"The numbers were on their website. The deficit was in their files. The surprise was in their press release."
"The deficit was on their own website long before they said it surprised them.
They called the largest budget in county history a cut. Then they raised your taxes
over seventeen percent and told you there was no other way.
There was. You just weren't told about it."
"The headlines wrote themselves. Click the photos for the coverage."
THE NEW CASTLE COUNTY TAX RECKONING
What The Records Show, and
What You Were Told
By Karen Hartley-Nagle
Former President of New Castle County Council (2016 to 2024)
Published: July 20, 2026 | A Truthline Investigative Report
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who will guard the guards themselves?
Juvenal, Satires VI
*If you are reading this on your phone, skip past the Table of Contents and scroll straight to the Introduction. The report loads best on a laptop or desktop, but every word is here. Start scrolling. The story is waiting.
The New Castle County Tax Reckoning: What the Records Show, and What You Were Told
On May 26, 2026, New Castle County Council voted 11-to-2 to raise the residential property tax rate 17.2 percent, effective July 1, 2026. The County’s own Office of Finance had posted a projection on August 31, 2025, showing an FY2027 operating gap of $47.9 million, months before County Executive Marcus Henry said he did not know how large the deficit was.
Key Facts, From the County’s Own Records
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Property tax rate increase: 17.2 percent, from 15.75 cents to 18.46 cents per $100 of assessed value
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Adopted May 26, 2026, effective July 1, 2026, by an 11-to-2 Council vote; Councilmen David Tackett and Kevin Caneco voted no
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FY2027 operating budget: $387.6 million, the largest in County history, higher than FY2026
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Real estate tax revenue rises $27,477,884, a 19.48 percent increase over FY2026
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The County’s August 31, 2025 projection, ArchiveCenter Item 3769, showed an FY2027 gap of $47.9 million, $5.9 million larger than the $42 million the County Executive announced on March 25, 2026
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Cost to the median $378,000 home: about $102 per year, charged against reassessed values that for many households roughly doubled
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The County’s April 16, 2026 projection shows the gap reopening at $19.4 million in FY2028 and $21.0 million in FY2029, with the Tax Stabilization Reserve reaching negative $28.8 million by mid-2029
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FY2025 unassigned General Fund balance fell 56 percent to $5.1 million
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Moody’s July 2025 scorecard-indicated outcome: Aa2, two notches below the County’s assigned Aaa
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Sewer Fund debt-service ratio: 28.2 percent against the County’s own 20 percent policy ceiling
Questions Residents Are Asking
Q: How much did New Castle County raise property taxes in 2026?
A: The residential property tax rate rose 17.2 percent, from 15.75 cents to 18.46 cents per $100 of assessed value, adopted May 26, 2026 and effective July 1, 2026. The County’s own budget book records both figures. It is the first non-reassessment property tax increase in New Castle County in eight years and the largest single rate increase since the 25 percent increase of 2009.
Q: Why did New Castle County raise property taxes?
A: The administration cited a structural deficit it put at $42 million. The County’s own Office of Finance projection, posted publicly on August 31, 2025, put the FY2027 operating gap at $47.9 million. The deficit traces to recurring spending built on one-time federal pandemic funds, a payroll that grew across the Meyer and Henry administrations, and reserve draws that deferred the correction. The County’s audited statements document each element.
Q: Who voted for the New Castle County tax increase?
A: Eleven Council members voted yes on May 26, 2026: Council President Monique Williams-Johns and members Brandon Toole, Dee Durham, Janet Kilpatrick, Penrose Hollins, Valerie George, David B. Carter, George Smiley, John J. Cartier, Timothy P. Sheldon, and Jea P. Street. Councilmen David L. Tackett and Kevin Caneco voted no. The roll call is the Council’s own record.
Q: How much will my New Castle County tax bill go up?
A: On the median $378,000 home, the rate increase adds about $102 per year, roughly $8.50 a month. The rate is charged against post-reassessment values, which for many households roughly doubled, so many homeowners will see a County tax bill that has roughly doubled in real dollars since FY2025 before school district changes are added.
Q: Did County Executive Marcus Henry know about the deficit before he said he did?
A: The documented record contradicts his statement in five distinct ways. The County’s own Office of Finance posted a $47.9 million FY2027 gap projection to the County’s public ArchiveCenter on August 31, 2025, five months and eleven days before his March 25, 2026 budget address, where he said he did not know in late 2024 that the deficit would be as large as it is. He had also served in the executive office across three administrations, was informed from March 2022 during the 2024 County Executive Primary Election, was warned in person in March 2025, and described the structural cause himself at the budget address.
Q: Was the New Castle County reassessment revenue neutral?
A: For exactly one fiscal year. The County held FY2026 property tax collections at the FY2025 level, as promised. The statutory 15 percent cap in 9 Del. C. Section 8002(c) applied only to the fiscal year immediately following the reassessment. FY2027 is the first year the cap did not apply, and real estate tax revenue rose $27,477,884, a 19.48 percent increase.
Q: Will New Castle County raise taxes again?
A: The County’s own April 16, 2026 projection shows the operating gap reopening at $19.4 million in FY2028 and reaching $21.0 million in FY2029, with the Tax Stabilization Reserve going negative in FY2028 and hitting negative $28.8 million by mid-2029. The 17.2 percent increase closes the FY2027 gap on paper only. The next increase is already in the County’s documents.
Q: Did the tax increase come with budget cuts?
A: The FY2027 operating budget is $387.6 million, higher than FY2026 and the largest in County history. The visible reductions, library hours, five parks positions, the Sleep Under the Stars program, and fifty-six struck positions, are small against a budget that grew. The Executive Assistant tier, which expanded from 21 positions under Gordon to 48 under Henry at roughly $8.4 million a year, was not touched.
Q: What did the credit rating agencies say about New Castle County?
A: All three flagged the trajectory in July 2025. Moody’s scorecard-indicated outcome was Aa2, two notches below the assigned Aaa. Fitch’s metric profile scored AA+ at 9.65, reaching AAA only through a qualitative notch. S&P praised reserves that the County’s own statements show declining, with the FY2025 unassigned General Fund balance down 56 percent to $5.1 million.
Q: Who wrote The New Castle County Tax Reckoning?
A: Karen Hartley-Nagle, Founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of The Truthline Network, and President of New Castle County Council from 2016 to 2024. The report is built entirely from primary sources: the County’s audited financial statements, budget books, posted projections, Council legislation, and the July 2025 rating-agency reports, with the author’s firsthand institutional knowledge disclosed and attributed by name.
"The people who benefit from this sequence have names and addresses.
So do the people who lose from it."
Summary
What this report establishes. On May 26, 2026, eleven members of New Castle County Council voted to enact a $387.6 million operating budget carrying a 17.2 percent increase in the residential property tax rate and a 5 percent increase in sewer rates, both effective July 1, 2026. The new residential rate is 18.46 cents per $100 of assessed value. For the median owner of a $378,000 home, the increase is about $102 a year, in the county with the highest foreclosure rate in the United States.
The County knew before it said it didn't. On August 31, 2025, the County's own Office of Finance posted a General Fund projection to its public ArchiveCenter, Item 3769, showing an FY2027 operating gap of $47.9 million. Five months and eleven days later, at his March 25, 2026 budget address, County Executive Marcus Henry described a deficit he said he had not seen coming. The number was on the County's own website the entire time.
This is a Truthline investigation by Karen Hartley-Nagle, former President of New Castle County Council from 2016 to 2024, reported entirely from primary sources: County resolutions and ordinances, budget books, the County's own published projections, Rating Agency Reports, Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (Outside Auditor), Annual Single-Audits (Outside Auditor) for ensure compliance with Federal Program requirements, including CARES Act and ARPA Funding, County Auditor Memorandum, Reports, Agenda's, Minutes, E-mails, County Council Committee and Council Meetings, IRS filings, State filings, and court records.
Author's Disclosure
The author of this report, Karen Hartley-Nagle, served as President of New Castle County Council from 2016 to 2024. She is named in the FY2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report as the Council President as of June 30, 2024. The fiscal trajectory documented in this report includes a baseline established during her tenure on Council. Where she has personal knowledge of events relevant to the record, including private briefings, candidate forum exchanges, and post-election conversations with the current County Executive, those facts are disclosed as such and attributed to her by name. The analytical framework used in this report reflects the author's prior research, including her review of the County's August 2025 General Fund projections and the budget documents she has analyzed since her tenure on Council.
The Case, in One Page
Everything below is drawn from New Castle County’s own records: its audited statements, its budget books, its posted projections, its Council legislation, and its rating-agency reports. This is the only place in Delaware where that record sits assembled in one document.
The County Executive told you he did not know how large the deficit was. The County’s own projection, posted to the County’s own website months before he said it, proves he knew. That is the case. The rest of this report is the proof.
They knew. On August 31, 2025, the Office of Finance posted a General Fund projection to the County’s public ArchiveCenter, Item 3769, showing an FY2027 operating gap of $47.9 million. Five months and eleven days later, at his March 25, 2026 budget address, County Executive Marcus Henry proposed a 17.2 percent property tax increase to close a deficit he called $42 million and said he “didn’t know in late 2024 that the deficit was going to be as large as it is today.” The County’s own worksheet had projected a number $5.9 million larger than the one he announced, and it had been public for months.
The increase does not fix the deficit, and the administration’s own numbers prove it. The County’s April 16, 2026 projection shows the gap reopening at $19.4 million in FY2028 and reaching $21.0 million in FY2029, and the Tax Stabilization Reserve going negative in FY2028 and hitting negative $28.8 million by mid-2029. The 17.2 percent closes the FY2027 gap on paper only. The next increase is already in the documents. You have not been told.
It was sold as discipline. The budget grew. The FY2027 operating budget is $387.6 million, higher than FY2026. The visible cuts, library hours, five parks positions, Sleep Under the Stars, fifty-six struck positions, are a sliver and a shift against a budget that rose. The Executive Assistant tier, grown from 21 under Gordon to 48 under Henry at roughly $8.4 million a year, was not touched. The tax increase funds the growth the cut shift did not reach.
Three schemes route money around the body the law requires to authorize it. The Tyler Technologies footprint moves recurring IT spending into the operating budget without the Council resolutions Section 2.02.004 requires. The row office Technology Fee architecture sends transaction-fee revenue to recipients the row officers choose, with Council ratifying decisions already made, and on the same ten-year, roughly $50.57 million Axon Enterprise public-safety contract, the County’s own documents name two different funding sources, the appropriating ordinance citing the Realty Transfer Tax Reserve and the FY2027 budget book citing Register of Wills Technology Funds.
The Hope Center, Inc. nonprofit, built by Marcus Henry while he ran Community Services under Matt Meyer, holds County money the administration says the County does not pay. And the model this report documents as a governance and federal-compliance failure is not being retired. It is being copied. The State has announced it will spend $11.243 million to replicate the New Castle County Hope Center in Kent County, announced by the Governor who built the original as County Executive. Three schemes. One architecture. The same officials.
The watchdog did not bark. The County Auditor’s Office has run below its statutory Audit Committee minimum, below its quarterly meeting requirement, without a current audit plan or Quality Assurance Review, with completed row office audit work sitting unreleased at the Auditor’s discretion. The body meant to be the independent check told the Audit Committee the County held revenue neutral during the reassessment. The County’s own budget book documents a $27,477,884 increase in real estate tax revenue, 19.48 percent, in the same period.
What it costs you, and why it lands so hard. About $102 a year on the median $378,000 home, charged at the new 18.46-cent rate on reassessed values that for many households roughly doubled, in the foreclosure capital of the United States, stacked over six to twelve months with sewer rates, school taxes on the same envelope, insurance, utilities, and rent. Behind it sits roughly $1.189 billion in committed long-term debt service and a $511 million six-year capital program with zero anticipated federal funding, borrowed in a low-rate window to stretch debt up, not down.
Who is accountable, and what can be done. The County Executive, the Chief Administrative Officer, the Chief Financial Officer, the County Attorney, the County Solicitor, the General Manager of Community Services, and the eleven Council members who voted yes can each answer this record entry by entry. The body with the power to act is the Council: consolidate the four row office accounts into a single County Technology Fund under the Office of Finance, order a comprehensive audit of all three schemes, request an Office of Law opinion on the statutory authority, and refer the findings to the New Castle County Ethics Commission, the Delaware State Auditor of Accounts, the Delaware Attorney General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Treasury Office of Inspector General. The authority is the Council’s. The record is already written.
They knew the number. They said they didn’t. They called a growing budget a cut, and a one-year patch a solution. The proof is the County’s own records. Read it.
The Reckoning and Its Companions
This report, Part I and Part II, is the spine. What follows, released separately, are the five companion chapters that carry the weight, each one a full primary-source excavation of a finding this report states in a paragraph and proves in a volume. They are built from the same record: the County’s resolutions, budget books, audits, leases, purchase orders, and the Council’s own legislative database. Read in order, they move from one story to the whole system.
The first chapter, "The PAL Reckoning", is where the pattern wears a human face. New Castle County paid rent for a quarter century on recreation centers it already owned, was warned in writing by its own Auditor in 2011, and did nothing for a decade under the General Manager, Marcus Henry, who now runs the County, until the Police Athletic League collapsed into an $876,000 federal clawback and a criminal investigation run by the County’s own police.
The second chapter, "Two Budgets, One Author", lays Marcus Henry’s two budgets side by side with the last budgets Gordon and Meyer authored, and answers the question the administration has avoided: if FY2027 contained real cuts, why is it the largest budget in the County’s history?
The third chapter, "Sixteen Departments, One Method", walks the budget department by department and shows the same five techniques operating in every one: the vacancy dressed as a cut, the public-facing reduction that funds back-office growth, the cost budgeted below what the County knew it would spend, the spending routed around the Council vote, and the one-time money turned into a permanent bill. It closes with a full model of what the County would save by returning to the footprint Gordon last governed with.
The fourth chapter, "The Appointed Workforce: Three Executives, One Payroll, and the Jobs No Voter Chose", isolates the part of government no voter chose: the at-will tier of chiefs, deputies, embedded finance officers, and commanders that nearly doubled across three executives, with the assistant tier beneath them more than doubling while the County’s functions did not, and that the 17.2 percent increase now funds.
The fifth chapter, "A House With No Owner", follows the County's name onto a private bank account: a corporation wrapped in the county's own name, created with county federal CARES Act money that could not lawfully be used to build a private nonprofit, its account opened four months before it legally existed, residents pointed to give under the County's own seal, then told the residents their government had nothng to do with it, and more than a million dollars tied to the Hope Center kept off the County's own financial statements.
Five chapters. One method. One record. The story first, then the proof, then the scale, then the part you can still do something about.
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XXXVI. Alan Levin: The Mentor, the Money, and the Model
Alan Levin is not a peripheral figure in this story. He is the connective tissue between the Markell era and the Meyer era and the Henry era, between the prior government influences and the current one, between the campaign that elected Matt Meyer and the fiscal infrastructure that now serves the interests of Meyer's donors and now Henry's.
Levin made his reputation as CEO of Happy Harry's, the family pharmacy chain his father founded in 1962. He sold it to Walgreens in 2006. Governor Jack Markell brought him into state government as Director of the Delaware Economic Development Office, a position he held for nearly seven years until 2015. When he left, Markell awarded him the Order of the First State.
During Levin's tenure at DEDO, he also served as Chair of the DSPC Board under Governor Markell. In 2012, the Markell administration explored a privatization deal with Kinder Morgan, the pipeline and terminal company. The ILA and the General Assembly stopped it. The template of that attempted privatization, handing a public port to a private operator under a long-term concession, is the model running the Port of Wilmington today. The players changed. The structure survived.
The Money
Levin's financial relationship with Meyer predates the gubernatorial campaign by nearly a decade. His first contribution to Meyer arrived on April 18, 2016, for $500, when Meyer was running for County Executive. Both men had worked inside Jack Markell's administration: Meyer as an economic advisor, Levin as DEDO Director. They came out of the same governing circle.
The contributions escalated. Alan Levin gave $5,000 to the Change Can't Wait PAC on October 28, 2022. Another $5,000 on September 29, 2023. Then $15,000 on June 10, 2024. His total contribution to the PAC reached at least $29,100. Across all Meyer committees and all cycles, the Levin household contributed $33,100. The full family network total is $41,182.50 across 60 contributions.
The Appointment
Meyer appointed Levin to chair DEFAC, the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council. DEFAC is not a ceremonial body. It reviews the state's revenue forecasts three times annually and produces the official projections that govern the Governor's budget proposals. Those projections determine how much flows through the Bond Bill, which in FY2026 totaled $977 million. The DEFAC chair does not approve specific allocations. He certifies the revenue envelope within which all allocations are made. That is the foundation on which the entire fiscal system rests.
On April 5, 2017, Alan Levin was serving as Of Counsel at Drinker Biddle and Reath, a law firm with practice areas in real estate, land use, and corporate transactions, and as Senior Advisor to SoDel Concepts. Levin's colleague at the same law firm, Shawn Tucker, is the same attorney the DSPC hired to lobby the New Castle County Council against the Lighthouse Road rezoning documented in Chapter 27. Tucker also contributed $1,000 to the Change Can't Wait PAC. Shawn Tucker is now a Partner at Barnes & Thornberg, joining the firm in June 2021.
Sources: Campaign finance filings (Change Can't Wait PAC; Meyer for NCC; Meyer for Delaware); DEFAC appointment records; Faegre Drinker Biddle and Reath firm records; April 5, 2017, Chamber of Commerce Leadership Breakfast with the Honorable Alan Levin Brouchure; DSPC Board history; Truthline EO 18 report.
"He advised the campaign. He funded the campaign.
The Governor he helped elect appointed him to chair the body that certifies the revenue available for every infrastructure commitment those developers depend on.
The throughline from Markell to Meyer is unbroken.
The man who controls the fiscal projections gave money
to the governor who appointed him."
XXXVII. The Amazon Question
Governor Matt Meyer is the founder and owner of Wise Men Shipping LLC. The company ships goods through Amazon's logistics infrastructure from Wilmington to East Africa. The Governor of Delaware operates a personal business that uses Amazon's supply chain. That fact does not appear in his official biography. It appears in corporate records.
As County Executive, Meyer approved a 67 percent property tax reduction for the Amazon Boxwood fulfillment center. The state provided $4.5 million in aid for the Amazon facility. Meyer's administration expedited permitting for Amazon projects in New Castle County. Alan Levin, as Director of DEDO, was instrumental in bringing Amazon to Delaware during the Markell administration. Levin later advised Meyer's gubernatorial campaign and was appointed DEFAC Chair.
The connections between Meyer, Levin, Amazon, the port, economic development and Henry are not allegations of wrongdoing. They are documented relationships between a governor who owns a shipping business, a mentor who brought the shipper to Delaware and now chairs the state's fiscal advisory body, and a port whose traditional tenants are being forced out while the operating contract remains available for restructuring.
If AutoPort has left as sources claim, if Trans Cargo cannot recover, if the traditional vehicle logistics business leaves the Port of Wilmington permanently, the 100-plus acres at Pigeon Point Road become available for a different kind of logistics operation. Amazon's distribution model requires exactly the kind of waterfront, rail-connected, highway-adjacent industrial acreage that AutoPort currently occupies. Whether that transition is intended or incidental, the pattern of facts demands investigation.
Sources: Wise Men Shipping LLC (Delaware corporate records); Amazon Boxwood fulfillment center tax records; DEDO/Levin records; Campaign finance filings; AutoPort Inc.; NCC property records.
"The Governor owns a shipping company that uses Amazon's logistics infrastructure. As County Executive, he gave Amazon a 67 percent tax reduction. The man who brought Amazon to Delaware now chairs DEFAC. The port's traditional tenants are collapsing. The land they occupy is precisely the kind of acreage Amazon's distribution model requires. Whether these connections amount to a coordinated strategy or merely a devastating coincidence, the pattern of facts demands investigation."
Governor Matt Meyer on the Port of Wilmington about a year ago.
XXXVIII. Follow the Money
The $1,772,731.02 PAC and the Infrastructure of Influence
The Change Can't Wait PAC, account number 02005278, registered with the Delaware Office of the State Election Commissioner, functioned as the principal outside spending vehicle for Matt Meyer's gubernatorial campaign. Its donor list is not a random sample of Delaware civic life. It is a structured map of the interests that now benefit most directly from the policies Meyer is implementing as Governor.
The PAC raised $1,772,731.02 from approximately 309 contributors. The 30-day pre-primary filing, covering January 1 through August 12, 2024, reported total receipts of $828,154. The 8-day pre-primary report added $151,400. The 30-day pre-general filing, covering September 4 through October 7, 2024, added $336,800, of which $250,000 came from a single donor: Michael R. Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York City, whose contribution was dated September 4, 2024, six days before the September 10 primary.
The concentration patterns are documented in detail in The Truthline's EO 18 report. What follows in this chapter and the four that follow is the subset of those contributors whose interests connect directly to the Port of Wilmington, its surrounding real estate, its competing facilities, or the regulatory architecture that governs all of them.
Port-adjacent contributors totaled more than $145,000. Real estate developers concentrated more than $200,000 into the PAC.
The contributors include warehouse and logistics developers, Delaware River waterfront property holders, auto import families, port-adjacent industrial real estate investors, the architect of the 2012 privatization attempt, and construction firms that hold hundreds of millions in state contracts.
Additional patterns include: Todd Fryatt's five separate solar energy contributions totaling $35,000. Labaton Keller Sucharow's $20,000, a New York law firm whose business depends on the Court of Chancery bench that the Governor nominates. The MRA Group cluster (Wojewodka and Stuardi contributions from related entities). Stephen Davies, who served on Meyer's campaign finance team while simultaneously developing property as a regulated developer. Stuart Grant, Vice-Chair of the judicial nominating commission. Chip DiPaula, former Chief of Staff to Governor Ehrlich of Maryland, connected to the University of Maryland Medical System court case. And the ABC Merit Shop PAC, representing anti-union contractors contributing to a governor whose port depends on union labor.
Sources: Delaware Office of the State Election Commissioner; Change Can't Wait PAC filings (30-day pre-primary, 8-day pre-primary, 30-day pre-general); Truthline EO 18 report (karenhartleynagle.com).
"$7,998,435.00. Nine thousand sixty-three contributors.
The donor list is not a random sample of civic engagement.
It is a map of the interests that benefit from the policies the Governor signed.
The money went in. The executive orders came out.
The connection is in the public record."
The Five-Committee Architecture
The Meyer political operation was not one campaign. It was a network of five separate committees, each with a different legal status and a different range of permissible contributions. The architecture is not unique to Meyer. It is, however, unusually well-funded for a Delaware gubernatorial primary race. The five committees and their totals from the Department of Elections' records are as follows:
Source: Delaware Department of Elections, preliminary campaign finance reports filed by each committee, aggregated from PDF filings and verified by individual contribution records.
Three observations about the architecture itself, before the contributors are named.
First, the smallest committee by contribution count, Citizens for a New Delaware Way, raised $1.3 million from five contributions. That is an average contribution size of $260,000, which is roughly the maximum legal contribution from a single source for an entire election cycle in a Delaware gubernatorial primary if the contribution went directly to a candidate. By routing the money through a PAC, the cap was avoided.
Second, the third-party advertiser committee received $1,268,567.72, almost the entire balance, from one source: the related Citizens for a New Delaware Way PAC. The third-party advertiser is the entity that paid for the attack ads against Meyer's opponent. The attack ads were funded, end to end, by the same money that Phil Shawe deposited at the top of the structure. The architecture was designed to convert one man's money into political television, mailers, and digital advertising in a way that the Department of Elections record makes visible only when the two committees are read together.
Third, the Change Can't Wait PAC was founded by Alan Levin, former Governor Jack Markell's Economic Development Director (DEDO, the same Alan Levin who personally negotiated Amazon's entry into Delaware, the same Alan Levin who Meyer appointed as chair of the Wilmington Airport Task Force, the same Alan Levin who Meyer would later appoint as chair of the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council (DEFAC), the same Alan Levin who personally contributed $29,100 to that PAC. The PAC bore his name. He gave to it. Meyer appointed him to the body that certifies whether the state can afford the projects the PAC's contributors were positioned to benefit from.
“One PAC named after the man. The man gave to the PAC.
The Governor appointed the man to the body that certifies the spending.
The architecture is the answer.”
The Top Twelve: Who Actually Paid
The following twelve contributors gave the most to the Meyer network across all five committees. Every figure is from the Department of Elections record. Every name is verified. Every dollar is traceable to a specific filing on a specific date.
“One New York translation CEO gave more than every Delaware developer combined. The man asking the Governor for corporate-law reform paid more than the men
asking for permits. And he got his answer in 90 days. ”
The Shawe Operation: $2.57 Million For One Legislative Outcome
“Shawe gave $2.57 million. He asked for SB 21. He got it 90 days after Meyer took office. He gave another $50,000 eight months after the bill was signed. That sequence has a name in every ethics code in the country.”
Who Phil Shawe Is
Philip Shawe is the founder and CEO of TransPerfect Translations International, a New York-based translation and globalization company with offices in over 100 cities and roughly $1.2 billion in annual revenue. He is also Delaware's most persistent and best-funded critic of the state's Court of Chancery, the corporate court that ordered the forced sale of his company in 2015 after he and his co-founder, Elizabeth Elting, ended their personal and business partnership. Shawe ultimately won the resulting auction. He has spent the decade since the ruling funding advocacy organizations and political campaigns dedicated to reforming or weakening the court that ruled against him.
Two of those organizations are documented in the public record. Citizens for a Pro-Business Delaware, later rebranded as Citizens for Judicial Fairness, has spent more than $1 million in Delaware political advocacy since 2016, primarily attacking Chancery Court rulings, custodian fees, and individual judges. The 2024 election year produced a third Shawe vehicle, Citizens for a New Delaware Way, the political action committee that received $1.3 million from TransPerfect and transferred $1,268,568 of it to a third-party advertising committee that ran the negative-ad campaign against Lieutenant Governor Bethany Hall-Long during the Democratic primary.
The Five Contributions
The Department of Elections records show five contributions from TransPerfect to Citizens for a New Delaware Way. The first four occurred in 2024, before the primary and before Meyer was even elected. The fifth occurred in November 2025, eight months after Meyer signed Senate Bill 21 into law.
Source: Delaware Department of Elections, Citizens for a New Delaware Way preliminary reports.
What Shawe Asked For
Shawe was not subtle about what he wanted. In an August 22, 2024, op-ed published in Delaware Online, he co-authored under the byline of Citizens for a New Delaware Way an explicit demand: “today's Delaware is governed by an unelected and omnipotent Chancery Court that no longer serves the interests of the masses... This system is fundamentally flawed and needs urgent reform.” He named the reforms he wanted: random case assignment, financial disclosures by judges, transparency on custodian fees, and statutory changes to limit the Court's authority over corporate governance disputes.
Within Shawe's coalition, the priority was Section 144 of the Delaware General Corporation Law. Section 144 governs transactions involving conflicted directors, officers, and controlling stockholders. The Chancery Court's interpretation of Section 144 is what produced the rulings that ordered the sale of TransPerfect, that voided Elon Musk's $56 billion compensation package, and that produced the wave of corporations threatening to redomesticate to Nevada or Texas in late 2024. Shawe's coalition wanted Section 144 rewritten to provide controlling stockholders with safe-harbor protection from fiduciary-duty challenges. They wanted Section 220, the books-and-records inspection statute, narrowed so that shareholder plaintiffs could no longer use it to develop the factual record for derivative suits. They wanted the package on the Governor's desk.
What Shawe Got
On March 25, 2025, 90 days after Meyer was inaugurated and 36 days after Senate Bill 21 was first introduced in the Delaware Senate, Governor Matt Meyer signed SB 21 into law. The bill bypassed the customary review by the Corporation Law Section of the Delaware State Bar Association. It moved through the Senate on a 20-0 vote and through the House 32-7. Five proposed amendments were rejected. The Governor signed it the same day.
SB 21 rewrote Section 144 of the DGCL to provide a safe harbor for transactions involving controlling stockholders, shielding such transactions from equitable relief and damages liability if approved by an independent committee or by disinterested stockholders. It defined “controlling stockholder” more narrowly than the Chancery Court's case law had defined it. It created a strong presumption of independence for public company directors. It rewrote Section 220 to limit the scope of books-and-records inspection, exclude director and officer emails and texts from the definition of “books and records,” require shareholders to state their purpose with new specificity, and allow corporations to impose confidentiality restrictions on inspected documents.
Legal scholars (Group Letter to General Assembly) at universities worldwide, at Stanford, Harvard (Internal Affairs Doctrine Threat; Harvard), Columbia, and the Delaware State Bar Association called SB 21 the most sweeping rewrite of Delaware corporate law in over half a century. Critics, including the Council of Institutional Investors, called it “the billionaires' bill.” Shawe's lawyers and his allies in the corporate defense bar called it victory.
The Gratitude Payment
Eight months after SB 21 was signed, on November 18, 2025, TransPerfect Translations International contributed an additional $50,000 to Citizens for a New Delaware Way. The committee was no longer running attack ads. The primary was over. The general election was over. Meyer was Governor. The bill was law (Supreme Court Decision on Amendment Challenge). The post-inauguration filings show the contribution arrived during a period when the committee reported almost no other receipts and no significant outflows. It looks, in the dry language of campaign finance, like a thank-you note written in bank wire.
Shawe, in interviews and op-eds, has said his fight against the Chancery Court is principled. The principle, however he describes it, has been expensive. The principle has cost his company $2,568,567.72 in contributions to a political network that supported a candidate who, within 90 days of taking office, signed exactly the legislation Shawe's coalition demanded. The principle is permitted under Delaware campaign finance law. Whether it is acceptable under Delaware's ethics laws is a question the Public Integrity Commission has not been asked to answer.
“He paid for the Governor. He paid for the attack ads. The Governor signed the bill.
He paid again. The sequence is on the Department of Elections record.
The bill is on Lexis. The connection is on the page.”
The Bloomberg Quarter Million
On September 4, 2024, six days before the Delaware Democratic gubernatorial primary, billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City and founder of Bloomberg LP, contributed $250,000 to the Change Can't Wait PAC. It was a single contribution. It was the largest individual contribution Change Can't Wait received in its entire history. It was the second-largest individual contribution from any source to any committee in the Meyer network.
Bloomberg has given to Democratic candidates and causes for years. He has given to Delaware Democrats before. He has not, in recent memory, given $250,000 to a single state-level Democratic primary candidate seven days before that candidate's primary election. The Spotlight Delaware investigation that first reported the contribution noted that the reason for the gift was “not immediately known” and that Bloomberg's office did not respond to inquiries.
As of the writing of this report, neither Bloomberg's office nor the Meyer campaign nor the Change Can't Wait PAC has publicly explained the rationale for the $250,000 contribution. Three theories are circulating in Delaware political circles, none confirmed: that the gift was related to Hall-Long's gun-control voting record, which had drawn criticism from Bloomberg-affiliated organizations; that the gift was related to Meyer's stated support for offshore wind development, on which Bloomberg has been a major philanthropic funder; or that the gift was related to Meyer's emerging national profile and Bloomberg's interest in cultivating Democratic governors with presidential potential.
Whatever the reason, the timing is documented. The amount is documented. The recipient committee's expenditure of those funds on attack mailers against Hall-Long in the final week of the primary is documented in the Change Can't Wait PAC's own filings. The contribution was, in the words of Spotlight Delaware's own coverage, “the exclamation mark at the end of a bitter gubernatorial primary campaign.”
“Two billionaires from New York gave $1.55 million combined to defeat the
woman from Dover. The woman from Dover lost. The man they backed
signed the legislation one of them wanted within 90 days.
Whatever the second one wanted, the public still does not know.”
The Drawbridge-Delaney Address Match
“Keith Delaney gave $30,000 personally. Drawbridge Claymont LLC gave $30,000.
On Delaney's October 2 contribution, he listed the address: 6300 Philadelphia Pike, Claymont. That is the exact Drawbridge parcel that received $1 million in state Site Readiness funds. The contribution form is the connection. The parcel is the corridor.
The corridor is the report.”
On April 29, 2024, Drawbridge Claymont LLC contributed $30,000 to the Change Can't Wait PAC. The address listed on the filing was 34 East Germantown Pike, Norristown, Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania business address of the Drawbridge ownership network.
On September 5, 2024, Keith Delaney, who is a principal in the Drawbridge ownership network, personally contributed $15,000 to the Change Can't Wait PAC. The address listed on that filing was 190 West Germantown Pike, East Norriton, Pennsylvania.
On October 2, 2024, Keith Delaney personally contributed an additional $15,000 to the Change Can't Wait PAC. The address listed on that filing was 6300 Philadelphia Pike, Claymont, Delaware. That address is the exact parcel that Drawbridge Claymont LLC was developing. That address is the parcel that received $1 million in Delaware Site Readiness Fund grants. That address is the parcel that the prior section of this report names as the keystone of the corridor.
The contribution form is not ambiguous. The contributor put his own name and the address of the parcel he was developing on the same document, four months before the parcel received state money. Together, Delaney and his LLC contributed $60,000 to the PAC that elected the Governor whose Department of Economic Development would later approve the Site Readiness award. Whether that constitutes a quid pro quo is a question for prosecutors, not journalists. What it constitutes for purposes of this report is documented sequence. The contribution preceded the grant. The grant preceded the development. The development preceded the corridor. The corridor is the subject of the report.
“He wrote the parcel address on the contribution form. He did not have to. He did.
That is the kind of detail that, in a courtroom, juries remember.”
The Stortini Money: $100,000 From A Felon's Network
On June 3, 2024, an entity called 847 Cranbrook LLC contributed $100,000 to the Change Can't Wait PAC. The contribution was the third-largest individual contribution to that PAC. The address on the filing was 300 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1370, Wilmington, Delaware, a downtown Wilmington office address that is shared by multiple Stortini-affiliated entities.
847 Cranbrook LLC is named after a residential property at 847 Cranbrook Drive in North Wilmington that was previously owned by Michael Stortini, a Delaware developer who in 2014 pleaded guilty to federal charges of theft from his employees' 401(k) retirement accounts and from his own company. According to court records and contemporaneous reporting, Stortini diverted more than $600,000 from employee 401(k) contributions to pay company expenses, failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in payroll taxes, and stole an additional $900,000 from the company itself. Federal prosecutors said he spent approximately $500,000 of the stolen money at casinos. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison and was released in 2016.
After Stortini's release, the IRS placed a tax lien on his 847 Cranbrook Drive property. New Castle County sold the property at sheriff's sale to an entity called Midnight Moon Trading Co. LLC. Midnight Moon then transferred the property to a newly formed company controlled by Stortini's son, Paul. That new company was named 847 Cranbrook Drive LLC. From that point forward, the Stortini family used 847 Cranbrook Drive LLC as a vehicle to control properties and receive loans, while Michael Stortini's fortunes appeared to recover, and he and his partners began launching new development projects, particularly along the Delaware beaches through a company called Apennine Development.
In 2024, 847 Cranbrook LLC, which is presumptively the same entity or a related successor, contributed $100,000 to the PAC supporting Meyer. Lisa, Michael, and Paul Stortini family members each separately contributed $1,200 to the candidate committee on July 11, 2023. An associate of Paul Stortini, Ricardo McKendrick, told Spotlight Delaware that the $100,000 contribution to the Change Can't Wait PAC was “fully legal.” Whether legal or not, it constitutes one of the largest single contributions to the PAC, and it originates from a network whose principal served two years in federal prison for the theft of retirement savings from his own employees.
"Some Delaware political committees publish vetting criteria.
Some return contributions when concerns arise.
Some flag contributions for additional review.
Change Can't Wait PAC did none of these things.
The PAC accepted what was offered. The filings are the record."
The Pension Chairs $100,000
On August 9, 2024, Philip Reese contributed $100,000 to the Change Can't Wait PAC. The address on the filing is 5601 Kennett Pike, Wilmington, Delaware, a residential property in Greenville. Reese also contributed an additional $2,500 in April 2023 and $1,200 in June 2022, for a Department of Elections total of $102,400 across the candidate and PAC committees.
Philip Reese is the former Chairman of the Delaware Public Employees Retirement System, the state pension fund. According to his publicly available LinkedIn profile and his White House Historical Association biography, he previously served as Vice President of Corporate Development, Treasurer, Vice President and General Manager of Marketing and Sales, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the non-regulated businesses, and Vice President and Treasurer of the regulated utilities at Conectiv, the predecessor energy holding company that includes Delmarva Power and Light. He is a former tax attorney for KPMG. He is a former senior officer at SunTrust and at Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company / J.P. Morgan.
DPERS, the body Reese once chaired, manages approximately $11 billion in assets on behalf of Delaware's state employees, teachers, judges, police officers, and other public servants. DPERS investment decisions, including its allocations to alternative assets, real estate, and infrastructure, are subject to oversight by a Board of Trustees that the Governor appoints. DPERS does not invest directly in Delaware corporate franchise revenue, but the Delaware corporate franchise produces approximately $2.2 billion annually that flows into the state's General Fund, which in turn supports the state's pension contributions. Any Governor who acts to protect or enhance the corporate franchise is, indirectly, protecting and enhancing the revenue stream that funds the obligations DPERS exists to meet.
Reese's $100,000 contribution does not, on its face, present the same kind of direct conflict that Shawe's contributions did. Reese has no documented business pending before the Governor. He retired from his Conectiv role over two decades ago. He has no documented financial interest in Edgemoor, in Amazon, in Drawbridge Claymont, or in any other corridor parcel.
What the Reese contribution does present is the question of why the former chair of the state's pension fund, a man who spent his career in regulated utilities and corporate finance, chose to give the largest single individual contribution that any private Delaware citizen made to a Delaware gubernatorial primary in 2024. The reason has not been publicly stated. The Public Integrity Commission has not asked. The Department of Elections has not asked. This report asks. The man who once chaired DPERS gave the equivalent of a midlevel public employee's annual salary to elect Matt Meyer. The public is entitled to know why.
The Auto Dealer Network
John Hynansky, principal of Winner Automotive Group, contributed $28,000 across five contributions: $25,000 to Change Can't Wait PAC on June 8, 2023 (filed under the spelling “John Hyanski”), $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on December 30, 2021, $600 to Meyer for New Castle County on October 24, 2019, $600 on December 2, 2016, and $600 on December 9, 2020. There is also a $25,000 contribution from John Hynansky to Change Can't Wait PAC on March 25, 2024, that the Department of Elections data appears to record under both spellings, suggesting the actual John Hynansky total may be $53,000 if both records reflect distinct contributions, which the timing suggests they do.
Michael Hynansky, John's son and a Winner Automotive principal, contributed $32,700 across six contributions: $25,000 to Change Can't Wait PAC on August 7, 2024, $2,500 on May 16, 2024, $2,500 on October 1, 2023, plus $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on June 9, 2022, $1,200 on September 15, 2024, and $300 to Meyer for New Castle County on February 25, 2019.
Ericka Hynansky contributed $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on April 24, 2023.
The Hynansky family's documented total to the Meyer network is $61,900 minimum, possibly $86,900 if both John Hynansky / John Hyanski records are independent contributions.
Louis J. Capano contributed $45,000 across two PAC contributions: $25,000 to Change Can't Wait PAC on February 9, 2024, and $20,000 on August 20, 2024.
The combined Hynansky-plus-Capano network is therefore between $106,900 and $131,900, depending on which interpretation of the John Hynansky records is correct.
The substantive question raised by the auto dealer network is the one this report has previously framed: do the Hynanskys and Capano benefit from the port's auto business or from its absence? The Department of Elections records cannot answer that question. What it can do is establish the magnitude of the contribution flow and the timing of the contributions, which clusters in 2023 and 2024, the period during which the operator the state had selected for the port concession, Enstructure, was raising rates on AutoPort and Trans Cargo, the period during which 30 to 40 auto ships left for Baltimore and New York, and the period during which Trans Cargo's used-vehicle export business was being captured by the Diamond State Port Corporation. The contributions arrived during the destruction of the port's auto business. The destruction continued. The contributors continued to contribute.
“The auto dealers wrote checks while the port was losing the auto business.
The port lost the auto business anyway. Either the contributions did not buy
what the contributors expected, or what the contributors expected was the loss.”
The Post-Inauguration Gratitude Payments
Between Meyer's January 21, 2025, inauguration and December 31, 2025, the network received $322,452 in additional contributions. The largest are itemized below. They are notable because they arrived after the election was over, after the candidate had become the office-holder, and after the policy actions that the contributors had reason to want had begun to be implemented.
Source: Delaware Department of Elections, all committees, post-inauguration period.
The post-inauguration pattern does not require interpretation. It requires only timing. Shawe's $50,000 came after his bill was law. Schell Brothers' $25,000 came after EO 18 was signed. Rush Street Interactive's $18,800, paired with the $5,000 from Rush Street Gaming chairman Neil Bluhm and additional contributions from Bluhm family members in November 2025, came during the period in which the Meyer administration was reviewing sports-betting and casino-licensing policy. Each of these payments is permitted under Delaware campaign finance law. Each of these payments produces, in aggregate, the appearance of a fee schedule for access to a Governor whose policy decisions the contributors had cause to want to influence.
“When the bill is signed and the donor pays again, the question is no longer whether the contribution influenced the policy. The question is whether the policy generated the contribution. The Department of Elections record shows the second contribution arrived after the first signature. That is not a campaign contribution. That is a receipt.”
Infrastructure: The Public Money Meyer And Henry Spent
The Meyer political network raised approximately $8 million in private contributions. In return, the Meyer administration and the Henry administration directed substantially more than $8 million in public money to projects that benefited those contributors. The relevant figures are presented below in summary form. Each figure is sourced to the underlying state budget document, ordinance, executive order, or board resolution.
State-Level Public Spending Under Meyer (January 2025 to April 2026)
Edgemoor Container Terminal commitment: $195 million in state funds, originally committed by the Carney administration in May 2024 via DSPC Resolution 24-03 and transferred in the closing days of December 2024. The Meyer administration accepted the commitment, defended it in the FY26 Mini Bond Bill, and has now, via Resolution 26-04, committed to negotiating the additional $185 million funding gap that Patibanda-Sanchez disclosed on April 20, 2026. Total state exposure on Edgemoor as of this writing: approximately $380 million if the state absorbs the full gap, compared with the originally promised $195 million.
FY26 Bond Bill: $977 million in state capital expenditure, signed by Meyer at the end of June 2025. The bill includes $37.3 million for the Strategic Fund, the Site Readiness Fund, the Lab Space program, the Transportation Infrastructure Investment Fund, the Delaware Prosperity Partnership, and the Sports Tourism Capital Fund. The Strategic Fund and Site Readiness Fund are the same vehicles that delivered $1 million to Drawbridge Claymont and $4.56 million to Agile Cold Storage in Claymont and $4.5 million to Amazon at the Boxwood Road site.
FY26 Mini Bond Bill: House Bill 270, passed in late January 2026 and signed by Meyer in early February 2026. The bill, in addition to making clarifying amendments to the FY26 capital budget, authorized DSPC to coordinate a traffic study with DelDOT on the feasibility of directing truck traffic to Hay Road into and out of the new Edgemoor Port Terminal. Hay Road is the access road for the Edgemoor parcel and runs through the Drawbridge Claymont corridor.
$50 million federal Port Infrastructure Development Program grant: secured by Senator Coons and incorporated into the Edgemoor financing through Resolution 26-03 on April 20, 2026.
$13.4 million federal RAISE grant: for Wilmington and Christina River bridges, supporting the road infrastructure that surrounds the existing port and the Edgemoor expansion.
$2.85 million state property purchase at 701 Christiana Avenue: approved via DSPC Resolution 25-03 on January 10, 2025, ten days before Meyer's inauguration, with the property added to Enstructure's leasehold.
County-Level Public Spending Under Meyer and Henry (2017 to April 2026)
Amazon Boxwood Road tax reduction and incentive package: approved during Meyer's tenure as County Executive. The state contributed $4.5 million in Strategic Fund grants in 2020 to support the conversion of the failed Fisker plant into the Amazon fulfillment center. The county contributed property tax abatements, expedited Jobs Now permitting, and infrastructure approvals. The total public subsidy to bring Amazon to Boxwood, when state and county contributions are combined, exceeds $10 million in direct expenditure plus an estimated $30 million-plus in foregone tax revenue over the abatement period.
Jobs Now program: established by Meyer as County Executive. The program brings all county agencies and the developer's team together to set a timeline for projects expected to bring significant jobs, with county officials reviewing expenditure plans within five business days. Jobs Now applications have been used by Amazon, by Stoltz Real Estate Partners, by Starwood Digital Ventures (the Project Washington data center), by Agile Cold Storage, and by Drawbridge Claymont. The program is the county-level mechanism through which the corridor's logistics and data-center infrastructure has been fast-tracked through the planning process.
87-parcel mass rezoning attempt: advanced by Patibanda-Sanchez as Land Use General Manager during Meyer's tenure as County Executive. The rezoning was defeated by County Council under President Karen Hartley-Nagle. Meyer subsequently rescinded support for the ordinance. The geographic footprint of the proposed rezoning aligned substantially with the corridor that the FY26 capital budget, EO 18, and SPUR have now activated through other mechanisms.
Executive Order 2026-06 (SPUR): signed by Marcus Henry on April 28, 2026. SPUR creates a parallel land-use review track at the county level for the same categories of project that EO 18 streamlined at the state level. The order is described in greater detail in Section 11 of this report.
Project Washington data center fast-track: the Starwood Capital Group / PBF Energy data center campus on 580 acres adjacent to the Delaware City refinery has been advanced through the Henry administration's Land Use Department under the Jobs Now framework, with Phase 1 potentially grandfathered against Ordinance 25-101's data-center siting standards. The Phase 1 buildout includes three 700,000-square-foot buildings and two 500,000-square-foot buildings, totaling approximately 3.1 million square feet of data center capacity. Construction is targeted for the third quarter of 2026.
The Math
The Meyer political network raised approximately $8 million. The Meyer administration has committed or directed approximately $380 million in state Edgemoor exposure, has signed a $977 million bond bill that includes $37.3 million in the same Strategic Fund and Site Readiness Fund vehicles that delivered grants to Meyer's contributors, and has overseen the Henry administration's signing of a county-level executive order that opens the same corridor to streamlined permitting at the county level. The ratio of public expenditure to private campaign contributions, on the Edgemoor commitment alone, is approximately 47 to 1. If the Strategic Fund and Site Readiness Fund grants delivered to corridor parcels are included, the ratio rises further. If the federal grants secured for the corridor are included, the ratio rises further still.
That ratio is not unusual for state government. State capital budgets are routinely many multiples of campaign-finance flows. What is unusual, and what this report documents, is the geographic concentration of the public expenditure on the same corridor that contains the contributors' parcels, the same corridor that benefits the Governor's personally-owned logistics company, and the same corridor that now has, in the form of the Enstructure 85-year concession, an ownership architecture that prevents the public from ever recovering the asset.
“$8 million bought $380 million in commitments and an 85-year lease on Delaware's largest single state asset. The ratio is the answer. The corridor is the answer. The Department of Elections record is the source.”
XXXV?. Summit North Marina, Daryl Baker, Holt, Meyer Deal?
XXXIX. The Convicted Felon's $100,000
The largest single contribution to the Change Can't Wait PAC came from 847 Cranbrook LLC, which gave $100,000 on June 3, 2024. Spotlight Delaware identified the LLC as linked to Michael Stortini. The name derives from 847 Cranbrook Drive, a North Wilmington property that passed through a sheriff sale and into a company formed by Stortini's son Paul, then used by the Stortinis to control properties and receive loans. The Stortini-controlled 847 Cranbrook LLC contributed $100,000 to Change Can't Wait PAC during the 2024 Democratic primary cycle. Documented additional Stortini family contributions at the individual level total $3,600 across three contributions on July 11, 2023, bringing the documented Stortini-network total to $103,600.
Michael Stortini is not an unfamiliar name in Delaware courts. As managing member and part owner of the Frank Robino Companies, one of Delaware's largest home builders, he pleaded guilty in federal court in October 2013 to theft from an employee pension benefit plan and willful failure to pay over taxes. He had diverted $606,500 from his employees' 401(k) accounts to pay company expenses and fund real estate projects. He had taken more than $900,000 from company accounts for personal use, spending approximately $500,000 at casinos. In 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Andrews sentenced him to 24 months in prison.
After his release, Stortini rebuilt his position in Delaware real estate through Apennine Development Co., LLC, registered at the same address as the LLC that made the $100,000 PAC contribution: 300 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1370, Wilmington. On February 19, 2026, Governor Meyer stood alongside Apennine at the groundbreaking for Savannah Grove, a 106-unit residential community in Georgetown backed by a $2 million state loan. That groundbreaking was seven days before he signed Executive Order 18, which accelerates permitting for exactly that category of development.
In March 2025, Apennine entered a management partnership with Buccini Pollin Group covering more than 2,500 units in Kent and Sussex County. The Buccini and Pollin families are separately documented contributors to the Meyer political operation.
A man who embezzled $606,500 from his employees' retirement accounts, who spent $500,000 of company money at casinos, who served 24 months in federal prison, contributed $100,000 to the PAC that elected Governor Meyer. Seven days before Meyer signed the executive order that benefits his development company, the Governor stood beside him at a groundbreaking backed by a $2 million state loan. That is not redemption. That is access.
Sources: DOJ press release (Oct 2013); U.S. District Court, District of Delaware (sentencing 2015); Spotlight Delaware (Sep 5, 2024); Delaware Division of Corporations; Change Can't Wait PAC filings; Governor's office press materials (Feb 19, 2026).
"$868,500. Seventy-five contributors.
The donor list is not a random sample of civic engagement.
It is a map of the interests that benefit from the policies the Governor signed.
The money went in. The executive orders came out.
The connection is in the public record."
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
XL. The Pension Chair's $100,000
Philip Syng Reese contributed $100,000 to the Change Can't Wait PAC. He also serves as Chair of the Delaware Public Employees' Retirement System, the body that administers pension benefits for state employees, including the 283 former Diamond State Port Corporation employees whose pension plan held $34.2 million in assets and a net position of $779,512.
The governance loop is not subtle. The pension chair is a mega-donor to the governor. The governor appoints the board that oversees the port. The port's pension plan is administered by the retirement system that the mega-donor chairs. Reese's contribution creates a financial relationship between the person who oversees the retirement security of port workers and the political operation of the governor whose policies determine whether those workers remain employed.
Reese's contribution history also includes a contribution to Liz Cheney for Wyoming, placing him in a donor profile that crosses party lines and suggests a pragmatic rather than ideological approach to political giving. That pragmatism is not unusual among major donors. But when the pragmatic donor chairs the body that administers the pensions of the workers whose jobs are disappearing because of the governor's port policies, the pragmatism takes on a different character.
Sources: Change Can't Wait PAC filings; Delaware Public Employees' Retirement System; DSPC FY2024 audit (pension plan data).
"The pension chair gave $100,000 to the governor.
The governor appoints the board that controls the port.
The port's workers depend on the pension system the donor chairs.
When those workers lose their jobs because the port collapses,
their retirement security is administered by the man who
funded the campaign of the governor who let it happen."
XLI. The Hynansky Auto Connection
The Hynansky family contributed $63,200 to Matt Meyer's campaign infrastructure across three committees over nine years, with $57,500 of that flowing through the Change Can't Wait PAC in the twelve months before the 2024 election. John Hynansky contributed $25,000 on March 25, 2024, and earlier amounts to Meyer for New Castle County. Michael Hynansky contributed $25,000 on August 7, 2024, plus $5,000 in October 2023 and $2,500 earlier. Direct contributions from John, Michael, and Ericka Hynansky to Meyer for Delaware added thousands more.
The Hynansky family founded Winner Automotive Group in Wilmington in 1973. The company now operates six Delaware dealerships under Michael Hynansky. Winner's corporate description identifies real estate, construction, and agriculture alongside automotive as core business lines. The family's international operations include Winner Group Ukraine, which operates 55 dealerships selling over 130,000 cars annually, representing brands including Ford, Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover, Bentley, MG, and Renault. The Ukraine operation has been valued at approximately $1.4 billion.
The Biden connection is documented in public records. The Hynansky family contributed more than $100,000 to Biden campaigns over the years. A $20 million taxpayer-backed loan supported the Ukraine dealership expansion. The political relationships span decades and cross multiple levels of government.
The question this report raises but cannot yet answer: does the Hynansky family benefit from AutoPort's collapse? If the port's traditional auto logistics business is destroyed and the OEM contracts move to competitor ports, does that create opportunities for a Delaware-based auto dealer network with international import capabilities? Do the Hynanskeys import vehicles through the Port of Wilmington or through a competitor? The contribution record is clear. The business interest behind the escalation remains unexamined.
Sources: Change Can't Wait PAC filings; Meyer for NCC filings; Meyer for Delaware filings; Winner Automotive Group; Winner Group Ukraine; public records.
"$63,200 across three committees over nine years.
$57,500 through the PAC in twelve months.
The Hynansky family runs the largest auto dealer network in Delaware.
The port's auto business is collapsing.
The question nobody has asked:
does the collapse create an opportunity for the contributor?"
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Governor Matt Meyer's Facebook Posts Promoting Executive Order 18
Every line of this post is contradicted by Executive Order 18, Governor Matt Meyer actually signed. He says no safety or environmental standards were cut. His order immediately eliminates Traffic Impact Studies for developer projects, bypasses the Administrative Procedures Act, and builds a permitting runway around Delaware's Coastal Zone Act for a data center that would consume twice the electricity of every home in the state. He says it streamlines coordination. It gives the Governor sole, unappealable authority to designate which projects and which locations get the fast track, with $725,000 in developer money mapping directly to the donors who benefit. This report documents every dollar, every donor, every provision.
XLII. The Drawbridge Claymont Connection
Keith J. Delaney, founder and CEO of the D2 Organization, contributed $30,000 to the Change Can't Wait PAC through Drawbridge Claymont LLC on April 29, 2024. His personal contributions to the PAC and to Meyer for Delaware bring the combined total from Delaney and his entities to at least $63,600 across multiple filing dates.
Drawbridge Claymont's asset is 58 acres at 6300 Philadelphia Pike in Claymont, Delaware, on the Delaware River. The site operated as a chemical manufacturing plant from the late 1890s under Allied Signal. General Chemical Corporation acquired it in 1986, filed for bankruptcy in 2002, and continued operating until Chemtrade Solutions LLC acquired it in 2014 and sold it to D2. The site includes a 750-foot pier with four mooring dolphins and Conrail freight rail access.
Delaware has already invested in the project. In March 2022, the Council on Development Finance awarded Drawbridge Claymont a $1 million Site Readiness Fund grant for demolition and engineering. The project has an active DNREC permit for a contaminated site involving metals, volatile organic compounds, and DDT, with Honeywell as a co-applicant. Braskem America operates a 240-car railyard as a tenant.
D2 lobbied to change the Coastal Zone Act to allow bulk product transfer through the site's pre-1971 pier. That legislative effort, if successful, would enable Drawbridge Claymont to function as a bulk cargo transfer point on the Delaware River, potentially competing with or bypassing the Port of Wilmington for certain categories of cargo.
The contribution timing is notable. The $30,000 arrived on April 29, 2024, the same month Governor Meyer withdrew DSPC board nominations. A developer with a Delaware River pier, a contaminated site grant, and an active lobbying effort to change the Coastal Zone Act contributed $30,000 to the PAC that elected the governor whose port policies now govern the competitive landscape.
Sources: Change Can't Wait PAC filings; Meyer for Delaware filings; D2 Organization; Council on Development Finance (March 2022 grant); DNREC permit records; Coastal Zone Act legislative history; Delaware Division of Corporations.
"A 750-foot pier on the Delaware River. A $1 million state grant.
A contaminated site permit. A lobbying effort to change the Coastal Zone Act.
And $63,600 to the governor's campaign infrastructure.
The question is whether Drawbridge Claymont is being positioned to compete with
or bypass the Port of Wilmington for bulk cargo.
The contribution record suggests the developer believes the answer matters."
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
XLIII. The Mass Rezoning That Was Stopped, Bundling Compromise, And Reform Legislation They Ran Out The Clock To Kill
The 87-parcel rezoning was not housekeeping. It was the inventory of the corridor.
Eighty-seven parcels. One Council vote. No separate hearings.
When the mass vote collapsed, the Department offered a compromise:
the same parcels, broken into ten bundles by Council district.
A majority of Council accepted it. The Council President did not.
She wrote the reform legislation instead.
The Department ran the clock until her term expired.
The reform legislation died with the term.
Sixteen months later, the data center developer arrived.
On June 13, 2023, Ordinance 23-083 was introduced before New Castle County Council. The legislation had been drafted and proposed by the New Castle County Department of Land Use under General Manager Charuni Patibanda. Council Members Janet Kilpatrick and Dave Tackett, who served as the chairs of the Land Use Committee, were the named sponsors of record. The named sponsorship was procedural. Council rules require the Land Use Committee chairs to sponsor Land Use legislation. The substantive position of each chair was not the same as the procedural one. Kilpatrick supported the mass rezoning on its merits and advocated for it through the public process. Tackett did not support it on the merits. The procedural sponsorship and the substantive support are two different things. The public record reflects only the first. The contemporaneous Council record reflects both.
The ordinance proposed to rezone 87 separate parcels across New Castle County in a single Council vote. Some parcels were proposed for upzoning to more intensive use. Others for downzoning. The Department called it a housekeeping measure to align the zoning maps with the Future Land Use Map of the NCC2050 Comprehensive Plan, adopted in July 2022. The Department argued that Delaware state law required compliance within 18 months of plan adoption, and that the mass rezoning was the efficient path.
The largest single concentration of parcels in the ordinance was in Red Lion Hundred and St. Georges Hundred. The legal description, posted by the Planning Board for its October 17, 2023, hearing and signed by Planning Board Chair Karen Peterson and Land Use General Manager Charuni Patibanda, listed every parcel by tax number and named owner. What follows is not a summary. It is the inventory.
The Inventory
The full 87-parcel list, by Hundred, included parcels owned by the Delaware City Refining Co., Stockton Development Co., Union Carbide Corp., E. I. duPont de Nemours & Company, Wilmington Friends School, Lighthouse Farm, the Town of Whitehall, Summit Aviation, the Russell W. Peterson Urban Wildlife Refuge along the Jack Markell Trail, Auburn Valley, Glasgow Commons, Glasgow Regional Park, the Red Lion Energy Center, Getty Refining and Marketing Co., Hub Marine and Industrial Acres Corp., Abessinio Stadium, Rockwood Office Park, the First Unitarian Church, Woodlawn Trustees, Hockessin Center, the Shoppes of St. Georges, the Hyetts Corner Road Water Treatment Plant, Van Wingerden Associates, the Lester Subdivision, the Dellaversano Subdivision, the Tall Subdivision, the Harris Subdivision, the Shahan Subdivision, the Stardel Inc parcels, the Gilbert Subdivision, the Ardentown community, and Christiana Village.
The strategist would not call this housekeeping. Neither does the Council President who stopped the single mass vote. This was the inventory of the corridor. Pharmaceutical expansion at Alapocas. Energy and refining parcels at Delaware City. The Frightland-adjacent farm at Port Penn. The runway at Summit Aviation. The wildlife refuge along the Jack Markell Trail. The airport-corridor office complex on Churchmans Road. The land owned by Wilmington Friends School. The land owned by E. I. duPont de Nemours & Company. Each parcel had a substantive use question that should have been the subject of its own public hearing. The mass-rezoning procedure would have answered each question without asking it.
Land owned by Wilmington Friends School. Land owned by DuPont.
Land at Delaware City Refining. Land along the Jack Markell Trail.
Eighty-seven parcels. One vote. No hearings. Call that housekeeping if you want.
Call it what it is, if you read the list.
The Problematic Parcels: What The Public Fought, By Category
The 87-parcel ordinance produced organized public opposition because specific parcels inside the bundle carried specific use questions that neighbors had every right to be heard on. The Planning Board, on December 12, 2023, voted to recommend a Substitute that removed 16 parcels of concern. RADAR did not support the Substitute either. The objection had never been to the size of the bundle. The objection had been to the bundling itself. But the 16 removed parcels are useful in another way. They tell the reader which parcels the Department itself acknowledged should not have been bundled in the first place. The chart that follows organizes the documented problematic parcels by category, identifying the controversy each carried, the public opposition organized against it, and the present-day status of the underlying use question.
This chart is compiled from the contemporaneous public record. Sources include the October 17, 2023, Planning Board Agenda containing the Ord. 23-083 legal description with parcels listed by tax-parcel number.
The chart documents fifteen categories of problematic parcels that drew organized public opposition during the public fight over Ordinance 23-083, which should have been flagged at the time, or that came up later through the bundled-by-district framework that replaced the single mass rezoning. Three categories produced specific named-parcel removals from the December 12, 2023, Planning Board Substitute.
Five categories were advanced separately after Ord. 23-083 was withdrawn through individual ordinances or the
district-bundled framework: the Walker Farm parcel through Ord. 22-143, the Summit Aviation parcel through Ord. 24-083, the Hub Marine and Russell W. Peterson cluster through Ord. 24-024, the Middletown Warwick Road Stardel and Shahan parcels through Ord. 24-083, and the 606 Stanton Christiana Road parcel through Ord. 24-023. The Churchman's Office Complex parcel was advanced through Ord. 24-042 under Prime Sponsor Smiley, the same councilman who advanced the Walker Farm rezoning.
The Wawa development at 2256 Dupont Parkway was advanced through its own separate parcel-specific ordinance and approved unanimously by Council in May 2024 with broad support from neighbors after revisions, four and a half years after the project was first proposed in 2019. The Lighthouse Road parcel near the Port of Wilmington and the Project Washington Red Lion parcels were inside the original 87-parcel mass rezoning by tax-parcel number, the same legal description that listed the Wilmington Friends School parcel and the Lighthouse Farm parcel at Port Penn. The remaining categories sit inside the corridor that Project Washington, the St. Georges Business Park, and the broader Greggo-Ferrara development pipeline now occupy.
Read together, the chart documents the exact pattern the Council President had identified at the November 16, 2023, Port Penn fire hall meeting. Each parcel had its own substantive use question. Each parcel deserved its own public hearing. Each parcel deserved its own separate vote. Bundling 87 parcels into one vote or breaking them into ten district bundles did not eliminate the underlying use questions. It only eliminated the procedural mechanism by which the public could be heard on each one.
Read across the chart in chronological order, and a pattern appears that no single news article ever captured. The 87-parcel mass rezoning was withdrawn on February 7, 2024. Within twenty days, on February 27, 2024, Ord. 24-024 reintroduced the Russell W. Peterson Wildlife Refuge parcel, the 2 Highspeed Way industrial parcel, and the Hub Marine and Industrial Acres Corp. parcel at 0 South Madison Street, all in one District 10 bundle.
Within the next four months, Ord. 24-023 reintroduced the 606 Stanton Christiana Road parcel adjacent to the Stanton Christiana Industrial Development warehouse plan. Ord. 24-042 reintroduced the 251 Churchmans Road airport-corridor parcel under Smiley’s prime sponsorship. Ord. 24-083 reintroduced eleven Middletown corridor parcels, including the Stardel and Shahan subdivision parcels in one District 6 bundle, plus the Summit Aviation parcel at 4 Troopers Way. The Wawa development at 2256 Dupont Parkway, the parcel listed in Ord. 23-083 under the obscured name “Lester Subdivision,” was advanced through its own separate parcel-specific ordinance and approved unanimously by New Castle County Council in May 2024 with broad support from lawmakers and neighbors after revisions. The Wawa is the proof of concept.
The single mass rezoning was replaced not with parcel-by-parcel hearings for every parcel, but with district-bundled rezonings for most parcels and parcel-specific hearings for a few. The procedural device was reduced in scale. The procedural device was not eliminated. Where the public was given a parcel-specific process, as on the Wawa, the project moved forward unanimously and with neighborhood support. Where the public was bundled back into a district vote, the parcels moved forward without that hearing.
Wilmington Friends School. Whitehall trucks. Hydrogen at Delaware City.
Hub Marine on the riverfront. Middletown mega-warehouses. The wildlife refuge.
The Summit Aviation runway. The Stardel parcels. The Churchman's Office Complex.
The Wawa at Asbury Chase. The Greggo-Ferrara corridor. Walker Farm at the airport. Lighthouse Road by the port. The Red Lion parcels under Project Washington.
Stanton Christiana Road by I-95. Each parcel had its own use question.
Each parcel had its own constituency. Each parcel deserved its own hearing.
The bundle was the procedural device that erased every one of them.
The Red Lion Hundred Cluster: Where Project Washington Sits Today
The Red Lion Hundred section of the ordinance contained nine parcels. Each is identified here by tax parcel number, address, and named owner of record on the October 17, 2023, Planning Board agenda.
On June 2, 2025, sixteen months after the single-vote mass rezoning was withdrawn, Starwood Digital Ventures filed a pre-application letter for Project Washington with the New Castle County Department of Land Use. Starwood proposed an eleven-building, six-million-square-foot, 1.2 gigawatt data center campus on a 580-acre footprint between Governor Lea Road, Hamburg Road, and River Road, north of the Delaware City Refinery, with power from Delmarva Power and Light's Red Lion electrical substation. The land was owned by New Castle Campus Development LLC, an entity tied to PBF Energy that, according to Delaware Business Times reporting, had been registered weeks before the Starwood filing.
PBF Energy is the corporate parent of Delaware City Refining Co. The Delaware City Refining Co. parcels at 0 River Road and 4667 Wrangle Hill Road inside Ordinance 23-083 are owned by the same petroleum refiner whose corporate parent is now the entity supplying the land to Starwood. Stockton Development Co. and Union Carbide Corp. are the legacy industrial entities whose Red Lion parcels rounded out the cluster.
The South Campus of Project Washington, the first phase, sits on a parcel at 825 Governor Lea Road that is already zoned Heavy Industrial, where data center use is a permissible use. The North Campus, the second phase, sits on the north side of Red Lion Creek on a parcel currently zoned Suburban that requires rezoning to Industrial before construction. The North Campus rezoning is now pending under application 2025-0309-S, with its own separate Planning Board hearing, its own separate Land Use Committee hearing, and its own separate County Council vote.
If Ordinance 23-083 had passed, Starwood would not be filing a North Campus rezoning today.
Starwood would be filing a building permit.
The Industrial zoning would already be on the books.
The public hearing would already be over.
The 87-parcel vote would have ended that conversation
before the conversation was scheduled to begin.
What Patibanda Said. What Hartley-Nagle Said.
During the public fight over Ordinance 23-083, from October 2023 through February 2024, Charuni Patibanda, then General Manager of the New Castle County Department of Land Use, defended the mass rezoning at multiple public meetings and to multiple reporters. The contemporaneous Delaware Public Media reporting establishes the substance.
At the Port Penn fire hall public meeting on November 16, 2023, Patibanda told the assembled residents that the Department of Land Use had "sought input from the public when they were creating the new comprehensive plan," framing the mass rezoning as the procedural completion of a public process that had already occurred. Several residents at the meeting said on the record that they had never received notice of the comprehensive plan process and questioned the efficiency of the department's outreach.
Council President Karen Hartley-Nagle, on the record to Delaware Public Media, said: "I immediately thought this was not legal. What the heck are they doing? 87 parcels being zoned in one vote? That doesn't make sense. That eliminates the possibility for all of my constituents throughout the county, our constituents, to have a voice in each and every one of them, like we normally do. Everyone goes through separately. It first goes through the committee, and then it will go through the council meeting. And you know I'll keep you there all night. Everyone gets to speak."
On the Land Use Department's outreach failures, Hartley-Nagle said: "Land Use knows how to get information out, they're really good when they want you to know something. So I'm not quite believing that they didn't do this on purpose to make it just as confusing and difficult for people as possible."
On the legal exposure to the County, Hartley-Nagle said: "We expect that we will be sued and we will probably lose based on what we are doing right now. And so I want to make sure that I am listing, if I go not voting, all the reasons why I'm not voting, because if it is challenged in the courts, I want them to understand the reasons why, and what could have been done better, and that there was a better way."
On December 12, 2023, the New Castle County Planning Board voted to recommend a Substitute that removed 16 of the 87 parcels described as parcels of concern. RADAR, the public opposition group led by Dale Swain, did not support the Substitute either. RADAR's position throughout was the position the Council President shared: each parcel deserved its own separate ordinance, its own public hearing, and its own separate vote, the way the Unified Development Code requires for every other rezoning in New Castle County.
On January 25, 2024, with the public opposition mounting toward defeat at the Council vote, then-County Executive Matt Meyer issued a public statement calling on the Council to withdraw the ordinance. Meyer's statement said there had been "misinformation" about the ordinance. The statement was understood by Council members at the time as a partial repudiation of the procedural approach Meyer's own Land Use Department had advanced. Hartley-Nagle, on the record, said she was taken aback. She interpreted the reference to misinformation as a dig against the residents opposed: "They are knowledgeable, they are paying attention, they know what they're talking about."
On February 7, 2024, Council formally withdrew Ordinance 23-083.
One characterization said the public was misinformed.
The other said the public was knowledgeable.
The Council President was right.
The single mass vote was withdrawn.
The General Manager became Secretary of State.
Sixteen months later, the data center filed.
The Bundling Compromise: Ten Ordinances, One Per District, Same Architecture, A Majority Of Council Accepted
The withdrawal of Ordinance 23-083 was not the end of the Department's effort. At the County Council Land Use Committee meeting on February 6, 2024, the day before the formal withdrawal, Patibanda revealed the Department's new path. Instead of voting on all 87 parcels in a single ordinance, the Department would draft ten individual ordinances, one per Council district, each containing the rezonings within that district's geographic boundary. Patibanda told the Committee that the rezonings would be more "digestible" for the public and Council in that format. She told the Committee that, "as far as tax payer dollars, efficiency of government spending, it would not make sense for the county to take one by one."
The Department implemented the path. The New Castle County NCC2050 Comprehensive Rezoning page on the official county website confirms the framework on the public record: "The Department of Land Use propose to draft 10 individual ordinances, one per Council District, which will include the proposed rezonings to comply with the Future Land Use Map contained within the Comprehensive Plan." The Department then conducted Community Open Houses by district grouping. March 11, 2024 covered Council Districts 1, 3, and 10. March 25, 2024, covered Districts 2, 4, and 8. May 22, 2024, covered Districts 5, 7, and 11. June 5, 2024 covered District 12. June 26, 2024, covered District 6. By March 2024, six new ordinances had already been introduced to rezone Wilmington-area parcels under the bundling framework.
RADAR's position on the bundling compromise was the same as its position on the original mass rezoning. Dale Swain told Delaware Public Media at the February 6 meeting: "Let the council vote on each of them so it is clear what they are voting on. This process with O-83 just really was not the way to do rezoning which is what we've said from the beginning." The objection had never been to the size of the bundle. The objection had been to the bundling itself.
A majority of New Castle County Council accepted the bundling compromise. The ten-ordinance path moved forward through the procedural mechanism the Department designed. The Department drafted the ordinances. Council introduced them under the same procedural-sponsorship rule that had governed Ordinance 23-083. The community open houses occurred. The substantive procedural deficiency that the original 87-parcel ordinance had created was preserved, in smaller form, across ten ordinances rather than one. Each district's ordinance still bundled multiple parcels with substantively distinct use questions into a single Council vote. The architecture survived the procedural retreat.
Council President Karen Hartley-Nagle did not agree to the bundling compromise. She voted no on every bundled district rezoning on the same procedural grounds on which she had opposed the original 87-parcel mass rezoning. She maintained the same position from the November 2023 fire hall meeting through the February 7, 2024 withdrawal through the bundling implementation that followed. Each parcel deserved its own ordinance. Each parcel deserved its own public hearing. Each parcel deserved its own vote. The bundling compromise that a majority of her colleagues accepted gave the public smaller bundles of the same procedural deficiency. Her objection, on the public record, has been put plainly by the Council President in her own words: "The principle is the same whether you bundle 87 properties or 12: if a parcel changes designation, the people who live next to it deserve their own hearing."
A majority of Council accepted the compromise. The Council President did not.
Bundling parcels into ten ordinances is still bundling parcels.
Smaller bundles, same architecture. The objection was never the size of the bundle.
The objection was the bundling itself.
The Reform Legislation: Two Bills, Two Mechanisms Of Death
Council President Hartley-Nagle did not stop at the no votes on the bundled district rezonings. She drafted and introduced two pieces of legislation specifically designed to counter the abuses of process, the concealment of intentions, and the favoritism toward connected developers that the 87-parcel ordinance and the bundling compromise had revealed. The first was a notice bill, Ordinance 23-168. The second was a separate individual-rezoning bill that would have added Section 40.31.111 to the Unified Development Code. The two bills did different work. They died by different mechanisms. Each death was procedurally distinct, and the public record on each is its own.
Ordinance 23-168: The Notice Bill
Ordinance 23-168 was introduced on December 12, 2023, by Council President Hartley-Nagle and Council Member Brandon Toole as co-sponsors. The bill was a comprehensive rewrite of Section 40.31.340 of the Unified Development Code. It established, for the first time, a standardized set of Notice Contents required in every form of legal notice regardless of medium: type of application, description of the proposed action, parcel address, hearing date and location, and contact information for obtaining full details. It then required that every proposed rezoning be noticed through every available channel simultaneously: newspaper publication as required by state law, the county website at least 14 days before the hearing, any social media platform used by the Department of Land Use at least 14 days before the hearing, certified mail with electronic return receipt to the applicant, and certified mail with electronic return receipt to all property owners within a 1,000-foot radius of the property to be rezoned, or to twelve different property owners in the closest proximity to the property, whichever was greater, no less than 14 days before the hearing.
The existing radius for mailed notice of non-rezoning applications was 300 feet. For rezonings, Ordinance 23-168 tripled it to 1,000 feet. The bill also required physical signage on the property at least 14 days before the hearing, with specific dimensions, placement requirements, and a mandate that the applicant provide photographic proof of posting and a signed affidavit at least seven days before the hearing. The sign had to remain in place for 14 days after the hearing concluded. The bill held both sides accountable: the applicant had to prove posting, and the Department had to deliver notice through every required channel with documented, verifiable delivery. The bill was designed so that no resident within 1,000 feet of a proposed rezoning could say they did not know.
The Office of State Planning Coordination supported the legislation. In its February 21, 2024 PLUS Review letter (2024-01-04), OSPC stated it had no concerns or substantive comments and was generally supportive of any process that facilitates public participation in land use planning. DelDOT had no comments. DNREC had no concerns. The Delaware Emergency Management Agency had no comments. The State Historic Preservation Office had no comment. The State Fire Marshal had no objection. Five state agencies supported the bill. One opposed it: the Delaware State Housing Authority, through contact Alex Modeas, argued in the same PLUS Review letter that expanded notice requirements would present additional barriers to fair housing choice, that community opposition had been successful in limiting, delaying, or preventing the development of diverse housing options, and that the ordinance would exacerbate the housing crisis.
The DSHA argument misrepresented the legislation. Ordinance 23-168 applied equally to all rezonings regardless of proposed use, including warehouses, data centers, industrial projects, and commercial developments. It did not single out housing. The Department of Land Use under General Manager Charuni Patibanda took the DSHA framing forward. County staff argued the expanded notification radius would cost too much. The cost figure they quoted, verified by many residents who attended the meeting, was misrepresented.
Ordinance 23-168 went to a vote and was defeated in Council. The certified-mail-to-1,000-feet provision did not become law. The standardized notice contents did not become law. The civic-association notice provision did not become law. The social-media posting requirement did not become law. The certified-mail-to-applicant provision did not become law. The notice practices the Department of Land Use operated under in 2023, the same notice practices the bill had been written to remedy, remain the notice practices in operation today.
Five state agencies supported the notice bill. One opposed it.
The one that opposed it called public notice a barrier to fair housing.
The bill applied to warehouses. It applied to data centers. It applied to industrial sites.
Ordinance 23-168 was defeated in Council.
The notice rule it was written to fix is still the notice rule today.
The Individual-Rezoning Bill: Killed By Two Trips Through PLUS
The second piece of reform legislation was a separate bill that would have added Section 40.31.111 to the Unified Development Code. The new section would have required that each rezoning application be assigned to and considered by the County Council pursuant to a single proposed ordinance per rezoning application, and would have explicitly prohibited comprehensive rezonings in conflict with that requirement. The draft ordinance was prepared for introduction in March 2024. It was the substantive procedural reform: one parcel, one ordinance, one hearing, one vote. It would have closed the bundling architecture that the Department had used in 2023 to advance the 87-parcel mass rezoning and that the Department continued to use in 2024 through the ten-ordinance district bundles.
The bill never reached the Council floor. The mechanism by which it was killed is on the public record. Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez, then General Manager of the Department of Land Use, delayed the rezoning bill through PLUS review. The Preliminary Land Use Service, or PLUS, is the state-level pre-application review process administered by the Office of State Planning Coordination. PLUS review takes weeks. When the review came back, Patibanda-Sanchez sent the bill to PLUS a second time for further review. The second referral was unnecessary. It served no legislative purpose other than delay. The second trip through PLUS consumed the remaining time on the legislative calendar before the Council President's term expired in November 2025.
The individual-rezoning bill never reached the Council floor. The bill that would have prevented future bundled rezonings was neutralized by the Department official who controlled scheduling, through a second referral that served no purpose other than delay. The Council President has put the mechanism on the public record. In the EO 18 investigation published at karenhartleynagle.com on March 10, 2026, Hartley-Nagle wrote: "Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez, as General Manager of the Department of Land Use, delayed the rezoning bill through PLUS review. When the review came back, she sent it to PLUS a second time for further review, a step that was unnecessary and that consumed the remaining time on the legislative calendar before my term expired in November 2025. The individual-rezoning bill never reached the Council floor. The bill that would have prevented future bundled rezonings was neutralized by the official who overstepped in scheduling, through a second referral that served no legislative purpose other than delay."
The Council President has named the mechanism plainly. "This was not a coincidence. It was obstruction in service of the same developer interests that EO 18 now serves at the state level. Patibanda-Sanchez became Meyer's Secretary of State. She was also named Chair of the Diamond State Port Corporation board. The person who killed reform legislation protecting the public was rewarded with two of the most consequential administrative appointments in Delaware state government."
Two bills. One voted down. One sent to PLUS review twice.
Both dead before the term ended. The official who killed them got two appointments.
Secretary of State. Chair of the Diamond State Port Corporation Board.
What The Two Bills Together Would Have Done
Read together, Ordinance 23-168 and the individual-rezoning bill would have closed the procedural architecture that the Department had used in 2023 to advance the 87-parcel mass rezoning and that the Department continued to use in 2024 to advance the ten-ordinance bundling compromise. Ordinance 23-168 would have required certified mail to 1,000 feet, standardized notice contents, civic-association notification, social-media posting, and verified-delivery proof on every rezoning hearing in New Castle County. The individual-rezoning bill, through new Section 40.31.111, would have required each parcel proposed for a zoning change to receive its own ordinance and its own separate vote, and would have explicitly prohibited comprehensive rezonings in conflict with that requirement. The notice reform and the procedural reform were two halves of the same architectural correction.
Both halves failed. Ordinance 23-168 was voted down in Council, after the Department's General Manager and DSHA together advanced opposition that misrepresented the bill and inflated its cost. The individual-rezoning bill was killed by the same General Manager through a second, unnecessary trip through PLUS review that consumed the remaining time on the legislative calendar before the Council President's term expired. The Department whose practices the bills had been written to correct is the Department that ran the clock on the procedural reform and that argued against the notice reform. The corrections the bills proposed are not in the Code today. The architecture the bills proposed to close remains operative.
The bundling compromise framework remains the operative procedural option available to the next Department of Land Use General Manager. The notice rule under which the Department operated in 2023 and 2024 remains the notice rule today. The next County Executive who wishes to advance a comprehensive rezoning under bundled ordinances by Council district will face the same Code today that the 2023 Department faced, and will give notice under the same notice rule the 2023 Department gave. The reform that would have closed those loopholes died, half by floor vote, half by the Department's second referral to PLUS.
Why The Bundling Compromise Mattered For Project Washington And Beyond
The Project Washington data center filing of June 2025 sits on parcels currently zoned Suburban that require rezoning to Industrial before construction. Under the current Code, Project Washington's North Campus rezoning is processed as a single-parcel ordinance. The Council President's reform legislation, had it passed, would not have changed the single-parcel ordinance procedure for Project Washington. What the reform legislation would have prevented is the architecture by which the Project Washington site, and dozens of other parcels in the corridor, could have been pre-positioned for rezoning under bundled ordinances by Council district at the next comprehensive rezoning cycle.
The Lighthouse Farm parcel at 381 Port Penn Road in St. Georges Hundred was inside Ordinance 23-083. The Lighthouse Farm parcel was assigned to one of the ten district ordinances under the bundling compromise. The Greggo-Ferrara network's St. Georges Business Park, the proposed redevelopment of the Frightland site for warehouse-and-data-center use, sits adjacent to that parcel. Each of the corridor parcels documented in the chapters that follow was, at one point in 2023 or 2024, available for rezoning under the bundled-ordinance framework that the Council President opposed and that the reform legislation would have closed off.
The reform legislation died in the closing weeks of the Council President's term. The Department that killed it did so by delay. The Council President left office on January 6, 2025. The Department's General Manager, Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez, was sworn in as Delaware Secretary of State and appointed Chair of the Diamond State Port Corporation Board within the same week the new gubernatorial administration took office. The procedural authority the Department had used to run the clock on reform legislation moved to the cabinet. The procedural advantage the bundling compromise had preserved remained inside the Code.
The Council President left office. The General Manager became the Secretary of State.
The reform legislation was already dead. The bundling architecture stayed in the Code.
Project Washington filed in June. The corridor architecture was already prepared.
The clock had already run on the reform that would have stopped it.
The Documented Chain
This sequence is documented. It is not interpretation. The Planning Board agenda of October 17, 2023 contains the legal description with the Red Lion Hundred parcels listed by tax parcel number and named owner. The New Castle County NCC2050 Comprehensive Rezoning page on the official county website documents the ten-ordinance bundling framework and the schedule of Community Open House Presentations by Council district. The New Castle County Active Plans list contains the Project Washington South Campus and North Campus filings under application 2025-0309-S. The Delaware Public Media reporting from November 2023 through February 2024 contains the on-the-record statements of the General Manager, the Council President, and RADAR. The Spotlight Delaware reporting from March 2024 documents that six new district-bundled ordinances had been introduced by that date. The Truthline Network's EO 18 investigation, published at karenhartleynagle.com on March 10, 2026, documents the procedural mechanism by which the reform legislation was killed. The contemporaneous public record establishes the chain.
Res neglecta, res amissa. Res defensa, res servata.
What is neglected is lost. What is defended is saved.
Sources & Citations: New Castle County Planning Board Agenda, Application 2023-0325-Z, Ordinance 23-083 legal description (newcastlede.gov, October 17, 2023); New Castle County Planning Board Agenda, December 12, 2023, recommendation of Substitute removing 16 parcels of concern (newcastlede.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/ArchivedAgenda/_12122023-2630); Ordinance 23-083 (newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/51682/23-083); Ordinance 24-083, June 11, 2024 (newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/55328/24-083), listing parcels by tax number including Appoquinimink Hundred and Pencader Hundred Summit Aviation parcel 11-058.00-009; Ordinance 23-168 (introduced December 12, 2023; Prime Sponsors Hartley-Nagle and Toole; amending New Castle County Code Chapter 40, Article 31, Section 40.31.340, Notice of Public Hearings); New Castle County NCC2050 Comprehensive Rezoning page (newcastlede.gov/2659/NCC2050-Comprehensive-Rezoning), documenting the ten-ordinance bundling framework and the schedule of Community Open Houses by Council district (March 11, 2024; March 25, 2024; May 22, 2024; June 5, 2024; June 26, 2024); Neighbors for Responsible Land Use, Letter to NCC Planning Board re: 20 Granite Road / Wilmington Friends School Lower School Parcel (neighborslanduse.com); Sawicki, R. (2023, November 17). New Castle County ordinance would rezone 87 parcels, Port Penn residents gather to oppose. Delaware Public Media; Sawicki, R. (2023, December 20). New Castle County rezoning ordinance headed to vote, Planning Board recommends substitute. Delaware Public Media; Delaware Public Media (2024, January 5). New Castle County mass rezoning ordinance sponsor intends to withdraw ordinance; Sawicki, R. (2024, February 6). New Castle County Land Use proposes new plan for comprehensive rezoning. Delaware Public Media; WDEL News (2024, January 2). Revisions to criticized 'mass rezoning' ordinance fail to impress. wdel.com (containing Bob Aellis quote on Whitehall truck traffic estimate of 750 trucks per day); Korfhage, M. (2024, January 25). After widespread protest, New Castle County comprehensive rezoning will be withdrawn. Delaware News Journal; Baker, K. (2024, March 21). Comp rezoning withdrawal isn't the end of New Castle County land use debate. Spotlight Delaware; Change.org petition, Halt the Rezoning of Residential Land to Business Park in Middletown, DE - ORDINANCE 23-083, over 1,500 signatures; Sawicki, R. (2023, October 13). Mid-Atlantic Hydrogen Hub proposal receives $750 million federal grant. Delaware Public Media; Tabeling, K. (2025, July 11). New Castle could be the site of mega data center campus. Delaware Business Times; Data Center Dynamics (2026, February 11). Starwood files to develop 1.2GW, 11-building data center campus in Delaware; T.C. Memo. 2024-59, Parkway Gravel Inc. v. Commissioner, U.S. Tax Court (Kerrigan, C.J., May 21, 2024), Findings of Fact pp. 6-7 (documenting Smiley/Ferrara political-rezoning relationship beginning 2006 and the Freeway Pit airport-corridor rezoning chain); New Castle County Active Plans list, application 2025-0309-S, Project Washington North Campus; Hartley-Nagle, K. (2026, March 10). The quiet dismantling of Delaware's democratic guardrails: Executive Order 18 and the pattern of developer-driven land use policy. The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com/eo18-report-developer-money-democratic-guardrails.
XLIV. The Tax Court, the Inventory, and the Architecture
The IRS challenged $4.2 million as a sham.
The petitioner had to prove the political work was real.
Under oath. Subject to cross-examination.
The U.S. Tax Court found the political work was real.
The federal court documented the architecture.
The architecture is now in the public record
because the IRS forced it there.
On May 21, 2024, three months after Council formally withdrew Ordinance 23-083, the United States Tax Court issued T.C. Memo. 2024-59. The decision was a tax case. Parkway Gravel Inc., a Delaware sand-and-gravel company in the Greggo-Ferrara development network, had reported a $4.2 million transaction. The IRS had challenged the transaction as a sham. The Tax Court ruled for the taxpayer. The transaction was real.
The transaction, the court documented under oath, was the value of the political work necessary to rezone a 58-acre parcel adjacent to the New Castle County Airport in 2012. The court found, as a Finding of Fact, that Nicholas Ferrara Jr., a partner in the Greggo-Ferrara development arm V&N, "began his political work in 2006 when he first broached the topic of rezoning with George Smiley, his county councilman. By March 2007, Mr. Smiley was in favor of changing the Freeway Pit's zoning to commercial."
The court found that Ferrara's political relationships were necessary because the developer purchasing the parcel, Keith Stoltz, had "a checkered reputation in the New Castle community because of certain unpopular real estate developments that he had pursued." Stoltz could not get the rezoning himself. Ferrara could. Six years of political work transferred a parcel from $6.9 million industrial value to $11.1 million commercial value. V&N received $4.2 million for the political work. The Tax Court validated the transaction. The court found that Ferrara had "made extensive efforts to rezone the property that ultimately proved essential for its sale."
Six years. One parcel. One councilman. One developer family.
Four point two million dollars in political-work value.
The Tax Court did not find corruption.
It found something more useful.
It found the unit economics.
The Greggo-Ferrara Group, By Entity
The Tax Court memorandum did not allow the network to remain anonymous. The IRS challenged a $4.2 million transaction. The petitioner had to produce, under oath and subject to cross-examination, the entire corporate structure that processed the political-rezoning value. The court's Findings of Fact list the entities. The list is the public record. The list is reproduced here in full, by entity, by function within the Group.
The court counted thirteen entities. The court counted three more on the Stoltz side: Churchmans Associates LLC (the initial purchasing entity, May 17, 2007 agreement); Churchmans 273 LLC (the final purchasing entity, the Delaware LLC that purchased the Freeway Pit in December 2012 for $11.1 million); and KSIP I Piccard LLC (the joint venture of Stoltz and Prudential Insurance that holds the 59-acre 550 Churchmans Road parcel adjacent to the Wilmington Airport). The court counted Stoltz Real Estate Partners as the parent. The court counted Apex Engineering Incorporated, the technical engineering firm, as the firm Stoltz retained because, per the court's finding, "Apex's lack of expertise in dealing with the political side of a deal" was one of the reasons Ferrara's political work was necessary.
That is sixteen named entities, plus the families behind them, plus the engineering firm. The Tax Court did not call them anonymous. It called them by name, on the public record.
What The Department of Elections Records Does and Does Not Show
Each of the sixteen corporate entities the Tax Court named was searched against the consolidated 9,063-record contributor database across all five Meyer political committees, Meyer for Delaware, Meyer for New Castle County, Change Can't Wait PAC, Citizens for a New Delaware Way, and Citizens for a New Delaware Way Third Party Advertiser, totaling $7,998,435 across the five committees. The cross-reference produced the following result.
These networks chose visibility. The corporate vehicle that holds the parcels is the corporate vehicle that wrote the check. A reporter searching the database for "Schell Brothers" finds the entry. A reporter searching for "Drawbridge Claymont" finds the entry. The personal-name pattern is the alternate path. The Greggo-Ferrara network and the Stoltz network chose the alternate path. The corporate vehicle holds the parcels. The personal name writes the check. The connection between the two requires the federal Tax Court memorandum.
Schell Brothers LLC. Drawbridge Claymont LLC.
847 Cranbrook LLC. Stonelock Properties LLC.
Onix Group. Fusco Properties.
These networks put the LLC on the contribution.
Greggo-Ferrara put thirteen LLCs nowhere.
The choice is legal. The choice is also a choice.
The contributions came in personal names. Nicholas Ferrara Sr. gave $600 in 2016. Nicholas Ferrara Jr. gave $600 in 2019. Nicholas Ferrara Sr. gave another $600 in 2021. Nicholas Ferrara IV gave $250 in 2022 and $950 in 2023. Lorraine Ferrara gave $1,200 in 2023. Nicholas Ferrara Jr. gave $600 in 2023 and a $5,000 PAC contribution in September 2024 to Change Can't Wait PAC, the gubernatorial PAC organized by Alan Levin. The Ferrara family total is $9,800 across 8 contributions. Jack Stoltz and Susan Stoltz gave matching $1,200 contributions on October 24, 2024, totaling $2,400.
Sixteen corporate vehicles named by the Tax Court.
Fifteen of them are not in the Department of Elections record.
The contributions came in personal names instead.
Nicholas Senior. Nicholas Junior. Nicholas IV. Lorraine.
Jack Stoltz. Susan Stoltz. Cherry Island LLC means nothing to a reporter.
Lorraine Ferrara also means nothing, until the federal Tax Court memo arrives.
Contrast: The LLCs That Did Contribute Directly
Other developer networks contributing to the same Meyer political committees made a different choice. Their LLCs are in the contribution record by name. The contrast tells you something about the level of disclosure on each side.
The Smiley Twenty-Year Pattern
The federal court record on Smiley begins in 2006 with the first conversation about the Freeway Pit rezoning. The pattern continues to the present. The Council records document the pattern. The pattern is reproduced here as a chronology.
What took Ferrara six years on one parcel, the 87-parcel mass rezoning
would have delivered on eighty-seven parcels in a single Council vote.
The mass rezoning was not housekeeping.
It was the industrialization of the model the Tax Court documented.
The Tax Court documented the relationship under oath. The Council records document the pattern. The pattern shows that Smiley's twenty-year career in the airport corridor is not separate from the Meyer-Patibanda mass-rezoning architecture. It is the prototype. The Council President who stopped the mass rezoning is the same Council President who, in the impact fee veto override of January 14, 2025, watched Smiley switch his vote from yes to no the morning after Meyer's veto. The pattern is the pattern.
The Tax Court forced the disclosure. The disclosure is the architecture.
Sources & Citations: Parkway Gravel Inc. and Subsidiaries v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, T.C. Memo. 2024-59, U.S. Tax Court, Chief Judge Kerrigan, Docket No. 10819-21, filed May 21, 2024, Findings of Fact pp. 2-7; KPMG TaxNewsFlash PDF (kpmg.com/kpmg-us/content/dam/kpmg/taxnewsflash/pdf/2024/05/tc-memo-2024-59-may21-2024.pdf); Delaware Department of State Division of Corporations entity records for the named LLCs (corp.delaware.gov/online-status); Delaware Department of Elections preliminary campaign finance records for Meyer for Delaware, Meyer for New Castle County, Change Can't Wait PAC, Citizens for a New Delaware Way, and Citizens for a New Delaware Way Third Party Advertiser; Consolidated database of 9,063 individual contribution records totaling $7,998,435; Cross-reference performed by computational search of contributor name field against each Tax Court-named entity, April 30, 2026.
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XLV. The Production Line, The NDAs, And The Public Records That Read Them Anyway
The Tax Court documented one parcel.
The public record documents eleven parcels.
The Tax Court documented one transaction.
The public record documents Amazon land transactions through Stoltz LLCs
totaling more than three hundred million dollars between 2020 and 2026.
The Tax Court was the proof of concept.
The public record is the production line.
The Tax Court memorandum was the proof of concept. It documented one parcel, one councilman, one developer family, one transaction. The political work took six years. The political work value was $4.2 million. The Tax Court found the transaction was real. The IRS had to accept that finding. The decision was entered for the petitioner.
The proof of concept proved the model. The model now operates at scale. The same Greggo-Ferrara development network that owned the Freeway Pit in 2006 now owns approximately 2,500 acres in New Castle County, distributed across the airport corridor (Churchmans Road, Hare's Corner, the parcels Smiley advanced through Council in 2024 after the mass rezoning failed), the Route 13 corridor (Blue Diamond Park, Hamburg Road, Federal School Lane), the southern New Castle County warehouse corridor (Middletown west, Middle Neck Road, Warwick Road, the 301 bypass), and the C&D Canal area (St. Georges Business Park, Lighthouse Farms, the Frightland site that Parkway Gravel is now seeking to demolish for the proposed 3.24 million square foot warehouse-and-data-center complex).
The Eleven Properties, The Production Line
Across the documented properties, the Tax Court-named network controls or has recently controlled approximately 2,500 acres in New Castle County. Each property is identified here by location, current owner of record, current or recent use, scale, and known Amazon connection.
The total Amazon land transactions documented through Stoltz LLC vehicles between 2020 and 2026 exceed $300 million. The principal documented transactions are the Stoltz-Amazon ILG1 lease at Blue Diamond Park (1.3 million sq ft, opened 2021), the November 2022 internal sale of the ILG1 building to PR-Stoltz Propco Blue Diamond Lot 1 LLC for $246.75 million, the May 2025 Amazon purchase of 130 acres at 301 Business Park North from 301 Logistics LLC for $87.5 million, and the late-April 2026 Amazon purchase of 117 adjacent acres for $120 million. Cumulative state subsidies to the network include $5.4 million TIIF for the Churchmans Road warehouse, $7.4 million combined Site Readiness and TIIF for Blue Diamond Park, and $5.34 million CDF support for the Aldi distribution center. The total exceeds $18 million in known state subsidies, not counting the Amazon-related transportation infrastructure improvements that flowed through DelDOT and the Bond Bill.
Two thousand five hundred acres.
Eleven properties. Four documented Amazon facilities.
Three hundred million in Amazon land transactions.
Eighteen million in state subsidies.
One Tax Court memorandum that identified the network.
The proof of concept proved the model.
The model is now the production line.
The Amazon NDA Architecture
Karen Hartley-Nagle described the Amazon procurement pattern in New Castle County. Developers build. Everyone signs NDAs. MOUs are drawn up. No one admits the Amazon connection until all the rezonings, permits, and construction are complete. Then Amazon leases the building. The pattern is documented across multiple Stoltz projects in the public record. The Tax Court did the IRS the favor of forcing one corner of the network into daylight. Amazon's NDA architecture, by design, does not get audited until the building is up and the workers are hired. By then, the rezoning fight is over.
Step One: The Speculative Warehouse Application
The developer files a Pre-Exploratory or Major Land Development plan with the New Castle County Department of Land Use for a warehouse, distribution center, or "business park" without naming the future tenant. The application is processed as a speculative development. The county planning staff reviews the application without information about who the eventual occupant will be.
Council members vote on rezonings, permits, and ordinances without knowing whether the future tenant is Amazon, a different
e-commerce company, a data center operator, or a different industrial use entirely.
This is the documented pattern at Blue Diamond Park, where Stoltz filed warehouse plans without identifying Amazon as the tenant; the Amazon connection was confirmed only in news reporting in October 2020 after the lease had been signed. It is the documented pattern at Churchmans Road, where Tucker, Stoltz's attorney, told reporters in 2020: "It is optimistic that it will be able to be leased or sold in the future. There are certainly discussions with different folks about accomplishing that but currently there is nothing in writing, and there's no agreement, verbal or written regarding a tenant, or a buyer for this property." It is the documented pattern at the Stoltz Middletown West site, where Stoltz attorney Roger Forsten told the Middletown Planning Commission in April 2025: "it's going to have a lot of robotics, and although we're not at liberty to say today who's going there, look for an announcement in the next few weeks."
Step Two: The MOU and the NDA
Behind the speculative-warehouse public filing, the developer has typically negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding with the eventual tenant, sometimes a binding letter of intent, and almost always a Non-Disclosure Agreement that prevents either party from confirming the connection until specified conditions are met. The conditions typically include zoning approval, building permit issuance, infrastructure completion, and grant disbursement. The MOU and NDA architecture protects the tenant from public relations exposure during the political process and protects the developer from public relations exposure if the deal does not close.
The MOU/NDA architecture is the reason Stoltz attorney Tucker could state to a CDF hearing in early 2024 that "we know Amazon wants this and we expect future tenants to want safe access as well" in the same hearing where the formal applicant identity remained unspecified. Tucker's knowledge of Amazon's preferences is documented; the formal corporate identification is not, until the conditions of the NDA are met.
Step Three: The Subsidy Application
The state subsidy application (TIIF, Site Readiness, CDF, capital expenditure grants, job performance grants) typically goes through one or more of the Delaware Prosperity Partnership, the Council on Development Finance, or the Transportation Infrastructure Investment Fund board. The hearings often include statements from the developer's attorney about the future use without naming the future tenant. The Council on Development Finance approved the $1 million Site Readiness grant for Blue Diamond Park in 2022, with no Amazon name on the formal application; the $4 million TIIF grant in June 2023 likewise; the $2.4 million Site Readiness grant in 2024, with Tucker on record about Amazon's preferences but without formal naming on the application.
The Aldi distribution center is the partial exception. The Council on Development Finance approved $5.34 million in grants on March 31, 2025, with Aldi formally named as the eventual tenant. The reason Aldi was named while Amazon was not, in nearly identical procedural settings, is that Aldi's NDA architecture appears to have been drafted differently. The CDF process is the same. The applicant disclosure rule is the same. The difference is the contractual choice of the parties.
Steps Four and Five: Construction and the Lease
Construction proceeds with the rezoning, permits, and infrastructure subsidies in place, with the public still uncertain about the eventual tenant. The eventual occupant remains formally undisclosed until Amazon issues its own announcement, typically two to six months before opening, sometimes simultaneously with opening, occasionally after opening.
The final step is the formal real estate transaction. Sometimes Amazon leases the completed building from the developer (Blue Diamond Park ILG1: lease, 1.3 million sq ft). Sometimes Amazon purchases the underlying land outright after the rezoning is complete (301 Business Park North: $87.5 million purchase from 301 Logistics LLC; the adjacent 117 acres: $120 million purchase). Sometimes the developer sells the completed building to a captive entity (Stoltz sold ILG1 to PR-Stoltz Propco Blue Diamond Lot 1 LLC for $246.75 million in November 2022, recapitalizing the position while keeping it under Stoltz operational control).
The NDA architecture serves a purpose.
The purpose is the smooth flow of warehouses, fulfillment centers, and now
data centers, through a county land-use process that, if the tenant identity were disclosed at the front end, would be subject to a different intensity of public scrutiny.
The Amazon name draws attention. The Aldi name draws less.
The unnamed future tenant draws the least.
The architecture is calibrated to that gradient.
The Light That NDAs Cannot Block
The NDA architecture works against journalists asking direct questions. It does not work against three categories of public-record evidence: the New Castle County Department of Land Use Active Plans list, the New Castle County Recorder of Deeds property transfers, and the Department of Elections contribution database. Read together, the three lists tell anyone the answer the NDAs were designed to delay.
The Active Plans list is published on the county website. It is searchable, public, and updated monthly. Every Pre-Exploratory Plan, every Major Land Development Plan, every Rezoning Plan, every Subdivision Plan filed with the Department appears with the application number, the applicant or property owner of record, the address, the acreage, the zoning, and a brief description of the proposed use. The list does not name the future tenant. It does name the developer's corporate vehicle and the engineering firm of record.
The same engineering firm appears on multiple Stoltz applications. Verdantas, the firm now representing Parkway Gravel on the St. George's Business Park, also represents Stoltz on Blue Diamond Park and on the Stoltz Middletown West site. The same legal counsel appears across the projects. Shawn Tucker of Barnes and Thornburg, the former General Manager of the New Castle County Department of Land Use, the same position that Patibanda then held from July 2023 to January 2025.
The Recorder of Deeds is the document that connects the corporate vehicle (301 Logistics LLC) to the corporate parent (Stoltz Real Estate Partners) and to the eventual purchaser (Amazon.com Inc.). The connection is in the chain of title. The chain of title is public. The chain of title cannot be NDA-protected because the recordation of the deed is itself the legal operation that perfects the transfer.
The Department of Elections' contribution record provides the third dimension. Apex Engineering contributed $2,400 across three contributions. The Ferrara family contributed $9,800 across eight personal-name contributions. The Stoltz family contributed $2,400 across two personal-name contributions. The Schwartz family of Frightland contributed $10,750 across eight contributions. The Tucker network and Barnes & Thornburg LLP contributed approximately $10,000 across multiple contributions. Total documented airport-corridor and Route 13 network contributions to the Meyer political committees: approximately $35,000.
The Recorder of Deeds documents the transfers.
The Department of Land Use documents the applications.
The Department of Elections documents the contributions.
The Tax Court documents the corporate network.
Each document is public.
The architecture is invisible only when the documents are read separately.
The Truthline Network reads them together.
The 301 Business Park North Example, In Detail
In March 2023, Stoltz Real Estate Partners acquired approximately 170 acres of farmland in west Middletown from Richard P. Money for $6.5 million. The Recorder of Deeds documented the transfer. In December 2024, Stoltz filed a Pre-Exploratory Plan with the New Castle County Department of Land Use for a 3.2 million square foot warehouse on the 130-acre portion of the holding. The Active Plans list documented the application. The applicant was identified as a Stoltz-associated entity. The future tenant was not named. Stoltz attorney Roger Forsten told the Middletown Planning Commission in April 2025 the announcement was coming "in the next few weeks."
On May 9, 2025, Amazon announced the purchase of the 130 acres for $87.5 million. The seller of record was 301 Logistics LLC, the Stoltz-associated entity. The Recorder of Deeds documented the transfer. The Active Plans list now showed the property as Amazon-controlled. The MOU and NDA conditions had been met.
On approximately April 28, 2026, Amazon announced the purchase of the adjacent 117 acres for $120 million from a different Stoltz-associated entity. The total Amazon land acquisition through Stoltz LLCs in West Middletown alone now exceeds $207.5 million across approximately 247 acres. The Stoltz acquisition cost was $6.5 million for the 170-acre core. The implied appreciation of the value of the parcels through the rezoning process and the Amazon-driven build-out is in the tens of millions of dollars per parcel.
Six and a half million in. Two hundred seven million out.
Two years between the acquisition and the resale.
Six years was the unit economics of the Tax Court parcel.
Two years is the unit economics of the production line.
The architecture works faster now.
The architecture works faster because the rezonings are pre-positioned
And the NDAs are pre-drafted.
The strategist would say: the same hand drew both contracts.
The Tax Court documented the unit economics of the political-rezoning model. The Recorder of Deeds documents the Amazon transactions that the political-rezoning model unlocks. The Department of Elections documents the contributions that flow back to the political committees that approve the subsidies. The architecture is the same architecture that the Tax Court forced into daylight. The architecture is now operating at twenty times the scale.
The Connection To The Port
The implication for the Port of Wilmington story is direct. The same architectural pattern that the Tax Court documented at the Freeway Pit in 2012, that operates at scale across the Stoltz Amazon network in 2025-2026, is the pattern that operates at the Port of Wilmington under Enstructure. The Port's Third Amendment to the Concession Agreement was signed December 23, 2024, eight days before Meyer's inauguration as Governor. The Concession Agreement runs 85 years. The Concession Agreement contains a no-competition clause and cross-default protection. The Concession Agreement protects redacted Minimum Annual Revenue Guarantees. The same pattern of NDA-protected commercial terms, locked in before public scrutiny, with subsidies committed before the public-policy questions are asked, is the pattern at every node of the architecture.
The Tax Court forced the disclosure on one corner. The Patibanda-Sanchez admission on April 20, 2026, forced the disclosure on another. The report's task is to document each remaining corner before the timing-protection of each NDA expires by its own terms.
Res neglecta, res amissa. Res patefacta, res servata.
What is neglected is lost. What is exposed is saved.
Sources & Citations: T.C. Memo. 2024-59 (corporate structure and parcel identification of Freeway Pit at 550 Churchmans Road); New Castle County Recorder of Deeds (Stoltz acquisition of Freeway Pit Dec 5, 2012; Stoltz acquisition of Middletown 170 acres from Richard P. Money for $6.5 million in March 2023; Stoltz internal sale of ILG1 to PR-Stoltz Propco Blue Diamond Lot 1 LLC for $246.75 million in November 2022); New Castle County Department of Land Use Active Plans list (newcastlede.gov/410/Active-Plans); Owens, J., & Tabeling, K. (multiple dates 2024-2026). Coverage of Stoltz projects, Delaware Business Times, including "Exclusive: Bear Amazon warehouse sold for $246M" (March 2024); "Stoltz seeks to build two huge warehouses near New Castle" (March 2024); "Stoltz project receives $2.4M in site readiness funds" (October 2024); "Exclusive: Amazon could build next generation center in Middletown" (May 9, 2025); "Delaware's next largest warehouse could be coming to Middletown" (April 16, 2025); "Pa. developer buys land for Middletown warehouses" (April 2, 2025); "Amazon buys Middletown land for $120M" (late April 2026); Council on Development Finance hearing minutes for Aldi distribution center grant approval, March 31, 2025; Spotlight Delaware coverage of Aldi grant and data center conversions; Quotations of Stoltz attorney Shawn Tucker at TIIF, CDF, and County Council hearings; Stoltz attorney Roger Forsten quotation at Middletown Planning Commission, April 2025; Department of Elections preliminary campaign finance database, 9,063 records.
XLVI. The Frightland Demolition, The Schwartz Contributions, And The Adjacent Farm Inside The Mass Rezoning
Frightland is owned by the Schwartz family.
Frightland sits on land owned by Parkway Gravel.
Parkway Gravel is the Tax Court petitioner.
The Lighthouse Farm parcel adjacent to Frightland
was inside the 87-parcel mass rezoning.
The Schwartz family contributed $10,750 to the Governor.
Three Schwartz members contributed $7,400 in a single day.
One hundred days after the data center ordinance was introduced.
One hundred thirteen days before the data center ordinance was passed
with the projects already grandfathered.
Frightland, the long-running Halloween attraction on Route 13 in St. Georges, has been operated by the Schwartz family for decades. The Frightland site sits within the Greggo-Ferrara family's approximately 1,500 acres of development land in the Route 13 corridor south of the C&D Canal. Parkway Gravel Inc., the Ferrara subsidiary documented by the Tax Court, is the named applicant for the St. Georges Business Park development that, according to Delaware Business Times reporting from January 2026, would demolish Frightland and replace it with 3.24 million square feet of warehouse-and-commercial space, 366 residential units, and, according to council members including Janet Kilpatrick and David Carter, likely data center buildings.
Lighthouse Farm, the parcel at 381 Port Penn Road in St. Georges Hundred (parcel 13-009.00-001), sits adjacent to Frightland. The Lighthouse Farm parcel was inside Ordinance 23-083, the 87-parcel mass rezoning that Karen Hartley-Nagle stopped on February 7, 2024. The mass rezoning would have delivered the Lighthouse Farm rezoning entitlement in a single Council vote, without a separate public hearing on the merits of the specific use. The Lighthouse Farm parcel sits at the access point to the same Route 13 corridor where the Greggo-Ferrara group is now seeking the St. Georges Business Park rezoning.
The Schwartz Family Contributions
The Department of Elections records show the following contributions from the Schwartz family to Meyer's political committees.
The November 19, 2025, sequence is notable for its concentration. On a single day, three Schwartz family members made three contributions totaling $7,400, including the $5,000 PAC contribution from Richard Schwartz to Change Can't Wait PAC and the matching $1,200 individual contributions to Meyer for Delaware from Richard and Lori Schwartz.
The November 19, 2025, sequence sits roughly 100 days after the August 5, 2025, introduction of Ordinance 25-101 (Carter's data center regulations) and roughly 113 days before the March 11, 2026, Council vote that grandfathered the Newark and Project Washington data centers out of the new regulations. The St. George's Business Park, which would demolish Frightland to build the warehouse-and-data-center campus, is one of the projects council members have stated is likely intended for data center use.
One hundred days after the ordinance was introduced.
One hundred thirteen days before the ordinance was passed
with the projects already grandfathered.
Three contributions on one day.
Seven thousand four hundred dollars.
The dates do not require a hypothesis.
The dates speak for themselves.
The Newark Table-And-Release: Ordinance 25-101 And The Grandfather
Councilman David Carter introduced the ordinance on August 5, 2025. He had the votes to pass it before Project Washington filed and before the Newark site filed. He did not have to table it. He tabled it. By the time the ordinance was signed, both projects were grandfathered. The procedural choice was the policy outcome.
The sequence is documented. On June 2, 2025, Starwood Digital Ventures filed its pre-application letter for Project Washington with New Castle County Land Use. On August 5, 2025, Councilman David Carter introduced Ordinance 25-101 to amend the Unified Development Code to establish data center siting and operational standards, including 1,000-foot residential setbacks, closed-loop cooling systems, decommissioning escrow, noise standards, and emissions limits.
In November 2025, an entity called Verdantas filed plans on behalf of Shelbourne Global Solutions, the New York-based property owner of the White Clay Center Industrial Park at the terminus of White Clay Center Drive off Ogletown Road in Newark. The Verdantas filing proposed to consolidate seven existing parcels into two and construct 847,450 square feet of industrial buildings, guard house, switchyard, and associated improvements with proposed use as a data center.
On December 16, 2025, Spotlight Delaware reported the White Clay Center Drive filing as the second proposed data center in New Castle County. Carter, in that reporting, told Spotlight Delaware: "We're losing ground, but it could get a whole lot worse if we don't get some reasonable controls in place." Carter publicly stated that he wanted to "move faster" so the rules could apply to the Newark and St. George's plans.
On March 11, 2026, after multiple postponements and amendments through committee, New Castle County Council passed Substitute 3 to Ordinance 25-101. Two amendments offered on the floor by Councilman John Cartier and Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick would have made the ordinance retroactive to the date of introduction or to a specific cutoff date that would have captured the Newark and Project Washington filings. Both amendments were withdrawn without a vote. The final ordinance, as passed, applies only to data center proposals filed after the ordinance's effective date. On March 18, 2026, County Executive Marcus Henry signed Ordinance 25-101 into law. By that date, both Project Washington and the White Clay Center Drive proposal had already been filed and were grandfathered into the pre-ordinance regulatory regime.
Carter introduced the ordinance in August.
Project Washington was already filed.
The Newark site filed three months later.
The ordinance sat on the table for seven months.
By the time it was signed, both had filed.
Both were grandfathered.
The bill that would have stopped them
was passed only after both had passed it.
A strategist would say:
The most consequential vote was the one that did not happen.
Why The Tabling Was The Decision
Carter introduced the ordinance on August 5, 2025. The Newark filing did not arrive until November 2025, three months later. Project Washington had been filed in June 2025, two months before the ordinance was introduced. If the ordinance had been passed at the August 2025 introduction, with a normal effective-date clause that captured all pending applications, both Project Washington and the Newark site would have been subject to the new regulations. The ordinance was not passed in August 2025. It was not passed in September 2025. It was not passed in October 2025. It was not passed in November 2025. It was not passed in December 2025. It was not passed in January 2026. It was not passed in February 2026. It was passed on March 11, 2026, after seven months of tabling, amendments, and delay, by which point both major data center proposals had filed and were grandfathered.
The procedural delay was the policy outcome. The amendments offered by Cartier and Kilpatrick that would have negated the rules retroactively were withdrawn without a vote. The withdrawal-without-a-vote is the procedural device by which an amendment dies without anyone having to be on the record voting against it. By the date the ordinance was signed, the regulatory architecture had been inverted. The rules applied to data center proposals that did not yet exist. The rules did not apply to the data center proposals that prompted the rules. Project Washington, the data center against which the entire ordinance was a response, was exempt. The 6-million-square-foot, 1.2-gigawatt facility that triggered the public outcry, that prompted Coastal Zone Act litigation, that strained the Delaware energy grid in projection models, was the project not covered by the rules drafted to address it.
An amendment that dies in withdrawal
is an amendment that no councilmember has to vote against.
That is procedure as policy.
The architecture is in the calendar.
The calendar made the policy.
A strategist would underline this twice.
The Architecture Of The Triangle
Three corners of the same architecture. The Greggo-Ferrara network owns the land. The Schwartz family operates the business that sits on the land. The political contributions arrive in personal names from both. The mass rezoning that would have pre-positioned the entitlement was stopped in February 2024 by Karen Hartley-Nagle. The data center ordinance that would have stopped the project was tabled for seven months and passed only after the project was grandfathered. The St. George's Business Park application is now pending. Frightland is to be demolished. Lighthouse Farm sits adjacent to it.
Greggo-Ferrara: $9,800 in personal-name contributions. Schwartz family: $10,750 across eight contributions, with $7,400 on a single day. Stoltz family: $2,400. Apex Engineering: $2,400. Tucker / Barnes & Thornburg: approximately $10,000. Total documented from the network, the Tax Court named: more than $35,000 to the political network of the Governor, whose Executive Order 18 industrialized the access architecture.
Thirty-five thousand dollars from the named network.
One million seven hundred thousand from the PAC.
One Tax Court memo. One mass rezoning. One data center ordinance.
One executive order. One county order. One JobsFirst launch.
Same architecture. Different floors.
Same building.
Sources & Citations: Delaware Department of Elections preliminary campaign finance records, Schwartz family contributions to Meyer for Delaware and Change Can't Wait PAC; Tabeling, K. (2026, January). St. Georges Business Park coverage. Delaware Business Times; Spotlight Delaware coverage of Carter's Ordinance 25-101 and the Newark/Project Washington grandfather sequence; New Castle County Council minutes, Ordinance 25-101 floor amendments by Cartier and Kilpatrick (March 11, 2026); Ordinance 25-101 Substitute 3 (signed March 18, 2026); New Castle County Active Plans list, Project Washington application 2025-0309-S, White Clay Center Drive Verdantas filing November 2025.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
XLVII. The Subsidy Ledger: Federal, State, And County Channels, With The Amazon Pipeline Separated
The Meyer political network raised approximately eight million dollars.
The Meyer and Henry administrations have committed approximately
One and a half billion dollars in public infrastructure spending
that touches the Corridor or the contributors.
The ratio is approximately two hundred to one.
The contributions are the small number.
The infrastructure is the large number.
Both numbers are in the public record.
The federal channel is the structural foundation. The state channel layers on top of the federal channel. The county channel layers on top of the state channel. By the time public money reaches a Stoltz LLC or a Greggo-Ferrara entity, it has typically passed through three layers of government, each of which has added administrative discretion to the process. The administrative discretion is the architecture. Each layer of discretion is the leverage point at which the public process can be opened or closed.
The Federal Channel: $177 Million To The Port, And The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
Senator Chris Coons's official accounting credits him with securing $177 million in federal funding for the Port of Wilmington across his career, beginning when he was New Castle County Executive. The most visible single tranche is the $50 million Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP) grant announced on November 3, 2023, by Governor Carney, Senator Carper, Senator Coons, and then-Representative Blunt Rochester. The PIDP grant is funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and administered by the U.S. Maritime Administration.
The federal channels into the Port include: the $50 million PIDP grant (November 2023); the $13.4 million RAISE grant (separate Department of Transportation discretionary award); the $9.2 million Wilmington Harbor maintenance and management funding from a prior cycle; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers $27.6 million dredging contract awarded to Norfolk Dredging on or about September 30, 2025; and additional Bond Bill and Mini Bond Bill commitments that flowed through the federal-state matching channels. The cumulative federal commitment to the Port of Wilmington exceeds $100 million, with Coons's career total accounting at $177 million, reflecting additional channels including operations, maintenance, and capital improvements.
The single largest federal investment in the Delaware regional economy is the $750 million Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub investment, secured for the regional H2 cluster that includes Delaware as a member state. The Hub is one of seven regional hubs designated by the U.S. Department of Energy for the federal Clean Hydrogen production initiative. The Mid-Atlantic Hub includes Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, with significant components of the production and distribution infrastructure planned for sites in Delaware.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law pass-through to Delaware over the five-year window is approximately $1.6 billion across all categories: highways and bridges, transit, broadband (the $107 million BEAD allocation Coons secured), drinking water and wastewater, electric grid resilience, port infrastructure (the $50 million PIDP), airport infrastructure (Wilmington Airport, Dover Air Force Base), and discretionary grant programs (RAISE, INFRA). The American Rescue Plan Act of March 2021 allocated approximately $1 billion to the Delaware state government, $200 million to Wilmington, and approximately $215 million to New Castle County. The ARPA pass-through funded the $50 million state commitment to Edgemoor (Carney committed ARPA funds in 2023).
The State Channel: The Strategic Fund, Site Readiness, TIIF, And CDF
The state channels operate at the scale of hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The Strategic Fund, the Site Readiness Fund, the Transportation Infrastructure Investment Fund, the Council on Development Finance, the Capital Expenditure Fund, the Job Performance Grant Fund, the Private Activity Bond Volume Cap, the Downtown Development District Rebate, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, the EDGE Grant, the MISI Grant, the State Small Business Credit Initiative, the Energy Efficiency Investment Fund. Each channel has its own approval process. Each channel has its own administrative discretion. The cumulative discretion is the architecture.
The Private Activity Bond Volume Cap: $580 Million In Two Orders
Executive Order 17, signed February 2026, allocates the State's 2026 Private Activity Bond Volume Cap of $198,812,500: $99,406,250 to the Delaware State Housing Authority and $99,406,250 to the Delaware Economic Development Authority. The order also allocates $69,584,375 to New Castle County, $49,703,125 to the City of Wilmington, $39,762,500 to Kent County, and $39,762,500 to Sussex County. The order also reallocates $194,390,000 of unused 2025 Volume Cap to the Delaware State Housing Authority for carry-forward use.
Executive Order 6, signed February 10, 2025, in Meyer's first month in office, was the predecessor allocation order for the 2025 Volume Cap of $388,780,000. The cumulative private-activity bond authority committed across EO 6 and EO 17 alone exceeds
$580 million in below-market financing capacity for designated private activities. Private Activity Bond Volume Cap is federal authority granted to states to issue tax-exempt bonds for qualified private activity (typically affordable housing, manufacturing facilities, and student loans). The Delaware Economic Development Authority's $99 million share of the 2026 cap can be allocated to manufacturing facilities, qualified industrial sites, and other private activities at the Authority's discretion.
$580 million in private-activity bond authority.
Issued by the executive branch.
Allocated by the executive branch.
Distributed at the executive branch's discretion.
No legislative vote on the allocation.
No public hearing on the recipients.
The authority is federal.
The discretion is the Governor's.
The Levin Connection
Alan Levin sits at the financial pivot. He was the namesake organizer of Change Can't Wait PAC, which raised $1.77 million for Meyer. He personally contributed $29,100 to the Meyer political network. He was appointed by Meyer as Chair of the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council, the body that certifies the revenue projections that determine whether the state can afford the Edgemoor commitment, the $185 million gap, and the additional Strategic Fund / Site Readiness Fund grants flowing to Corridor parcels.
The Levin role is structural, not ceremonial. DEFAC issues the official revenue forecast that the General Assembly is bound to use as the upper limit on appropriations. If DEFAC certifies aggressive revenue projections, the state can absorb the $185 million Edgemoor gap. If DEFAC certifies conservative projections at a strategic moment, it can create the fiscal pressure that justifies restructuring the port deal under the Enstructure cross-default protections. Same lever. Two directions. Same hand.
One man at the top of the campaign-finance pivot.
The same man at the top of the body that certifies the spending.
The same man who built the relationship with the company
that benefits from every node on the corridor.
That is not coincidence.
That is architecture.
The Amazon-Connected Projects, Itemized
Separating Amazon-connected from non-Amazon-connected requires looking at the operating tenant of the completed facility, not the corporate vehicle of the applicant. Stoltz is the developer of record for at least three Amazon facilities in Delaware. Dermody is the developer of the Boxwood Amazon MTN1 facility. The Greggo-Ferrara network owns the land that Stoltz developed at Blue Diamond Park. The cumulative public-money investment supporting the Amazon footprint is in the tens of millions, plus the underlying land that flowed through Tax Court-documented entities.
The Tax Court documented the unit economics.
The Recorder of Deeds documents the scale.
The Department of Land Use documents the engineering and legal continuity.
The Department of Elections documents the political flow.
The Subsidy Ledger documents the public money.
Read separately, each list is incomplete.
Read together, the architecture is unmistakable.
Sources & Citations: U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration, FY 2023 PIDP Grant; Senator Coons's office career-total accounting; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Philadelphia District news release, September 30, 2025; U.S. Department of Energy, Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub designation; American Rescue Plan Act allocations; Diamond State Port Corporation Resolutions 24-03, 25-03, 26-02, 26-03, 26-04; Council on Development Finance hearing minutes; TIIF board records; Site Readiness Fund records; Delaware Strategic Fund grants; Delaware Prosperity Partnership records; Executive Order 6 (February 10, 2025); Executive Order 17 (February 2026); Executive Order 18 (February 26, 2026); New Castle County Department of Land Use records; Spotlight Delaware coverage by Karl Baker (multiple dates 2024-2026); Delaware Business Times coverage by Jacob Owens and Katie Tabeling (multiple dates 2024-2026); Delaware Department of Elections preliminary campaign finance records, all five committees.
XLVIII. Alan Levin: The Personal Money, The PAC, And The Architecture That Connects Markell, Carney, And Meyer
Alan Levin contributed $29,100 personally.
His household contributed $33,100.
His extended family contributed $41,182.50.
The PAC he organized raised $1,772,731.02.
The full Levin-attributable political support for Meyer totals $1,813,913.52.
The personal $29,100 figure understates his role by a factor of about sixty.
The PAC figure is the better measure.
Who Alan Levin Is
Alan Levin is one of the most consequential single political-economic figures in the Meyer political network. He is the former CEO of Happy Harry's, the family-owned Delaware pharmacy chain that grew to the 10th largest drugstore chain in the United States. The chain merged with Walgreens in 2006. Governor Markell awarded Levin the Order of the First State, Delaware's highest honor, for his service. Levin was then appointed Director of the Delaware Economic Development Office (DEDO) by Markell in January 2009. He served in that role until April 30, 2015, and during that tenure, he led the negotiations on Delaware's behalf for the proposed Kinder Morgan privatization of the Port of Wilmington in 2012-2013, which was killed by the International Longshoremen's Association Local 1694 and the Delaware Senate.
After leaving DEDO in April 2015, Levin became Senior Advisor at SoDel Concepts, the Sussex County restaurant group, a role he holds to this day. He also serves on the Beebe Medical Foundation Board of Directors and SoDel Cares. Levin was not a member of DEFAC during the Carney administration. The DEFAC Chair throughout the Carney administration was Michael Houghton, who served from 2017 to 2024. Levin's first DEFAC role came after he advised Meyer's 2024 gubernatorial campaign. Following Meyer's victory, Meyer appointed Levin Chair of DEFAC in 2025. The appointment was Levin's first formal role on the Council.
Levin's continuity across the Markell, Carney, and Meyer administrations runs through different roles in different periods rather than through a single continuous appointment. Under Markell, he was the Director of DEDO, the Cabinet-level economic development office. Under Carney, he held no formal state-level appointment but operated through the SoDel Concepts business platform, the Beebe Medical Foundation, and his ongoing political-fundraising network. Under Meyer, he is Chair of DEFAC. The three roles together establish a 17-year window of involvement in Delaware political-economic policy at the cabinet, board, or advisory level.
Director of DEDO under Markell, 2009 to 2015.
Senior Advisor at SoDel during Carney, 2015 to 2025.
Advisor to Meyer's 2020 county executive & 2024 gubernatorial campaign.
Chair of DEFAC under Meyer, 2025 to present.
The titles change. The hand stays in the same room.
The Levin-Kinder Morgan History: 2012 To 2013
The Enstructure deal in 2024 was not the first attempt to privatize the Port of Wilmington. It was the third. The first was Markell-Levin-Kinder Morgan in 2012. It died because the union killed it, and the legislature took oversight authority before the deal could close. The man who lost that fight in 2013 is the same man Meyer appointed Chair of DEFAC in 2025. The history is the precedent. The precedent is the pattern.
In 2012, under Governor Jack Markell, Alan Levin (then Director of the Delaware Economic Development Office) advanced a public-private partnership proposal under which Texas-based Kinder Morgan, the energy infrastructure giant, would lease the Port of Wilmington from the Diamond State Port Corporation under a long-term concession. Levin's stated goal was to modernize the port to take advantage of the post-Panama Canal expansion era. Levin negotiated the deal directly. He told reporters in early 2013 that the state was close to a deal with Kinder Morgan.
Two forces killed the Kinder Morgan deal. The first was the leadership of ILA Local 1694, the longshoremen's union at the Port of Wilmington. Kinder Morgan's letter to Levin suspending the deal explicitly cited "the leadership of" the local union as the breakdown. The union opposed the deal because Kinder Morgan's energy portfolio raised concerns that the company would pivot the port toward coal handling and away from the niche fruit and auto businesses that supported existing union jobs.
The second force was the Delaware General Assembly. On January 16, 2013, the Delaware Senate passed legislation requiring legislative oversight of any sale or long-term lease of the Port of Wilmington. The bill prohibited Kinder Morgan, or any successor private operator, from assigning a privatization agreement to a third party without legislative consent. The Senate passed the legislation 11 to 9. Levin told reporters at the time that the legislative oversight bill jeopardized his negotiations. The bill was the legislature reasserting its authority over the disposition of a major public asset before the executive branch could complete the deal. On March 7, 2013, Kinder Morgan formally suspended its pursuit of the Port of Wilmington lease deal.
The 2012 deal had a public negotiation.
The 2024 deal was negotiated in private.
The 2012 deal had a clear stated counterparty the union could mobilize against.
The 2024 deal had Enstructure, integrated through the Port Contractors
acquisition before the bid.
The 2012 deal could be killed by legislation requiring legislative consent for assignment.
The 2024 deal contains an 85-year term, a no-competition clause,
and cross-default protection.
Twelve years of architecture between the two deals.
The 2024 architecture is what 2012 could not have escaped.
The structural features that distinguish the 2024 Enstructure agreement from the 2012 Kinder Morgan effort are not coincidence. They are the lessons of 2012 applied as architecture. The 2024 Concession Agreement was negotiated in private, signed on December 23, 2024 (two days before Christmas, eight days before the new Governor took office, and during the news lull when public attention is at its lowest annual point), and contained redacted concession fees and a redacted Minimum Annual Revenue Guarantee. The deal architecture of the 2024 amendment is the deal architecture that 2012 could not have escaped public scrutiny under. The 2024 deal contains an 85-year term, a no-competition clause prohibiting the state from operating any other port for the duration, and cross-default protection that compartmentalizes the operator's risk on Edgemoor from the operator's risk on the existing port.
Levin himself was Markell's Economic Development Director when the 2012 attempt failed. He returned to public service when Meyer appointed him as DEFAC Chair in 2025. The same man who lost the privatization fight in 2013 was reinstalled in 2025 at the DEFAC pivot, the body that certifies the revenue projections that determine whether Delaware can absorb the $185 million Edgemoor funding gap that emerged from the 2024 Enstructure deal architecture. The continuity of personnel between the 2012 attempt and the 2024 deal is not coincidental. It is institutional memory applied as advantage.
Levin's Personal-Name Contributions To Meyer
Alan Levin contributed $29,100 to the Meyer political network across 8 contributions in his own name. The contributions began in April 2016 with $500 to Meyer for New Castle County, escalated to $5,000 PAC contributions in 2022 and 2023, and culminated in a $15,000 contribution to Change Can't Wait PAC on June 10, 2024, in the final stretch of the gubernatorial primary.
Beyond Alan Levin's personal contributions, the broader Levin family contributed an additional $12,082.50 across 52 contributions to Meyer's political committees. Ellen Levin, Alan's spouse at the same Montchanin PO Box address, contributed $4,000 across 5 contributions. The combined Alan + Ellen Levin household total is $33,100. The extended Levin and Levine family contributed an additional $8,082.50 across 47 contributions across thirteen family members. The full family network total is $41,182.50 across 60 contributions.
The Levin-Organized Change Can't Wait PAC
Change Can't Wait PAC is a Delaware political action committee formed in 2021. It is registered with the Delaware Department of Elections as an issue-advocacy committee, the structure that allows the PAC to receive contributions in unlimited dollar amounts (subject to disclosure) without being subject to the individual contribution limit of $1,200 per cycle that applies to candidate committees. The PAC's stated purpose is to "shape public opinion and mobilize support to make Delaware more competitive."
In its August 2024 reporting, Spotlight Delaware (Karl Baker) confirmed: "Last week, the group's former treasurer acknowledged to Spotlight Delaware that Change Can't Wait formed in 2021 to support Meyer." Spotlight Delaware further reported that PAC spokesman Julian Mulvey acknowledged that Change Can't Wait had communicated with Meyer's campaign staff, but only "for the purpose of fact-checking before producing our communication." Meyer himself, when asked at a press conference whether Change Can't Wait supports him, said: "you'll have to ask them."
The PAC's spending pattern in the 2024 primary cycle is consistent with the former treasurer's confirmation. Change Can't Wait ran a TV advertisement that lauded Meyer's healthcare plan. The PAC sent political mailers attacking Meyer's chief opponent, Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, calling her "wrong on public safety." The PAC's spending was concentrated in the final weeks before the September 10, 2024, Democratic primary, with Bloomberg's $250,000 single contribution arriving seven days before the primary.
The Top 25 Contributors To Change Can't Wait PAC
Of the $1,772,731.02 in total contributions to Change Can't Wait PAC, the largest 25 contributors gave $1,043,800, approximately 59 percent of the total. The list illustrates the network of high-dollar political-economic actors who used the PAC as a vehicle for supporting Meyer at scale beyond the individual contribution limits.
The top 25 contributors include the billionaire former NYC Mayor,
the convicted Stortini network, the former DPERS Chairman,
the DuPont family, the Capano network, the Hynansky family,
the Schell Brothers, the Delaney network, whose company
received the $1 million Site Readiness grant,
the former Maryland GOP Lt. Gov. Chief of Staff,
the Indian-American Patel family that connects to the temple,
and Alan Levin himself.
The PAC was the vehicle. Levin organized the vehicle.
The vehicle raised $1.77 million for Meyer.
The Houghton Firing And The DEFAC Sequence
Houghton asked the question on March 16, 2026. WHYY published the question on March 24. Meyer fired Houghton on March 26. The sequence is two days from publication to termination. That is not a personnel decision. That is a chilling effect, dated and delivered.
Michael Houghton served as DEFAC chair from 2017 to 2024 under Governor Carney. When Meyer took office in January 2025, Meyer replaced Houghton as chair with Alan Levin but kept Houghton on the council as a member. Levin himself confirmed publicly that he had asked Meyer to keep Houghton on the council despite the gubernatorial transition. Levin said Houghton had proven "very helpful" on the committee.
On March 16, 2026, DEFAC met. Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez and other officials presented the projections. The corporate franchise tax, limited liability company fees, and other business entity fees projections in the materials provided to the council were unchanged from the December 2025 meeting. Houghton, on the record, asked: "There's been a lot of discussion about a surge and unprecedented streak of formation in 2025 going into 2026. You would think that a $2.1 billion revenue stream would begin to play through and evidence itself." Patibanda-Sanchez told DEFAC members at the meeting that the delay in revenue data was due to revenue that had not yet been collected from the 2025 entity formation growth. A former State Department employee, speaking on background to WHYY because of concerns about publicly criticizing the Meyer administration, said the department should have "almost all of the data" because corporations that owe more than $5,000 are quarterly payers and make their final payment by March 1.
On March 24, 2026, WHYY News published its report on Houghton's questions and the missing corporate franchise data. On March 26, 2026, Houghton received an email from Meyer informing him that he would be replaced on the council. Meyer subsequently appointed Brenda Wise, CSC Corporate Counsel and Director of Global Government Affairs, to the council on April 7, 2026.
Senate President Pro Tempore David Sokola, in a public statement, called the firing "undue political interference" and said the termination was "for publicly asking questions about our State's corporate franchise tax revenue." Sokola said the move "undermined the council's role to work without political interference" and called for Houghton's reinstatement.
Levin himself, on the record to Spotlight Delaware, was carefully diplomatic. Levin noted that DEFAC members serve at the pleasure of the executive branch and that governors have regularly swapped out members who served under their predecessors. But Levin also noted, on the record, that he shared Houghton's concerns about the revenue figures presented by the Division of Corporations. Levin himself had noticed at the March meeting that certain figures matched numbers presented in December. The Chair of DEFAC publicly acknowledged that the man Meyer fired had asked a question Levin himself had also been asking inside the room.
Houghton, in subsequent interviews, told Delaware Business Times: "I think my termination may have delivered a different message to DEFAC, the legislature and the public: that tough questions are not welcome by this administration." In April 2026, the General Assembly advanced bipartisan legislation to codify DEFAC into law, taking the council's existence out of the executive order framework where governors can replace its members and placing it in statute where statutory protections would apply.
The contributor was fired for asking the contribution-funded
Governor's appointee to disclose the corporate franchise data.
The chair of DEFAC said publicly that he shared the contributor's concern.
The Governor fired the contributor anyway.
The legislature is now codifying DEFAC into law
to prevent the Governor from doing it again.
That is the textbook definition of a legislative response
to executive overreach.
The Full Levin Footprint
Alan Levin: $29,100 personal.
$4,000 spousal. $8,082.50 extended family.
$1,772,731.02 PAC organized.
$1,813,913.52 total Levin-attributable political support for Meyer.
Director of DEDO under Markell.
Advisor to Meyer's 2024 gubernatorial campaign.
Chair of DEFAC under Meyer.
The Port of Wilmington Kinder Morgan privatization in 2012-2013 he negotiated.
The Enstructure Concession Agreement Third Amendment in December 2024.
The PAC that funded the third Governor's election.
The DEFAC Chair role he now holds.
The $1.77 million raised through Change Can't Wait PAC is the vehicle through which the regional development network (Stortini, Delaney, Schell, Hynansky, Capano, Pettinaro, Onix, Stonelock, Patel) and the out-of-state donor network (Bloomberg, Fryatt, Carper-affiliated, the gaming sector) supported Meyer at a scale that the individual contribution limits would not have allowed. The regional development network is the same network that operates the parcels, hires the same legal counsel (Shawn Tucker, Barnes and Thornburg), uses the same engineering firm (Verdantas), and receives the same state subsidies (Site Readiness Fund, TIIF, CDF) that the Subsidy Ledger documents.
The Houghton firing on March 26, 2026, places Levin's institutional position under direct stress. The DEFAC Chair publicly acknowledged he shared Houghton's concerns about the corporate franchise revenue data. The DEFAC Chair did not resign. The Senate is advancing legislation to codify DEFAC into statute. The institutional architecture is being tested by the same governor whose election Levin's PAC enabled. The structural investment that Levin organized is now confronting the structural displacement that the executive branch is producing. The Truthline Network continues to read the documents.
Sources & Citations: Delaware Department of Elections preliminary campaign finance records for Meyer for Delaware, Meyer for New Castle County, and Change Can't Wait PAC, all five committee filings cross-referenced for Alan Levin and the broader Levin / Levine family contributors; Baker, K. (2024, August 6). A PAC that says it doesn't support candidates runs ad that lauds Meyer. Spotlight Delaware. https://spotlightdelaware.org/2024/08/06/meyer-pac-ad/; Baker, K. (2024, October 15). Bloomberg donated $250K to support Meyer PAC ahead of primary. Spotlight Delaware. https://spotlightdelaware.org/2024/10/15/bloomberg-meyer-donation/; Baker, K. (2024, September 5). Questions surround large, unexpected donations to Delaware PACs. Spotlight Delaware; Baker, K. (2026, March 26). Meyer removes longtime budget official following critical comments. Spotlight Delaware. https://spotlightdelaware.org/2026/03/26/meyer-removes-longtime-budget-official-following-critical-comments/; Change Can't Wait PAC public website (changecantwaitpac.org); Alan Levin LinkedIn profile (linkedin.com/in/alan-levin-89127619); Delaware Department of Elections preliminary report listing the September 10, 2024, Democratic primary results; Delaware Public Media coverage of 2012-2013 Kinder Morgan privatization; Delaware Senate vote January 16, 2013 on legislative oversight bill; Kinder Morgan letter to Levin suspending negotiations, March 7, 2013.
XLIX. The Property Transactions (2015 to 2025)
In the last decade, not a single Delaware-based company has acquired a major property near the Port of Wilmington. Every buyer came from out of state. Every seller was paid. The land changed hands while the port collapsed.
In 2017, the Diamond State Port Corporation purchased the 114-acre Edgemoor site from Chemours for approximately $10 million. This is the site of the planned $635 million Delaware Container Terminal. In November 2021, Enstructure, based in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and New York, acquired Port Contractors and its 205 acres, including the 25-acre waterfront parcel that would later be folded into the Edgemoor project. In 2022, Lineage Logistics of Michigan acquired the MTC cold storage facility at 2 Dock View Drive. In January 2023, First Industrial Realty Trust of Chicago paid $11.5 million for parcels at First State Crossing in Claymont. In October 2023, Agile Cold Storage of Georgia paid $170 million for the Agile Cold Storage facility at the same Claymont complex. In December 2023, Eastern Salt of Massachusetts paid $17 million for the approximately 47-acre Oceanport Marine Terminal. In May 2024, Catalyst, a New York City private equity firm, paid $4.5 million for 350 Pigeon Point Road. In 2024, Lineage acquired Burris cold storage for $9 million. In 2025, LogiPropCo acquired the 43-acre Crossroads 95 site in Newark.
The pattern is uniform. Out-of-state private equity, REITs, and logistics companies are systematically acquiring cold storage, warehouse, and waterfront industrial land around the Port of Wilmington while the port itself struggles with ship diversions, crane failures, dredging delays, and leadership vacuums.
The Pigeon Point Road corridor tells the story in miniature. At 170 Pigeon Point Road, Trans Cargo's operations have collapsed. At 203 Pigeon Point Road, AutoPort is "nearly out of business." At 350 Pigeon Point Road, a New York private equity firm paid $4.5 million. Smart money does not buy next to dying businesses unless it knows something about what comes next.
Sources: NCC property records; Delaware Recorder of Deeds; Delaware Business Times; corporate filings; Source #1 (confidential).
"Not a single Delaware-based company has acquired
a major property near the port in the last decade.
Every buyer came from out of state. Every seller was paid.
This is not investment in Delaware. This is extraction from Delaware."
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L. The Closing Argument
You live in the foreclosure capital of the United States. Your County government has structured the FY2027 budget to extract from you a 17.2 percent property tax increase that will not solve the structural deficit. The deficit will reopen in FY2028 at $19.4 million. The deficit will grow to $21.0 million in FY2029. The Tax Stabilization Reserve will go negative in FY2028 and reach negative $28.8 million by June 30, 2029. The administration’s own April 16, 2026 projection says so. The administration did not say it out loud.
Your County government has committed your grandchildren to approximately $1.189 billion in combined long-term debt service. Your County government has committed itself, in legislation it adopted on May 26, 2026, to a six-year capital program of $511 million with zero anticipated federal funding. Your County government has used a one-time lowest-cost-of-capital window to amortize debt up, not down. Every dollar your County government borrows for capital this fiscal year is a dollar of interest your grandchild will pay.
Your County government runs three schemes. Tyler Technologies and the broader IT contract footprint route information technology expenditure around the body the law requires to authorize it. The row office Technology Fee architecture, operated by three constitutional row officers with the Sheriff conspicuously staying out, routes transaction-fee revenues to recipients of the row officers’ choice with Council ratifying the row officers’ prior decisions in procedural form. The Hope Center, Inc., an off-books nonprofit, constructed by Marcus Henry during his tenure as General Manager of Community Services under Matt Meyer, operated by Carrie Casey since December 15, 2021, funded by County tax money the Casey letter says the County does not pay, sits at the intersection of Delaware corporate law violations and federal compliance violations under 2 CFR 200.331 and 200.332. Three schemes. One architecture. Same officials. Same audit-disclosure failures. Same public misrepresentations.
Your County government has made eight documented misrepresentations to you in connection with the FY2027 budget. The Casey letter that contradicts the Finnigan email by $2.43 million. The Henry deficit announcement that contradicts the August 31, 2025 projection by $5.9 million. The deficit-closing claim that the April 16, 2026 CFO Presentation contradicts. The cuts that are not cuts, contradicted by the Operating Budget Ordinance that ordains a $16.36 million increase. The Primary Cost Drivers slide that omits Hope Center while spending $3.02 million on it. The Henry thank-you to Poppiti for $2.2 million the legislation record cannot account for. The Triple-A reaffirmation framing that conceals the embedded downgrade triggers in the Fitch and Moody’s reports and the non-publication of the S&P report. The County Auditor’s ’very positive news’ characterization that contradicted the FY2022 Single Audit qualifications dated eight months earlier.
Your County government’s institutional check did not function. The County Auditor’s Office operates below its statutory five-member minimum, below its quarterly meeting requirement, without a current annual audit plan, without a current Quality Assurance Review, with audit work performed but reports withheld at the County Auditor’s discretion, and with the County Auditor proposing to receive funding from the very mechanism his office is supposed to audit. The County Auditor did not stop the Hope Center scheme. The County Auditor did not stop the Tyler contract Council workaround. The County Auditor did not stop the row office Technology Fee architecture. The County Auditor told the Audit Committee everything was fine. The records say otherwise.
And your County government is asking you to absorb the 17.2 percent property tax increase while the stacking of eleven concurrent cost increases hits you over six to twelve months. Delmarva Power. Sewer rates. School taxes. DMV fees. SEPTA fares. Credit card fees. Homeowner’s insurance. Natural gas. Groceries. Rent and mortgage pressure of a foreclosure-capital housing market. The 17.2 percent County tax is the breaking point. The administration has not acknowledged the stacking. The administration is asking you to absorb more, because the administration’s own April 2026 projection shows it will.
Your tax increase does not solve the deficit. The next one is coming.
The administration knows. You have not been told. Until now.
The Truthline Network has read every page of the FY2027 budget. The Truthline Network has read the FY2024 and FY2025 ACFRs, the FY2025 Single Audit, the County Auditor’s memoranda, the rating agency reports, the Council legislation database, the federal compliance framework, and the seventeen Department and Row Office Budget Presentations the administration submitted to Council. The Truthline Network has named the officials accountable. The Truthline Network has traced the dollars to the line items.
The Truthline Network has followed the cross-references between the audits, the bond ordinances, the rating agency reports, and the Council legislative record. This report is the only place in Delaware where the full picture exists.
The body with the authority to act on what the documentary record establishes is the County Council. The Council adopts the row office fee schedules. The Council authorizes the appropriations. The Council exercises the appropriation authority 9 Del. C. 1101 reserves to it. The Council can consolidate the row office Technology Fee Accounts into a single County Technology Fund. The Council can request the County Auditor to audit the three schemes. The Council can request an Office of Law opinion on the statutory authority. The Council can refer the documentary findings to the New Castle County Ethics Commission. The Council can refer the matter to the Delaware Attorney General. The Council can refer the federal compliance findings to the U.S. Treasury Office of Inspector General. The Council has the authority. The Council has the documentary record. The Council has the obligation. The Council, in short, can do what the State Code authorizes it to do and what the State Code, properly read, requires it to do.
The residents have the vote. The residents have the voice. The residents have the documentary record. The residents have, in this report, the only consolidated account in Delaware of what their County government has done with their tax money and what their County government plans to do next. The residents are entitled to know. The residents now know. What happens next is up to the residents and to the Council members the residents elect.
The administration was not honest. The schemes were running.
The residents were paying. The records are the proof.
The Council has the authority. The residents have the vote.
The case is made. What follows is the proof, in the order it should be read. Begin with The PAL Reckoning, the single story that tells you everything about how this County governs when it thinks no one is reading the file. Then the three that show it was never one story. It was the method.
The Truthline Network Publication Attachments List for This Report
For the growing number of readers who enjoy deep dives, explainers, and additional information, below are PDFs that supplement this report for your viewing or downloading.
[PDF] Governor Matt Meyer, Executive Order 18
[PDF] Governor Matt Meyer, Executive Order 16
[PDF] County Executive Marcus Henry Executive Order 2026-06
[PDF] T.C. Memo. 2024-59, Parkway Gravel Inc. and Subsidiaries v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue
[PDF] Truthline Memorandum, "The Tax Court Record: Ferrara, Smiley, and the Airport Corridor Rezoning Chain", Companion Document to “The Quiet Dismantling of Delaware’s Democratic Guardrails”
[PDF] Truthline Memorandum, "Twenty Years, One Councilman: The George Smiley File, The Tax Court Record, the Property Chain, and the Questions Nobody Has Asked", Companion Document to “The Quiet Dismantling of Delaware’s Democratic Guardrails”
Discover the Truth About Delaware's Port of Wilmington In The In-Depth Web Series Below
1. "The Quiet Dismantling of Delaware's Democratic Guardrails." Governor Matt Meyer's Land Use Code Law Protections Override. Governor Meyer's Executive Orders 18 and Companion Executive Order 16. A must-read for every Delaware resident.
2. "The Battle for Delaware's Waterfront." First Port of Wilmington Investigative Report. Published February 2026.
3. "When The Cars Stopped Coming." Second Port of Wilmington Report. The damage. The workers. The collapse. For the public. Published April 14, 2026.
3-A. [PDF] The Longshoremen's Record. The history. The pride. The labor. For the workers. Published April 14, 2026, attached to "When the Cars Stopped Coming."
4. "The Port They Gave Away." Third Port of Wilmington Report. The contract. The money. The power. For legislators, lawyers, and journalists. Published March 31, 2026, Updated April 28, 2026, Updated: Section II, Published April 30, 2026
Three reports. One investigation. Three audiences. One truth.
A Note on Methodology and Sourcing
This supplement follows the same sourcing standards as the original report. Every claim is traceable to a government document, court filing, campaign finance disclosure, published tariff, statutory text, or on-the-record statement from a named official. Where unnamed sources provide context, the underlying facts are independently verifiable through public records.
"We make it easy to verify. We make it hard to misquote."
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Methodology Note: The Meyer Political Network, Contributions Reconciled
Every dollar figure in this section is reconciled against the Delaware Department of Elections public filings for the five committees that constitute the Meyer political network across his County Executive and gubernatorial campaigns. The complete record spans March 17, 2016 (the first dollar raised for the 2016 New Castle County Executive campaign) through December 31, 2025 (the most recent reporting period). The figures come directly from the Schedule A summary line of each filed report, as certified by the candidate and filed with the Office of the State Election Commissioner. The methodology is published in full so any reader can verify the arithmetic against the Department of Elections public filings.
How the contributor data is reported and what this section captures
Delaware campaign finance law requires committees to report contributions on Schedule A of each periodic financial report. Schedule A contains two lines that together produce the total contribution figure. The first is itemized receipts, which lists each contribution exceeding one hundred dollars with the contributor’s name, address, and date. The second is an aggregate line titled “Total of Contributions Not Exceeding $100,” which reports the sum of all contributions of one hundred dollars or less as a single dollar figure without itemized donor names. Both lines combine to produce “Total Receipts” for the period, which is the figure that appears on the Statement of Account Balance and that the candidate signs and certifies.
This report identifies named contributors by aggregating itemized receipts from the public filings. The unitemized aggregate is reported as its own line, so the total reconciles to the filed Schedule A. Loans received by committees (reported on Schedule D-1) and in-kind contributions (reported on Schedule C-1) are also reported separately, as they are not cash contributions but are part of the committee’s total reported activity. The result is a methodology that uses the same line items the Department of Elections uses, and produces totals that match the press coverage by Spotlight Delaware and WHYY in August 2024 to the dollar.
Total dollars raised, as reported on Schedule A of all five committee filings
The total cost of putting Matt Meyer in elected office, across his nine-year political career from his first dollar raised for the 2016 New Castle County Executive primary through December 31, 2025, is $8,990,165.24. Five separate political committees raised that money, organized through five separate Schedule A filing pathways at the Delaware Department of Elections, and operated under three different responsible-party structures. The five committees broke into two architectural categories: Matt Meyer’s own two campaign committees, which raised a combined $3,941,929.15 across 8,725 itemized contribution receipts, and three supporting political action committee vehicles (PAC's) organized by other people on Meyer’s behalf, which raised a combined $4,342,366.74 gross across 325 itemized contribution receipts.
The $4,342,366.74 figure includes a $1,268,567.72 internal pass-through between two arms of the same Phil Shawe vehicle, so the net political dollars actually raised to support Meyer’s candidacies, with the pass-through removed, was $7,015,728.17 in itemized and unitemized Schedule A receipts, plus $700,636.60 in loans separately reported on Schedule D-1, plus $5,232.75 in in-kind contributions separately reported on Schedule C-1, for a net total of $7,721,597.52. Of the $7,976,684.00 in itemized contributions disclosed under Delaware’s named-contributor reporting threshold (contributions exceeding one hundred dollars), every dollar is traceable to a named individual or organization on the certified public filings. The remaining $307,611.89 represents unitemized contributions of one hundred dollars or less, where Delaware law does not require donor names. The 9,050 itemized receipts across the five committees represent every traceable contribution to Matt Meyer’s political career.
The first architectural category is the candidate’s own campaign infrastructure. Meyer for New Castle County, the closed County Executive-era committee, raised $564,815.31 in Schedule A receipts plus a $100,000 personal loan from the candidate himself in 2016, for $664,815.31 in total reported committee activity, across 1,320 itemized contribution receipts spanning fourteen separate periodic filings from February 7, 2016, through December 31, 2021. That committee covered two election cycles, the 2016 first-time County Executive race against incumbent Tom Gordon and the 2020 re-election race against Maggie Jones, plus the interim non-election years and a final winding-down period in 2021 when the committee transferred its $34,480.58 closing balance to Meyer for Delaware as seed capital for the gubernatorial campaign and then closed.
Meyer for Delaware, the open gubernatorial committee, raised $3,377,113.84 in Schedule A receipts plus $580,000 in personal loans from the candidate, across 7,405 itemized contribution receipts spanning the period from September 9, 2021 (the day the committee was registered) through December 31, 2025. The combined receipt count of 8,725 across the two Meyer-name committees is consistent with what a typical multi-cycle candidate-committee fundraising operation looks like in Delaware: many contributors, contributing multiple times at many small and medium-dollar amounts, accumulated over nine years of active politics.
The second architectural category is the supporting political action committee infrastructure, and its profile on the certified record is entirely different. Change Can’t Wait PAC, founded and organized by Alan Levin (the former Delaware Economic Development Office Director, former Chair of the Diamond State Port Corporation Board, and current Chair of the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council by Meyer’s appointment), raised $1,773,799.02 across 310 itemized receipts between its registration on September 22, 2021, and December 31, 2025. Citizens for a New Delaware Way PAC, the Phil Shawe and TransPerfect Translations International vehicle, raised $1,300,000.00 across just five itemized receipts: a single $1,000,000.00 contribution from TransPerfect on May 17, 2024, plus four smaller contributions in 2024 and 2025.
Citizens for a New Delaware Way Third Party Advertiser, registered as a separate filing entity on July 19, 2024, raised $1,268,567.72 across ten itemized receipts during the final weeks before the September 10 Democratic primary, every dollar of which came as transfers from the Citizens for a New Delaware Way PAC arm to the Third Party Advertiser arm. This is what a pass-through looks like mechanically: the Shawe-TransPerfect contributions arrived in one Delaware-registered vehicle, the PAC, which then transferred all of the money substantially to its separately registered advertising arm, which then paid two Washington-area political advertising firms to produce and distribute the political mailers and digital ads that ran during the closing weeks of the primary campaign. The combined receipt count of 325 across the three supporting-PAC vehicles is less than four percent of the receipt count across Meyer’s own committees, but the dollar amount they raised exceeded Meyer’s own committees by $400,437.59.
The contrast in concentration is the structural finding of the certified record. Matt Meyer’s own two campaign committees raised $3,941,929.15 across 8,725 receipts, which means the average contribution to a Meyer-name committee was $451.65 across the nine-year arc of his political career, with most receipts under one thousand dollars and a substantial number under one hundred dollars. The three supporting PAC vehicles raised $4,342,366.74 across 325 receipts, which means the average contribution to a supporting-PAC vehicle was $13,361.13, almost thirty times the average size of a contribution to Meyer’s own committees. The ten-to-one concentration ratio is not random. It is what a parallel campaign-finance architecture looks like when its operational purpose is to allow a small number of large contributors to underwrite an outside-money campaign without those contributors appearing on the candidate’s own committee disclosure.
The campaign-finance literature has a term for this structure. It is sometimes called the shadow campaign, sometimes the
dark-money pathway when the contributor identities are concealed (which they are not in this case, since Delaware PAC filings disclose donor names just as candidate-committee filings do), and sometimes more bluntly the big-check pathway. The architecture allows the candidate to maintain a candidate-committee fundraising profile that looks like a normal grassroots operation, while a parallel infrastructure runs underwritten by a much smaller number of much larger checks. Both pathways are legal under Delaware campaign-finance law. Both pathways are documented on the certified public record. Both pathways were operating simultaneously during the 2024 Democratic primary.
The single largest individual contribution in the entire nine-year record was not from a Delaware contributor. On September 4, 2024, six days before the September 10, 2024, Democratic primary, Michael R. Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York City and the founder of Bloomberg LP, the financial-information firm, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, the gun-control and climate-policy foundation, contributed $250,000.00 to Change Can’t Wait PAC in a single transaction. As Spotlight Delaware also reported on October 15, 2024, the PAC held a balance of $38,000 on September 3, 2024, after spending more than $1 million on political advertising during the preceding three months. The Bloomberg contribution one day later, plus other receipts that week, freed the PAC to spend an additional $283,000 during the final days before the primary, and the resulting mail campaign included the political mailer that stated “Bethany Hall-Long BROKE THE LAW.” The largest organizational pathway in the entire record was also not from a Delaware contributor.
Phil Shawe and TransPerfect Translations International, headquartered in New York, sent $1,300,000.00 through Citizens for a New Delaware Way PAC, of which $1,268,567.72 was then transferred to the Citizens for a New Delaware Way Third Party Advertiser arm and from there to two Washington-area political advertising firms. Combined, the Bloomberg and Shawe pathways accounted for $1,550,000.00 of the $7,015,728.17 in net political dollars raised in support of Matt Meyer’s candidacies, or 22.1 percent. The remaining 77.9 percent came from Delaware contributors, Delaware political committees, and entities with Delaware business interests. The Delaware press has reported individual pieces of this contributor record over the course of the campaign. This is the first time the full architecture, the full nine-year total, and the full receipt-by-receipt accounting have been assembled in a single reconciled disclosure.
The Top 100 Contributors to the Meyer Political Enterprise
The 9,050 itemized contribution receipts on the certified Department of Elections record represent a network of contributors. Some are individuals making small contributions across many cycles. Some are corporate entities and limited liability companies, making single large contributions. Some are political action committees making transfers between political vehicles. Some are
out-of-state finance and policy actors with specific issue interests in Delaware. The 100 largest contributors to the Meyer political enterprise, ranked by certified end-figure dollar total across the five committees, are presented below with their business or organizational identity where the public record establishes it. The dollar amounts and receipt counts come from the certified Schedule A filings.
The identifier text comes from a combination of Spotlight Delaware’s October 15, 2024, reporting (Karl Baker), Spotlight Delaware’s September 5, 2024, reporting on the Stortini 847 Cranbrook LLC vehicle, Delaware Business Times reporting on the Ocean Atlantic Companies and Jamison Corner Commerce Center developer connections, and direct public-record verification done for this report. Where the public record does not establish a business or organizational identity beyond the contributor’s filed address on the Department of Elections record, the filed address is shown as the identifier. The chart is presented in full. No contributors in the top 100 by certified end-figure total have been omitted. The reader is given the entire record so the reader can assess the architecture of the Meyer political-economy base.
The chart establishes a structural finding the Delaware press has not previously reported. Of the 100 largest contributors to the Meyer political enterprise, nineteen are limited liability companies or trust vehicles whose individual ownership is not always apparent from the filing alone. Eight are out-of-state corporate entities (TransPerfect, Bloomberg, Centene, Rush Street Interactive, Olive Tree Management LLC, Rickman Management LLC, Frederick Airpark Properties LLC, Align Technology). Eleven are members of three Delaware-area developer family networks (Schell, Hynansky, Capano, with the Copeland family adjacent through Gerret Van S. Copeland’s personal contributions). Six are Delaware political committee transfers or party-committee transfers (Democratic State Committee, New Castle County Democratic Committee, Citizens for a New Delaware Way pass-through, ABC Merit Shop PAC, Principled Veterans Fund). The remaining contributors are individual personal donors, the majority of whom are Wilmington-area, Greenville-area, or Delaware-beach-area residents. The architecture of the Meyer political-economy base is concentrated in Wilmington’s residential developer families, the Sussex County residential homebuilders, the Delaware-area attorneys and finance professionals, and a pathway of out-of-state regulated-industry, finance, and policy contributors that ran in parallel with the Delaware donor base.
The candidate’s own loans to his campaigns
Two of the loans on Schedule D-1 deserve specific identification. The first is Matthew Meyer’s personal loan of $580,000 to Meyer for Delaware, the gubernatorial campaign committee. This is the single largest financial commitment to the gubernatorial campaign from any source. WHYY’s August 19, 2024, reporting identified the loan as “nearly $600,000 of Meyer’s campaign war chest comes from a personal loan he made to the campaign last year.” The loan is part of the committee’s total reported activity, but is not contributor money. The candidate is the lender. The second is Matthew Meyer’s personal loan of $100,000 to Meyer for New Castle County, dating from the 2016 County Executive campaign era. The smaller historical loan is identified here for completeness. Both loans appear on Schedule D-1 of the respective committee filings and are part of the public record.
The candidate’s personal financial commitment to his own campaigns, taken together, is $680,000. This is not a critique. It is a disclosure. Delaware allows candidates to lend money to their own committees. The lending of personal funds is a documented practice across many gubernatorial races. The disclosure matters because it identifies the candidate as the largest single contributor of money to his own gubernatorial campaign, ahead of any external contributor, when loans and contributions are combined.
Net political contributions from unique sources
The net political contributions figure, after removing items that would otherwise be double-counted between filings, is $6,981,247.59. The reconciliation between the Schedule A gross and the net political contributions is shown in the table below. Two adjustments matter for accurate counting: the $1,268,567.72 pass-through from the Citizens for a New Delaware Way PAC to its Third Party Advertiser arm (same TransPerfect money, transferred once) and the $34,480.58 closing-balance transfer from Meyer for New Castle County to Meyer for Delaware (previously raised contributor money rolled forward as seed capital for the gubernatorial campaign, already counted in the County Executive committee total).
Top contributors across the network
The following are the top 15 unique contributors in the Meyer political network, ranked by aggregate contributions across all 5 committees. The Department of Elections records establish the names. The dollars are exact. The dates are exact.
How the money was structured
The structure matters. TransPerfect Translations International, a New York-headquartered translation services company whose principal, Phil Shawe, relocated his corporate domicile to Delaware after a celebrated legal dispute, contributed $1,300,000 to Citizens for a New Delaware Way PAC in five contributions between June 2024 and November 2025. The PAC, with no other significant contributor, then transferred $1,268,567.72 to Citizens for a New Delaware Way Third Party Advertiser, a separate filing entity authorized to spend on outside electioneering. The Third Party Advertiser disbursed the money in support of Meyer during the gubernatorial race. The arrangement separates the contributor from the speaker by one filing entity. The contributor remains identifiable. The pathway remains traceable. The total expenditure attributable to TransPerfect is $1,300,000, the original contribution.
Change Can't Wait PAC, a super PAC, founded and operated by Alan Levin, the former Director of the Delaware Economic Development Office under Governor Markell and longtime political-economy figure in Delaware, raised $1,773,799.02 from September 2021 through December 2025. Michael R. Bloomberg’s single $250,000 contribution to the PAC on September 4, 2024, was the largest single receipt outside the TransPerfect pathway.
Meyer for Delaware, the gubernatorial campaign committee itself, raised $3,377,113.84 in cash contributions on Schedule A. Of that, $3,131,162.07 came from itemized contributors named on the public filings, and $245,951.77 came from unitemized contributions of one hundred dollars or less, where Delaware law does not require donor names. The committee also received $580,000 in loans on Schedule D-1, in the form of Matthew Meyer’s personal loan to his own campaign. Combined cash receipts and personal loan: $3,957,113.84. The committee took in the $34,480.58 closing balance of Meyer for New Castle County on December 31, 2021, as the County Executive committee wound down.
The County Executive committee, in turn, raised $564,815.31 in Schedule A receipts during Meyer’s 2016 and 2020 New Castle County races, plus $100,000 in a 2016 personal loan from the candidate. The County Executive contributor base is materially the same network that subsequently contributed to the gubernatorial campaign. Repeat contributors appear in both committees. The contributors who gave in 2016 and 2020 were reminding the campaign, by their renewed presence in 2024 and 2025, how long they had been in the network.
The County Executive numbers are not separable from the gubernatorial numbers in any meaningful political-network sense. The same donor list rolls forward. The same expectations roll forward. The money that closed out the County Executive committee on December 31, 2021, became the seed capital for the gubernatorial committee the same day. The political continuity is the contributor continuity.
The Meyer for New Castle County committee, by race and reporting period
Meyer for New Castle County reported across fourteen separate periodic filings spanning February 7, 2016, through December 31, 2021. The committee covered two election cycles (the 2016 first County Executive race against incumbent Tom Gordon and the 2020 re-election race against Maggie Jones), the interim non-election years between them, and a final winding-down period in 2021.
The figures below come directly from the Schedule A summary line of each filed report, and they cross-reference to the Delaware press coverage of the period.
The 2016 race. Meyer raised $214,744.54 in cash contributions across the five reporting periods covering his first County Executive run, plus a $100,000 personal loan to the campaign on Schedule D-1. Delaware Online’s September 8, 2016, reporting (“Clear fundraising leaders emerge in primary races”) also confirmed the pre-primary 8-day report figure: Meyer raised $11,003 in the August 15 through September 5, 2016, reporting window. The figure on the filed Schedule A for that exact period is $11,003.00. Match to the dollar. Delaware Online’s August 20, 2016, reporting (“Candidates staking huge sums on their own campaigns”) also confirmed Meyer’s $100,000 personal loan. The Schedule D-1 of the Meyer for New Castle County 2016 pre-primary 30-day filing confirms the $100,000 loan from the candidate, dated within the February 7 through August 14, 2016, reporting period. Match to the dollar.
The 2019-2020 re-election race. Meyer raised $176,900.53 during the 2019 calendar year, building his war chest before the formal primary cycle began. Wikipedia’s entry on the 2020 New Castle County Executive election cites the press-reported figure of approximately $177,150 raised by the end of 2019. The Schedule A figure on the filed 2019 year-end report is $176,900.53. Delaware Online’s September 12, 2020, reporting (“Delaware primary election fundraising money candidates”) reported Meyer’s January through mid-August 2020 receipts at approximately $57,898. The Schedule A figure on the filed pre-primary 30-day report for the January 1 through August 16, 2020 period is $57,215.80. Total 2019 plus pre-primary 2020 fundraising: $234,116.33, consistent with the Delaware press characterization of “approximately $235,000.” The 2020 race did not require a personal loan from the candidate.
The total Meyer for New Castle County committee activity across both races and all interim periods is $564,815.31 in Schedule A cash receipts plus the 2016 $100,000 personal loan, for $664,815.31 in total reported committee activity. The Delaware Department of Elections public filings are the source of every figure in this table.
The contributors who matter: a Port-network reading of the record
The headline contributor totals tell one story. The names tell another. The following groupings identify the contributors whose presence in the public record matters for New Castle County and Delaware specifically: who they are, what they do, and why their appearance on the contributor list matters beyond the dollar amount.
Alan B. Levin, the political-economy architect
Alan B. Levin contributed $29,100 directly to the Meyer political committees across eight receipts spanning 2016 through 2024: $15,000 to Change Can’t Wait PAC on June 10, 2024; $5,000 to Change Can’t Wait on September 29, 2023; $5,000 to Change Can’t Wait on October 28, 2022; $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on September 22, 2024; $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on December 18, 2021; $500 to Meyer for New Castle County on April 18, 2016; $600 to Meyer for New Castle County on October 14, 2016; and $600 to Meyer for New Castle County on December 7, 2017. The personal contributions are documented across the entire Meyer political record from the first County Executive race through the gubernatorial general election.
Personal contributions are the smaller half of the Levin contributor footprint. The larger half is the political action committee Levin founded, organized, and remains the responsible party for: Change Can’t Wait PAC, which raised $1,772,731.02 across 309 receipts between September 2021 and December 2025. The PAC’s receipts, as documented in earlier sections, include Michael R. Bloomberg’s $250,000 single contribution on September 4, 2024, the Schell Brothers developer network, the Capano and Copeland family contributions, the Hynansky auto-dealer family, the Stortini 847 Cranbrook LLC $100,000, and Philip Reese’s $100,000.
Every dollar that flowed through Change Can’t Wait PAC to support Meyer flowed through a political vehicle organized by the same Alan Levin who chaired the Diamond State Port Corporation Board under Governor Markell from 2009 through 2017, who chaired Meyer’s 2019 Wilmington Airport Task Force, and who is now Chair of the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council (DEFAC) by Meyer’s appointment. The Port governance role, the airport task force role, and the fiscal council role are all on the public record. The PAC he founded raised the money. The contributions he made personally are also on the public record. The continuity is not in dispute.
Drinker Biddle and Reath LLP, the predecessor name of Faegre Drinker Biddle and Reath, the firm where Alan Levin served Of Counsel since approximately 2015, contributed directly to Meyer for New Castle County twice: $600 on September 26, 2016, from the firm’s Wilmington office at 222 Delaware Avenue, and $600 on November 4, 2019, from the firm’s 1 Logan Square, Philadelphia office. The firm itself appears on the contributor record during the period when Tucker and McGonigle were still partners there, and Levin was Of Counsel. Tucker and McGonigle left in June 2021 for Barnes and Thornburg.
The McGonigle and Tucker households: from Faegre Drinker to Barnes & Thornburg
Two Delaware attorneys appear on the Meyer contributor list as sustained, multi-year, multi-committee contributors. Their professional history matters for understanding what their presence on the contributor list documents. Thomas McGonigle and Shawn P. Tucker were partners at Drinker Biddle and Reath LLP, the firm that merged into Faegre Drinker Biddle and Reath in February 2020. They were colleagues there of Alan B. Levin, who joined Drinker Biddle as Of Counsel after leaving the Delaware Economic Development Office in mid-2015 and who continued as Of Counsel and reportedly Director of Business Development at Faegre Drinker after the merger.
On June 14, 2021, McGonigle and Tucker left Faegre Drinker as part of a coordinated team of eight Delaware professionals (three partners, two government relations consultants, an of-counsel attorney, an associate, and a paralegal) who joined Barnes and Thornburg LLP as that firm built out its Wilmington office. McGonigle became the partner-in-charge of the Wilmington office. Tucker became a real estate and land use partner. Alan Levin did not move with the team.
McGonigle’s biography before the 2021 move is part of the political-economy continuity the Port story traces. He served as chief of staff to Governor Jack A. Markell from 2009 through 2012, the exact period during which Alan Levin served as Markell’s Director of the Delaware Economic Development Office and as Chair of the Diamond State Port Corporation Board. McGonigle managed the Governor’s office while Levin ran the state’s economic development apparatus and the public corporation that owns the Port of Wilmington. McGonigle also previously served as chief legal counsel and policy director to former Governor Thomas R. Carper, now Delaware’s senior United States Senator, and as a Deputy Attorney General in Delaware. McGonigle and Levin worked together inside the Markell administration. Both later moved into private practice at the same Delaware law firm, where they remained colleagues until McGonigle’s 2021 move to Barnes and Thornburg.
Tucker’s biography is parallel and complementary. Before entering private practice, Tucker served as New Castle County’s First Assistant County Attorney, responsible for overseeing all land use matters and related litigation in Delaware’s most populated county. He led the rewrite and adoption of New Castle County’s current zoning and subdivision code, the Unified Development Code. After the code’s adoption, Tucker was tapped to manage New Castle County’s Land Use Department. He is, in his own firm’s biographical materials and in the Delaware Business Times’ reporting, the attorney who has “quarterbacked some of Delaware’s largest development projects.” Per the Delaware Business Times’ September 2025 reporting on the Barnes and Thornburg Wilmington practice, the firm under McGonigle’s leadership is the legal firm behind major New Castle County warehouse development projects, including Stoltz Real Estate Partners’ Amazon warehouse and a potential 3.9 million square-foot Amazon-related warehouse project. The Truthline Network’s February 18, 2026, report previously identified Tucker, based on a firsthand source, as the attorney who handles Amazon’s legal work at his firm and who, with Levin, raised money for Meyer’s gubernatorial campaign. The published record establishes the firm’s representation of Amazon-warehouse development projects; the firsthand-source attribution adds the specific identification of Tucker as the responsible attorney for that work.
The contributor record tracks both attorneys across both firms. Shawn Tucker contributed $6,480 total across eleven receipts spanning September 28, 2016, through October 29, 2024. Six of those contributions, totaling $2,000, predate his June 2021 move to Barnes and Thornburg and were made during his Drinker Biddle and Faegre Drinker period (the period when he was Levin’s colleague). Five contributions, totaling $4,480, postdate the move and were made during his Barnes and Thornburg period. Tucker’s October 29, 2024, contribution of $1,000 lists his address as 222 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1200, Wilmington, which is the Barnes and Thornburg Wilmington office address. His other contributions list his personal residence at 414 Derby Way, Wilmington. Michele W. Tucker, at the same Derby Way address, contributed an additional $2,900 across four receipts spanning 2016 through 2024. Combined Tucker household contributions: $9,380 across fifteen receipts.
Thomas McGonigle contributed $3,300 across five receipts. Four of those contributions, totaling $2,100, were made during his Drinker Biddle and Faegre Drinker period: $600 on September 26, 2016; $300 on December 7, 2017; $600 on December 31, 2019; and $600 on September 18, 2020. One contribution of $1,200 on October 5, 2024, was made during his Barnes and Thornburg period. Patricia McGonigle, at the same Wilmington address (1305 Shipley Road), contributed an additional $2,400 across two receipts during her husband’s Barnes and Thornburg period: $1,200 on October 29, 2024, and $1,200 on November 20, 2025. The McGonigle household total: $5,700 across seven receipts. Combined Tucker-and-McGonigle household contributions: approximately $15,080 across twenty-two receipts.
The Drinker Biddle and Reath LLP firm itself appears on the contributor record twice during the period before its merger into Faegre Drinker. The firm contributed $600 to Meyer for New Castle County on September 26, 2016, from its 222 Delaware Avenue Wilmington office, and $600 on November 4, 2019, from its 1 Logan Square, Philadelphia office. These contributions came from the firm where Levin had joined as Of Counsel in 2015 and where Tucker and McGonigle were partners. After the 2021 move, the new firm followed.
Barnes and Thornburg LLP, the firm Tucker and McGonigle joined in June 2021, contributed $3,600 across three receipts to Meyer for Delaware: $1,200 on September 27, 2023; $1,200 on October 10, 2024; and $1,200 on November 20, 2025. The contributions came from the firm’s main office address at 11 South Meridian Street, Indianapolis, Indiana. Barnes and Thornburg is also, per the prior Truthline reporting and the Delaware state permit appeals docket, the law firm representing the Diamond State Port Corporation in the Edgemoor litigation. McGonigle, identified in the DSPC Board minutes pulled for this report as the firm’s representative at every Board meeting throughout 2025, is the attorney attending those meetings. The same firm contributing to the Governor was the firm representing the public corporation he oversees, in the federal and state litigation that is central to the Port investigation.
The pattern across the two firms documents a single political-economy network with continuity through three Delaware administrations. McGonigle worked with Levin inside the Markell administration. McGonigle and Tucker were partners with Levin at Drinker Biddle and Faegre Drinker. McGonigle and Tucker then moved together to Barnes and Thornburg, where they continued their political-economy practice, while Levin remained at Faegre Drinker. Both firms appear on the Meyer contributor list. Both named attorneys appear on the contributor list across their entire careers in private practice. The political-economy continuity runs across firms, across administrations, and across both Meyer’s County Executive and gubernatorial campaigns.
Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, LLP, the law firm that beat Delaware in federal court
Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, LLP, the Philadelphia law firm whose attorney Andrew Levine and his team (Michael J. Engle, Brandon M. Riley, Joelle E. Polesky) represented PhilaPort and Holt Logistics in the federal lawsuit that invalidated the Edgemoor permits in October 2024, contributed $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on September 26, 2024. The contribution is documented in the Delaware Department of Elections public filings. The firm’s address on the filing is 2005 Market Street, Suite 2600, Philadelphia, the Stradley Ronon main office address.
Six weeks after this contribution, U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney issued the federal court ruling in Stradley Ronon’s clients’ favor, invalidating the Edgemoor permits. The Truthline Network’s February 18, 2026, report identified Stradley Ronon as PhilaPort’s lead counsel in that litigation. The contributor record shows that the firm representing the litigants who beat Delaware in federal court contributed to Delaware’s Governor during the pendency of the litigation. No individual Stradley Ronon attorneys (Andrew Levine, Michael J. Engle, Brandon M. Riley, Joelle E. Polesky) appear in the Meyer contributor record. The firm contribution is the only Stradley Ronon-network hit.
Both sides of the Edgemoor litigation, on the same contributor list
The structural observation reinforces what the Tucker and McGonigle section above already documents. Both law firms in the same federal Edgemoor litigation appear on the Meyer contributor list during the pendency of the litigation. Stradley Ronon, representing the litigants who beat Delaware (PhilaPort and Holt), contributed $1,200 on September 26, 2024, six weeks before the federal court ruling in its clients’ favor. Barnes and Thornburg, representing the State entity that lost (the Diamond State Port Corporation), contributed $3,600 across three receipts to Meyer for Delaware over three years (September 27, 2023; October 10, 2024; November 20, 2025). The law firm representing the State and the law firm representing the State’s adversaries in the same federal litigation both appear on the Governor’s contributor list. The contributions are public. The litigation is public. The Governor accepted both.
The Pilots Association for Bay & River DE, direct maritime governance
The Pilots Association for Bay & River DE, the maritime pilots’ association that governs pilotage on the Delaware River and Bay (the pilots who board vessels and navigate them into and out of the Port of Wilmington), contributed $2,400 across two receipts to Meyer for Delaware: $1,200 on August 11, 2023, listed at 800 South Columbus Boulevard, Philadelphia (the pilots’ main office); and $1,200 on October 7, 2024, listed at the Association’s political action committee filing address. The Pilots Association’s structural interest in Port governance is direct: every vessel calling at the Port of Wilmington is piloted by an Association member. The Association is the maritime workforce that benefits when Port traffic increases and that is directly affected when Port traffic shifts upriver to competing terminals.
The Stortini network and 847 Cranbrook LLC: $103,600 across four entities
The Stortini family and the LLC at 847 Cranbrook Drive together account for $103,600 across four receipts in the public record. The structure of the contributions is itself informative.
On July 11, 2023, three Stortini family members each contributed the maximum permitted personal contribution of $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on the same day: Paul Stortini at 847 Cranbrook Drive, Wilmington; Lisa Stortini at 300 Meredith Avenue, Suite 1370, Wilmington (a Wilmington corporate-services suite); and Michael Stortini at the same 300 Meredith Avenue Suite 1370 address. Total Stortini personal contributions: $3,600 across one coordinated day.
Eleven months later, on June 3, 2024, an LLC named 847 Cranbrook, LLC, with a filing address at 300 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1370, Wilmington (the same Suite 1370 numbering that appears on two of the personal Stortini contributions), contributed $100,000 to Change Can’t Wait PAC. The LLC’s name matches Paul Stortini's personal residence address from the prior year’s contributions. Combined Stortini personal-plus-LLC total: $103,600.
Buccini/Pollin Group: $18,050 across the family network
The Buccini/Pollin Group is one of the most influential urban real estate development firms on the East Coast, with property portfolios stretching from Wilmington through the broader Mid-Atlantic. Their development footprint in Wilmington is substantial. They are the developer of major Wilmington riverfront, downtown, and waterfront mixed-use projects. Their structural interest in Port-of-Wilmington governance, in waterfront land values, and in state infrastructure investments is direct. The contributor record reflects sustained giving from across the family network.
The Buccini family network contributed $14,200 across twelve receipts: Robert Buccini, $2,500 to Change Can’t Wait PAC on November 30, 2023, plus $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on December 24, 2021, plus $600 to Meyer for NCC on October 11, 2016; Christopher F. Buccini, $2,500 to Change Can’t Wait on December 4, 2023; Chris Buccini, $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on December 24, 2021, plus $600 to Meyer for NCC on October 11, 2016; Mati Buccini, $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on December 24, 2021; Elizabeth Buccini, $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on December 27, 2021; Maria Buccini, $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on November 10, 2022; Bernadette Buccini, $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on January 1, 2022; Maria Bonetti de Buccini, $600 to Meyer for NCC on October 11, 2016; Donato R. Buccini, $200 to Meyer for NCC on August 23, 2016; Robert Buccini, $600 to Meyer for NCC on October 11, 2016.
The Pollin family (David Pollin, partner in Buccini/Pollin Group) contributed an additional $3,850 across four receipts: David Pollin, $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on December 26, 2021, plus $250 to Meyer for NCC on December 3, 2019; Kirstin Pollin, $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on December 26, 2021; Kirsten Pollin, $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on August 5, 2024.
Combined Buccini-plus-Pollin Group contributor network: $18,050 across sixteen receipts. The developer with the deepest urban real estate footprint in Wilmington is on the contributor list, in sustained giving from across the family network, across two committees, across three election cycles. The Port of Wilmington is part of the same waterfront economy in which the Buccini/Pollin Group is the most consequential developer. The structural interest is direct.
Fusco Properties LP: the contributor at the airport gate
Fusco Properties LP, with a filing address of 200 Airport Road, New Castle, Delaware, contributed $13,000 across six receipts spanning 2016 through 2024 to the Meyer political committees: $5,000 to Change Can’t Wait PAC on August 20, 2024, $5,000 to Change Can’t Wait on October 10, 2023, $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on October 12, 2022, and three earlier contributions totaling $1,800 to Meyer for New Castle County. The address, 200 Airport Road, is adjacent to the Wilmington/New Castle County Airport, the same airport whose lease with the Delaware River and Bay Authority was studied by the Wilmington Airport Task Force that Meyer appointed Alan Levin to chair in 2019. The task force recommended against renewing the DRBA lease. The Truthline Network’s prior reporting establishes the Levin task force context. Fusco Properties is in the airport’s immediate footprint.
The Delaware developer and political-economy network
Several additional top-25 contributors are part of the same Delaware developer-and-political-economy infrastructure that funded the gubernatorial campaign. They are part of the larger network whose presence on the contributor list contextualizes the New Castle County story.
Louis J. Capano contributed $45,000 to Change Can’t Wait PAC across two receipts ($25,000 on February 9, 2024, and $20,000 on August 20, 2024). The Capano family is one of the longest-running real estate development dynasties in Delaware, with substantial property holdings in Wilmington and the unincorporated New Castle County area.
The Hynansky family contributed $86,900 across thirteen receipts spanning 2016 through 2024. John Hynansky ($53,000 total, including two separate $25,000 contributions to Change Can’t Wait PAC on June 8, 2023, and March 25, 2024) and Michael Hynansky ($32,700 total, including $25,000 to Change Can’t Wait on August 7, 2024) anchor the family contributions. Ericka Hynansky, at the same 911 Tatnall Street address, contributed an additional $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on April 24, 2023. John Hynansky’s June 8, 2023, $25,000 contribution to Change Can’t Wait PAC appears on the certified Department of Elections filing under the misspelled contributor name “John Hyanski,” as identified by Spotlight Delaware in its October 15, 2024, reporting. The Spotlight Delaware reporting also noted the misspelling is “an apparent misspelling in the records of John Hynansky” and that the address on the misspelled filing matches a Wilmington office associated with Hynansky’s businesses (911 Tatnall Street). The misspelled receipt remains on the certified filing as filed.
The Hynansky family operates Winner Automotive Group, the Wilmington-area auto-dealer network. The auto-export business at the Port of Wilmington, anchored by AutoPort and Trans Cargo on Pigeon Point Road, was the second-largest revenue line at the Port until its collapse during the Meyer administration. The Hynansky network’s structural interest in the regional auto economy is direct.
The Copeland family network (Gerret Van S. Copeland and Tatiana Copeland, of the DuPont family) contributed $46,855 across twenty receipts spanning 2019 through 2025, including Gerret Van S. Copeland’s $25,000 to Change Can’t Wait on May 26, 2024 and $15,000 to Change Can’t Wait on November 13, 2023. The Copelands are a foundational Delaware political-economy family with deep roots in the state’s civic and corporate infrastructure.
The Schell Brothers developer network (Chris Schell, Preston A. Schell, Joseph M. Schell, Lori J. Schell, Deborah Schell, Christopher H. Schell, and Schell Brothers LLC) contributed $78,400 across fifteen receipts spanning 2021 through 2025. Schell Brothers is the largest residential developer in Sussex County, Delaware. The contribution total includes Schell Brothers LLC’s $25,000 single contribution to Change Can’t Wait on September 10, 2025, plus multiple $10,000 contributions from individual Schell family members in 2024.
These four networks (Capano, Hynansky, Copeland, Schell) together contributed $257,155 to the Meyer political committees across fifty receipts. They are part of the influential big money, dark money, super PACs in New Castle County and Delaware story directly. They are the developer-and-political-economy infrastructure that funded the Meyer and Henry campaigns, and they are part of the larger network whose presence on the contributor list demonstrates the breadth of Delaware private-sector backing for the Meyer gubernatorial run.
The Administration, The County Succession, and The Port Board Chair on The Contributor List
The certified Department of Elections record establishes a separate finding the Delaware press has not previously developed. The people Matt Meyer brought from New Castle County into his state administration, the person who succeeded Meyer as County Executive, and a sitting member of the New Castle County Council were also among Meyer’s personal campaign contributors. One of those administration officials now chairs the Board of Directors of the Diamond State Port Corporation, the same body whose conduct is the subject of this report. The contributions are itemized, named, and reconciled to the Schedule A end figures on the same Department of Elections filings that establish every other number in this report.
Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez, who now serves as the Delaware Secretary of State and as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Diamond State Port Corporation, appears on the certified contributor record across two addresses with ten contributions to the Meyer political committees. Her own seven contributions total $1,450 and include the first contribution on October 23, 2019, made for $400 from a Los Angeles residential address (424 S. Broadway, Unit 305) before her return to Delaware and more than a year before any Meyer administration appointment. Additional contributions from household members Madhava Patibanda and Patibanda Sarma at her current Wilmington residence (2719 Pickering Road) total $2,200. The Patibanda household contributions to the Meyer political committees total $3,650 across ten receipts. Patibanda-Sanchez was sworn in as Delaware Secretary of State by the Delaware State Senate on January 28, 2025. She concurrently chairs the Board of Directors of the Diamond State Port Corporation, the state authority whose conduct under the Meyer administration is the entire subject of this report. The Chair of the Port board is also a multi-year contributor to the campaigns of the Governor who appointed her.
County Executive Marcus Henry, who took office as the 13th County Executive of New Castle County on January 7, 2025, succeeding Matt Meyer, appears on the certified contributor record at his Wilmington residence (305 Rockwood Road) with two personal contributions to two separate Meyer political committees: $600 to Meyer for New Castle County on December 7, 2017, and $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on September 7, 2022. His mother, former Delaware State Senator Margaret Rose Henry (197 Christina Landing Drive, Wilmington), appears on the same certified record with three contributions to Meyer for New Castle County: $600 on December 7, 2017; $200 on September 18, 2020; and $300 on September 18, 2020. The Marcus Henry and Margaret Rose Henry contributions total $2,900 across five receipts. The certified contributor record does not show contributions from Marcus Henry’s wife, Diliana Henry. Marcus Henry worked for Meyer as the General Manager of the Department of Community Services from 2017 to 2021, appointed by Meyer to lead the department with oversight authority for The Hope Center, the homeless services facility documented in the New Castle County single audit series and previously reported on by The Truthline Network, and for Rockwood Park & Museum. Marcus Henry’s December 7, 2017, contribution to Meyer for New Castle County was made during the calendar year of his appointment by Meyer to head Community Services.
Carrie Casey, who serves as the General Manager of the New Castle County Department of Community Services, appears on the certified contributor record at her Wilmington residence (614 Foulkstone Road) with five personal contributions to Meyer for Delaware: $300 on December 30, 2022; $50 on December 4, 2023; $500 on December 31, 2023; $50 on January 4, 2024; and $500 on November 1, 2024. Her husband, Mike Casey, at the same address, contributed $500 to Meyer for Delaware on December 31, 2023. The Casey household total is $1,900 across six receipts. Carrie Casey worked for Meyer as the General Manager of the Department of Community Services, starting December 15, 2021, appointed by Meyer in November 2021 to succeed Marcus Henry, pending County Council approval. The two senior officials who consecutively led the New Castle County Department of Community Services under Meyer’s NCC executive tenure, the department with oversight authority for The Hope Center, documented in the New Castle County single audit series and previously reported on by The Truthline Network, and for Rockwood Park & Museum, are both on the certified Meyer contributor list.
David Grimaldi served as the Chief Administrative Officer of New Castle County from November 2012 to October 2015. He appears on the certified contributor record with two contributions to two separate Meyer political vehicles: $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on March 7, 2023, from 307 Westtown Road, West Chester, Pennsylvania, and $5,000 to Change Can’t Wait PAC on August 5, 2024, from 902 Mountainview Drive, Wayne, Pennsylvania. The Grimaldi total is $6,200 across two receipts. The August 5, 2024, contribution is a PAC-level contribution that placed Grimaldi in the same donor tier at Change Can’t Wait PAC as the Capano, Hynansky, Schell, and Copeland networks.
Janet Kilpatrick, the sitting New Castle County Councilwoman from the 6th District (Hockessin), appears on the certified contributor record at her Hockessin residence (9 Shagbark Court) with three personal contributions: $100 to Meyer for New Castle County on August 22, 2016; $100 to Meyer for New Castle County on October 18, 2016; and $600 to Meyer for Delaware on May 30, 2024. Her husband, Vincent Lofink, at the same Hockessin address, contributed an additional $500 across two receipts: $200 to Meyer for New Castle County on August 19, 2020, and $300 to Meyer for Delaware on July 28, 2024. The Kilpatrick-Lofink household total is $1,300 across five receipts spanning the 2016 County Executive race, the 2020 NCC Executive re-election, and the 2024 gubernatorial campaign. A sitting Council member’s household has contributed to every Meyer election cycle since 2016.
The pattern in the certified record is direct and disclosed. Matt Meyer’s gubernatorial campaigns drew personal financial support from three categories of public officials connected to him. First, a senior official he brought from New Castle County government into his state administration: Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez, now Delaware Secretary of State and Chair of the Diamond State Port Corporation Board of Directors, with household contributions totaling $3,650. Second, the person who succeeded Meyer as the County Executive of New Castle County: County Executive Marcus Henry, with family contributions including those of former State Senator Margaret Rose Henry, his mother, totaling $2,900. Third, a senior official, Meyer named to lead the same County department that had been led by his successor: Carrie Casey, who replaced Marcus Henry as General Manager of Community Services in late 2021, with household contributions totaling $1,900.
Source: New Castle County Auditor’s Office, Review of Financial Statement Audits of Police Athletic League, November 1, 2011, Financial Statement Highlights and Analysis.
The Auditor translated the ratios into plain language. A current ratio of 0.10 meant PAL could not meet its short-term obligations from available resources. Working capital had fallen from negative $81,959 in 2006 to negative $336,667 in 2010, and the farther an organization goes below zero, the more serious its condition. The defensive interval of 0.19 meant, in his words, basically six days. PAL had enough cash to operate for six days. A healthy nonprofit holds three to six months in reserve.
Revenue had collapsed from a high of $934,927 in FY2008 to $688,993 in FY2010. PAL owed Delmarva Power roughly $170,000, and the utility was threatening to shut off the power to the Hockessin facility. The situation was severe enough that on February 8, 2011, County Council passed an emergency ordinance to pay roughly $101,000 of PAL’s delinquent Delmarva bill directly. PAL carried a $250,000 unsecured line of credit it had never been able to pay down to zero, meaning the bank could call the balance at any time and PAL would default.
And PAL was raising almost nothing on its own. Contribution income generated by the organization itself, independent of a paid third-party fundraiser, came to roughly 0.52 percent of total revenue, less than four thousand dollars a year. Sixty-two percent of every fundraising dollar went to that third-party fundraiser, an organization headed by a former New Castle County police officer who was also a former PAL board member.
Six days of cash. A power company threatening the lights. A line of credit that could be called at any moment. This was the organization the County kept paying, and kept owning the buildings for.
The governance vacuum
The Auditor’s report catalogued a board that was not functioning as a board. PAL’s own bylaws required an Audit Subcommittee, including at least one outside member with a financial background, to review the financial records. It does not appear that this Audit Subcommittee has ever been created. PAL’s IRS Form 990 disclosed no written conflict-of-interest policy and no document-retention policy. The County’s own Chief Administrative Officer had urged PAL to adopt an ethics policy back in March 2005, PAL had promised to, and, in the Auditor’s finding, no one ever followed up.
The conflicts ran through the County itself. The County’s Community Services Department Manager from 2005 through 2010 sat on PAL’s board while a County employee. A long-time PAL employee was the spouse of a PAL board member who was also a former high-level County employee. The third-party fundraiser’s contract was held, when signed, by a PAL board member. These are the entanglements the Auditor flagged as conflicts of interest or appearances of impropriety.
THE TELL. Every structural failure that produced the 2025 collapse, a board that did not meet, an audit committee that never existed, records that were not produced, money that could not be accounted for, was documented by the County’s own Auditor in 2011 and placed on Marcus Henry’s desk. Nothing in the public record shows it was acted on.
The questions the Audit Committee asked, and no one answered
On October 20, 2011, the County Auditor presented his findings to the County Audit Committee. The Committee approved the report and asked that its own concerns be added to the executive summary. Those concerns, printed in the November 1, 2011 executive summary, read like the script for the crisis that arrived fourteen years later:
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Has the County Administration been evaluating PAL’s financial condition on an ongoing basis? Should there be someone from the County on PAL’s board?
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Why would PAL not let the County Auditor see its detailed accounting records? Will the County Auditor’s ability to do so be reflected in the language in the amended leases?
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The Board of Directors does not appear to be fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities.
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If the County owns the facilities, then why is the County leasing the facilities from PAL and not vice versa?
Every one of those questions is live again today. In 2025 the County put someone from the County on PAL’s board, its own police chief, only after the organization had already failed. The records PAL would not show the Auditor in 2011 are the records a criminal investigation is now trying to reconstruct. And the question of why the County leases its own buildings has still never been answered.
The Decade of Silence
Most accountability stories are about a single bad decision. This one is about the absence of a decision, repeated year after year, by the one person whose job was to make it. The warning was not lost. It was not ambiguous. It was a formal report from the County’s own Auditor, addressed by name to the General Manager of the department that oversaw PAL. From that point forward, the clock starts, and it runs for fourteen years.
Begin with what the role was. The General Manager of Community Services is not a clerk who receives reports. The department is the County’s point of contact for its recreation and human-services partners, the office that administers exactly the kind of relationship the County had with PAL. When the Auditor needed to tell the Administration that a County-funded organization was insolvent and would not open its books, this is the desk the warning landed on. Receiving it was not incidental to the job. Acting on it was the job.
What a single year of inaction looks like, multiplied by ten
One year of silence after a warning like this is a lapse. Two is a pattern. A decade is a posture. By the County’s own public accounting, Marcus Henry served roughly ten years in County leadership, working directly for three different County Executives, with much of that time spent as the General Manager of Community Services, the very role the 2011 report was addressed to.
Across that decade, the public record shows no follow-up operational audit of PAL, no enforcement of the annual-audit requirement written into the 2004 lease, no move to resolve the ownership question the Audit Committee had flagged, and no halt to the payments. The League’s governance stayed broken. The checks kept clearing.
And the payments did not merely continue. They were restored and increased. In November 2011, the same month the Auditor’s report was finalized, the County rescinded a rollback, paid PAL back the withheld money, and added an inflation bonus. In 2012, it sent another bundled check. In 2014, it locked in a five-year schedule with an automatic escalator. Every one of those actions ran through the period in which Henry sat in County leadership, and every one moved in the opposite direction from the warning.
A warning ignored for one year is an oversight. A warning ignored for ten, by the manager whose department owned the file, is not an accident. It is a choice the calendar makes impossible to call anything else.
The promotion, and the second chance not taken
In November 2024, the voters of New Castle County elected Marcus Henry as County Executive. He was sworn in on January 7, 2025. For the first time, the official who had received the 2011 warning held the single office with the authority to fix everything it described: to commission the audit, to renegotiate or end the leases, to resolve the ownership question, to protect the taxpayers from the liability that had been building for years.
That authority is the point. As a department General Manager, a person can say the decision was above their pay grade. As County Executive, there is no one above. The second chance was not theoretical. It was the most complete grant of corrective power the County can give one person. And in the first months of the new administration, the public record shows no audit launched, no lease reopened, no ownership claim asserted, nothing that would have gotten ahead of the crisis the 2011 report had predicted in detail.
The correction came only when the collapse made silence impossible. In the summer of 2025, after the organization’s longtime executive director resigned and the State froze its grants, Henry announced he had been made aware of concerning issues at PAL and was acting to right the ship. The phrase is worth holding up to the 2011 report. He was not newly made aware. His department had been told, in writing, when he ran it. The issues were not concerning surprises. They were documented, distributed, and filed under his name a decade and a half earlier.
The tool he reached for
When Henry finally moved, the instrument he chose deepened the problem rather than resolving it. He installed the County’s own Police Chief, Colonel Jamie Leonard, as chairman of PAL’s board, and a County police lieutenant, Angela Dolan, as its interim executive director. The County Police Department had, by then, opened an inquiry into how PAL spent millions in taxpayer dollars.
So the same department now investigating the organization was also running it, under a chief who reports to the County Executive who had received the original warning.
THE TELL. Set the dates side by side, and the story tells itself. 2011: the warning arrives, addressed to Henry as department GM.
2011 to roughly 2018, and through the decade of County leadership: no correction, payments restored and increased. January 2025: Henry becomes County Executive, gaining full power to fix it. Mid-2025: he acts only after the public collapse, and installs his own police command at the top of an organization his own police are investigating. The through-line is not bad luck. It is fourteen years of a warning that was received and never answered, by the one person present at both ends.
None of this requires speculation about motive, and this report offers none. It requires only the calendar and the org chart, both of which are public. The Auditor did his job in 2011. He put the warning in writing and named the recipient. What the record shows next is silence, through a decade in the department and into the highest office in the County, broken only when the wreckage could no longer be ignored.
What PAL Told the County in Writing in 2018
Between the 2014 escalator and the pandemic windfall, there is a document that captures PAL exactly as it presented itself to the County: a New Castle County Council grant application, dated July 27, 2018, signed by PAL’s Executive Director. It is a small grant, capped at $2,500. But the numbers PAL was willing to certify on it tell the story of an organization that had learned to live on government money and to describe itself in the language the County wanted to hear.
On the form, PAL identified itself as the Police Athletic League of Delaware, Inc., a corporation and a 501(c)(3), at 7259 Lancaster Pike, Hockessin, with federal Employer Identification Number 22-2606531. The contact listed on the application was associated with the palde.org domain that the organization’s then-Executive Director, former House Speaker Valerie Longhurst, would use. The stated purpose: to supplement a STEM program for youth ages 8 to 18, the same kind of program the federal pandemic money would later be awarded, and misspent, to support.
The budget worksheet PAL attached is the revealing part. For its then-current operating year, PAL reported the following.
Appendix B. Department-by-Department Budget Comparison
Source: New Castle County FY2027 Recommended Operating Budget, page 6.
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Appendix C. Position Count by Department
Sources: New Castle County FY2027 Recommended Operating Budget, page 4. Note: In addition to the 1,692 funded positions, the FY2027 budget identifies 43 General Fund and 13.3 Sewer Fund 'unfunded' positions totaling 56.3 positions and saving $4,769,161. These positions remain on the books and can be re-funded.
Appendix D. The Three Rating Agencies and Their Downgrade Triggers
Sources: Moody's Investors Service Credit Opinion (July 8, 2025); Fitch Ratings issuer report (July 7, 2025); S&P Global Ratings; New Castle County press release (July 8, 2025). Key insight: Both Moody's and Fitch assigned the AAA rating ABOVE their scorecard-indicated outcomes through qualitative adjustments.
Without those adjustments, the County would be rated Aa2/AA+. Standard & Poore’s Global Ratings (S&P Global Ratings) is not on New Castle County’s website alongside the posted Moody’s and Fitch Rating Agency Reports for the public to read. This move is a red flag: The Henry Administration is not sharing the third ratings agency report with the public. The two reports on the site issue warnings of downgrading. Could it be worse than that?
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Appendix E. Reserve Trajectory
Sources: New Castle County FY2024 ACFR, Exhibit B-3; FY2025 ACFR, Exhibit B-3.
Appendix F. Historical Tax Rate Record
Companion Table: Historical Sewer Rate Increases
New Castle County sewer rate increases over the past two decades sit alongside the property tax rate increases in Appendix F above. The pattern is documented in Section XVIII of this report. The companion table below presents the same time horizon and the same County Executive attribution, applied to the sewer side of the rate history.
Sources: New Castle County Council minutes and ordinance records; FY2019 budget legislation (Substitute 1 to Ordinance 18-061). The FY2019 final adopted sewer-rate figure is documented as pending verification in primary source material. Council negotiated the figure below Meyer’s proposed 12 percent. New Castle County FY2024 ACFR, Exhibit C-2; New Castle County FY2025 ACFR, Exhibit C-1; New Castle County FY2026 Approved Operating Budget; New Castle County FY2027 Recommended Operating Budget.
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Appendix G. ARPA, Hope Center, and the Federal Funding Cliff
Per the FY2027 budget (page 1633), Ordinance 22-012 (Meyer era) added ten Executive Assistant positions for ARPA Grant operations. As the federal window closes, positions including the Hope Center Assistant Manager, Readers Cafe Chef, SBE Coordinator, and three Project Seed positions have been transferred from the ARPA Grant Fund to the General Fund.
Sources: New Castle County FY2024 Single Audit; New Castle County FY2025 Single Audit; New Castle County FY2027 Recommended Operating Budget.
Appendix H. The FY2027 Council Vote
Sources: New Castle County Council minutes, May 26, 2026; FY2027 adopted budget ordinances.
Appendix I. Single Audit Comparison
Finding 2025-001 (FY25 only): $3,142,837 in Grants Fund receivables and $1,177,066 in General Fund receivables not collected within the GASB availability period. Financial statements misstated. Audit adjustment entries provided to management.
Sources: CliftonLarsonAllen LLP, Single Audit Report FY2024 and Single Audit Report FY2025, New Castle County, Delaware.
Appendix J. The Stacking of Cost Increases
The cumulative annual cost increase for a typical New Castle County household, accounting for the full set of cost categories above and including the ACA Marketplace subsidy expiration, the school district 10 percent automatic increases, the Wilmington water and sewer trajectory, the Veolia rate case, the DMV document fee, the childcare cost trajectory, and the federal Medicaid and SNAP changes, ranges from approximately $2,000 to $6,000 or more per year. The 17.2 percent County property tax increase is approximately 2 to 5 percent of the cumulative load. The County did not create most of these increases. The County, however, added its 17.2 percent rate increase to the stack at the same moment the federal subsidies expired, the federal Medicaid and SNAP changes took effect, the private water utilities filed their rate cases, the school districts implemented their automatic increases, the reassessment redistribution landed, the DMV fee increased, and the inflation in groceries, insurance, and childcare continued. The synchronization is the burden. The County’s choice was to add to it.
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Appendix K. Bond Issuance History by County Executive
Notes on the data above:
(1) Original issue amounts and outstanding balances are taken from Schedule #1 of the County's FY2026 Operating Budget Debt Service section, page 230, dated as of July 1, 2025.
(2) The 2010B RZEDB series was a federal Recovery Zone Economic Development Bond under ARRA. New Castle County's allocation was $50.91 million for governmental projects plus $76.365 million for private activity projects (State of Delaware Executive Order No. 23, January 2011). The County Council defined recovery zones pursuant to Substitute No. 1 to Resolution No. 09-123 on July 29, 2009, during the Coons administration. The bonds carry federal interest subsidies.
(3) The 2015 series is shown with $11.20 million outstanding after the impact of the October 2021 refunding transaction (the 2021B series). The original balance of $189.69 million was substantially refinanced at the lower interest rates available in late 2021.
(4) The 2021B series represents the single largest bond issuance in New Castle County history. Its $148.025 million Sewer Fund portion is the largest single-fund issuance the County has ever undertaken. It was authorized by Resolution R21-156, introduced by Council members George Smiley and John J. Cartier on August 31, 2021, and sold on or about September 30, 2021. Of the $205.475 million total, approximately $100 million was new money, and the balance was refunding.
(5) The 2025 series was authorized by Ordinance 25-050 ($71.906 million for FY26 capital projects) and Resolution 25-106 (sale authorization up to $82 million). Both passed Council 13-0 on May 27, 2025. The bonds were sold competitively on July 22, 2025, raising $82 million total ($56.62M GF + $19.44M Sewer = $76.06M new money plus the rest covering issuance costs and premium adjustments). The 2025 bonds financed over 70 different capital projects.
(6) Projected new debt offerings between FY2026 and FY2035 total $478.4 million, per the FY2026 Operating Budget Debt Service section, page 228. Operating revenue growth after FY2026 is estimated at 3.0 percent annually.
(7) The 2026 GO row reflects Ordinance No. 26-036, the FY2027 capital bond authorization, sponsored by Council members George Smiley and John J. Cartier, introduced April 14, 2026, adopted by County Council by supermajority on May 26, 2026 (the same night as the 11 to 2 vote on the FY2027 budget and the 17.2 percent property tax increase), and signed by County Executive Marcus Henry on May 28, 2026. The Fiscal Note Exhibit A was acknowledged by Chief Financial Officer David Del Grande on March 31, 2026.
The maximum aggregate net principal amount stated in Section 1 of the ordinance is $59,790,230. The schedule line items sum to $59,790,230. The displayed TOTAL BOND AUTHORIZATIONS line at the bottom of the schedule reads $59,730,230, a $60,000 arithmetic error which then propagates into the Exhibit A Fiscal Note calculation. The General Fund / Sewer Fund split shown in this table allocates the Sanitary Facilities and Stormwater line ($34,220,000) to the Sewer Fund and the remaining purposes (Public Safety $14,485,230, Parks $5,315,000, Administration $3,090,000, Facilities and Equipment $1,800,000, Community Services $880,000, total $25,570,230) to the General Fund. The bonds had not been sold as of the publication date of this report; the sale is scheduled for summer 2026 following the same pattern as the July 22, 2025 sale of the Series 2025 bonds. The cumulative
pro forma debt position documented in Exhibit A of Ordinance 26-036 brings the combined principal plus interest obligation to $979,223,601 on the general obligation bond stack, plus a separate $210,680,629 in principal plus interest on State Revolving Fund and WIFIA loans, for a combined long-term obligation of $1,189,904,230 as of February 28, 2026. The County has crossed the one-billion-dollar threshold on long-term debt during the Henry administration.
Sources: New Castle County FY2026 Operating Budget, Debt Service section, Schedules #1 through #9 and pages 224 through 239; Ordinance 25-050 (Exhibit A Fiscal Note); Ordinance 26-036 (Exhibit A Fiscal Note, acknowledged by Chief Financial Officer March 31, 2026, adopted by Council May 26, 2026, signed by County Executive May 28, 2026); Summary Notice of Sale, $77,575,000 General Obligation Bonds, Series 2025 (July 22, 2025); Resolution 25-106; Ordinance 21-039; Resolution R21-156; Ordinance 23-041; State of Delaware Executive Order No. 23, January 2011; New Castle County FY2027 Recommended Capital Program and Budget.
Appendix L
Appendix M. The Henry Misstatement Chart, Category Cross-Reference
Section IV of this report contains a comprehensive chart of sixty-two documented instances in which County Executive Marcus Henry, or the administration acting under his authority, made public statements at variance with the documentary record, or omitted disclosures that the administration was in a position to make. The chart in Section IV is organized chronologically. This appendix re-organizes the same sixty-two entries by category, allowing the reader to retrieve, at a glance, every instance the report has documented in a single category.
The four categories used in the chart are: statements contradicted by the County’s own records, statements that concealed material counterfacts, material facts the administration did not disclose, and statements attacking those who were telling the truth. The categories are defined by what the documentary record establishes about the conduct, not by what label the speaker can dispute. Each entry below references the report section where the documentary backup is found.
Category One: Statements Contradicted by the County’s Own Records (13 entries)
A public statement contradicted by the County’s own audited records, the Office of Finance’s own posted projections, the budget book itself, the historical record of County legislation, or other documentary evidence available to the administration at the time the statement was made.
1. April–May 2026. Through Casey, repeated assertion that the County does not pay anything for the Hope Center; the FY2022–FY2027 audited operating allocations total $16M (Section VII; Appendix L)
2. FY2026 Approved Budget. Framed FY2026 as a year without a tax increase while the audited records document a $36M reserve draw equivalent to a 25.5 percent property tax rate (Section II; Section III)
3. July 8, 2025. Press release: AAA ratings are “a strong vote of confidence in financial management” while the technical reports underlying the ratings documented every downgrade trigger moving in the wrong direction (Section XI)
4. March 25, 2026. Stated on the record that he “didn’t know in late 2024 that the deficit was going to be as large as it is today” while the Office of Finance’s own August 31, 2025 worksheet had projected the FY2027 gap at $47.9M, larger than the $42M Henry announced (Section IV; Section X)
5. March 25, 2026. Cited FY2027 as “just the second since 2011” when the historical record shows six increases in twenty years (Section XVIII)
6. March 25, 2026. Characterized FY2027 budget as containing “significant cuts” while the operating budget grew from $371.3M to $387.6M (Section XIII)
7. FY2027 budget document. Funded nearly 46 appointed assistant positions in the budget book versus approximately 48 documented on the live payroll, within an appointed assistant tier that more than doubled from Gordon to Henry, 21 to 48, inside a senior appointed workforce that nearly doubled, roughly 50 to 94 (Section XII)
8. June 2025; FY2026 budget. Projected outside counsel costs at $283,752, eighteen percent below FY2024 actual, while active litigation portfolio expanding with Ballard Spahr and Connolly Gallagher concurrent engagements (Section XXVI)
9. November 28, 2023. Wasserbach told the Audit Committee in the CARES Act CRF Audit Report that the FY2020 and FY2021 Single Audits were 'very positive news' while the FY2022 Single Audit dated eight months earlier documented material weaknesses and qualified federal opinions (Section IV; Audit Reckoning Reports 1, 2, 4; CARES Act CRF Audit Report 11/28/23)
10. FY2020, FY2021, FY2022. Three consecutive Single Audit fiscal years documented compliance failures under the Community Services department Henry led as General Manager 2017-December 2021 (Audit Reckoning Reports 2, 3, 4)
11. FY2025-FY2026 statements. Administration publicly told residents the County would not be foreclosing on homes if taxes are unpaid; 9 Del. C. § 8721/8725/8726 makes the contradiction documentary (Tyler Audit-or-Illusion piece)
12. August 27, 2025 Audit Committee. Wasserbach told the Audit Committee that 'the County maintained revenue neutrality' during the Tyler reassessment; FY2027 Recommended Operating Budget projected real estate tax revenue increase of $27,477,884 or 19.48 percent (Section IV; August 27, 2025 Audit Committee minutes)
13. Multiple audit reports (2023-2026). Wasserbach has stated in four successive published audit reports that his office hopes to obtain a Quality Assurance Review in a subsequent fiscal year; the QAR has never been obtained in over eight years of statutory entitlement under 9 Del. C. § 1410(d) (Audit Reckoning Report 1; CARES 11/28/23; Lodging Tax 4/10/25; Pensions 8/27/25; Workers Comp 4/2/26)
Category Two: Statements That Concealed Material Counterfacts (8 entries)
A statement true in one respect that, by its framing, prevents the listener from learning a material counterfact the speaker was in a position to disclose. The category includes statements that confess part of the truth in a manner calculated to conceal the rest.
1. LinkedIn (ongoing). Takes personal credit for negotiating the Hope Center while denying surprise at its $2.7M annual cost (Section IV; Appendix L)
2. March 25, 2026. Characterized the deficit as something handed to him while omitting his role as senior architect (GM Community Services 2017–2021) (Section IV; Section VII)
3. March 25, 2026. Characterized 56 already-vacant positions as evidence of fiscal discipline, concealing that the salary and benefits lines for those positions were not being spent (Section VIII; Section XIII)
4. March 25, 2026. Stated on the record “this is not an easy conversation, it’s an honest one” while the County’s motto had quietly dropped “HONESTY” three months earlier in the FY2025 ACFR (Section V)
5. March 24, 2026. Thanked Register of Wills Ciro Poppiti personally for “making available” $2.2 million for police technology, when the County’s own Ordinance 25-158 and Resolution 25-203, both adopted December 9, 2025, document that figure as the FY2027 cost of the renegotiated Axon Enterprise contract, appropriated from the Realty Transfer Tax Reserve, not from any Register of Wills account (Section IV (Row Office Technology Fee Accounts))
6. FY2027 Operating Budget. Projected 3.0% operating revenue growth annually despite Delaware’s highest-in-nation foreclosure rate in Q1 2026 (Section XVII)
7. May 28, 2026. Stated on the record “I was presented information... but it ended up being much, much larger than what I was shown” while the County’s own August 31, 2025 worksheet had documented the $47.9M projection (Section IV; Section X)
8. May 2026. Acknowledged the 30% increase that would have been required without reserve drawdown while concealing the forward forecast for FY2028 and FY2029 (Section XVI; Section XXVI)
Category Three: Material Facts the Administration Did Not Disclose (40 entries)
A material fact that the administration was in a position to disclose and did not. The category includes facts buried in technical exhibits where the public would not encounter them, facts known to senior administrators but not communicated to Council in time for action, and facts that should have been the subject of a press release but were not.
1. Early March 2025. At an in-person meeting, did not act on the author’s direct warning to restructure immediately, end the expiring federally funded programs, and avoid the tax increase, and told the author he had good people working on it (Section IV)
2. August 31, 2025. Posted FY2027 $47.9M gap projection to public website without press release or urgent Council communication (Section X)
3. October 14, 2025. Presented August 31, 2025 worksheet to Council without characterizing the structural implications (Section X)
4. December 17, 2025. Signed FY2025 ACFR transmittal letter listing values as “COLLABORATION INNOVATION DEDICATION,” dropping prior “ACCOUNTABILITY HONESTY TRANSPARENCY” without public announcement (Section V)
5. December 2025 (FY2025 ACFR). Significant Deficiency in internal control over financial reporting in the FY2025 audit not publicly characterized (Section IX)
6. February 2, 2026. Police Accountability Board restructuring introduced via Caneco/Toole without disclosing prospective Section 1983 litigation cost (Section XXVI)
7. February 28, 2026 baseline. County crossed $1.189 billion long-term obligation threshold during Henry administration; no press release (Section XIX)
8. March 25, 2026. Asked Dover to shift school tax billing without disclosing the County’s fifty-year use of the consolidated bill as a billing sleight of hand (Section XXII (Billing Sleight of Hand))
9. March 25, 2026. Framed $1M for 10 new assessment positions without disclosing this is the third round of reassessment hiring across the decade (Section IV (Office of Finance Assessment Division))
10. April 14, 2026. Signed Ordinance 26-036 with a $60,000 arithmetic error on its face; did not disclose discrepancy to public (Section XIX)
11. May 26, 2026. Did not propose or support Tackett/Toole amendments ($710,839 in cuts); administration opposed at floor (Section XXIV)
12. FY2027 Capital Budget. Newark Library negative $22,291,166 funding gap not disclosed publicly in plain language (Section XX; Section XXI)
13. FY2027 Capital Budget. $1.45M Executive Capital Contingency held by County Executive not disclosed publicly with tax increase (Section XX; Section XXI)
14. FY2027 capital plan. $951M Christina River Force Main with $700M future bonds not aggregated in public-facing materials (Section XXI)
15. FY2027 budget. Sewer Fund debt service ratio at 28.2% violates County’s own 20% policy ceiling; violation not disclosed (Section XI)
16. Multiple Tyler contracts. Did not produce Council resolution numbers authorizing Tyler footprint beyond R21-110; Section 2.02.004 compliance unaddressed (Section IV (Tyler section))
17. January 2021. Hope Center, Inc. bank account opened four months before legal incorporation; no public explanation by administration, Auditor, or County Attorney (Section VII; Appendix L)
18. Ongoing. Hope Center, Inc. 501(c)(3) Facebook page features County Executive in promotional content; IRS rule compliance unaddressed (Section VII; Appendix L)
19. Multi-year pattern. Has not disclosed that future major settlements may pass Council via Watson-precedent mechanism (by title only, six minutes, no discussion) (Section XXVI)
20. April 10, 2025. Received Auditor’s second Hope Center memorandum (internal control failures, $1,090,633 revenue exclusion, separately incorporated nonprofit); none of three findings publicly addressed (Section IV; Appendix L)
21. FY2027 forward. Has not given the public the forecast for what FY2028 and FY2029 will require (Section XXVI)
22. Since FY2022 audit completion. Has not posted the FY2022 Single Audit on the County website while every other Single Audit (FY2020, FY2021, FY2023, FY2024) is posted (Section IV; Audit Reckoning Report 4)
23. January 26, 2021 through November 28, 2023. Audit Committee did not meet for 1,036 consecutive days, exceeding the 9 Del. C. § 1404(b)(2) quarterly meeting requirement by approximately eleven missed quarters (Section IV; Audit Reckoning Report 1)
24. FY2020-FY2023. Did not disclose federal funding clawback exposure from documented Single Audit compliance failures across three consecutive fiscal years (Audit Reckoning Reports 2, 3, 4)
25. September 9, 2024 at 4:06 PM. Filed 69-page Superior Court lawsuit against Hersha Hospitality Management on the day before the September 10, 2024 Delaware Democratic Primary (Section VII; Appendix L)
26. FY2022 audit posting period. Posted the FY2022 Single Audit PDF as an upside-down file and removed it from the public-facing Audit Reports section (Audit Reckoning Report 4)
27. As of June 3, 2026. Audit Committee operates with four members (Bailey, Cordano, Brockenbrough, St. Pierre) rather than the statutory five required by 9 Del. C. § 1404(b)(1) (Section IV; Audit Reckoning Report 1; NCC Audit Committee webpage)
28. Eight-year tenure of former Council President plus Henry administration to present. Has not furnished a Quality Assurance Review of the County Auditor's Office as required by 9 Del. C. § 1410(d); non-compliance now in its tenth-plus year (Section IV; Audit Reckoning Report 1)
29. As of June 3, 2026. The annual audit plan required by 9 Del. C. § 1407(a) is not posted; the only accessible audit plan is the FY2019 first-half plan (Section IV; Audit Reckoning Report 1; NCC Auditor's Office webpage)
30. August 26, 2025. Simultaneously praised the County Auditor's 'work and transparency' at the 4:00 PM Finance Committee while Resolution 25-150 directing the same Auditor to review Tyler reassessment failed 7-6 at the 6:30 PM Council meeting (Audit Reckoning Reports 1, 4; Tyler Audit-or-Illusion piece)
31. Henry's GM tenure 2017-December 2021. Did not disclose during the FY2027 budget rollout that his prior role as GM of Community Services placed him at the head of the department that produced three consecutive years of Single Audit compliance failures (Audit Reckoning Reports 2, 3, 4)
32. Meyer-Henry succession January 2025. Did not disclose the management succession pattern in which the GM who presided over three audit failures became County Executive and the County Executive who presided over them became Governor of Delaware (Audit Reckoning Reports 1, 2, 3, 4)
33. August 27, 2025 Audit Committee. Wasserbach told the Audit Committee that audit work had been performed on the Recorder of Deeds Office, construction procurement, Light Tax and Crossing Guards funds, and Clerk of Peace Office (the row offices) but the office had 'not decided whether audit reports will be issued or, alternatively, audit memoranda' (Section IV (Row Office Technology Fee Accounts subsection); August 27, 2025 Audit Committee minutes)
34. August 27, 2025 Audit Committee. Wasserbach told the Audit Committee his office expected to seek funding approval through the County's Technology Fund for audit software; institutional-conflict question not disclosed (Section IV (Row Office Technology Fee Accounts subsection); August 27, 2025 Audit Committee minutes)
35. August 27, 2025 promise vs April 2, 2026 non-fulfillment. Wasserbach promised at the August 27, 2025 Audit Committee meeting that 'a new audit plan will probably be presented to the Audit Committee at the next meeting,' but the April 2, 2026 agenda does not list an audit plan presentation (Audit Reckoning Report 1; August 27, 2025 Audit Committee minutes; April 2, 2026 Audit Committee agenda)
36. October 24, 2025 Resolution 25-150 reporting deadline. Tyler reassessment review the County Auditor announced August 27, 2025, has not produced a published report on the Audit Reports/Memoranda page as of the date of this report (Audit Reckoning Report 1; Tyler Audit-or-Illusion piece)
37. As of June 3, 2026. Audit Committee webpage displays a 'Meeting Minutes 08/27/2025' link with embedded URL containing the date stamp '042424'; link 301-redirects to 'Meeting-Minutes-Last-Meeting' (Section IV; NCC Audit Committee webpage)
38. January 2021 through April 2024. Did not disclose during 2021-2024 that the Hersha Hospitality Management bank account was operated by a vendor against whom the County would later file a 69-page Superior Court complaint (Section VII; Appendix L; Hope Center Audit Memorandum 4/10/2025)
39. December 1, 2020 through April 2024. Did not commission or produce a formal County Auditor audit report on the Hersha Hospitality Management contract during the nearly four-year operational period in which the operational failure was being flagged by the Council President (Section IV; County Auditor Audit Reports/Memoranda page)
Category Four: Statements Attacking Those Who Were Telling the Truth (1 entry)
A public statement characterizing as false the statements of a person whose statements the documentary record subsequently established as true. The category captures the political use of falsehood against truth-tellers and is distinct from the categories above because it speaks directly to the speaker’s intent in the political process.
1. 2023–2024. In candidate forums during the 2024 election cycle, publicly characterized the author of this report as a liar for raising projected County structural deficit numbers and the federal ARPA cliff. The author’s projections were subsequently established as correct. The federal funding cliff arrived as predicted. The structural deficit followed as documented. The candidates who attacked the author are now the Governor and the County Executive (Section IV)
Summary
Total documented instances: 62. Statements contradicted by the County’s own records: 13. Statements that concealed material counterfacts: 8. Material facts not disclosed: 40. Statements attacking those who were telling the truth: 1. Material facts not disclosed are the single largest category. The pattern is not random. The administration has been consistently more comfortable not disclosing than misstating. The fiscal magnitude of what has gone undisclosed exceeds the magnitude of what has been directly misstated. The $1.189 billion long-term obligation threshold crossing, the $22M Newark Library funding gap, the $951M Christina River Force Main, the third round of reassessment hiring, the four-month gap between the Hope Center, Inc. bank account opening and its legal incorporation, the gap between the appointed assistant count the budget book funds, nearly 46, and the approximately 48 documented on the live payroll, within an assistant tier that more than doubled across three administrations, 21 to 48, and a senior appointed workforce that nearly doubled, roughly 50 to 94, and the forecast for what FY2028 will require are all undisclosed or partially disclosed in the public-facing materials. The Truthline Network publishes the cross-reference so the omissions are no longer scattered. They are in one place.
Appendix N. The Truthline Network Proposed Cost Savings, Quick Reference Index
The recoverable cost documented in Section XXVI-A is organized here by implementation pathway, so the reader can retrieve at a glance which reductions are within the County Executive’s unilateral administrative authority, which require Council ordinance action, and which require coordination with State or federal authorities. Every figure is the fully loaded amount, costed at the County’s own published 53.3 percent benefit rate and built position by position from the County’s own budget books and ordinances.
Implementation Path One: County Executive Administrative Authority (No Council Action Required)
The reductions in this category are within the County Executive’s direct administrative authority and can be implemented by administrative decision without Council ordinance amendment. These are the actions the County Executive could take immediately.
Implementation Path Two: County Council Ordinance Action Required
The reductions in this category require Council action by ordinance or adoption of amendments. They are within the power the Delaware Code assigns to the Council.
Implementation Path Three: State or Federal Coordination Required
This reduction requires coordination with State or federal authorities to secure recurring funding in place of the General Fund subsidy the County now carries.
The single most important line in this appendix is the Implementation Path One subtotal: $42,432,346 in annual recurring savings available to the County Executive through administrative action alone, with no Council vote required, no ordinance amendment required, and no State coordination required. The savings are recoverable today. The actions are within the County Executive’s direct authority today. The 17.2 percent property tax increase residents began paying on July 1, 2026, was the choice made instead of the actions documented in Implementation Path One. The taxpayer paid for the choice. The County Executive made it.
The Truthline Network publishes this appendix so the path forward is no longer scattered across the report. The path forward is in one place. The County Executive, the Council, the Chief Administrative Officer, the Chief Financial Officer, and every Department General Manager are in a position to act on it. The public is entitled to know the path forward exists.
The Evidence File: Receipts, Sources, and Primary Documents
Truthline Investigative Report Title: The New Castle County Tax Reckoning
The Truthline Network | karenhartleynagle.com | Published July 15, 2026
Every figure in this report is drawn from the County's own published, audited, or recommended financial documents, from adopted ordinances and resolutions, from the legislative and court record, and from the primary sources listed below. Quotes attributed to named officials are drawn from these cited public sources. Links are provided where a public web source exists.
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Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware. (2025b, November 3). DPML Jamison Corner, LLC v. New Castle County, et al., C.A. No. 2024-0403-CEB. Post-Trial Opinion. Vice Chancellor Cook. https://courts.delaware.gov/Opinions/Download.aspx?id=387020
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Delaware General Assembly. (1970). Chapter 768, House Bill amending Title 9, Delaware Code, Sections 1101 and 9617, relating to general powers of the Government of New Castle County and fees of the Recorder of Deeds of New Castle County. Approved July 24, 1970. Effective January 1, 1971. https://www.legis.delaware.gov/SessionLaws/Chapter?id=28280
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Delaware Today. (2023, July 8). The Hope Center provides transitional housing to those in need. https://delawaretoday.com/life-style/hope-center/
Donorbox. (2026). Hope Center, Inc. donation campaign. Retrieved June 1, 2026 from https://donorbox.org/new-castle-county-hope-center-inc
ElderLife Financial. (2024, May 2). The Cost of Senior Care in Delaware. https://www.elderlifefinancial.com/cost-of-care/cost-of-senior-care-delaware/
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. (2025). The Rising Burden of Homeowners Insurance in the Third District States. https://www.philadelphiafed.org/community-development/housing-and-neighborhoods/rising-burden-homeowners-insurance
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First Five Years Fund. (2026, February 13). Child Care and Early Learning in Delaware. https://www.ffyf.org/states/delaware/
Fitch Ratings. (2025, July 7). Fitch Rates New Castle County, DE's $82MM GO Bonds 'AAA'; Outlook Stable. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/59849/Fitch-Ratings-Report
FMI. The Food Industry Association. (2026, February 19). What to Expect for Food Price Inflation in 2026. https://www.fmi.org/blog/view/fmi-blog/2026/02/19/what-to-expect-for-food-price-inflation-in-2026
Fox21 News Colorado. (2026). Pet care costs rise 15% in 2026 as food, vet bills increase. https://www.fox21news.com/news/pet-care-costs-rise-15-in-2026-as-food-vet-bills-increase/
Genworth. (2024). Cost of Care Survey, Delaware. Genworth Financial.
Government Finance Officers Association. (2015). Fund Balance Guidelines for the General Fund [Best Practice].
Government Finance Officers Association. (n.d.). Best Practice: Debt Management Policy. https://www.gfoa.org/materials/debt-management-policy
Governor of Delaware. (2025, October 31). Proclamation of Extraordinary Session: Fiscal Legislation [convening the General Assembly for November 13, 2025 to address the projected $400 million revenue shortfall arising from H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act]. https://governor.delaware.gov/proclamations/proclamation-of-extraordinary-session-fiscal-legislation/
Hartley-Nagle, K. (2017, April 30). Go over with Jim for Amendment to the Operating Budget: Draft [personal email record].
Hartley-Nagle, K. (2025a). Audit in name only: How a press release became county policy, and why that matters. The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com/post/audit-in-name-only-how-a-press-release-became-county-policy-and-why-that-matters
Hartley-Nagle, K. (2025b). The Clean Report That Wasn't: The FY2021 Single Audit. Audit Reckoning Series, Report 3. The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com/the-clean-report-that-wasnt-audit-reckoning-series-report-3-fy2021-single-audit-truthline-network
Hartley-Nagle, K. (2025c). The Million-Dollar Omission: How a Hidden Bank Account Exposed a Culture of Evasion in New Castle County, The FY2022 Single Audit Report. Audit Reckoning Series, Report 4. The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com/the-million-dollar-omission-audit-reckoning-series-report-4-fy2022-audit-truthline-investigation
Hartley-Nagle, K. (2025d, August 20). Tyler Technologies Audit or Illusion? Why New Castle County's Reassessment Crisis Demands an Independent Audit, Not Insider Spin. The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com/truthline-network-tyler-technologies-audit-or-illusion-truthline-report-by-karen-hartley-nagle
Hartley-Nagle, K. (2025e, September 25). When the Watchdog Sleeps: Oversight Fails, Taxpayers Lose. Audit Reckoning Series, Report 1. The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com/when-watchdog-sleeps-ncc-audit-oversight-failure-fix-audit-reckoning-report-1-truthline-network
Hartley-Nagle, K. (2025f, October 5). When Compliance Came Second: The FY2020 Single Audit. Audit Reckoning Series, Report 2. The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com/when-compliance-comes-second-audit-reckoning-series-fy2020-single-audit-truthline-investigation
Hartley-Nagle, K. (2025g, November). The Checkbook Illusion: What the County Told You, And What the Numbers Actually Say. The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com
Hartley-Nagle, K. (2025h, November). The New Castle County Tax Hike No One Wants to Say Out Loud, Yet. The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com
HealthInsurance.org. (2026). Delaware Health Insurance Marketplace: 2026 ACA Coverage Guide. https://www.healthinsurance.org/aca-marketplace/delaware/
Heat Fleet. (2026, February 15). Wilmington, DE heating oil prices. https://heatfleet.com/heating_oil_prices/7ct-Wilmington-DE.html
Henry, M. A. (2026, March 31). Certification Memorandum: General Fund Estimates and Special Fund Estimates for the Fiscal Year 2027 Operating Budget. New Castle County. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/64272/FY27-Certification-Memo
HomeHeat. (2026, April 6). Heating Oil Price Trends in Delaware. https://www.gethomeheat.com/price-trend/de/
Houzeo. (2026). Cost of Living in Delaware in 2026. https://www.houzeo.com/cost-of-living/delaware
Innago. (2026, February 21). Delaware Housing Market Trends & Forecast 2026 [citing ATTOM Q1 2026 foreclosure data]. https://innago.com/delaware-housing-market-trends-forecast/
Insurify. (2026, January 14). Car Insurance Prices Tumbled 6% in 2025.
Kaiser Family Foundation. (2026a). What We Know So Far About 2026 ACA Marketplace Enrollment, Premiums, and Deductibles. https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/what-we-know-so-far-about-2026-aca-marketplace-enrollment-premiums-and-deductibles/
Kaiser Family Foundation. (2026b, January 21). ACA Marketplace Premium Payments Would More than Double on Average Next Year if Enhanced Premium Tax Credits Expire. https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/aca-marketplace-premium-payments-would-more-than-double-on-average-next-year-if-enhanced-premium-tax-credits-expire/
LinkedIn. (n.d.). Marcus Henry profile. https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-henry-99a56b5/
McVety, M. (2023, August 15). New Castle County Council urges action from County Executive on park safety. The News Journal. https://www.delawareonline.com
Mecklenburg Times. (2026, May 14). Foreclosure activity rises 18 percent annually with Delaware and South Carolina hardest hit. https://mecktimes.com/news/2026/05/14/foreclosure-activity-rises-delaware-south-carolina-hardest-hit/
Medicaid Planning Assistance. (2026). Nursing Home Costs by State and Region: Updated January 2026. https://www.medicaidplanningassistance.org/nursing-home-costs/
MOHELA. (2026, March 10). Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) Plans, SAVE Plan court order. https://mohela.studentaid.gov/DL/resourceCenter/IDRPlans.aspx
Moody's Investors Service. (2025, July 8). New Castle County, DE: Update to Credit Analysis [Report Number 1454218]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/60022/Moodys-Ratings-Report
NBC News. (2026, May 15). Grocery price tracker: Inflation trends for eggs, bread and more during the Trump administration. https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/grocery-price-tracker-inflation-trends-eggs-bread-trump-administration-rcna257424
NestApple. (2026, February 4). Managing Rising Home Repair Costs in an Inflationary Economy (2026). https://www.nestapple.com/managing-rising-home-repair-costs-in-an-inflationary-economy-2026/
New Castle County. (2015). Ordinance 15-064: Amend the Capital Budget: Appropriate $52,653 from the Clerk of the Peace Technology Fee Account for the Cloud View Project, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Introduced June 9, 2015 by Bell and Street. Adopted June 23, 2015 under the presidency of Christopher Bullock. Signed by County Executive Thomas P. Gordon on July 10, 2015. Earliest documented Technology Fee Account appropriation in the New Castle County legislation database.
New Castle County. (2016). Ordinance 16-003: Amend the FY 2016 Capital Budget: Appropriate $13,000 from the New Castle County Technology Fee Account within the Office of the Recorder of Deeds towards the Department of Public Safety Crime Fighting Platform Capital Project. Introduced January 12, 2016 by Bell and Street. Adopted January 26, 2016 under the presidency of Christopher Bullock. Signed by County Executive Thomas P. Gordon on February 3, 2016. Earliest documented appropriation from the Recorder of Deeds Technology Fee Account architecture; funded the LEADS Online Database annual subscription.
New Castle County. (2017a). Position Management: FY2018 Vacancies as of 4/1/2017 [internal report prepared by Finance Director Brian Maxwell].
New Castle County. (2017b). Vacancy legislation: Unfunded Vacant Positions [draft ordinance prepared by Council Counsel Michael Migliore, April 17, 2017].
New Castle County. (2017c). Workforce Diversity Report. Department of Administrative Services and Human Resources. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/14438/Workforce-Diversity-Report
New Castle County. (2018). Ordinance 18-014: Amend the FY2018 Capital Budget: Appropriate $100,000.00 from the New Castle County Technology Fee Account, $91,939.36 from the Recorder of Deeds Technology Fee Account, and $25,000.00 from the Clerk of the Peace Technology Fee Account, totaling $216,939.36, to the Department of Administration, Information Systems Expansion II Capital Project. Introduced February 27, 2018 by Smiley and Cartier. Adopted March 13, 2018 under the presidency of Karen Hartley-Nagle. Signed by County Executive Matthew Meyer on March 22, 2018. Earliest documented compound appropriation aggregating three row office Technology Fee Accounts in a single ordinance.
New Castle County. (2019). Ordinance 19-100: Amend the FY2020 Capital Budget: Appropriate $43,335 from the Register of Wills Technology Fee Account to the Department of Public Works, Security Capital Project. Introduced October 22, 2019 by Smiley and Cartier. Earliest documented appropriation from the Register of Wills Technology Fee Account.
New Castle County. (2020a). Resolution R20-167: Authorizing the execution of one purchase order contract for Server AMS Custom Enterprise License Agreement for the Cityworks Software Program for the Office of Technology and Administrative Services in the amount of $69,210.71. Introduced August 25, 2020 by Smiley and Cartier. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/39341/R20-167
New Castle County. (2020b). Resolution R20-233: Authorizing the County Executive to sign the Delaware Public Employees Council 81, AFSCME (AFL-CIO), and its affiliate Local 3911, Collective Bargaining Agreement. Introduced by Karen Hartley-Nagle. Adopted December 8, 2020. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/40664/R20-233
New Castle County. (2021a). Ordinance 21-014: Amend the FY2021 Approved Operating Budget: Allocate $26,640,000 from the General Fund Tax Stabilization Reserve Account to the General Fund Reassessment Reserve Account. Introduced February 23, 2021 by Smiley, Kilpatrick, Carter, Woods, Hollins, and Cartier. https://www.newcastlede.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/ArchivedAgenda/_02232021-1884
New Castle County. (2021b). Ordinance 21-087: Amend the FY2022 Capital Budget to appropriate $50,000 from the Recorder of Deeds Technology Fee Account to the Department of Administration, Recorder of Deeds HOA Portal Capital Project. Introduced July 13, 2021 by Smiley and Cartier. https://www.newcastlede.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/ArchivedAgenda/_07132021-2070
New Castle County. (2021c). Ordinance 21-088: Amend the FY2022 Capital Budget to appropriate $50,000 from the Register of Wills Technology Fee Account to the Department of Administration, Register of Wills System Capital Project. Introduced July 13, 2021 by Smiley with Cartier as cosponsor. Adopted July 27, 2021 under the presidency of Karen Hartley-Nagle. https://www.newcastlede.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/ArchivedAgenda/_07272021-2094
New Castle County. (2021d). Resolution R21-065: Authorizing the County Executive to sign the Delaware Public Employees Council 81, AFSCME (AFL-CIO), and its affiliate Local 459, Collective Bargaining Agreement. Introduced by Karen Hartley-Nagle. Adopted April 13, 2021. https://www.newcastlede.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/ArchivedAgenda/_04132021-1946
New Castle County. (2021e). Resolution R21-110: Authorizing the execution of a Software-as-a-Service and Professional Services Agreement with Tyler Technologies, Inc. to provide and implement a computer-assisted mass appraisal system and conduct the FY2024 general reassessment. Introduced June 8, 2021 by Smiley and Cartier. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/42976/R21-110
New Castle County. (2021f). Resolution R21-113: Authorizing the execution of one purchase order contract for Azteca Systems Holdings LLC for license and support for Cityworks Software for the Office of Technology and Administrative Services. Introduced June 22, 2021 by Smiley and Cartier. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/43120/R21-113
New Castle County. (2021g). Resolution R21-149: Authorizing the execution of one purchase order contract for Infor Public Sector, Inc. for the Annual Technical Services Agreement for the Land Use and Public Works Hansen Software. Introduced August 31, 2021 by Smiley and Cartier. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/43962/R21-149
New Castle County. (2021h). RFI 21-002: Municipal Land Use Solution. September 24, 2021. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/44477/RFI-21-002-Municipal-Land-Use-Solution
New Castle County. (2021i, April 13). Ordinance No. 21-039: Authorizing the Issuance of General Obligation Bonds of New Castle County for the Purpose of Financing Certain Capital Projects Approved in the Fiscal Year 2022 Capital Budget [introduced by Mr. Smiley, Mr. Cartier]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/42214/21-039
New Castle County. (2021j, August 31). Resolution No. R21-156: A Resolution Prescribing the Details and Form and Providing for the Sale of General Obligation Bonds of New Castle County [introduced by Mr. Smiley, Mr. Cartier]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/43969/R21-156
New Castle County. (2021k, November 17). New Castle County Executive Meyer nominates Carrie Casey to role of GM of Community Services. https://www.newcastlede.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=2086
New Castle County. (2023a). County Executive applauds $750K federal appropriation for Hope Center capital improvements [press release]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/m/newsflash/Home/Detail/2293
New Castle County. (2023b). Ordinance 23-166: Amend the FY2024 Capital Program and Budget: Appropriate funds from the Register of Wills Technology Fee Account in the amount of $250,000 to the Department of Administration, Register of Wills System Capital Project. Introduced December 12, 2023 by Smiley and Cartier.
New Castle County. (2023c, April 11). Ordinance No. 23-041: Authorizing the Issuance of General Obligation Bonds of New Castle County for the Purpose of Financing Certain Capital Projects Approved in the Fiscal Year 2024 Capital Budget [introduced by Mr. Smiley, Mr. Cartier]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/50767/23-041
New Castle County. (2024a). Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2024 [companion citation; see also New Castle County, 2024]. New Castle, DE: Office of Finance. https://www.newcastlede.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/3664
New Castle County. (2024b). Fiscal Year 2025 Approved Operating Budget. Operating Budget Comparison and Fund Summary. Office of Finance.
New Castle County. (2024c). FY2025 Approved Operating Budget. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/54296/FY2025-Approved-Operating-Budget
New Castle County. (2024d). Ordinance 24-168: Amend the FY2025 Approved Operating Budget: Appropriate funding from the New Castle County Technology Fee Account within the Office of the Recorder of Deeds and Recorder of Deeds Technology Fee Account to the Department of Public Safety, Division of Emergency Medical Services for the purchase of Handtevy. Introduced by Smiley and Cartier. https://newcastlecode.portal.civicclerk.com/event/1920/files/attachment/8743
New Castle County. (2024e, April 9). Ordinance No. 24-056: Amend the Pay Plans and Rates of Pay for All Certified Police Service Employees Represented by Fraternal Order of Police, New Castle County Lodge No. 5 (Including Chief of Police Classification). https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/54916/24-056
New Castle County. (2025a). Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025. General Fund Statement of Revenues, Expenditures and Changes in Fund Balance, Budget and Actual (Exhibit 5). Office of Finance.
New Castle County. (2025b). Bid 26PP-204: Government Enterprise Software for Land Use Management. Issued September 20, 2025 by the New Castle County Purchasing Division. https://newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/61584/26PP-204-Government-Enterprise-Software-for-Land-Use-Management-FINAL-110425
New Castle County. (2025c). Fiscal Year 2026 Approved Operating Budget. Operating Budget Comparison and Fund Summary. Office of Finance.
New Castle County. (2025d). FY2026 Approved Capital Program and Budget, Fiscal Year 2026-2031. New Castle, DE: Office of Finance.
New Castle County. (2025e). FY2026 Approved Operating Budget, Department of Public Works. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/285/13-Department-of-Public-Works
New Castle County. (2025f). FY2026 Approved Operating Budget, Department of Administration program summaries, pp. 122-138. Office of Finance. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/284/11-Department-of-Administration
New Castle County. (2025g). FY2026 Approved Operating Budget. New Castle, DE: Office of Finance.
New Castle County. (2025h). FY2026 Recommended Budget Presentation to County Council, Office of Technology and Administrative Services. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/58922/Technology-and-Administrative-Services
New Castle County. (2025i, May 13). Ordinance No. 25-050: An Ordinance Authorizing the Issuance of General Obligation Bonds of New Castle County for the Purpose of Financing Certain Capital Projects Approved in the Fiscal Year 2026 Capital Budget [introduced by Mr. Smiley, Mr. Cartier; adopted June 10, 2025; signed by County Executive Marcus Henry; Fiscal Note acknowledged by Chief Financial Officer May 1, 2025]. New Castle, DE: Author.
New Castle County. (2025j, July 8). County Executive Henry announces 'AAA' credit rating from country's three major rating agencies. https://www.newcastlede.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=2540
New Castle County. (2025k, July 8). County Executive Henry Announces AAA Credit Rating from Country's Three Major Rating Agencies [Press release]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/m/newsflash/home/detail/2540
New Castle County. (2025l, July 22). Summary Notice of Sale, $77,575,000 General Obligation Bonds, Series 2025. New Castle, DE: Office of the Chief Financial Officer / PFM Financial Advisors LLC.
New Castle County. (2025m, July 29). New Castle County Property Reassessment FAQs. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/60194/New-Castle-County-Reassessment-FAQs-30
New Castle County. (2025n, August 31). General Fund Financial Projections, As of 8/31/2025, Fiscal Years 2025-2028 [ArchiveCenter Item 3769]. New Castle, DE: Office of Finance. https://www.newcastlede.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/3769
New Castle County. (2025o, November). Revised Property Tax Bill, Residential Explainer. "New Castle County is only the billing administrator for school taxes." https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/61855/RESIDENTIAL---NEW-Explainer
New Castle County. (2025p, November 30). General Fund Financial Projections, As of 11/30/2025, Fiscal Years 2025-2028 [ArchiveCenter Item 3903]. New Castle, DE: Office of Finance. https://www.newcastlede.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/3903
New Castle County. (2026a). Fiscal Year 2027 Approved Budget Book. Operating Budget Comparison and Fund Summary. Office of Finance.
New Castle County. (2026b). FY2027 Recommended Budget Presentation to County Council: County Executive. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/63868/County-Executive
New Castle County. (2026c). FY2027 Recommended Budget Presentation to County Council: Finance. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/63870/Finance
New Castle County. (2026d). FY2027 Recommended Budget Presentation to County Council: Public Safety. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/63781/Public-Safety
New Castle County. (2026e). FY2027 Recommended Budget Presentation to County Council: Public Works. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/63619/Public-Works
New Castle County. (2026f). FY2027 Recommended Capital Program and Budget, Fiscal Year 2027-2032. New Castle, DE: Office of Finance.
New Castle County. (2026g). FY2027 Recommended Operating Budget. New Castle, DE: Office of Finance.
New Castle County. (2026h). Ordinance 26-034: The Annual Revenue Ordinance of New Castle County for Fiscal Year 2027. Prime sponsors: Mr. Smiley and Mr. Cartier. Introduced April 14, 2026. Adopted May 26, 2026. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/64273/O26-034-FY2027-Annual-Revenue-Ordinance
New Castle County. (2026i). Ordinance 26-035: Calculation of Sewer Service Charges Effective July 1, 2026 for Fiscal Year 2027. Prime sponsors: Mr. Smiley and Mr. Cartier. Introduced April 14, 2026. Adopted May 26, 2026. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/64274/O26-035-FY2027-Sewer-Rate-Ordinance-
New Castle County. (2026j). Ordinance 26-036: An Ordinance Authorizing the Issuance of General Obligation Bonds of New Castle County for the Purpose of Financing Certain Capital Projects Approved in the Fiscal Year 2027 Capital Budget. Prime sponsors: Mr. Smiley and Mr. Cartier. Introduced April 14, 2026. Adopted May 26, 2026. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/64275/O26-036-Capital-Bond-Ordinance-
New Castle County. (2026k). Ordinance 26-037: The Capital Budget Ordinance of New Castle County for the Fiscal Year Beginning July 1, 2026. Prime sponsors: Mr. Smiley and Mr. Cartier. Introduced April 14, 2026. Adopted May 26, 2026. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/64269/O26-037-FY2027-Capital-Budget-Ordinance
New Castle County. (2026l). Ordinance 26-038: Adopt the Annual Operating Budget of New Castle County for the Fiscal Year Beginning July 1, 2026. Prime sponsors: Mr. Smiley and Mr. Cartier. Introduced April 14, 2026. Adopted May 26, 2026. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/64270/O26-038-FY2027-Operating-Budget-Ordinance
New Castle County. (2026m). Ordinance No. 26-043, amend the FY2026 approved operating budget to appropriate $150,000 from the Recorder of Deeds technology fee accounts to the Department of Public Safety, Division of Police, for Blue Voice software (adopted April 28, 2026).
New Castle County. (2026n). Resolution 26-085: Adopting the New Castle County Capital Program for Fiscal Year 2027 through 2032. Prime sponsors: Mr. Smiley and Mr. Cartier. Introduced April 14, 2026. Adopted May 26, 2026. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/64271/R26-085-FY2027-Capital-Program-Resolution
New Castle County. (2026o, February 28). General Fund Financial Projections, As of 2/28/2026, Fiscal Years 2026-2029 [ArchiveCenter Item 3960]. New Castle, DE: Office of Finance. https://www.newcastlede.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/3960
New Castle County. (2026p, March 31). County Executive Marcus Henry announces Countywide town hall series [press release]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/m/newsflash/home/detail/2635
New Castle County. (2026q, March 31). General Fund Detail, Projected Financial Status, Fiscal Year Ending 6/30/2026. New Castle, DE: Office of Finance.
New Castle County. (2026r, April 16). CFO Presentation to Council Budget Overview FY2027 [Slide deck, posted to County Document Center as DRAFT, author metadata: JEFinnigan]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/63617/CFO-Presentation-to-Council-Budget-Overview
New Castle County. (n.d.a). Audit Committee webpage. Retrieved June 3, 2026 from https://www.newcastlede.gov/388/Audit-Committee
New Castle County. (n.d.b). Audit Reports/Memoranda webpage. Retrieved June 3, 2026 from https://www.newcastlede.gov/1177/Audit-ReportMemoranda
New Castle County. (n.d.c). Auditor's Office webpage. Retrieved June 3, 2026 from https://www.newcastlede.gov/1408/Auditors-Office
New Castle County. (n.d.d). Department Listing for County Executive Office. https://www.newcastlede.gov/Directory/Home/DepartmentListing?DID=62
New Castle County. (n.d.e). Marcus Henry, County Executive [official biography]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/2755/Marcus-Henry---County-Executive
New Castle County. (n.d.f). Office of Finance. https://www.newcastlede.gov/178/Office-of-Finance
New Castle County. (n.d.g). Taxes: official County guidance on property and school tax billing. "State school tax rates are set by the local school districts; New Castle County simply collects the taxes and passes them on to the districts." https://nccde.org/232/Taxes
New Castle County Audit Committee. (2025a, April 10). Meeting minutes. https://www.newcastlede.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_04102025-2704
New Castle County Audit Committee. (2025b, August 27). Meeting Minutes. New Castle County Office of Council Audit.
New Castle County Audit Committee. (2025c, August 27). Meeting minutes. Retrieved June 3, 2026 from https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/54751/Meeting-Minutes-Last-Meeting
New Castle County Audit Committee. (2026a, April 2). Meeting Agenda. New Castle County Office of Council Audit.
New Castle County Audit Committee. (2026b, April 2). Meeting agenda. Retrieved June 3, 2026 from https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/13383
New Castle County CARES Act/ARPA Audit and Compliance Committee. (2022, September 21). Meeting minutes. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/49494/CARES-Act-Audit-Compliance-Meeting-Minutes-9-21-22
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U.S. Department of Justice. (2018). Union County Man Indicted on Public Corruption Charges. (Orange Township, New Jersey computer networking no-bid contract case). https://www.oversight.gov/union-county-man-indicted-public-corruption-charges
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Wasserbach, R. (2024, December 17 / issued 2025, April 10). Lodging Tax Audit Report. New Castle County Auditor's Office. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/58800/Lodging-Tax-Report---04102025
Wasserbach, R. (2025, August 27). New Castle County Pension Program Audit Report. New Castle County Auditor's Office. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/60733/Pensions-Audit-Report---08272025-
Wasserbach, R. (2026, April 2). Follow-up Audit Report of Workers' Compensation. New Castle County Auditor's Office. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/63450/Workers-Compensation-Follow-up-Audit-Report---04022026
Wasserbach, R. B. (2025, April 10). Memorandum: New Castle County Hope Center [County Auditor memorandum to Carrie Casey, General Manager, Department of Community Services]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/58799/Hope-Center-Memo---04102025
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Yahoo Finance. (2025b, September 30). Prices for home remodeling outpaced inflation in the second quarter due to labor costs. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/prices-home-remodeling-outpaced-inflation-120800921.html
Yahoo Lifestyle. (2026, March 30). What streaming costs in 2026: The price of Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and more. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/articles/streaming-costs-2026-price-netflix-145018585.html
Yahoo News. (2025). Education Department restarts interest accrual for borrowers on SAVE plan. https://www.yahoo.com/news/education-department-restarts-interest-accrual-171719334.html
Moody’s Ratings, New Castle County, DE: Update to Credit Analysis (July 8, 2025), County posting: newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/60022; S&P Global Ratings, Research Update: New Castle County, DE GO Bonds Assigned ‘AAA’ Rating; Outlook Is Stable (June 30, 2025), County posting: newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/59848; Fitch Ratings, Fitch Rates New Castle County, DE’s $82MM GO Bonds ‘AAA’; Outlook Stable (July 7, 2025), County posting: newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/59849, agency page: fitchratings.com/research/us-public-finance/fitch-rates-new-castle-county-de-82mm-go-bonds-aaa-outlook-stable-07-07-2025; New Castle County press release, County Executive Henry announces ‘AAA’ credit rating (July 8, 2025); Fitch Ratings via Business Wire, Fitch Rates New Castle County, DE’s $187MM GO Bonds ‘AAA’; Outlook Stable (January 21, 2015); New Castle County FY2026 Operating Budget, Debt Management section; New Castle County Approved Capital Program and Budget FY2008-2013 (Ordinance #07-042), Debt Management, “Rating Upgrade” (S&P upgrade to AAA February 2, 2001; Fitch upgrade to AAA October 2, 2002; Moody’s Aaa October 8, 2002): newcastlede.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/169; Substitute 1 to Ordinance 18-061 and County Exhibit C-2 (Meyer FY2019-FY2020 cumulative 15 percent increase); Title 9 Del. C. § 8002; County Executive Marcus Henry, FY2027 Recommended Budget address (March 25, 2026) and FY2027 Recommended Operating Budget transmittal letter; New Castle County FY2025 audited financial statements; FY2027 Approved Operating Budget (adopted May 26, 2026, effective July 1, 2026).
Sources: PAL
New Castle County Council Resolutions 99-129 (PO042527), 00-139 (PO103155), 01-103, 01-105 (PO106469, PO106464), 04-005, 04-035, 10-191 (PO148521), 11-176, 12-111 (PO154334), and 14-119, with attached purchase orders, requisition justification sheets, lease agreements, and fiscal notes. Retrieved from the New Castle County legislative search system, www3.newcastlede.gov/legislation/search.
New Castle County Auditor’s Office. (2011, November 1). Review of Financial Statement Audits of Police Athletic League, and Executive Summary.
New Castle County Council. (2018, July 27). Grant Application, Police Athletic League of Delaware, Inc. (EIN 22-2606531), Budget Worksheet and Request for Taxpayer Identification Number.
New Castle County. (2025–2026). FY2026 and FY2027 Approved Operating Budget Books and Approved Capital Books, including the Community Services and Public Safety divisions and project C301713.
Henry, M. (2026, March 24). FY2027 Budget Address, as prepared, New Castle County Executive.
New Castle County. (2018, December). County Executive Meyer nominates Carrie Casey as General Manager of Community Services (statement noting Marcus Henry’s decade of County service under three County Executives).
Police Athletic League of Delaware. (2016, December 14). PAL-DE Programming 2016–2017 (R. Jameson, Executive Director, to K. Hartley-Nagle, Council President).
Police Athletic League of Delaware, Inc. (2011–2024). IRS Forms 990, EIN 22-2606531 (annual revenue, contributions, net assets, and officer/board listings).
New Castle County Council. (2025–2026). Meeting records and presentations by the Department of Public Safety regarding the Police Athletic League, including testimony on the federal repayment demand.
New Castle County. (2025). County Executive announcement of interim leadership at the Police Athletic League (Col. Jamie Leonard, board chair; Lt. Angela Dolan, interim executive director).
State of Delaware. (2025). Office of the Controller General correspondence and grant-freeze actions concerning the Police Athletic League of Delaware.
State of Delaware. (2023, May). ARPA Capital Projects Fund award announcement, Hockessin PAL.
New Castle County, DE. (n.d.). Police Athletic League; Programs; Community Services Unit. Official County website.
The Truthline Network. (2026). Original reporting and primary-source analysis, karenhartleynagle.com.
All figures reproduced as printed in the underlying primary sources.
New Castle County Council Resolutions 99-129 (PO042527), 00-139 (PO103155), 01-103, 01-105 (PO106469, PO106464), 04-005, 04-035, 10-191 (PO148521), 11-176, 12-111 (PO154334), and 14-119, with attached purchase orders, requisition justification sheets, lease agreements, and fiscal notes. Retrieved from the New Castle County legislative search system, www3.newcastlede.gov/legislation/search.
New Castle County Auditor’s Office. (2011, November 1). Review of Financial Statement Audits of Police Athletic League, and Executive Summary.
New Castle County Council. (2018, July 27). Grant Application, Police Athletic League of Delaware, Inc. (EIN 22-2606531), Budget Worksheet and Request for Taxpayer Identification Number.
New Castle County. (2025–2026). FY2026 and FY2027 Approved Operating Budget Books and Approved Capital Books, including the Community Services and Public Safety divisions and project C301713.
Henry, M. (2026, March 24). FY2027 Budget Address, as prepared, New Castle County Executive.
New Castle County. (2018, December). County Executive Meyer nominates Carrie Casey as General Manager of Community Services (statement noting Marcus Henry’s decade of County service under three County Executives).
Police Athletic League of Delaware. (2016, December 14). PAL-DE Programming 2016–2017 (R. Jameson, Executive Director, to K. Hartley-Nagle, Council President).
Police Athletic League of Delaware, Inc. (2011–2024). IRS Forms 990, EIN 22-2606531 (annual revenue, contributions, net assets, and officer/board listings).
New Castle County Council. (2025–2026). Meeting records and presentations by the Department of Public Safety regarding the Police Athletic League, including testimony on the federal repayment demand.
New Castle County. (2025). County Executive announcement of interim leadership at the Police Athletic League (Col. Jamie Leonard, board chair; Lt. Angela Dolan, interim executive director).
State of Delaware. (2025). Office of the Controller General correspondence and grant-freeze actions concerning the Police Athletic League of Delaware.
State of Delaware. (2023, May). ARPA Capital Projects Fund award announcement, Hockessin PAL.
New Castle County, DE. (n.d.). Police Athletic League; Programs; Community Services Unit. Official County website.
The Truthline Network. (2026). Original reporting and primary-source analysis, karenhartleynagle.com.
All figures reproduced as printed in the underlying primary sources.
Attribution:
Content and analysis © 2025 The Truthline Network, a division of Nexus Innovation Group LLC.
All content authored by Karen Hartley-Nagle, Founder & Publisher, The Truthline Network; Editor-in-Chief, Host & Executive Producer, The Truthline (Radio & Live); Former President, New Castle County Council (2016–2024); Founder & CEO, Nexus Innovation Group, LLC.
Excerpts, data, or quotations may be reproduced for noncommercial use with attribution to The Truthline Network and a direct link to the original report. Commercial use or republication requires written permission.
Cite as:
Hartley-Nagle, K. (2026, July 15). The New Castle County Tax Reckoning: The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com/new-castle-county-tax-reckoning-they-knew-you-werent-told
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