9/28/2012 As a public service and to boost government transparency, the Caesar Rodney website includes payroll data for every state government employee and all vendor transactions. While recently updating this information through June of 2011, CRI ran into a roadblock with regard to adding pension data for retired state workers. The general assembly has written a statute into the state code that requires all pension data on individuals to be kept confidential (29 Del C &8

The Caesar Rodney Institute’s analysis of the Universal Recycling bill, SB234 indicates tonnage diverted for the added recycled material will have a potential value of $0.8 million/yr. Costs to Delaware residents will be $28.6 million/yr. So, each $1 of benefit will cost Delawareans $38 in spending! DSWA landfills have an estimated remaining capacity of 56 million tons and an expected life of thirty years. Thirty years of diverted tonnage will add about 7 months to the expec

Regardless of what happens in coming months in the national economy, Delaware will avoid a double dip.

As shown in the chart below, a picture is often worth a thousand words. Since the year 2000, Federal debt has increased almost 200%, going from 57% of GDP to 105% of GDP (we now beat out Sudan!). Simultaneously, GDP rose just 60% and total private sector jobs fell. Do we really need more Federal debt spending to “help” the U.S. economy?

When I was a kid, my favorite Superman comics featured Bizzaro World, a place where everything was topsy-turvy and kryptonite was good for you. Today, you can find a real-life congressional version of Bizzaro World at the House Agriculture Committee, a place where deficit spending is rarely criticized and corporate welfare is stoutly defended. On Wednesday, the Republican committee chairman, Frank Lucas, successfully blocked a small but bipartisan effort to reduce agricultura

The Affordable Care Act was passed with the intent of insuring 700,000 uninsured and functionally cost-prohibitively uninsurable patients because of pre-existing conditions. By the end of 2012, 78,000 were insured. The AP reported last week over 100,000 were insured via the program at the end of February, a highly unlikely number. In any case, a majority of targeted patients remain uninsured, perhaps more. The ACA allocated $5 billion for the program to cover uninsu

The leading edge of the baby boomers hits age 65 this year and will contribute to a surge in Delawares senior population over the coming decade. The Delaware Population Consortium projects a 10% increase in the states population from 2010 to 2020 while the senior population jumps 41%. This surge in seniors has tremendous implications for consumer markets, financial services, the labor force, housing and government. Is Delaware beginning to prepare for the Gray Wave?

As evidenced by recently released data from the U.S. Department of Labor, Delaware is part of a nationwide carelessness in the administration of unemployment insurance benefits. Over the past twelve months Delaware has made an estimated overpayment of unemployment benefits of more then $12 million, an administrative error rate of 9.5%. The total overpayment in Delaware for the last three years is almost $43 million, for an error rate of 9.3%. Among all the states Delaware h

In 1994 the State of Delaware made a successful bet on legalized gambling. Legislation authorized three horse racing tracks (now racinos) to build casinos for slot machines, which the State designated as video lottery terminals due to constitutional restrictions. Operations began in 1995 and revenues from slots and numbers lotteries are now the states fourth largest source of revenue. Gambling revenue to the state represents a voluntary payment of taxes. Unlike income and bus

Given two very different decades of performance, how do we expect employment in Delaware to perform in the coming years?