Contact:

Robert Bohm, Campaign Coordinator
(302)239-2572  rebsalerno@msn.com

J. Roy Cannon, Media Committee
(302)738-9963  jcannon11@comcast.net

Wilmington, DE:  Green Party candidate for Attorney General Vivian Houghton responded today to her Democratic opponent's recent statements on establishing an environmental crime unit in the Attorney General's office.  "Unfortunately, Mr. Schnee is a Johnny-comes-lately with regards to this issue," said Houghton. "While I've been talking for months about setting up a special unit to investigate DNREC's possible criminal liability in letting Industrial polluters off the hook, he's been silent while waiting to figure out what the public wants to hear.  Now that he realizes the public likes my message, he's trying to copy it - but his voice, at this late date in the campaign, is just empty noise in the wind." 

From the beginning her campaign and on numerous occasions since, Houghton has spoken out against Delaware's chronic polluters of the environment promising to hold them accountable for violations of the law.  In her press conference just last week she repeated this issue saying,  "while Schnee's head is in the clouds, Motiva, Metachem, Sunoco, General Chemical and other multi-million dollar companies have dumped carcinogens in our soil and spewed poisons in the air."  She called for strong measures to hold top executives accountable under the law for any criminal behavior. 

"Mr. Schnee likes to talk about his term as a federal prosecutor," Houghton pointed out.  "But during that time he did nothing to penalize companies for the crimes he now says he wants to fight.  Yet other federal prosecutors HAVE prosecuted CEO's for the very crimes that Schnee refused to even look at as a federal prosecutor.  For instance in Texas, the Justice Department charged and convicted 2 managers of a chemical plant under the Clean Air Act.  The 2 managers were sentenced to 36 months in prison."