General Assembly Prefile Profile
As the General Assembly heads into the second year of the current term, we are presented with this teaching opportunity. Primarily for the newbies, but you grizzled vets might learn a little something as well. We begin with the term ‘prefile’. The term refers to a group of bills filed prior to the legislature convening or reconvening. These bills are introduced, and are subsequently assigned to committee by either the Speaker of the House or the President Pro-Tempore of the Senate even though the General Assembly is not currently in session.
A prefile is often accompanied by a press release, or press releases, singing the praises of various bills in the prefile. Here’s a rewrite of such a release.
Here are the notable bills in a prefile package introduced in the House last week:
HB 270 (Mulrooney) creates a ‘Clean Water Trust, supported by dedicating several existing revenue sources and a proposed new dedicated Clean Water Surcharge that will be levied on personal income tax payments and business license fees. The surcharge will be capped at $40 for individual tax filers, $80 for individuals filing a joint return, and $45 for business licenses’. Among the cited uses for the funds are ‘more than $500 million in water and wastewater systems upgrades…statewide’; ‘more than $150 million in stormwater upgrades…throughout the State along with more than $75 million for removing toxic pollutants from various waterways’; not to mention, now pay attention ‘in addition, demand for agriculture cost-share funds used to reduce pollution from nutrients far surpasses available resources.’ OK, here’s my question. It appears, and I could well be wrong, that everybody in the state is being asked to pay for issues caused by a few industries and serial polluters. I’m totally fine with paying for the systems upgrades. I think it’s absolutely necessary. But why should I pay for decades of wanton disregard of environmental rules by certain industries, and why aren’t said industries being required to clean up the lion’s share of their own (literal) shit? Or, maybe they are? More information, please.
HB 300 (Longhurst) bans the bump stock, or, to quote from the synopsis, ‘makes it a crime to sell, transfer, buy, receive or possess a trigger crank or bump-fire device designed to accelerate the rate of fire of a semiautomatic rifle, making such weapon function more like an automatic weapon.’ This common sense bill has already elicited crocodile tears from that law-abiding gun-smuggling senator Brian Pettyjohn, who laments, ““Anybody that possesses, receives or has possession of one is automatically guilty of a Class E felony.” Fine, give the local yokels a seven-day window then. Since the device’s only purpose is to optimize human destruction, that only seems fair.
HB 285 (Bennett) is the latest attempt to keep weapons out of the hands of the deranged. Even the Rethugs are finally starting to come around on this one. We’ll see if it withstands the ‘jackbooted storm troopers’ meme of the NRA and the oxymoronically-named ‘Delaware Sportsmen’s Association’, of which the gun-totin’ Pettyjohn is a member.
HB 278 (Baumbach) changes the terms of elected school board members from 5 years to 4 years. Note: This is not the draft legislation providing for school board member recall.
HB 282 (Matthews) seeks to ensure that students in high poverty schools can afford educational enrichment activities like field trips.
OK, after the disaster of last June, I’m looking to ease myself back into the legislative morass slowly. Consider this the tiniest of baby steps.
I’ve spoken to someone with a working understanding of HB 270. In general, it looks like a much-needed bill. The projects that the bill would fund have to be done. Not only have our systems fallen behind, we also face the spectre of more flooding. Flood abatement is an important piece of this bill.
It is also a public works bill in the sense that it will create jobs. Jobs that need to be done to ensure our state’s well-being moving forward. Hell, if John Carney could get behind a similar initiative for restoring our roads and bridges, we wouldn’t need (well, actually we DON’T need) to throw money at a secret partnership to hand tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to corporations who are swimming in cash.
There’s more, of course, but, all in all, this could be a real boon to our state. We all make a modest investment to make a significant improvement to our quality of life. Imagine that–realizing true benefits via shared sacrifice.