General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tuesday, June 5, 2012

No doubt the big action of the day will take place in party caucuses, where members of the Joint Finance Committee will brief members on the markup of the budget.

It’s always possible (wishful thinking, I know) that, after two weeks of soul-searching away from Dover, some legislators may announce that they’ve decided to retire. Of course, careful readers have already detected the Jeff Goldblum-sized Fly in the ointment, the very notion of soul-searching by politicos.

OK, gotta move quickly today. Lotsa prep for this morning’s Al Show at 10 on WDEL-1150 Newsradio.

Today’s House Agenda features perhaps a legislative first, by George. Two pieces of legislation  on the same agenda sponsored by the same person, but with two last names. Rep. Melanie George is the sponsor of HB 145, yet another real good piece of sentencing reform legislation, that has returned from the Senate with an amendment. Rep. Melanie Smith is the sponsor of HJR 15, which creates a working group designed to improve the Alternative Dispute Resolution process in Delaware. This could well be a first, as I’m guessing that Debbie Hudson got that ‘Capano’ excised from her name faster than it takes a cooler to sink to the bottom of a river.

Big thumbs-up to Rep. Darryl Scott for HB 309, which recognizes an inherent right to privacy when it comes to keeping information confidential in the wake of “new technological advances in internet use and social networking”; and:

…makes it unlawful for a public or nonpublic academic institution to mandate that a student or applicant disclose password or account information granting the academic institution access to the student’s or applicant’s social networking profile or account. This Bill also prohibits academic institutions from requesting that a student or applicant log onto their respective social networking site to provide the academic institution direct access to the student’s or applicant’s social networking site profile or account.

Kudos to all involved in crafting this legislation.

The rest of the House agenda features charter changes, meaning changes to the operating charters of various municipalities. These bills are sponsored by the respective Reps and Senators for the impacted municipalities, and, absent any local opposition, fly right through the General Assembly.

The Senate Agenda features one of those bills that makes me scratch my head. HB 87(Brady) “protects public transit operators by including that position in the list of other positions, such as volunteer firefighters and paramedics, that result in heightened levels for crimes in which the operator was a victim.” I think it simply creates a class system of victims. If you assault some bum, or, say, a social worker, it’s worth one set of lesser charges. But, if you attack a transit driver, it’s a more heinous offense with more onerous charges. If the crime is so bad, increase the penalties for the crime, not for the status of the victim. But that’s just me. Bill will almost assuredly pass unanimously like it did in the House.

While Sen. Mike Katz ponders the eternal verities of the National Popular Vote, bills like SB 218 fly through the General Assembly unexamined. Go ahead and read the synopsis. I dare ya. Then explain it to me.

A couple of what appear to be good bills from the AG’s office, this, and this round out the agenda.

Before I depart, let me address the issue of desk drawers,  as there appears to be some misunderstanding of it over on the National Popular Vote thread. An , um, understandable misunderstanding, if you will, since I don’t think I’ve ever explained it before. When I’ve talked about the President Pro-Tempore, be he Adams or DeLuca, putting a bill in his desk drawer, I don’t mean that he, and he alone, refuses to allow the bill to be considered in committee. I mean that the President Pro-Tempore, who appoints committee members, has made such appointments as to ensure that he has the votes to keep a bill bottled up in committee, either his own or someone else’s. That’s why people like Jim Vaughn, Bob Venables, and Nancy Cook were always on such committees, and why Republican Republicans (i.e. not Connor, Cloutier, or Sorenson) were on those committees. This was the practice that Michael Katz railed against. On the National Popular Vote bill, Katz has done exactly what he criticized DeLuca for doing. The President Pro-Tempore did not stack this committee. The committee has 4 D’s and 2 R’s. While Dave Sokola is a proud progressive, few of us would put Patti Blevins or Bob Marshall in that category (I would argue that Marshall is, but that’s an argument for another day). Yet, all three have voted to release the bill from committee. The two Rethugs are Rethug Rethugs, Booth and Lawson. They like the idea of enabling R’s to steal elections they could not otherwise win.  So, Sen. Mike Katz has indeed, by his decision that the bill doesn’t even deserve to be considered on the floor, unilaterally done his small part to enable the stealing of national elections by the R’s. And then he says that  ‘big special interest money’ is out to get him. That, my friends, defines the term, ‘bullshit’. You can try to parse the syllables any way you want, but that’s what he’s done, and that’s what he spews. And it’s every bit as blatant as Uncle Thurm bottling up equal rights for gays in his desk drawer.

Ya think we might talk about this on today’s Al Show? I think so…