the State Auditor, as well as the Governor, to provide a clear explanation and full disclosure of why an illegal act was not reported to all of our state legislators and to the public for more than a year. The citizens of Delaware deserve no less.
Amen. That is a great statement.