PDD-DL Vote Tracker Update for May 22, 2013

Not much new this week, since the Assembly is out of session for the next two weeks as the Joint Finance Committee finishes the budget. Still there was some action on the bills we are following, and there have been two new bills that I have added to the Trackers as they seem interesting. The first is Rep. Rebecca Walker’s House Bill 131, or the Gestational Carrier Agreement Bill. At first, I thought the term “Gestational Carrier” was an overly technical and political correct replacement for Surrogate Mother. But it turns out that I was wrong.

There are two kinds of Surrogacy. One is where the surrogate mother is genetically related to the child she is carrying, or in other words, the surrogate mother used her own egg and had it artificially inseminated by the intended father. This is called traditional surrogacy. If the surrogate mother carries an fertilized egg to term and she is not genetically related to it, that is gestational surrogacy, and Representaive Walker’s legislation establishes the legal rights of all involved in a gestational surrogacy.

Titles and labels aside, the bill is a good idea, as it establishes into law the notion that these agreements between a couple and a surrogate mother are binding legal contracts. According to the legislation, after the child is born, the intended parent becomes the legal parent of the child and the gestational carrier would have no parental rights. In New Jersey, Governor Christie vetoed a similar law, and his official reason is that it could radically change the traditional notion of the family. Please. This bill allows more families to be created, which I thought was a good thing.

The other bill (Senator Hocker’s Senate Bill 74) features an unholy alliance of Progressive and Arch Conserative sponsors, all agreeing on transparency and open government. See Democratic Leadership, the GOP is really going after you on transparency. It is a potent issue, and you ignore it at your peril. The bill would require that whenever a state agency adopts or amends a state rule or regulation that have the force of law, a regulatory impact statement must be prepared. This is already required of federal agencies.

To keep up to date on all legislation that is of priority or a concern to liberals and progressives, DL has partnered with the Progressive Democrats for Delaware (PDD) to compile this Vote Tracker. Now, this chart does not follow all the legislation that has been filed. We don’t report on perfunctory bills, nor do we follow the progress of judicial nominations, executive nominations, or Concurrent or Joint Resolutions unless they are a matter of controversy. So the legislation that is listed is a matter of concern and priority for those of us on the liberal / progressive side of the aisle. I review every piece of legislation as it is filed, and if I miss something, Senators and Representatives on our side of the aisle usually call me out on it, so if I miss something it won’t be missed for long.

The legislator’s names which are colored blue are Democrats. If they are colored red, they are Republicans. The first chart focuses on House Bills, and the second chart focuses on Senate Bills. If you want to download this Vote Tracker chart, at the very bottom you will see a black bar with a Microsoft Excel logo on the right. Click on it and you will be able to download the chart into the Excel format.

Senate Bills

House Bills