Wednesday, June 13, 2012 - 11:52am
Flowers wants to 'dial back' rhetoric with Markell
Updated Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 1:29pm
State Treasurer Chip Flowers admits his relationship with Governor Markell's office is strained, but he's hoping to 'dial back the rhetoric' and get it back on track.
Flowers tells WDEL's Al Mascitti that the most recent bone of contention involved a vacancy left in his office for a director of finance and the administration's push for him to sign off on an $18.5-million bond for a Newark Charter School expansion.
Flowers says he wanted to make sure that what was being proposed was financially solid. He reminded the administration that there was no one in his office in the job that should be reviewing that kind of thing.
"For over six months, that thing wasn't billed. And then, of course, when the Newark bond came through, some folks at the administration said 'You need to sign off on this right now.' And I said, 'Where's the purse expert?' I said I had no problem reading the documents myself because I read them any way. But, of course, we have a process here. 'No, no, no...this is Newark Charter...you need to get this done," (they said). And that's not the way I govern," Flowers told WDEL.
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Flowers says a long running vacancy in his office for a Director of Finance means he has to review such bonds personally and he did not want to rush the decision with so much money at stake.
"Months went by....then all of a sudden...we had warned them in April that this delay was going to potentially cause a delay. And it caused a delay. But what I do have a problem is when two Democrats who, I think we're reasonable people...this is the way we engage. And that's just unacceptable," Flowers said.
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Flowers says he won't sacrifice what he sees as the appropriate process his office should use to do its job.
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