General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., April 24, 2013

Man, it feels great to be part of one of the preeminent political blogs in the entire country! The coverage, analysis, and response to consideration of HB 75, the Marriage Equality Bill, was crack cocaine for all of us political junkies. Thanks to Delaware Dem and everyone who added to the threads! The bill faces a less certain result in the Senate, where the votes of  Cathy Cloutier, Bethany Hall-Long, and Ernesto Lopez will likely determine the result. If you are constituents of any of those senators, now is the time to contact them to encourage them to support HB 75. Be friendly, polite, and positive. Let them know that you’ll have their backs if they have yours.

For you legislative completists out there, here is yesterday’s session activity report. As expected, HB 40(Keeley), which extends the Automatic Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Mediation Program and the Office of Foreclosure Prevention for four more years, unanimously passed the Senate. Due to a technical amendment, the House will hold another vote before the bill heads to the Governor, no doubt by Thursday afternoon.

Not everyday can be yesterday. But my work goes on.

Here is today’s Senate Committee Hearing Schedule. Here’s what floats my boat:

Well, Sen. Bethany Hall-Long has scheduled a meeting of the Senate Health & Social Services Committee, but has provided no agenda. Unless the committee is just gonna sit around and not officially consider anything, that’s a no-no. Public notice and all that. BTW, this has become much rarer in the Senate than it had in the past. Coupled with immediate posting of roll calls online and live streaming, the Senate has made great strides when it comes to public access. One would hope that this non-agenda agenda is an outlier.

SB 47(Sokola) ‘authorizes the creation of public benefit corporations. A public benefit corporation is a for-profit entity which is managed not only for the pecuniary interests of its stockholders but also for the benefit of other persons, entities, communities or interests’. Since I’m functionally illiterate when it comes to corporate law, I offer this News-Journal article for explicative purposes. And this excerpt:

Senate Bill 47 would allow for the formation of “public benefits corporations” in Delaware. Such entities would be legally permitted to consider civic-minded responsibilities alongside generating profits for shareholders.

A nonprofit organization called B Lab has encouraged Delaware and other states to create public benefit corporation systems. If the law passes, B Lab officials said they know of several companies interested in reincorporating in Delaware, including Plum Organic, which makes a line of natural baby foods, and Change.org, the leading online petition platform.

No public benefit corporation has ever been publicly traded, supporters of the bill and legal experts said, and some doubt how much investment such a company would attract. But Andrew Kassoy, a co-founder of B Lab, believes that will change in the near future.

If one ever does go public, Kassoy said, it would want to incorporate in Delaware for the same reason many companies do: access to the best business court in the world and a consistent, accommodating legal and regulatory environment.

Interesting concept, bipartisan support. This bill’s worth watching. Senate Small Business Committee.

Highlights from today’s  House Committee Hearing Schedule:

HB 67(Scott) seeks to establish ‘firearms-free school zones’. IMHO, difficult to implement, unlikely to pass. House Education Committee.

HB 90(K. Williams), also in the House Education Committee, seeks to update and improve the workings of the School Choice Program. While the bill has a lengthy synopsis, I think the particulars are important:

This bill updates the school choice program, which has not received substantive attention since 1998. This bill aims to make it easier for parents to navigate the choice process by standardizing application forms and deadlines across traditional and charter schools. More specifically, the bill requires all local education agencies to accept a standard application form provided by the Department of Education, which must be available on the Department’s website. Further, the bill seeks to eliminate discrimination by districts against choice students by: (1) allowing districts to request supplemental application information from choice students only to the extent it requires the same information from attendance zone students; (2) limiting the supplemental criteria a receiving district may use to evaluate choice applications—after that, districts must use a lottery system; and (3) removing the provision that allows districts to reject applications of students with special needs. Districts would also be required to accept choice students until each school and/or program has reached 85% of its capacity. Districts would be required to hold a public information session about choice and enrollment opportunities by October 31 and report estimated capacity and projected enrollment information to the Department of Education by November 30; those estimates may be revised until January 30. Finally, the bill will create a task force to consider the current landscape of all school enrollment preferences to include magnet, vocational technical, and charter schools, and to develop recommendations as necessary.

Whaddayathink?

The House Rethugs get their annual chance to raise their fists at prevailing wage in the form of two bills before the House (House) Administration Committee. They ain’t goin’ nowhere.

That’s all I got.  I’m outta here.