The state will award $2.4 million and local officials will provide a ten year property tax break for Johnson Controls to build a second manufacturing and distribution facility in Middletown, Delaware. Is this simply corporate welfare? Well, yes and no. On one hand, giving handouts to Johnson Controls appears to be like making donations to Bill Gates. In the most recent fiscal year Johnson Controls had total sales of $34 billion from 1,300 locations in 63 countries and 142,0

10/25/2012 The core argument upon which the health care political campaigns rest is based on mis-information, emotion, jealousy, greed, fear and empty promises. It is a perfect political issue. One side professes to provide free health care for all, forever with no cost to the user (unless they are wealthy and will foot the bill). The other warns of the danger of socialism, elimination of the doctor patient relationship, destruction of the free market and an additional 16 %

Have you ever wondered which state employee receives the most compensation? (Orlando George with $454,230 in 2010…more than two and a half times what the Governor is paid. George has been paid more than $1.6 million over the past four years.) What about use of overtime and other pay by state employees? (A staff person in Health and Social Services had a salary of $58,000 in 2010 and earned an additional $132,000 in overtime and other pay.) Are you surprised that the Universit

There is a lot of misunderstanding around the recent Ebola outbreak. There is reason to feel safe from the disease based upon its prevalence or density in our population. There is also good reason to be concerned about the disease and act proactively, due to the extremely high death rate associated with the Ebola virus. It kills approximately 70% of those infected and is nearly impossible to treat large populations of people. In these cases of historically dangerous epidemics

As the surcharge for the 30 megawatt Bloom Project with Delmarva Power kicks in at over three times the expected cost to consumers questions persist about how this project got through the system. It is really a story of how rules were bent for a risky start up business that promised a lot of jobs in return for a very large financial guarantee. As Director of the Caesar Rodney Institute’s Center for Energy Competitiveness I regularly work with the legislature an

9/20/2012 The on-going analysis of the Transparent Delaware data on state payroll continues to raise puzzling results. For this round, CRI compared the total compensation of state employees in 2008 and 2010 and found that some state employees are treated far more generously than others with regard to supplemental pay. For each individual employee, the state records the annual salary, overtime pay and “other” pay. Together, overtime pay and “other” pay are considered supp

The court decision giving victory to the citizens of Delaware over the power hungry bureaucrats at DnRec

The national base realignment and closure program (BRAC) is transforming the Aberdeen Proving Ground into a major center for high tech research and development. Employment at Aberdeen will hit about 22,000 by late 2011. The bulk of these employees will be civilians in occupations such as computer science, IT, engineering, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Will Delaware benefit from the Aberdeen explosion? The BRAC effect Will the tremendous expansion at the Aberdeen Provin

It was very helpful to receive the comments in the News Journal of Delaware OMB director, Ann S. Visalli, regarding the unfunded retiree benefits of government employees. My response follows. First, Ms. Visalli is correct that the state’s pension fund is 94% funded. The data that the Pew Foundation had at the time of their analysis was 92%. So that is positive change. Based upon the Pew analysis, however, that leaves a dollar amount of unfunded pension obligations ranging f

The passage of New Castle County’s 1998 Uniform Development Code (UDC) swiftly halted—and continues to harm-- economic growth and development. Within just a few years employment in the County had flat-lined, more people were moving out of NCC than were moving in, residential permits shrunk while shifting to southern Delaware and NCC’s incorporated areas, and transfer payments outstripped wages as the prime source of personal income. New Castle County now ranks last in contrib