Speaker Bob Gilligan spoke to the Progressive Democrats of Delaware last night to preview next year’s legislative battles. There are really two big issues we’ll see next year: the budget and the 2010 election.
Budget
Gilligan told us that they expect at least a $300M-$400M budget gap next year (that’s before the additional job losses in Delaware City were announced) and he said point blank that they are not going to raise taxes again. Therefore the budget gap is going to be closed by slashing programs. He didn’t know if state workers were going to take another hit, but he thought that they probably wouldn’t get their pay cut back next year. The state programs mentioned by Gilligan were the following:
– Medicaid – Gilligan discussed the “Missouri solution” which was to toughen Medicaid eligibility
– Universities – Gilligan said that three state universities were a lot for a state with a population of less than 1M people.
– SEED – Gilligan stated that the state now pays for 15 years of school: full day Kindergarten, grades 1-12 and 2 years of college at Del Tech.
– Parks – Gilligan stated that the state took over some of the city/county parks in the last decade which has added to the budget woes.
Gilligan stated that programs will be cut, and they may be popular programs. I expect to hear about a lot of unhappy people in the next legislative session. I believe this is where we’re going to see the most fireworks in the upcoming legislative session
2010 Election
It sounds like the House Democrats are going to focus on two big issues in next year’s races: streamlining running of the House and their legislative accomplishments. For the legislative accomplishments from last year he listed the following (incomplete):
– Changing the way the House was run. The Democratic majority cut the staff by a lot, the revoked extra holidays (the year before there had been 12 above and beyond the scheduled 21), removed privileges like free mailing (franking) and travel.
– Open government – Gilligan pointed out, rightly IMO, that this legislation died every year when the Republicans ran the House.
– Banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation
– Workplace Fraud Act
– Violent Crimes Compensation Board reform
Gilligan talked a lot about the atmosphere. Delaware Republicans are becoming the party of no, just like the national party. He said they gave absolutely no help to Markell in closing the budget gap, which in part was caused by their own actions. He doesn’t expect that to change in the coming legislative session.
Gilligan also dismissed calls for reform of the redistricting process. He basically said that if Democrats control the House, they are going to use the redistricting process to protect themselves (well, at least he’s honest). He also defended John Atkins, said that Atkins worked very hard and when push came to shove, he was there for the caucus.
I asked Gilligan next session’s HB1 would be. He didn’t really have an answer except that it sounds like the budget gaps will be priorities 1, 2 and 3 next year.