On Return Day, House members and staff wore ‘495’ stickers, celebrating the end of the short, but far-too-long, reign of Val Longhurst as Speaker. 495 days. Such humorous stickers are a staple of Return Day.
Undaunted, the House Democratic Caucus elected the remnants of the Mean Girls’ Club to lead them. Further into the abyss.
You would think that, at the least, the new/old leadership would learn from Val’s defeat, and resolve to create a more collegial atmosphere and to treat staff better than Speaker Pete and Our PAL Val did. It’s not like it would take much to improve on their Reign Of Terror.
You, however, would be incorrect. I can’t even believe that I’m about to write this, but it’s true.
Rather than create a less tense work environment, Mimi Minor-Brown and Keri Evelyn Harris have decided instead to require all House staff to sign, wait for it, Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA’s). You know, the agreements that the likes of Donald Trump and Vince McMahon require in order to hide their personal, business, and ethical misbehavior from the public. In this case, though, the NDA’s are designed to ensure that staff not disclose legal, personal or ethical misbehavior of public officials. How can that possibly be legal? For example, if a state employee knows that the Speaker is still stealing money from her other ‘jobs’, they couldn’t report it. An excerpt:
Former Sen. Ernie Lopez, R-Lewes; Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long; and House Majority Leader Rep. Melissa Minor-Brown, D-New Castle, all worked at the University of Delaware while serving as elected leaders. Minor-Brown also worked for Delaware Technical Community College, according to the report.
At Delaware Technical Community College, the audit states payroll was not properly documented, verified or reduced for hours officials spent serving in an elected position coincident with their workday.
“We also found that state Rep. Melissa Minor-Brown, an official employed part-time by the college received compensation for coincident time,” the audit reads.
Any revealing of sexual harassment or job-related harassment would not be permitted with the NDA’s. In fact, the sole purpose of NDA’s in this case would be to hide behavior of public officials from the public that employs them. Well, not the sole purpose. This policy will ensure that the best people employed by the Caucus will not work under these conditions. Nothing but shills need apply.
Need I remind you that these are Democratic officials who have been chosen for leadership positions? Not what one would envision from a party that claims to protect working people. This is what the House Democratic Caucus now officially stands for–anti-democratic NDA’s designed to stifle the flow of public information. All in service to a verified triple-dipper at taxpayers’ expense and a sell-out who went from snowing people like me with her ‘Queen For A Day’ sob story to someone who revels in retribution.
I don’t think this is legal. We have whistleblower statutes to protect state employees. Can the General Assembly exempt themselves from those laws? Even so, is this the message the Democratic Caucus wants to send to the public? That they can break the law, can mistreat staff w/o fear of being exposed? If I’m the Rethugs, I’m making an issue of this. There could well be more than enough D’s to join with them to kill this rule. I also call on the ACLU to challenge this policy and, yes, for AFSCME to seek to organize these ‘at-will’ employees.
Here’s the big picture. Criticize Val Longhurst all you want. But she was a keen judge of character when it came to choosing people every bit as amoral and vicious as she was for leadership.
You’d think that the Caucus would have recognized that doubling down on instilling fear was a loser’s game. As in Val Longhurst: Loser.
You would have been wrong. Calling it now: Mimi Minor-Brown and Keri Evelyn Harris will find out just what a career-ending mistake they’ve made. In the mean time, challengers to (at least) Stephanie Bolden, Franklin Cooke, Lumpy Carson, Bill Bush, and no doubt a few more, start your engines.