‘Somebody’s paying for your freebies’: Delaware lawmakers don’t report trips to Taiwan as ‘gifts’ and one didn’t disclose Israel mission

What are journalists missing from the state of Delaware? What would you most like WHYY News to cover? Let us know.

Free trips abroad funded by foreign governments have been routine for some Delaware lawmakers.

Disclosing them has not.

Since about 2010, a revolving handful of state legislators have taken an annual trip to Taiwan. In September, a group of five state lawmakers also traveled to Israel.

Neither the lawmakers nor Delaware taxpayers paid for the weeklong fact-finding missions, however. Instead, the two foreign countries footed the bill.

But when it came time to disclose any “gifts” they received on their required annual financial reports to the Delaware Public Integrity Commission, known as the PIC, members of the state House and Senate handled their free trips to Taiwan and Israel differently.

None have disclosed the Taiwan trips, which were paid for by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, according to reports since 2020 that WHYY News reviewed, and interviews with several attendees.

But four of the five elected officials who trekked to Israel last year reported a gift worth $6,500 from the Consulate General of Israel in New York. Dover-area Republican Rep. Bryan Shupe did not disclose the free trip, but last week, hours after defending his decision in an interview with WHYY News, Shupe revised his 2025 report and disclosed the $6,500 gift.

So what in the name of transparency is going on here?

It turns out that lawmakers say they think, but can’t prove, that the PIC advised them years ago that the free trips to Taiwan did not constitute a reportable gift. Though lawmakers cannot document that guidance or pinpoint when it might have been provided, they have passed that advice on to subsequent trip-takers.

Benjamin Warshaw, who became the PIC’s attorney in late 2024, doesn’t dispute lawmakers’ accounts but said the commission doesn’t have records showing what lawmakers were told about disclosing the Taiwan trips.

But last year — in large part because of the controversy over Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza after the Oct. 7, 2024 Hamas terrorist attack — lawmakers asked the PIC whether they needed to report the mission to Israel.

Warshaw said the commission advised them to report the Israel trip as a gift.

So what is the PIC’s current policy on free trips lawmakers receive?

Commission Chair Ron Chaney would not agree to an interview. Instead, he issued a statement that said lawmakers need to disclose trips that are paid for not only by foreign governments but by any entity other than the state of Delaware.

“The PIC currently advises legislators to report trips paid for by third parties as gifts on their financial disclosure reports, in compliance” with Delaware’s conduct code for state employees and officials, Chaney’s statement said. “Legislators with questions about how to report a specific trip, or who believe they were told something different in the past, are encouraged to contact the PIC directly.”

Under Delaware law, lawmakers and about 300 other state government officials, including judges, must disclose any gift worth more than $250.

The law defines a gift as a “a payment, subscription, advance, forbearance, rendering or deposit of money, services or anything of value unless consideration of equal or greater value is received.“ Gifts from close relatives do not need to be reported.

John Flaherty, a board member at the Delaware Coalition for Open Government, said the issue is a no-brainer: Free trips should be disclosed, regardless of the circumstances.

“If these legislators get anything of value, whether it be in the form of money or somebody’s paying for a trip, whether it’s to Israel, Taiwan, Guatemala, Ireland, wherever it is, the public has a right to know how much these trips cost, period,” Flaherty said.

“They have a duty and an obligation to report this on their financial statements. The fact is they are going somewhere; somebody else is paying for their trips, for their hotels, for their leisure once they get there. The public has an absolute 100% right to know who’s lobbying our legislators.”

News of trip to Israel triggers transparency advocate’s quest

The issue of disclosing lawmakers’ free foreign trips was brought to the attention of WHYY News last week through a social media post by Delaware transparency advocate and civic activist Amy Roe.

“What are the consequences for legislators who fail to disclose substantial gifts on their Public Integrity Commission reports?” Roe asked on Facebook.

Roe told a reporter that her inquiry stemmed from news stories she read about the trip to Israel and an exchange she had on Facebook with Shupe about whether he would disclose it on his financial filing.

After Shupe posted a video describing his experiences on the trip, Roe asked how much it cost and who paid. He responded that it was the “Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs” but provided no other information.

Roe, undeterred, reminded Shupe that he was “required by law to report gifts that you receive” and said she would file a public records request to the PIC.

That’s what she did for all five lawmakers who went to Israel — Shupe and fellow GOP Rep.  Jeffrey Spiegelman, and three Democrats: Rep. Melania Ross Levin and Sens. Trey Paradee and Darius Brown.

All but Shupe had disclosed a $6,500 gift from the Israeli consulate.

Roe said Shupe should have done the same.

“Was it not a gift for him? Did he pay for it himself?” Roe asked. “I don’t know, but I do think that it’s important for fairness in our government, transparency, to eschew the concept of a conflict of interest, that there is complete and total reporting on this.”

Roe said last she planned to file an official complaint with PIC about Shupe’s lack of disclosure.

“I would like this officially looked into and I think that the public deserves an answer. That is an important thing for the voters in our state to know about,” she said.

Shupe told WHYY News he made a conscious decision not to report the trip.

Both Taiwan and Israel, Shupe said, host lawmakers from Delaware and other states so they can “experience what it means to be a democracy” in a region of the world where few democracies exist.

“At the time that we went to Taiwan, it was not said to us that we needed to disclose that at all and I don’t see why just because it’s the state of Israel that that needs to be any different,” Shupe said.

But Shupe contacted WHYY News afterward and said he decided to disclose a $6,500 gift.

“I guess I’ll just put what they want so that way there will be no controversy,” Shupe explained.

No free trips to Taiwan disclosed in financial reports

So what’s this annual trip to Taiwan that roughly five lawmakers take every year?

No news reports about such missions could be found online, and PIC filings for 2020 through 2025 that WHYY News obtained with a public records request show that no lawmakers reported gifts from Taiwan or the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States.

Shupe said former state Rep. Paul Baumbach, a Newark-area Democrat whom he called “the leader of the delegation with Taiwan,’’ told him he’d been advised that the trip didn’t have to be reported because the Taiwan agency didn’t give them any money but rather just paid for the trip.

“A gift is something that is a personal benefit and this is a delegation trip conducted for a public purpose, for diplomacy and policy,” Shupe said of going to Taiwan and not disclosing the free trip.

Shupe said he assumed Baumbach had checked with PIC, but Baumbach said he did not.

Baumbach first told WHYY News that a legislative staffer he trusted but did not identify told him the Taiwan trips didn’t need to be reported, but later said the word came from legislative leaders that he did not identify.

“While it is possible that I checked with the PIC, it would have been around the time of my first trip [to Taiwan about a decade ago],” said Baumbah, who did not seek reelection in 2024 and added that he can’t access his old legislative emails to check.

Spiegelman, who represents the Middletown area, has been a guest of Taiwan and Israel on trips. He said both involved hard work.

“We’re not there because they’re trying to curry our favor by taking us on vacation. We’re there to work in our capacity as legislators,” Spiegelman said.

Spiegelman echoed Shupe in saying it was a consensus among lawmakers that the trip paid for by Taiwan didn’t need to be disclosed. But Spiegelman said he decided to get advice from the PIC about the Israel trip, and was told to report it.

So he complied.

“We disclosed Israel because of, rightly or wrongly, the controversy around Israel” over how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was conducting its war against the Palestinians, Spiegelman said.

The Delaware delegation visited the site of the music festival where Hamas militants killed hundreds of concertgoers and took dozens of hostages; a kibbutz, or agricultural commune, where more people were killed or taken; and Israeli’s border with Gaza, where they could see buildings that Israeli bombs had reduced to rubble.

Paradee, who represents the Dover area, expressed similar sentiments.

He has been to Taiwan twice since 2019, including one trip he took with Shupe. After that first visit to Taiwan, Paradee said he initially planned to disclose it on his financial filing.

“And I recall talking to some of the other people who went on the trip and essentially was told what you had just told me — that it doesn’t need to be disclosed. They don’t have any issues before the Delaware legislature, and it’s not a gift, per se,” Paradee said.

“But looking back, if I had to do it over again, I probably would have disclosed the Taiwan trip. And so this time around with the trip to Israel, just knowing that it was under a lot of scrutiny, and that here were some members of the public who were a little upset about that, I just felt that it was the right thing to just be very forward and put it out there that I’ve been on the trip.”

Paradee said he didn’t seek or receive any advice from PIC or other lawmakers. “I just decided that I was going to report it,” he said.

Lawmakers consider modifying the disclosure law

Roe expressed incredulity that lawmakers had been taking trips to Taiwan for years at the Asian state’s expense without disclosing what she said is clearly a gift.

“What?” she exclaimed. “I didn’t know about that. It seems like a bigger story” about lawmakers keeping freebies secret.

Meanwhile, the inquiries by WHYY News have sent waves of consternation through Legislative Hall about whether lawmakers must disclose not only free foreign trips, but also any conferences paid for in part or in full by nonprofits or trade groups.

Though Chaney’s statement makes clear that trips not paid for by the lawmakers themselves or the state of Delaware must be disclosed, lawmakers are now considering ways to modify the law so they have more clarity in how to report free gifts.

Spiegelman said that’s a sensible approach.

“There’s probably some cleanup in this section of code that needs to be done to make it clearer that trips like this should be disclosed. And importantly, how they’re disclosed,” said Spiegelman, who does not believe that the free trips are “gifts” in the traditional sense.

“If somebody is going to want to clean up this section to make it clearer what we’re supposed to do on trips like this, I’m absolutely positively willing to listen because currently it just doesn’t fit well,” Spiegelman said.

But Flaherty said lawmakers should already know that freebies worth more than $250 should be in the annual financial reports.

“If somebody’s paying for your freebies, you have to report it, period,” Flahety said. “Whether it’s the National Council of State Legislators, whether it’s the government of Taiwan, it really doesn’t matter who’s paying for it.

“The issue is they’re paying to influence legislators and if legislators are getting a freebie, they need to report everything they’re getting.”