General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., May 15, 2013
Just two more days before the Memorial Day 2-week recess.
Actually, during the two weeks, the Joint Finance Committee will meet to mark up the budget. Meaning, you’ll hear a lot of bitching by Gov. Walker’s Markell’s budgeteers. The more bitching, the better the budget, IMHO. I especially look forward to their outrage should state employees (and don’t forget us pensioners!) get raises. Governor, I’ve got three words for you: Tax your friends. Three more: Or shut up. Damn, that feels good.
I gotta say it: The Delaware General Assembly has done a great job of pushing back at the NRA. And its pigeon-maiming front man.
The House passed SB 16(Henry), which will help put an end to ‘straw purchases’ of firearms. The bill just squeaked through the Senate by an 11-10 vote, and the House passed it by a similarly-close 22-19 count. D’s voting no: Atkins, Bennett, Carson, Mulrooney(?), Paradee, and Walker(?). R'(s) voting yes: Ramone(!). The bill heads to the Governor for his signature. Great work all around here! If I were a wounded pigeon in Pa., I’d be veryvery afraid right about now. John Sigler has even more blood in his eye than usual.
The House also passed HB 88(Barbieri), which is designed to keep deadly weapons away from those with dangerous mental conditions. Here is that roll call. Rep. Peterman was the only no.
Beaucoups d’action on this last pre-break committee day.
Highlights from today’s House committee meetings:
Well, not necessarily highlights. For example today’s House Education Committee features HB 34(D. Short), which:
“establishes the Delaware School Safety and Security Fund to allow eligible public schools to compete for grant awards to partially or fully fund projects intended to improve school safety or security. The Department of Education shall administer the competitive grant program. This Act further requires all funding to be awarded by a five-member committee consisting of representatives from the Department of Education, Department of Safety and Homeland Security, the Office of Management and Budget, the Governor’s office, and the Delaware Association of School Administrators. Said committee shall meet no later than thirty days after the effective date of this Act to develop rules and regulations necessary to carry out the provisions of this Section.
Awards granted under this Section shall be limited to a maximum of $50,000 per school, with priority given to applications addressing a current unresolved safety or security issue, or an issue which would significantly improve the safety and security of the public school relative to the size of the investment.”
In other words, a boondoggle in search of a problem. At $5 mill a year. Idiocy masquerading as legislation. And $5 mill less for real educational needs.
Well, somebody is pushing for two new casinos or, as they’re called in Delaware, ‘video lottery agents’. HB 135 (D. E. Williams), in today’s Gaming & Parimutuels Committee, would do just that. Check out this craftily-worded synopsis:
…seek(s to) create jobs and new sources of revenue for the State of Delaware by, among other means, authorizing the addition of two new video lottery agents, one in Sussex County and one in New Castle County, through an application process conducted by a Lottery Economic Development Committee. This Act creates a nine member, politically-balanced Committee (is it possible, by definition, to have a nine-member politically balanced committee? 4 1/2 D’s and 4 1/2 R’s, perhaps?) with financial, accounting, or banking experience to select the sites and licensees. This Act also increases the number of required racing days to reflect the current amount of racing, and prevents the addition of video lottery agents from triggering a reduction in the minimum number of days that existing harness tracks must offer harness racing (hmmm, something hinky about that, methinks). Finally, this Act also expresses the intent of the General Assembly that the new video lottery casinos will be subject to a one-time license fee and ongoing license fees, as well as such fees as are necessary to create a level playing field for competition with video lottery agents who operate horse racing or harness racing, and directs the Department of Finance to prepare legislation implementing that intent.
Somebody paid for this bill. Who wants to fill in the blanks for me?
Yet another gun measure where the nexus of illegal possession and minimum mandatories converge. In today’s House Judiciary Committee. When it comes to minimum mandatories, it’s always a triumph of brochure material over common sense.
Also in the House Judiciary Committee, and probably apropos of nothing, we have HB 128(Walker). However, the cunning linguist in me can’t resist a synopsis that reads:
This bill modernizes the language of the statute to conform to the current practice of the Court.
Now, help me out here…if the Court is currently practicing in a manner not in conformity with the statute, then isn’t the court violating the statute? Is that Kosher? Just askin’.
Rep. Paul Baumbach has three modest, but positive, initiatives to assist residents in manufactured housing communities. HB 121, HB 106, and HB 107. Check ’em out. Quality legislation that I suspect are his own initiatives.
HB 38(Barbieri) increases the tax on ‘moist snuff’ and other tobacco products, not including cigarettes. These other products have apparently been taxed at a lower rate than cigarettes, and this bill would eliminate that disparity, with the new funding going to the Delaware Health Fund. In the House Revenue & Finance Committee.
Time for the Senate Committee highlights:
Have I perhaps mentioned that I like this Bryan Townsend guy? Here’s yet one more reason from today’s Senate Energy & Transit Committee meeting. SB 55 ‘adds members of the Public Service Commission to the definition of ‘public officer’ which would subject them, like many other individuals in positions of public trust, to certain financial disclosure requirements’. Simple government transparency, with a bipartisan group of sponsors.
The Senate Executive Committee considers an amendment to the Delaware Constitution that would ‘modernize the bail provisions within the Delaware Constitution…’. Since this is the first leg of a constitutional amendment, it would have to pass in both houses in two subsequent sessions of the Delaware General Assembly. Should it be approved this session, it would still require passage in the 2015-16 session.
While the House doesn’t work legislation on the floor on Wednesdays, the Senate does. Here is today’s Senate Agenda.
SS1/SB28(Peterson) enables state pensioners to work as per diem employees of the General Assembly without penalty. I initially misread this bill, as it does not in any way offer a pension to these employees. I’m all for this bill, and its bipartisan sponsorship indicates that it’s likely to pass.
I like HB 42(Barbieri), which ‘adds adult aunts and uncles to the list of relatives who may act as a surrogate to make health care decisions for an adult patient if the patient lacks capacity and there is no agent or guardian, no prior designated surrogate, the prior designated surrogate is unavailable, or the health-care directive does not address the specific issue’. Only Rep. Stephanie Bolden voted against this bill in the House, and it should fly through the Senate.
I also expect swift passage for HB 32(Longhurst), which ‘updates and streamlines the State’s Oil Pollution Act by eliminating a monetary cap for liability for damages’. Passed unanimously in the House.
Time for me to make swift passage to the WDEL studios, where Al Mascitti and I will wax poetic on All Things Delaware. WDEL1150-AM has eliminated the monetary cap on my salary, and I’m now making three times what I used to make! (Of course, I’m still liable for damages to its reputation, so it’s a wash.) This morning, 10-12.
Tags: Delaware casino expansion, El Somnambulo, Featured, John Sigler pigeon-maimer, Rep. Paul Baumbach, Sen. Bryan Townsend, Steve Tanzer Delaware
as well as such fees as are necessary to create a level playing field for competition with video lottery agents who operate horse racing or harness racing
Clearly this is supposed to benefit someone who wants a casino but not the horses. Which is OK, except it sounds as though the casino with the competitive advantage would be the one *without* the horses. It reads to me like whoever is paying for this doesn’t want to deal with the horses but wants to be sure that current racinos have little way to adjust their own business models.
And that might be your balanced political committee right there — half who want the horse racing and the other who don’t. 😆
“Public Service Commission to the definition of ‘public officer’ which would subject them, like many other individuals in positions of public trust, to certain financial disclosure requirements’’
This is long overdue, especially in a small state like Delaware where one only has to play 2 degrees of Kevin Bacon. The PSC makes decisions that directly affects the pocketbook of citizens (except those who don’t need water, sewer, etc – basically the dead).
At least in Sussex County, the lack of a regional approach and gerrymandering of utilities, such as wasterwater would be any political partisan redistricting process to shame.
Financial disclosure may not stop the idiotic way they carve out the utilities, but at least we will be able to confirm that it is stupidity rather than personal financial interest.
HB 34 is a ridiculous waste of resources for something that should have been done a long time ago, and done by professionals.
In the original language of Federal Homeland Security Grants (under which DE received tens of millions over multiple years) there was a requirement for security audits for all schools and public buildings.
Either those were done (and merely need to be updated) or they were not. If done, they would have actually been done by public safety officials who presumably knew what they were looking for. If nobody ever did them, one wonders where the money went.
What we really need is for a full security audit to be done on all schools and public buildings and then–instead of a bizarre competition–the relevant state authorities need to rank-order and prioritize which will receive funds first and then work down the list.
Again (ironically) this requirement has been around since 2002-2003, which makes me wonder more and more why we are going to spend $13.5 million on the Office of the Secretary of Safety and Homeland Security which serves (check the budget) to process paperwork rather than actually engage in activities to make us safer.
Cut that budget (let our current Secretary pimp for the FBI Director job on his own) and return the necessary oversight to DSP. The result? Conservatively, $60 million over the next five years to spend on improving school and public building security without spending a single new dime.
Sure, Steve, give a whole new project to the DSP. Its not like they don’t have duties and responsibilities.
I was with you for most of your post until you drifted into Libertarian “somethin for nuthin'” Things cost money. It would probably save a lot to let DSP handle this, but it would still cost money.
I’m not suggesting it wouldn’t cost money. I’m suggesting you take the money from the Office of the Secretary which is a gigantic and useless bureaucratic extravagance and give DSP $12 million per year over the next five years to do the audits and supervise the upgrades.
Steve,
Do you know what the Office of the Secretary does, or are you just trashing good people on dumb principle?
SW I know exactly what the Office of the Secretary does. I have worked in meetings with them, seen their work product, examined their budget in detail.
The first DE Sec of Safety and Homeland Security was the former chief of the MDSP who got out just before the scandal about his officers using improper methods to bug peaceful anti-war groups. He set up multiple work groups that never accomplished much of anything.
The current DE Sec came to us after some titular VP positions at major banks (most of which took govt bail-outs) after he got caught up in the politics that nailed Louis Freah as Director. Examine the budgets, especially the travel budgets.
I have worked with the DHS people who examine and review DE homeland security grant applications. In DHS there are several states known to be really bad at this for a long time. It used to be that to say a state was “as bad as Tennessee” was to slam them. Several have told me over the past few years that Delaware’s applications are “worse than Tennessee.”
You think that we’re getting anything of substance for that $13.5 million (which was only about $8.5 million two years ago), you dig it up. If the best you can come up with it fusion center participation and better radios, then I will know you actually looked.