Civil unions are but a week or two away from being legalized in Delaware. SB 30 passed the Delaware State Senate by a vote of 13 Y, 6 N, and 2 absent. Rep. Pete Schwartzkopf has already announced that the bill will be considered in House committee this Wednesday, and he’s made it real clear that he has no intention of dragging his feet on this bill. Since becoming House Majority Leader, Schwartzkopf has consistently assumed the leadership mantle on equal rights issues. I know of no similar precedent for Sussex County legislators. He deserves accolades from equal rights supporters for his advocacy and full-speed-ahead approach.
There remains one important question regarding SB 30, one that I’m working to answer as I write this. And that surrounds the absences of Senators Dori Connor and Cathy Cloutier, as this is not the first time that the tandem have been mysteriously absent when most needed by those in the equal rights community who had endorsed them.
I’m preparing another piece addressing this question in detail. Suffice it to say that this song paints an accurate picture of Cloutier’s & Connor’s support for equal rights:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLPoukOg0lk[/youtube]
Elvis Costello: “Lip Service”
Allow me to pay more than lip service to the rest of Thursday’s action. While it may seem anticlimactic, the final passage of HB 19 (George) reflects a significant sea change in the General Assembly’s approach to drug-related crime. While the final product is not as strong as the initial proposal, this bill went as far as the General Assembly was prepared to go at this point. Kudos to Rep. Melanie George, whose attention to detail and focus on the ultimate goal led to the bill’s enactment. It makes sense from both policy and fiscal perspectives. Job well done.
Legislation making changes to state employees’ pension and health plans also passed, with only three no votes and one ‘not voting’. I’m tired of state employees having to sacrifice when the fatted moneyed class gets away w/o sacrifice. Whether the Governor considers HB 81 a budget reduction or a revenue raiser, he knows, or should know, that those with the most to give are being asked to sacrifice nothing. When it comes to making the wealthy pay their fair share, George Wallace was right when he said, “There ain’t a dime’s worth of difference” between the two major parties. BTW, one of the ‘no’ votes? None other than Monsignor Greg Lavelle, who felt that state employees were not being screwed enough.
Neither the Governor nor legislative leadership feel any shame over this bill, which is the exact opposite of how real Democrats should feel.
A ‘feel-good, do nothing’ package of PR releases masquerading as legislation also passed. These are the bills the Attorney General’s office ginned up in the wake of the Dr. Earl Bradley scandal. What these bills really do is provide an unwarranted fig leaf to all the people and agencies who failed the victims in the first place. If any one of them had done their jobs, Bradley would have been stopped, and stopped early.
Oh, and Rep. Atkins’ special interest bill for the ‘commercial game preserves’ passed unanimously in the House. 41 checks should be going out in the mail soon.
Here’s the entire Session Activity report for last Thursday.
Speaking of empty exercises in public relations, Tony DeLuca’s bill purportedly opening up the entire redistricting process is on today’s’s agenda. Once again, I feel compelled to quote from my favorite legislative analyst, me:
There’s, um, one other piece of business on today’s Senate Executive Committee agenda. (DeLuca’s) joke of a bill, SB 50, which would purportedly ‘ensure that the redistricting process becomes entirely open’, will be considered in DeLuca’s own Senate Executive Committee. Kids, they’ve been working on the maps for two months now. The process is close to over. This bill is nothing but a phony attempt on DeLuca’s part to perversely claim the mantle of being an ‘open government’ advocate. Do not be fooled. Anyone who was truly serious about opening up the process would have introduced legislation like this months or years ago. Pay no attention to the man behind the door. Read the bill in its entirety (it won’t take long), and you will see that this is merely a PR stunt in bill form.
HB 47 (B. Short), which gives the Department of Health & Social Services the explicit authority to investigate and inspect unsanitary or unsafe conditions in certain facilities where invasive medical procedures are performed and to give DHSS the authority to adopt regulations to strengthen oversight of facilities. I expect far less grandstanding than the R’s did in the House, especially since the promised companion bill has been introduced, and I expect the bill to pass by a comfortable margin.
Here’s the complete Senate agenda.
The House has replaced one bad bill (the aforementioned ‘legal killing in commercial game preserves on Sundays’) with another bad bill on today’s House Agenda. Rep. Gerald Brady continues his one-man speed code vigilantism with HB 66, which would ‘authorize…the Municipalities to establish a video speed enforcement program within ¼ mile of any work zone or school”. In other words, the installation of video cameras by private companies to enrich the municipalities’ coffers. In the name of public safety, of course. We’ve just had thousands of cases like these thrown out of Philly courts due to calibration errors. How do you challenge a bleeping machine in court? Can you even challenge a bleeping machine in court? At least I’ve come up with a song lyric that describes the bill:
‘Get your tix with Bill 66’.
Which, of course, brings me to yet another musical interlude:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQwb4SpNuKo&feature=related[/youtube]
Manhattan Transfer- “Route 66”
Hey, you think this is self-indulgent? Get your own column!
Also worthy of some note, but not much, are HB’s 46 and 48, the relatively thin gruel that passes for gun control legislation these days now that the NRA rules the legislative roost from its armed perches. Three NRA amendments have already been placed with HB 46, two by brainless toad ‘Lumpy’ Carson, and one from former Elsmere Police Chief John Mitchell, who should know better. The more substantive of the two is HB 48, which would authorize Delaware to ‘provide certain information to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System (“NICS”) database about persons prohibited from possessing firearms, including mentally ill individuals. Delaware is one of only 10 states that have provided no information on mentally ill individuals to the federal database.’
The NICS was created by Congress in 2007 in response to the tragic killings at Virginia Tech by a mentally-deranged gunman. In other words, the NRA will probably be all over this bill as well.
Gotta go. I’m on Al’s show today at 10 am on WDEL 1150 AM. Check out the spiffy new production values that ‘DEL’s ace engineering gurus have provided for me. La Cucuracha anyone?