T-Gor announces “No More Pam Scotts Rule”
The NJ reports…
New Castle County Executive Tom Gordon will announce “a comprehensive ethics reform package” today that he said has the sharpest focus to regain control over the government’s land-use process.
Top county officials would have to disclose more information about their and their families’ outside businesses interests, vendors would have to disclose campaign contributions and private attorneys who help author legislation would have to be identified.
I mean, yeah..but.. It wasn’t like Paul Clark’s relationship WITH HIS WIFE was undisclosed, was it? It wasn’t as if HIS WIFE’S CLIENTS were a mystery to anyone.
I’m looking for the “No more Sherry Freeberrys Rule” but I’m guessing that one isn’t coming.
It’s brilliant. He is now the reform politician, cleaning up the mess…
Politics is quite a funny world.
Jason’s point is quite right though — all of this sunshine doesn’t mean much unless someone is willing to act on the obvious conflicts of interest. All too often, ethics reform means we have all kinds of disclosure but elected officials and people who want something from them find that if they can live in the light, there is little reason to stop business as usual.
Seriously, all of the “politicians/players” playing in this sandbox should have been covered over by the cat and we all know that. It is only when one of them gets sand kicked in their face that they tattle. I for one do not care who tattles — I just want the truth!
Wrong Williams writes a blog post in defense of his Hunter’s Den pal Paul Clark:
Ron Williams was fired from the News Journal what, two years ago now? He was regularly pilloried for drinking too much and haunting the Hunter’s Den during the day. Paul Clark was known to have his ear and to be a regular bar-mate of Ron’s.
A friend told me a few weeks ago that Paul Clark is still hanging out during the day with Ron at the Hunter’s Den.
So it was amusing to come across Ron Williams resurfacing with this editorializing I found today on Town Square blog.
With a nod to his friend, Mr. Clark.
http://townsquaredelaware.com/2013/02/19/rons-roundup-defiant-texters-and-county-muckrakers/
WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR?
I like to think I know a little something about newspaper reporting and editing, have done both for 42 years in Delaware and New Jersey. Jersey is not among the heavy weights in ethical and legal politics. The first three Jersey secretaries of state when I worked there were indicted for varvious nefarious deeds.
One of the papers I worked for in Trenton was the same as News Journal editor David Ledford tried for a while.
But I can’t figure out what the Journal reporters are trying to prove with all their ink on Pam Scott, the real estate attorney wife of former county executive Paul Clark. Several prominent attorneys agreed in the paper’s latest fumbling attempt last Sunday to do whatever it is it’s trying to do to Scott. They don’t see anything illegal or odd in her real estate handling of the now famous Greenville Center-Barley Mill development.
Maybe I’m just missing something.
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BYW – Clark was supposed to report Scott’s land use activity above $1,000.00 per year and list her clients.
Of the 7 years he was in office he only entered her name once and even then didn’t enter the names of her clients as the ethics code dictates. The Ethics Commission admitted that they didn’t check the financial disclosure forms. Some of the clean up should go to making sure the Ethics Commission is doing its job too.
More incriminating “un”deleted emails are soon going to be posted on my blog and on the county’s new open government web page. Then Ron and Paul and Pam might have more to worry about and less to crow about.
Ron Williams was not fired. He was laid off in the Gannett bloodbath that also claimed a lot of excellent journalists. To say he was fired is to knowingly lie.
SW…
very often people are fired but with an excuse that allows them to deny the reasons. It is called putting a human face on progress… There is a very good chance that both you and Nancy could be correct in both your direct statements, even if at first, they seem directly contradictory.
Kavips: Nancy is wrong, as she usually is. I won’t say she’s lying, but Ron Williams was not fired. That may not fit with the anti-Ron narrative people have constructed, but it is the truth.
I guess the distinction is over the word “fired”; that distinction being whether it was “with” or “without cause”.
Being fired before the turn of this century usually meant it was because someone deserved it by their actions through fault of their own. Up until that time one could work until retired, and if one was fired, it was the employees fault. But ever since corporations became people, being fired stopped meaning that at all. You fired people because they were too expensive. Now being fired simply means the severing of a relationship. It no longer has that old stigma attached to it, any more than getting divorced has a stigma, or breaking up with relationship number 15 and moving on to number 16 has a stigma.
I can’t speak for Nancy, but I certainly wasn’t implying he was fired for cause. I was instead applying the current definition of the word fired, simply piggybacking off of your statement he left in the Gannett Bloodbath… Nine times out of ten, all firings are the result of the employer, not the person employed.
Sorry to go on about this, but I tend to be intrigued by our living language and how it changes. So this comment is more about the word “fired” than it is about Ron Williams. All said and done, it appears the economic reality of allowing Republicans to take power in 2000, has created another hereto unlisted causality and that, is the old meaning of the word “fired”.
Old timers will say one could substitute the term “let go” or “laid off” and they are right, one could. But in today’s corporate workplace and press, those distinctions are not used anymore and the term across the board continues to be “fired”, as long as it involves a management decision being the one who initiated the separation.
Case in point: last year, Peyton Manning was fired by the Indianapolis Colts… In truth, the Colts opted to term the contract. But throughout TV, radio, and the news, only the word “fired” was used in the headlines. Since most of those still working in those fields probably graduated journalistic school sometime within this century, they probably were completely unaware of any incongruous distinction…
Generally, when someone is fired, it is for cause and done individually. Ron Williams was laid off along with many other people whose jobs were eliminated by Gannett. He and others have not been replaced. If you want to debate language, those are the facts to plug into your rubric.
I’m no friend of Ron’s, but to say a person was fired when he wasn’t is wrong. Gannett targeted good employees and bad ones, older ones and younger ones, short-timers and company veterans. To call that a firing is to slur the good ones, too.
I am glad Ron is writing again – can’t wait to see what gossip he comes up with.
“Generally, when someone is fired, it is for cause”
In the old days that was true. But not any more. Now, “fired” is carelessly used for every sort of termination. In the old days, you could be laid off and actually called back when things improved. People who were laid off still considered themselves employees of the company, and their benefits continued. And everybody had real pensions. Now, people who were laid off consider themselves fired.
And now, employers have a sneaky way of downsizing one-at-a-time and calling it performance related, even though it is clearly financial.
At a time with 8% unemployment and record corporate profits, at-will employment has turned malignant. Employers have become entirely too cocky about the labor supply.
I don’t know about Ron though.
“Now, “fired” is carelessly used for every sort of termination.”
Your ignorance of the proper word does not change the facts. People recognize a fundamental difference between being fired and being laid off. One is for cause, the other is a position elimination. If Ron were fired, there would be a replacement for him now working there. There is not. Nor is there a replacement for the other editorial writer who was laid off. Those jobs are gone. The people who held them were laid off.
Gee SW you are right. I guess I’ll have to work on my vocabulary.
Good idea. You can take English lessons from Dana. The stupidity and sanctimony would complement each other nicely.
I’ll respond as soon as I look up “sanctimony.”
I apologize for that last. Uncalled for. Woke up on the wrong side of my hammock.
Please excuse my faulty memory. Ron had been getting himself into increasingly hot water with crazed, off-the-wall editorials just prior to leaving the paper. The reason for his dismissal isn’t clearly or officially tied to his wrongedness so “fired” was probably just a way to process it in my mind at the time. SW of course would rather believe I deliberately LIED.
SW may want to Google wrong williams delaware for a taste of how much the locals appreciated Williams’ “excellent” editorializing…..
https://www.google.com/search?q=wrong+williams+delaware&oq=wrong+williams+delaware&aqs=chrome.0.57j62l3.5319&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Here’s my favorite DE Way wRong post ~
http://delawareway.blogspot.com/2010/05/wrong-williams-wrong-again-next-time.html
wRong Williams Wrong Again: Next Time Lee Ann Walling Slips You A Tip You’d Better Double Check Your Sources, Dude
What up Ron? Lee Ann Walling’s merit system violation case still gets a public hearing, didn’t cha know? The grievance denial you are yakking about today is only one of many steps in the grievance process for Dave Carter. There will be an independent, public review before the Merit Employee Relations Board later this year. The process that ‘exonerated Walling’ by Aaron Shapiro was a purely political one without a full record of the testimony. In fact it is my understanding that several individuals’ testimony was excised from Markell’s OMB staffer’s report. Are things really back to business-as-usual under the reign of big, bold Jack Markell?
(WNJ) Ron Williams writes ~ Regarding job for Minner adviser: Time for reality check…….
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Walling won that case and is firmly ensconced at DNREC in Planning and orchestrating all kinds of interesting land use situations. She was involved in the recently approved Sussex Co. waste facility that circumvented the Coastal Zone Act (saying it would all be resolved when Markell revamped the CZA via the regulations revisions now in review) and up here in NCC she is busy getting a contract lined up to develop and commercially exploit the historic and environmentally sensative state-owned lands at Fort Delaware.
Here’s a good DE Liberal wRong Williams post from 2008 (Protack warning) http://delawareliberal.net//2008/01/20/wrong-williams-likes-bill-lee-for-governor/
I am going to stop now and watch Markell on CSPAN.
Thank the governor for wanting to develop Fort Delaware. The land floods regularly. Why would someone want to build there ?