The Meyer Plan: Inspector general, campaign audits for better government

Why Should Delaware Care?
Governor-elect Matt Meyer is taking over from a governor who some lawmakers say was reluctant to support certain transparency measures. The incoming governor made pledges to embrace new transparency-focused measures, but they could face challenges from state lawmakers.

With Matt Meyer ascending to Delaware’s top elected post this month, the state will be getting a governor who has professed support for a string of transparency reforms, including many that would force lawmakers to disclose more information to the public than they do today.

They include calls for expanding the state’s open records laws to the legislature; requiring politicians to publicly disclose business relationships with lobbyists; and prohibiting departing elected officials from immediately taking jobs as lobbyists, in state government, or from entering into state contracts.

The proposed reforms were part of a larger platform presented during Meyer’s campaign for governor that he said would make state government more transparent and efficient. 

And it came amid heightened public scrutiny around public transparency, following a corruption scandal at the Delaware Department of Labor, and questions around the accuracy of Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall Long’s campaign finance reports.  

Now, with the launch of the 2025 legislative session, some proposals Meyer supports – like the creation of an inspector general’s office – appear to have a wide-range of support. But, for others, the prospects are less clear.

Will legislators support reform?

In an emailed statement, Delaware’s Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives said  they “look forward to reviewing the governor-elect’s draft proposals.” They also asserted that the Democratic leadership has already supported measures in recent years to open up government, pointing specifically to a launch of live-streaming for committee hearings. 

Today, all 50 states livestream their legislative hearings, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

For years, state lawmakers resisted pushes to livestream debates from Legislative Hall. In fact, Delaware was one of the last states in the nation to livestream video of legislatives sessions, and it was virtually forced to begin doing so in May 2020 after the COVID pandemic struck.

Today, livestreaming video and audio are available for all committee and floor hearings, and recordings are retained for later viewing.

A spokeswoman for the Delaware House leadership did not respond to a question, asking which of Meyer’s individual policies lawmakers may, or may not, support. 

Separately, in an interview Spotlight Delaware, Delaware Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend said he and other legislators have for years been working on, and gaining ground, on several transparency policies that Meyer included in his campaign platform. 

But he also said questions around the wisdom of certain of Meyer’s proposals exist, and can only be quelled with more details about how they may be crafted 

Specifically, Townsend said that a two-year prohibition on elected officials working as lobbyists could spark constitutional questions. He also questioned the fiscal wisdom of requiring the state to audit the campaign finance reports for every political candidate.

“How much money do you want to invest in the Department of Elections for staff to go through an audit?” he asked. “You have to just make a balanced decision with regard to how many fiscal resources, how many taxpayer dollars to invest.”

Finally, Townsend suggested one reform that was not put forth by Meyer, expressing concern about the “role of big third-party money coming from outside of Delaware” to elections in the state. 

“I don’t know the answer to that right now, but there are people who are really concerned,” he said. 

During the previous campaign season, Meyer benefitted the most out of any statewide candidate from large out-of-state donors and political organizations. 

Among those was a group funded by executives of the New York company TransPerfect that spent roughly $1 million on ads largely attacking Hall-Long, who was Meyer’s top primary opponent. 

Will an Inspector General work in Delaware?

One proposal on Meyer’s transparency platform that appears likely involves the creation of a new state inspector’s office, tasked with investigating fraud, corruption and general mismanagement in state government.

In campaign literature, Meyer said that if lawmakers did not pass a bill creating an Office of Inspector General, he as governor “would authorize and appoint an Inspector General to keep tabs within the executive branch.”

Such a move could spark legal challenges questioning the governor’s constitutional authority to create such a body. 

Asked if there will be the votes to pass legislation creating an office of inspector general, Townsend said that was his “hope.” 

He said that State Sen. Laura Sturgeon (D-West Brandywine Hundred) has pushed the idea for several years and last year received “pledges from colleagues to prioritize it in this coming budget cycle.” 

Townsend further said that the leadership in the Delaware Senate intends to hold robust discussions on it “and make a clear case for its merits.” 

Two retired lawmakers from opposite political ideologies who spoke with Spotlight Delaware expressed differing views about the wisdom of creating such an office.  

Former Republican State Sen. Greg Lavelle said state inspector general reports would likely be ignored by people in government, as he says happens routinely at the federal level. 

Lavelle also doubted that an inspector general would be able to avoid becoming corrupted by politics. He noted that Sturgeon’s legislation last year that would have created the office, called for the governor to appoint the inspector general, after a selection committee provided him with three names of candidates. 

“To suggest there will be no politics in the selection process is, well, a fantasy,” Lavelle said in an email. 

In support of the office’s creation is former-Rep. John Kowalko, who for years has been arguing that Delaware needs someone to investigate what he argues are the often-secret economic development deals entered into by the state. 

Kowalko said past proposals to create the office didn’t gain traction because lawmakers believed Gov. John Carney, who is leaving the office this month, didn’t support it. 

He said Meyer, in contrast, is presenting himself as a transparency advocate, “and I’m going to take that leap of faith that he will be.” 

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