Three good government bills introduced

Recently, I introduced three bills not just because they are important on their own but also because I believe strongly in good government and transparency.

In multiple surveys and studies, Delaware’s grades for good government and transparency have consistently been a D or an F.

House Bill 292 requires that candidates’ campaign finance reports be reviewed by the Department of Elections for any violations of campaign finance rules. Currently, a candidate submits a campaign finance report and it immediately appears on the DOE public website after undergoing only a few high-level system checks.

Once a report is reviewed by DOE employees, if no violations are found, the report status is considered final. If issues are found, the DOE works with the candidate to rectify the situation and submit an amended report. If violations are found that are not simply mistakes, the DOE refers the case to the Attorney General’s Office.

HB 291 does three things. First, it requires that candidates’ campaign finance reports include the names of donors’ employers and the donors’ job titles. This is already required in 38 other states and at the federal level. These two pieces of information will not appear on public campaign finance reports or be subject to FOIA requests. Donors’ employers and job titles raise a flag for the DOE regarding possible campaign finance violations. 

Second, HB 291 requires that when a candidate unintentionally accepts more money from an individual or entity than they are allowed, they must return that surplus money to the donor. It prohibits such candidates from donating the surplus money to a charitable organization so they cannot make such donations public and gain political mileage from them. Third, HB 291 requires the DOE to maintain a telephone number and form on its website through which individuals may report suspected campaign finance violations.

These three parts of HB 291 came from recommendations from a 2013 report written by E. Norman Veasey. At the time, he was a special deputy attorney general. Later, he served as the chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court. Veasey served as independent counsel in a case in which the owner of NKS Distributors, Christopher J. Tigani, plead guilty to violating federal and state campaign finance and tax laws, and was sentenced to two years in prison. Tigani had been giving money to his employees to donate to certain candidates for public office.

Finally, I’ve introduced HB 319 to address nepotism in state government. The Delaware Department of Human Resources recently instituted a much more restrictive nepotism policy than its previous one, but it does not apply to all state employees, including the judiciary, executive and legislative branches. HB 319 mandates that these branches of government and other state agencies must draft and implement nepotism policies that are at least as restrictive as the new DHR policy.

I hope that my colleagues in Dover will support these three important bills.