Skip to main content

Random thoughts about Delaware's 2014 budget

I really should do a coordinated piece on this, but times are full of lots of stuff, and so I offer just a few observations:

1.  Higher Education

You can really tell who owns the General Assembly here.  According to the proposed increases for next year:

UD will receive an increase of over $9 million--a 4% increase

DelTech will receive an increase of over $5 million--a 7.8% increase

and

DSU will receive an increase of about $0.9 million--a 2.8% increase

In other words, in both terms of total money appropriated and percentage increases, despite the most rapidly growing enrollment in the state, DSU will again be the stepchild of higher education in Delaware.

Four years ago the state appropriated about $38 million for DSU; this year's "increase" will bring DSU back up to just  $33.7 million.

From a comparative standpoint, DelTech's 2009 appropriation was about $73 million, and this year it will rake in over $74 million.

Again:  you can tell who really owns the General Assembly here.

2.  Safety and Homeland Security

The completely unnecessary Office of the Secretary of Homeland Security had a budget appropriation in 2012 of $8.3 million.  In 2013, when almost all other state budgets were shrinking, that appropriation leaped to $12.9 million, and next year they are slated to get $13.5 million.

Now remember, this office is above and out of the budget line of the Delaware State Police.

So what are we getting for our $13.5 million, aside from the privilege of having a hefty-salaried retired FBI bigshot sitting on his ass in Wilmington?

I don't think you'd believe it if I just quoted it, because you probably think the Office of the Secretary of Homeland Security actually has something to do with law enforcement.  The reality is that all it has to do with is ... $13.5 million in paper-shuffling.

Here's the screenshot:
You get this, right?

The performance measure for the Office of the Secretary of Homeland Security is evaluated on "the percentage of fiscal documents received, reviewed and processed within three days."

There's, uh, nothing in the entire freaking document about being evaluated on making Delaware safer, on conducting risk assessments, or anything like that.

Here's a thought:  instead of taking $13.5 million for plush offices and sending a retired FBI agent to conferences so he can pimp for the next FBI Directorship on the state dime, let's actually spend the money on ... homeland security.

Want to know how to make our schools safer?

Eliminate this office and return its oversight functions to the Delaware State Police.

Then take $13.5 million and have an actual safety audit of our public schools done and begin spending the money to upgrade their security.

Let's see:  over five years we would be able to commit over $75 million to improving the safety and security of our public schools without increasing taxes by a dime, and we could get rid of the ridiculous idea that our schools should compete for grants to make their students safer.

Later I'll do public education and a few other topics.  This is enough to chew on today ....

Comments

Scott G. said…
Oh come on Steve. You know how important those Radio Ads I hear every day on WDEL telling me how important it is to rat out anyone doing anything slightly out of the ordinary are. Those ads alone make the Delaware Dept. of HLS worth every penny we spend on them! ;)

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...