Bunting reserves judgment on Hayward

By Sam Harvey
Staff Reporter

State legislators lambasted former Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) Secretary Nathan Hayward this week, but local Sen. George Howard Bunting (20th District) took more of a moderate stance.

“I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt until this is all investigated,” Bunting said. “Some would call him an independent S.O.B., but we need a few more of those.”

Even more so in an election year, everyone wants to hand out road projects to their constituents, he said. But Hayward had taken $40 million off the table — and dropped it all into one Democratic legislator’s district, on the Wilmington Riverfront. That was despite Hayward’s own affiliation with the Republican party, Bunting added.

A Democrat himself, Bunting said Hayward had been very good to the 20th District. “From the standpoint of our area, there would be no Indian River bridge without Secretary Hayward,” he said.

Hayward apparently signed off on millions of dollars in Wilmington Riverfront contracts in his final days as DelDOT chief. That was on Saturday, Jan. 28 (2006), less than two days after state legislators passed a supplemental 2006-fiscal-year “mini-Bond Bill” that contained language limiting Hayward’s power to make just such a move.

Gov. Ruth Ann Minner signed the legislation on Feb. 1, making it official, on the same day that Hayward officially resigned his post, citing health problems. He was slated to begin treatment for prostate cancer.