Unless they’re corporate giveaways or tax breaks for the ‘financial services industry’, bills can run into trouble this time of year. Especially if (a) they cause turf wars or alleged turf wars between different state agencies; or if (b) they pose a threat to the Delaware Way.
Hence, HB 75(Schwartzkopf), which would have put an end to ‘double-dipping’ for state legislators, is at best on life support. The reason? The News-Journal reports that:
…some lawmakers have privately grumbled that scrutiny of DeLuca and Booth’s jobs is hurting their chances to jockey for a second paycheck from taxpayers. “We have a lot of people who are out of work and they would like to apply for a job,” said Rep. Earl Jaques, D-Glasgow. “We have an open and free society where people should have the right to apply for a job.”
Try to wrap your heads around that Jaques quote for a second. If indeed ‘people…are out of work and they would like to apply for a job”, wouldn’t it be fairer if some legislator who already has a job doesn’t step in front of them and take that job away?
Bottom line is that legislators still want to be able to double-dip at the taxpayers’ expense. Another great excerpt from the story:
Jaques and five other Democratic representatives pulled their support of the bill Tuesday citing concerns about excluding legislators from getting part-time work as adjunct professors at the University of Delaware or school bus drivers or athletics coaches at public school districts.
I’m sorry. If this reasonable attempt to rein in the worst of the Delaware Way is being undercut, constituents should no longer even think that the ‘Honorables’ can be shamed into doing the right thing. If this can’t be done in the aftermath of Tiny Tony DeLuca’s blatant manipulations, it can’t be done, period. The dirty little secret is that many legislators serve in the General Assembly precisely so that they can use the system for their own selfish motives, and this bill would significantly reduce their opportunities to do so. I’m especially disappointed that some of our better legislators, Mike Barbieri, J. J. Johnson, and John Kowalko, withdrew their support. Memo to all of them: Once you start carving out exceptions to this policy, no matter how well-intentioned you believe them to be, you effectively neuter the legislation. Please reconsider your reconsideration.
The Delaware Way is also visible in the roadblock that has detoured the expected coronation of HB 168(Keeley). HB 168 would strengthen penalties for DUI offenses. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for taking all the time necessary to get this bill right. Bills introduced this late in session should generally have more scrutiny, because ill-considered legislation can often be rushed through with the attendant unanticipated consequences. However, the reason the bill has run into trouble is because of a turf dispute between the Justice of the Peace courts and the Court of Common Pleas:
But a provision that would reduce the JP Courts’ role in handling DUI cases drew strong objections from Chief Magistrate Alan Davis.
“This was presented as a fait accompli,” Davis said. “This is not a consensus bill. I take offense to it.”
Chief Deputy Attorney General Charlie Butler lamented that the debate had “started to take on more of a personal air.””We’re not saying we don’t like JP Court,” Butler said, but that it doesn’t make sense to allow a defendant to be tried in two courts for the same offense.
The real issue with the bill is that its fiscal impact might require additional funding for prison beds, something not considered during the budget deliberations. It’s probably best that this bill returns in January, at which point the food fight started by the Chief Magistrate might have been cleaned up.
Meanwhile, legislation to clear the way for the Bloom Energy fuel cells project in Newark raced through the Senate yesterday. While some expressed concerns about broadening the renewable portfolio standard, the overriding raison d’etre for the bill is jobsjobsjobs. Delaware’s resident go-to guy for all-things-environmental, Tommywonk, provides his well-balanced critique (must-reading, as always), and ultimately gives the bill a cautious thumbs-up:
Deployment of the Bloom Energy Servers will have benefits for the environment and the grid. To the extent that these fuel cells replace coal generation (which provides about one half of our electricity) they will contribute to reductions in air emissions. Bloom Energy’s fuel cells are reportedly more efficient than conventional natural gas turbines, and their ability to be located onsite enhances their efficiency by eliminating the loss of power over transmission lines. By providing distributed baseload power, this technology will alleviate congestion on the grid and reduce our reliance on out of state power. In considering the tradeoffs, I have concluded that the benefits are worth the stretching of the RPS in this case.
One last major story before we get into the two-day look at legislative action, suh-prize, suh-prize, it looks like state revenue projections have been reduced by $20 mill or so. This, of course, has led to the inevitable hand-wringing over what must be cut. Might I point out that, in light of earlier, more rosy, surplus projections, Jack Markell pushed to cut Delaware’s top personal income tax rate, which would result in a $13 million cut in state revenues. Why in hell isn’t anyone, ANYone, even suggesting that this sop to the rich be taken out of the equation this year? It’s gonna expire next year anyway, so why the rush to hand them some more unearned cash this year? Don’t answer. Rhetorical question. The game’s fixed.
Two notable bills passed the Senate during Wednesday’s truncated session. SB 98(Bushweller), which would require that vaccinations, health screenings and children’s wellness visits be covered for all new health plans starting with plan years beginning on or after Sept. 23, 2010, passed unanimously and heads to the House. SS1/SB 56(Blevins), which ‘require(s) insurers administering CHIP buy-in programs in other states to cause similar buy-in programs to be offered in Delaware if they should engage in specified transactions or affiliations with Delaware health service corporations’ passed the Senate unanimously after returning from the house in an amended form. The bill now heads to the Governor for his signature.
Both houses were busy on Thursday. If this were January instead of June, and if this column wasn’t long-winded enough already, I’d likely have at least something to say about the following bills that the Senate passed in particular: SB 64(McBride), SB 89(Katz), SB 117(Bunting), and SB 125(McDowell). I encourage all of you to be my surrogates here and provide your insights. I simply can’t let the unanimous Senate passage of HB 105(Viola) go without comment. I warned the Honorables, but they went ahead with this anyway. I urge the Governor to sign this bill. Why? Because I suspect that some day it will bite some of the Honorables big time. And I don’t ever want to run out of material.
Some notable and many not-so-notable bills in the House.
Let us first have a moment of silence for the latest, and perhaps last, incarnation of Rep. Gerald Brady’s speed camera/monitor bill. HS1/HB66 was defeated in the House yesterday, 15 Y’s, 15 N’s, 7 not votings, and 4 absent. His latest attempt to rescue his concept of speed cameras/monitors in school zones/construction areas had been reduced to creating pilot programs in Wilmington and Dover within school zones. The House had had enough. Me, I can’t get enough of this. One note on the roll call. Legislators often go ‘Not Voting’ if they’re reluctant to take a stand on an issue. In this case, however, I suspect that the large number of NV’s grew out of a desire not to further embarrass the sponsor. A noble sentiment, but both the legislation and the legislator are embarrassments enough.
Glad to see that HB 145(George) sailed through unanimously. It represents incremental improvement (IMHO) in how expungements are handled.But it’s progress nevertheless, and you can’t spell progressive without ‘progress’.
There has been some controversy on the DL board concerning SB 79(Bunting), which would ‘eliminate(s) the requirement that the Sussex County Administrator be a Sussex County resident at the time of his appointment.’ For the life of me, I don’t understand the controversy. SB 79 requires that the Sussex County Administrator be a county resident by the time he/she starts the job. If you lived in Sussex County, why wouldn’t you want the best-qualified candidate, regardless of where they currently reside? Should be a moot point now, as SB 79 passed the House, attracting only one ‘no’ vote (Atkins, of course) along the way. It now heads to the Governor. Seeing as how the new DELDOT secretary was not a Delaware resident when approved by the Senate, I doubt that Gov. Markell will veto this. So, it’s a win-win. Sussex County presumably gets a well-qualified candidate, and whatever crony Millsboro’s most infamous law-abiding citizen was pushing gets left out.
As I wrote a couple of days ago, I still have my doubts about HB 180(Mulrooney), but legislators rarely delve deeply into stuff like this lest their stuff be delved deeply into as well. (Memo to the Grammar Police: I know that last sentence must violate all kinds of rules, but I don’t know how to fix it. Feel free to let me know how it should read.)
No more delving for me today. I’m all delved out. I’ll endelvor to do better on Tuesday.