Guest Commentary: More laws needed to fight corruption in Delaware
Jack Guerin is an anti-corruption advocate with fightdecorruption.com.
Public corruption has been pervasive throughout human history, permeating societies ancient and modern. Based on this familiar reality, our society accepts some level of public malfeasance as inevitable.
Nevertheless, when corruption materializes, there is always a sense of public outrage. The trial of Kathy McGuiness, Delaware’s auditor of accounts, provides a recent example. Every newspaper in the state provided regular coverage of the trial.
The outrage was magnified by the irony of a statewide official, elected to combat graft and fraud, being convicted on corruption charges. Following multiple guilty verdicts, both Delaware’s governor and speaker of the House enabled McGuiness to run for reelection. However, she was defeated in a landslide by a relative newcomer.
Anti-corruption fervor is a product of democracy. In “Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United,” Zephyr Teachout documents the passion with which the Founding Fathers reacted to the old-world corruption of European monarchy.
The fall of the Roman republic loomed large for the Founders’ generation. The first volume of Edward Gibbon’s “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” was published in 1776 — the same year American independence was declared. The remaining five volumes, documenting the slow corruption of Roman public life, were published by 1789, when our Constitution went into effect.
The United States banned the traditional receipt of expensive gifts offered by foreign countries to our ambassadors. There was extensive debate whether these gifts were corrupting, and, coming at the end of an ambassador’s tenure, in many cases, the gifts may not have been troubling.
Nevertheless, the fledgling American government was among the first to ban these expensive gifts. This was a preventive measure. No criminal intent was expressed, and there was no need for investigation or prosecution. The ban eliminated any potential corrupting influence from the gift. It was as simple as that.
This is an example of “a bright-line rule.” According to Wikipedia, “A bright-line rule … is a clearly defined rule or standard, composed of objective factors, which leaves little or no room for varying interpretation. The purpose of a bright-line rule is to produce predictable and consistent results in its application.”
Delaware needs more structural bright-line statutes targeted at preventing public corruption. The McGuiness trial highlighted Delaware’s lack of action against nepotism in our state government. Our General Assembly should pass comprehensive anti-nepotism legislation. We also need clearer statutes prohibiting those convicted of crimes to continue serving as public officials.
Based on Delaware’s Home Rule statute, most state laws don’t apply to local government. Local government employees represent almost 80% of the more than 65,000 government employees in Delaware, so this is a major gap in our anti-corruption infrastructure.
State agencies are required to do competitive bidding for all contracts over $10,000, but local government has no such requirement. An analysis by Fight DE Corruption found than less than one-third of Delaware’s charter cities had procurement rules with a reasonable threshold for competitive bidding. Ten of these cities had no competitive bidding requirement at all.
We need both prevention and prosecution. Delaware is fortunate that our Department of Justice is taking on public corruption, demonstrating that even higher-level officials are not above the law.
However, prosecution should be the last resort. When cases reach the courtroom, society bears the cost of the corruption which occurred, along with the costs of investigating, prosecuting and punishing those found guilty. Fighting corruption in Delaware requires a more effective and comprehensive set of anti-corruption statutes.
