Wally Nunn: Delco council lied about the cost of their spending

There is no other way to say this: County Council looked Delco citizens in the eye and lied. They lied so voters would re-elect them. Power mattered more than honesty.

In December 2024, Budget Management Director James Hayes emailed Executive Director Barbara O’Malley that the county faced a roughly $75 million deficit. A tax increase of about 23 percent would raise only $41.4 million. That left about $33.1 million in non-recurring revenue still papering over the hole. Hayes wrote: “I will leave the glorified language to the professionals but from a purely budget standpoint it is a Budget Deficit.” O’Malley agreed: “I don’t mind the term deficit. It’s what it is.”

That is what Council knew. This is what Council said.

On December 11, 2024, Council Chair Monica Taylor declared, “We are going to leave this county with a quality and stable budget.” She knew a multi-tens-of-millions hole remained. The rest of Council sat there. Ask yourself: was that truthful?

Council raised taxes about 24 percent and knew a far larger increase would have been required to close the structural gap. They also knew an election was coming in 2025. That is when the decision to understate the problem was made. A 40 percent increase might have woken the public up to the spending.

Until the emails surfaced, a charitable reader could still believe they were merely hapless. Now we know they were hapless and dishonest.

They and their staff thought they were hiding a $33 million remainder. Anyone with sixth-grade arithmetic who read the budget could see the one-time money was larger than that. Broad + Liberty said so at the time: the real hole was $40 million-plus, not $33 million.

In their defense, they had already forgotten another fiction. In the same phony budget they booked a phony transfer of about $8 million that had not existed in the prior draft. Council never explained where it came from when first asked. That $8 million was part of how they cut a proposed 28 percent hike down to 23 percent without cutting spending.

Councilwoman Christine Reuther’s response to the reporting was: “Wally Nunn is entitled to his opinions but not his facts.” Councilwoman, try a remedial math class. A Harvard degree is not a substitute for addition. An ethics course would not hurt either. I would not bet on a passing grade.

The emails closed the argument. Council knew the 2025 budget was not stable. They said it was anyway. Then, after the 2025 election, they came back for another 19 percent.

That is not a rounding error. That is a lie. 

Wally Nunn is the former Chairman of Delaware County Council.