Delaware must rebalance finances

Delaware Secretary of State Jeff Bullock stood outside former Gov. Jack Markell's Legislative Hall office one day last week. He had a short stack of papers for Markell to sign, some of the final bits of business they had to attend to before Markell handed over the keys to John Carney.

While Markell is leaving after two terms, Bullock is not. He has a long history working in Delaware government and, more particularly, with John Carney, who worked as finance director in previous administrations. Bullock has agreed to continue as secretary of state.

Some of the papers he handed to Markell for his signature were written entirely in distinctive Chinese characters. Illegible to 99.9 percent of the Delaware population, the papers signaled the complexity of state government in the 21st century.

Bullock, as secretary of state, plays a key role in Delaware. His department runs incorporation operations involving national and international businesses. He said the state's incorporation network is solid, and incorporations have been on a record-setting pace for the past three years. That's important. Fees and revenues generated by those operations - coming largely from entities outside of Delaware - represent more than one-third of the money Delaware uses each year to run the state. They're a major reason why our taxes are so low.

But rather than taking advantage of that extraordinary source of income to make us an extraordinary state, we have become dependent on it for ordinary operations to keep our taxes artificially low. We're spoiled, and that's not good.

As John Carney takes the reins, the state faces a budget shortfall of about $350 million. Some expense cutting will help. But with the waterways of the state woefully polluted, our highways pressured and our critically important Del Tech unable to even take care of simple maintenance issues due to budget constraints, it's time for a responsible package of carefully crafted tax and fee increases.

Delaware must rebalance its finances, shoulder a greater share of its own obligations, and become the truly extraordinary state that the corporate franchise fees should permit. Otherwise, our shortsightedness will cripple us as we move forward into the century.