The importance of sentencing reform to Delaware.

State Senator Colin Bonini has created a power point presentation that highlights Delawares Bad Habit....over spending. We have posted Senator Boninis presentation for visitors to view.

The individuals who gathered in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776 to declare the independence of the original thirteen Colonies from England did so at great peril because they were, as a group, among the wealthiest and better educated citizens with the most to lose if their efforts failed.

This piece from the website of Hillsdale College is a clear statement of what is wrong with the U.S. and DE economies!

Caesar Rodneys Transparent Delaware website has been updated to include the state of Delawares FY 2014 vendor payments of $4.7 billion encompassing almost 474,000 individual transactions. The state is a major player in Delawares economy with vendor payments that amount to nearly 10% of private industry output. Transparent Delaware now contains over 8 million records. The state vendor data covers 11 years of transactions. The sophisticated website software allows the annual ve

The cost of healthcare in Delaware is again rising rapidly.  It is looming as a major budgetary issue for the State of Delaware current employees and pensioners. Delaware's Medicaid budget is increasingly strained. There is a steady flow of articles in the News Journal about the rising cost of health insurance, the rising cost of pharmaceuticals, and the rapid rise in both co-pays and deductibles for patients. There are, however, a few elements in play that have been overlook

Any discussion of job creation in Delaware must start with the recognition of the existence of the two distinct societies in Delaware: persons with limited education (a high school degree or less) and persons with ample education (a college degree or more).   The limited education folks are being hammered by the current economy while the ample education crowd barely knows there has been a recession. The ample education crowd dominates policy decision making and that is to the

The most recent benchmarked data does little to evidence that state and local government is recognizing the true impact of the recent recession. As shown in the chart below, as private sector employment in the nation and the Delaware region dropped from 2007 through 2009, state and local government employment continued to grow.   While total private jobs in the U.S. fell 4.2%, state and local government jobs across the nation rose 1.3% (and Federal government jobs jumped 3.4%

The Tax Foundation has just released its 2012 Facts and Figures on state finances. The results are below in order of Delaware’s ranking among all the states. Delaware ranks 9 th highest in tax collections per capita and 8 th highest in debt per capita. The high ranking in tax collections is not a disaster as Delaware “exports” much of its tax burden through the corporate franchise tax and lottery tax (note that in lottery tax revenue per capita Delaware is the “first” state

The Caesar Rodney Institute has updated its Transparent Delaware website with state payroll and vendor data through 2010. A quick glance at the data shows that there will be a great deal to consider. As a first pass, CRI looked at “overtime” pay and “other” pay in the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services in 2010. (“Other” pay includes more than 100 categories, the most important of which are holiday pay, shift differentials, call back pay, and sick day buyouts.)