It’s shaping up as a quiet June as the Joint Finance Committee has pretty much finished up their work.
Bottom line: State employees get a raise (!) but teachers don’t, other stuff gets cut, no new revenue sources added to mix, corporations extort millions, which is why other stuff gets cut.
Here’s the News-Journal story.
We discussed this last year. There appeared to be a legitimate chance then that additional revenue could be raised via corporate franchise fee increases and/or creating a couple of additional tax brackets for wealthier citizens. Instead, Pete Schwartzkopf cut his own deal with the Senate Rethugs, and gave the finger to progressive members in his own caucus. That essentially doomed any new revenue streams for this year, as the legislators/lemmings were not going to raise taxes in an election year.
However, they were more than willing, desperate even, to throw tens of millions of dollars at DuPont and Chemours, allegedly to ‘save’ jobs and Chemours’ corporate headquarters. I know it’s redundant for me to point out that the sole reason for Chemours’ existence is to enable serial world-class polluter DuPont to get out from under clean-up liabilities. The invevitable Chemours bankruptcy (‘Hey, we’d love to clean up this toxic environmental disaster, but sadly we don’t have the money to do it’) inches ever closer to reality. A sharp-eyed tipster shared this video account with us. It is must viewing. Hey, we all knew it at the time and wrote about it at the time. Doesn’t bother the Generous Assembly. This should be a crime of the highest order, but it’s likely legal thanks to a bought-and-paid-for Congress. Markell, Levin, and the General Assembly are rewarding and enabling this activity by throwing tens of millions at it. The Delaware Way, ladies and gentlemen.
But, I digress. BTW, there’s one budgetary item that was increased beyond Gov. Markell’s initial proposal. If you guessed an additional $1.2 million for state police patrols in Sussex County, you would be correct.
Time for the inevitable ‘Waiting For Godot’ quote: “I can’t go on. I MUST go on.”
That always has a strangely liberating effect on me.
It’s Sunset Committee Day in the Senate, with virtually the entire agenda devoted to bills coming out of the Joint Sunset Committee. Those bills have all passed the House and generally deal with the boards that regulate occupations and professions in Delaware. One of the bills, though, changes the name of the committee itself to the “Joint Legislative Oversight and Sunset Committee”, which is a more accurate description of the committee’s work. In practice, very few operating boards/commissions, etc. are ‘sunset’, i. e. terminated, but the parameters governing how those bodies operate are changed by the legislature. In general, the balance the Sunset Committee seeks to strike is as follows: The least regulation necessary to insure the health, safety, and well-being of the public. The committee generally does a good job, and their work is largely overlooked by the rest of the General Assembly.
There’s also a notable bill that would expand the Syringe Exchange Program statewide. The program is currently geographically limited to the City of Wilmington. It’s hard to imagine even the most backwards bumpkins opposing this, as the heroin scourge is hardly limited to the City of Wilmington.
Oh, boy, do we have a ‘putting lipstick on a pig’ bill highlighting today’s House Agenda. Ah, but first, let’s refresh your memories about this issue. You know, civil forfeitures, aka police just taking stuff. Quoting my favorite pundit (myself):
I didn’t know, betcha that you didn’t either, that police can seize property, money and valuables when they suspect that the owners of said property, money and valuables are involved in drug-related crime. Betcha didn’t know that neither (a) the filing of charges and/or (b) convictions for said offenses were a prerequisite for police just taking stuff. Betcha didn’t know that it’s exceedingly difficult, if not down-right impossible, for innocent victims of said seizures to get their money, property and valuables back. Betcha didn’t know that the ‘proceeds’ go directly to a law enforcement slush fund called SLEAF. Betcha didn’t know that Delaware is the only state in the union that refuses to release the amount of money seized and how the money is spent.
Oh, and didja see how SLEAF, which disburses the filthy lucre and which is ‘not considered a public entity’, is comprised of eight prosecutors and law enforcement officials, all of whom are public servants? Pretty sneaky if not illegal.
So. HB 309(Mitchell) is our pig meets lipstick bill. It’s not even a bad bill. But it only addresses one small corner of this corrupt universe. The bill removes the ridiculous exemption that SLEAF enjoyed from the Freedom of Information Act. Nothing more. Except, and this is pretty interesting, the bill also:
…provides for a process by which law enforcement agencies can determine if their applications for SLEAF funds will be public records under FOIA before they decide whether to pursue those applications.
I don’t know about you, but doesn’t that sorta make you wonder exactly what these police agencies have been applying for all along? I think they should make the exemption elimination retroactive. I think the people of this state deserve to know what the police have done with the money they stole from people they ‘suspected’, but often never charged, of drug-related crimes.
The Delaware General Assembly has the authority to eliminate this legalized looting of its citizens. It is past time to right this wrong. But this bill won’t do it.
I like HB 332(Keeley), which ‘adds misdemeanor possession and paraphernalia marijuana offenses to the list of violations and offenses for which a person may be eligible for probation before judgment if the person otherwise qualifies for probation before judgment’. Of course, if we fully legalized marijuana in Delaware, we wouldn’t need this, but until then…
I’ll be back tomorrow with a preview of committee meetings. The action gets fast and furious this time of year, and we really need to be on the lookout for special interest bills that get ‘walked’ through the process in June. Join me tomorrow to see what perfidy awaits.