The History of the Delaware GOP’s Broken Promise on Senate Bill 4

Did I ever have the wool pulled over my eyes. And it was not as though I hadn’t been warned by many of my Democratic friends. “When it comes down to the moment of really doing what it takes to extend Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act to the Delaware Legislature,” they said, “the promises made by the Delaware Republicans in the State Legislature will vanish.”

But I didn’t listen to my friends. I praised the Republicans repeatedly for sponsoring open and good government bills, and I scolded Democrats for not following their lead. And now that Senator Karen Peterson (D) is once more forced to seek to petition her FOIA bill (SB 4) out of Senate Pro Tem Thurman “Slick and Slippery” Adams’ desk drawer, the promises made by the GOP Senators so far (except Sen. Colin Bonini) have vanished.

Sen. F. Gary Simpson (R) won’t sign the petition and the Senate Minority Leader Charles Copeland (R) appears to be against signing it as well:

At this point, even the leader of the Senate's minority Republicans -- all of whom support bringing the General Assembly under FOIA -- is not yet willing to sign on....

Although minority leader Copeland is a co-sponsor of S.B. 4, he said there is some question whether it would withstand legal scrutiny. It may be, he said, that the only real way to subject the General Assembly to the Freedom of Information Act is through a constitutional amendment.

Amending the state Constitution is a difficult and time-consuming task. Amendments must be passed by two successive General Assemblies, with one intervening election. (link)

I believe there are good reasons for adding FOIA to the Delaware constitution but not for the reason suggested by Senator Copeland. I greatly suspect the so-called issue about whether Senator Peterson’s bill will “withstand legal scrutiny” is pure fiction, but I will save a discussion of it for another post. Instead, I want to show how Senator Copeland has been both promising he will sign the petition and dropping hints that he would not.

The History of Copeland’s Broken Promise

When Senator Charles Copeland was elected as the Minority Leader in State Senate, his first announcement was his support for the re-election of Senator Thurman Adams as Pro Tem. Because the Pro Tem has extraordinary powers to kill legislation, and Adams is a legendary opponent of open government and real democracy, Copeland’s endorsement all but guaranteed Adams’ reelection as Pro Tem.*

After Copeland’s ascension to the leadership position, he appeared on WDEL’s, then, “Rick and Gerry” show (during the General Assembly session of 2007). I confronted him on about signing the petition to get Peterson’s bill out of Adams’ drawer. Notice here in the 1st audio clip how many different ways he tried to get out of the promise until Gerry Fulcher pins him down on the real facts of the GOP promise to sign the petition:

• The official end of the current General Assembly session is 2008 and not 2007 (a claim that was completely true but totally irrelevant since there was no more likelihood that Adams would allow Peterson’s bill to come up for a vote in 2008 than in 2007, which turned out to be true).

• That the promise made by the incumbent GOP Senators and their State Senate candidates in 2006 was made on the condition they won their elections and became the Senate majority. Totally false.
  

• After Fulcher points out that the campaign promise made by the Senate Republicans extended to signing the petition even if the Republicans didn’t become the majority in the State Senate, Sen. Copeland says explicitly they “will” sign the petition but in 2008.

Well, it’s 2008 and they ain’t signing. It’s a particularly vexatious broken promise because Senator Karen Peterson said yesterday on WDEL she has 3 Senate Democrats (4 including herself) willing to sign her petition. If all 8 GOP State Senators signed the petition as they promised, Peterson would have enough signers to bring her FOIA before the full Senate for a vote.
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* Contrary to a Delaware GOP myth, they had an open-government alternative candidate in the majority caucus for Pro Tem. I know. I was the messenger. But the message I got back was the candidate was “too liberal,” as if being a liberal that made any difference whatsoever in performing the duties as Pro Tem.