General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., April 9, 2014

Lotsa action in the General Assembly Tuesday. Here’s the Session Activity Report.

The Senate passed legislation moving administration of defensive driving courses from the Insurance Commissioner’s office to the Division of Motor Vehicles; and the Blue Collar package discussed yesterday. A brief aside about our vaunted IC. Didja read any of the articles about the breakdown in talks between Nemours and United Healthcare? Didja notice that it’s Matt Denn trying to broker the deal? Didja notice that the only mention of Karen Weldin Stewart is that she, um, is also involved. Anyone who knows KWS understands that she is utterly incapable of contributing anything to high-stakes negotiations like these. It’s OK if you’re a narcissist with no other skills, but it’s not OK if you are expected to ensure that families can access desperately-needed care for their children, and you are not up to the task. If you’re looking at who has harmed the state more, KWS gets the nod over Chip Flowers b/c she’s truly bleeped things up. Can you say Highmark? But, I digress.

Legislation ‘recogniz(ing) tobacco and nicotine products as contraband in correctional facilities’ barely passed the Senate, 12-9. The roll call is all over the place. Can someone in the know clue us in as to what the debate was about?

A bill expanding police authority to make arrests for certain offenses passed the House with only one no vote. That one no vote? John Atkins, who has had his share of unscheduled and unfortunate meetings with police officers.

Committee Time! Starting with the House this week.

Paging Mitch Crane.  Is this a good bill, and, for the laypeople out here, what does it do? In the House Business Lapdog Committee.

A lengthy agenda in the House Administration Committee (I refuse to call the committee by its real name any more because (a) the name is stoopid; and (b) I think I’ve already made my point).  Pander-bear R’s want to “restrict(s) heads of State agencies, Cabinet Officials and the Executive Staff of the Governor” from lobbying for two years after leaving office. The penalty? An ‘unclassified misdemeanor’. That’ll scare the bleep out of ’em.

Since the Rethugs refuse to provide votes for ‘no excuses’ absentee voting, the D’s are…expanding the permissible excuses. HB 191(D. E. Williams). Here’s the synopsis:

This bill expands the business or occupation category of permissible absentee voters to include those who are unable to appear at the polling place “because of the nature of such person’s business occupation, including the business or occupation of providing care to his or her parent, spouse, or child who may require care due to illness, disability, or injury, or may require such person to travel or work such hours which might preclude them from appearing at their regular polling location.

The bill also eliminates the requirement to have any affidavit requesting an absentee ballot be notarized.

No R sponsors. But, then, you knew that.

HB 300(Baumbach), The Whistleblowers Protection Act, seeks to protect employees from employer retribution should they assist in any investigation of the employer. Real good bill, no R sponsors.

Two protection of privacy measures highlight today’s House Judiciary Committee meeting. HB 211(Scott) ‘expressly brings text messages within the meaning of electronic communication so as to ensure that text messages get the protections presently afforded to other voice and electronic communications’. HB 260(Bennett) would criminalize the production and dissemination of ‘revenge porn’, where, for example, an ex makes public a sex tape w/o the consent of the participant(s).

Onward to the Senate! First there is a Senate Agenda for today. The one bill of note is HB 227(M. Smith), which seeks to improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness when it comes to ‘cases involving minors who receive money or property through settlements, bequests, or other transfers’. One of the bill’s goals is to maximize said payments by reducing administrative costs.  HB 227 passed the House unanimously.

Dream Act legislation will be considered in today’s Senate Education Committee. SB 183(Marshall) enables Delaware residents who “are individuals of non-U.S. Citizen status, who graduate from high school and who arrived in the U.S. as minors” to pay in-state tuition rates at Delaware higher education institutions, and makes them eligible to apply for the SEED and Inspire Scholarship programs. I’d love to see this become law.

The Senate Executive Committee will waste no time in trying to move HB 265(Schwartzkopf) to the floor. We’re talking $51 mill in additional state revenues through certain corporate tax and fee increases, so I’m looking for a vote on Thursday in the full Senate. The committee will also consider (well, they’ll all have a good laugh, then bury…) SB 170(Bonini), which establishes a ‘Ronald Reagan Day’ in Delaware. In honor of Reagan, on that day (Feb. 6), everyone will be encouraged to forget everything they knew about Iran-Contra. The Committee will also consider nominations, including that of Andre Bouchard to be a chancellor on Chancery Court, the position vacated by recently-installed Supreme Court Chief Justice Leo Strine.

I’ll leave it to experts to explain the policy value of SB 181(Blevins), which makes material changes to the Child Protection Registry. It looks like important legislation, so I’d love some input from readers.

Finally, legislation to literally kill Delaware’s Official Wildlife Animal will be considered in the Senate Natural Resources Committee. You may know the story by now. If not, now you do. Let’s cut to the ‘chase’. From the News-Journal article:

In 2010, Delaware legislators – at the urging of fourth grade students at Joseph M. McVey Elementary School in Newark – designated the gray fox as the official state wildlife animal.

The bill enacting the designation noted that the gray fox is “a unique and primitive species, believed to be between 7 million and 10 million years old, which is indigenous to Delaware; and … is a swift and powerful animal capable of running up to 28 miles per hours and the only member of the canid family which is able to climb trees; and because the [gray] fox does not hibernate, in the words of the McVey students, it is “always ready like our soldiers at Dover Air Force Base …”

This week, four years after designating the gray fox as the official state wildlife animal, the House passed a bill classifying the gray fox, as well as skunks and weasels, as game animals. House Bill 98 amends the existing statute to allow the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to establish seasons and regulations for these species.

C’mon now. Are there so few targets for the bloodthirsty out there that they really need to doom a group of now-eighth-graders to years of intensive therapy? BTW, I sure hope that there is clarifying language in the bill to specifically enumerate the definitions for skunks and weasels.  Otherwise, certain legislative-types could face a ‘thinning of the herd’. This bill smells like it came out of the Skonk Works. BTW, the Skonk Works was a creation of famed cartoonist Al Capp for the comic strip Li’l Abner. And just what did the skonk works make?:

‘Kickapoo Joy Juice’: The Rivingtons

Yeah, yeah, yummy yum yum, you’re welcome.