Governor Markell

Secretary of Finance Tom Cook’s recent op-ed epitomizes the strategy of hiding things in plain sight.  Secretary Cook and Governor Jack Markell’s revenue review panel has concealed among its recommendations for making Delaware tax revenues more “elastic” an ideologically driven agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy and out-of-state corporations at the expense of our state’s middle class, senior citizens and local business owners.  That our governor could sanction such recommendations is a prime example of how politics in Delaware has been hollowed out in favor of profit taking. Let’s first notice that in a era of declining revenues and increasingly challenging budgets to balance Governor Markell’s instructions forbade raising new revenue:  “if a recommendation was made that could be expected to generate additional revenue for the state, then a corresponding revenue reduction would also be proposed to offset it.”  This means (in English) that Cook’s panel was not interested in providing more money to balance our budget, but in changing who pays the bills.