Anyone with a grain of sense would know this isn’t true. You don’t get “sent home to write a column” because a major story has a couple of minor errors in it. Indeed, I’ll be happy to go into the details of that story on this morning’s show, because Mr. Gordon is lucky he wasn’t indicted for some of the actions taken with county credit cards. Thank you for bringing it back up so I can further discredit Mr. Gordon for his brazen behavior.

Quite frankly, Liz, this story you are peddling is a lie, and if anyone sues anyone, it’s going to be me suing you and Mr. Gordon for continually spreading it. Mr. Gordon has been informed that this isn’t true and he keeps spreading it. You, of course, have no money, so you aren’t worth suing. Mr. Gordon is another story.

You are a vicious, petty person with anger-management issues, who personally attacks anyone who disagrees with you, and pretty much everyone in Delaware knows it. You and Tom Gordon deserve each other.

Fact is Al, Gordon caught you on your incorrect little story at the NJ, and you were sent home to write a column.

Now you can be as venomous as you wish. I know for a fact that you have tried to slime me, with your factless demonizations, trying to paint me as you do everyone who objects to your so called “vast knowledge”.

If I were Susan Gordon I would sue the shit out of you. You an a radio talk show host (meaning you can make up lies from whole cloth, and spread them as truth), an entertainer (and not really great at that), you are rarely prepared and deliver “fluff pieces” as news.

You use the public airways as your “public denounization chamber”, believing you are the “Star Chamber”, and your so called words of wisdom, and vast knowledge gives you the right to ruin people’s reputations, just cuz you feel like it.

I feel sorry for you Al, you really need to up the meds!

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http://courts.delaware.gov/opinions/(bnka0fbrx4l3haaefgpnu455)/download.aspx?ID=90020

I don’t think the question is IF Gordon left office w/ a surplus but, rather, the telling question is why is it so important to DENY that Coons left office w/ a surplus. What critically hangs on that denial?

When the Gordon administration reported a “surplus,” it wasn’t in per-year budgeting; they were reporting the amount of money the county had in the bank. For several years in the ’90s, the county brought in far more than it spent, allowing it to bank this extra cash. (By its own definition of a “surplus,” in fact, the Gordon administration entered office with a surplus of nearly $100 million, the amount that was supposed to be kept in a separate sewer fund, as I understand it). When it refers to the surplus it built up, the Gordon administration follows its own, non-standard-understanding usage of the term. Indeed, if you look back at the news stories of the period, you’ll see that the county never reported its budget in the same way other governments do.

The county began spending more than it took in two years before the end of Gordon’s second term. In his last year, expenditures exceeded revenues, IIRC, by something like $7 million. It used the money in the bank — the so-called surplus — to plug the gap. It’s still doing that.

Again, it’s been years since I looked at this stuff and I’ve cleaned out those files, but IIRC the turning point on this came right after Gordon’s re-election, when the county started hiring more people and gave a new round of contracts to the unions. Coons laid all this out when he got elected — unchecked, the county would now be spending about $35 million a year more than revenue, and that estimate was before the housing crash.

Gordon didn’t care, because after the end of his second term he was supposed to be preparing for a run for governor, and it was going to be fueled by the vote-gathering union machine he built up. You can see the residue of its effects in the two unions who have endorsed him.

I don’t for one second believe he has some secret plan for turning around the county’s finances. The first time around he benefited not just from a robust economy but political ties to a number of prominent Democrats in Dover, particularly Bob Gilligan. Because Gordon commanded fear and respect for his ability to get “volunteers” from the unions to help win elections, he got people like Gilligan to help engineer the state takeover of “nonperforming assets” that got a lot of expenses off the books, and the re-jiggered transfer tax formula that gave the counties an extra one-half percent of that revenue.

What Korn won his lawsuit on was the fact that there was nothing in county law allowing the buildup of so much cash in the bank. Before the last year of his administration, when Gordon scandalously gave away tens of millions of taxpayer dollars at no benefit to county taxpayers, the “surplus” in the bank amounted to more than 100% of the county’s annual budget. In other words, money that could have been given back to taxpayers in the form of reduced taxes was stockpiled for use by Gordon, and use it he did. One of the court findings that was underreported was the annual inclusion of something like $5 million in funds that could be used at the county executive’s discretion — “slush funds,” as Korn termed them. These were the funds that a News Journal story in the ’90s was referring to when it showed all sorts of purchases were being made outside the normal bidding process.

Try being more open-minded. He’s never going to tell you the straight truth, Dana, and he’s a very charming guy.

Your take is friendlier than mine on this. He does say that Gordon never left him w/ a surplus but w/ a deficit, although Chancery Court determined in the suit that Korn brought against the county that Gordon did indeed leave a surplus. That settles it as far as I’m concerned–a court of equity certified surplus.

Therefore, who is Coons blaming for HIS deficit problem? In today’s paper he blames Gordon in part. I don’t get it.

Consider this. Across the country Republicans are in disarray because their most conservative members spent the past 12 years trying to purge the party of moderates. This hit particularly hard in Delaware, where a majority of the upstate Republicans are socially moderate. Now that the country is turning away from the divisive culture wars, the GOP is screwed because they don’t have other issues.

For the local expression of this schism, look no further than Mike Protack. He started out as a social conservative, and though he’s added layers of camouflage over the years, it still shows through sometimes — witness his blue-nosed swipe at Bill Lee for bar-hopping. Delaware’s GOP has never been dominated by social conservatives (indeed, the national party never was, either, which is why it’s willing to look the other way at all the closeted gay Republicans in Washington), and it doesn’t want Protack to win because it would make the party even less able to compete.

The GOP’s problem is that the conservative takeover of the party has led to a situation where you practically have to take a loyalty oath to get in. You can’t be uncommitted on Roe v. Wade, you must oppose it. You can’t be of the opinion that the government sometimes needs to raise cash through taxes; you must oppose that. And on and on it goes, through a gauntlet of issues that would have any rational person saying, “Who needs this much grief to join a party that’s outnumbered 2 to 1 in the first place?”

This is about what people are willing to overlook. You interviewed him for six hours. Great. But how much time has elapsed? It was years before I found out some of the things Gordon told me were lies. And, of course, he has spread lies directly about me — the one repeated over at DWA is just the latest iteration of one he has spread for years. That I find quite difficult to forgive.

I also find difficult to forgive the fact that Tom Gordon has never even accepted responsibility, let alone blame, for any of his actions. It’s always someone else’s fault. For all his shortcomings, Coons at least takes responsibility for what he’s done, without justifying it by saying “Everyone before me did the same thing” or “Everyone’s picking on me.”

And by the way, the UDC is not the unalloyed force for good you seem to believe it is. It is an incumbent protection plan — by never allowing council to vote against a project that makes it through land use, all you have to do is rig up the land-use department and presto! Your project cannot be stopped. Yes, it removes the expense of lawsuits — but those were often the only way of delaying or killing projects that met the rules but were unpopular with the neighbors.

The greed of Saul Ewing is a slime that seems to be the joyful beverage of county government from executive to council. We have a problem here folks and your pocketbook and your quality of life is yours to lose.

I interrogated Gordon for six hours over three meetings before endorsing him for executive. Juxtaposing his background in providing the UDC and growth-control against their total reversal of the last four years left the equation in favor of dumping Coons and Clark for Gordon and Dunn. It’s the math not the personalities.