Skip to main content

Governor Markell makes a good move: eliminating the Department of Finance

As first reported (at least the first time I saw it while traveling this week) at Delawareliberal, Governor Jack Markell has made the decision to eliminate the Department of Finance and consolidate necessary functions among other government offices.

This is a good move, a good sign, and a follow-through on a campaign promise that was badly needed to restore confidence following the ham-handed attempt at non-surgical salary cuts for all State employees.

I'm hoping that he will eventually get around to looking at the elimination of Homeland Security, folding its major functions into the State Police headquarters, but today I'm just happy to note that--unlike a lot of other politicians of both parties--Jack Markell seems to be trying to keep his commitments.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I'll post this anon, but in the interest of full disclosure, I work for DSHS. I think a case could be made that having a non-State Police entity in charge of the State Police isn't necessarily a bad thing. DSP has a pretty poor track record of lawsuits, etc against them in the past and it's possible that that situation could get worse if they (DSP) have no on but the governor to answer to.
But then again, I fully expect to be working for the Dept of the Technologically Inept (DTI) by this time next year :)
Anonymous said…
oops, he "eliminated" the Finance Department but kept all the people... and promoted Nancy Cooks son.

it's all pretend. it's "change" without a difference!
Anonymous said…
"...I'm just happy to note that--unlike a lot of other politicians of both parties--Jack Markell seems to be trying to keep his commitments."

There is a punchline to this, right?
Nancy Willing said…
Interesting commentary from the trenches, so to speak. Is DTI really that bad? Because it has gotten a front row seat in the analysis process

DTI and OMB were the constants in the teams that were developed in January for the Delaware Government Performance Review process. (see pdf at DE Way)
Anonymous said…
look at Me!!!
I'm moving the deck chairs!

Hope, Change and Profiles in Courage all rolled into one!

J. Markel
Anonymous said…
"Is DTI really that bad?"

Yes, too many chiefs. But they do have a difficult job. And they have some good people working for them. Let's see what Sills brings to the table

OMB= Office of Many Boneheads

(I used to work for them too) :)
Nancy Willing said…
Chris Coons also made a big stink over how he reduced a department and then went ahead to simply place the people under another department - so Community Services now also controls Community Governing.

Can't wait to see how staffers are just shuffled under this edict.

We do know that it was Finance where two legislative nepotist hires were directly responsible for the stolen money. Lofink and Henry (who never even got a slap on the wrist did he?).

Maybe this move has as much to do with improved oversight as anything else.

It's the Delaware Way never to embarass the 'right' people. Natch. So go through the backdoor.

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.) You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken). But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective: Let's run that by again: Elliot Jacobson says, This instance is not a case of a father bonding with h

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?