General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., May 2, 2018

The Senate has ruined my fun! Yesterday, I wrote about the imminent Senate consideration of one of the worst bills of ALL-TI-I-I-I-ME. Was on today’s Senate Agenda. It’s no longer on today’s Senate Agenda. Perhaps President Pro-Tem McBride decided that it wasn’t a good look to consider that bill while gun control bills languish under his leadership. So, what was this joke of a bill? Here it is.  Think it has to do with Sharia Law. Or something. BTW, while we’re discussing Sen. Lawson as a legislator, is it asking too much to ensure that misspellings don’t appear in the title of a bill? Rhetorical question, the answer is yes. On today’s Senate Agenda: ‘AN ACT TO AMEND TITLE 10 OF THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO JUVENILE EXPUNGMENTS’. Even our bleeping spell-check catches that one. Not so sure about Jason330, though…

Here is yesterday’s Session Activity Report.  Some interesting stuff went down, or didn’t go down.  To wit:

* The amended bump stock bill passed with four no votes, including D’s Carson and Mulrooney. It can and should be brought up under suspension of rules and voted on in the Senate ASAP.

*Ernie Lopez’s ‘Keep pollution info out of the hands of DNREC’ bill was not worked in the Senate, and is not scheduled for the rest of the week.

*For reasons that only they can explain, not a single R in the House voted for a bill providing for the adoption of retired laboratory animals.  Hardly seems like a partisan issue, passed the Senate with 19 yes votes. Final House vote was 24-14, so the bill passes. But R opposition seems passing strange.

OK, kids, it’s committee preview time. Starting with the House. First, today’s committee lineup.

*Even (or is that especially?) the hackiest of Dover’s hacks earns brownie points for planting a big fat kiss on the BEE-hind of the Biden family. Yep, yet another bill naming something after the Bidens. The hack? Gerald Brady (Does he still live in his district?). The Something? The I-95 DELDOT Welcome Center. Transportation/Land Use/Infrastructure Committee.

*HB 261 (Briggs King)  effectively terminates the Delaware Advisory Council On Career and Technical Education. The reason? According to the synopsis, ‘it is clear’ that the $331,700 expended on this council ‘would produce greater benefits if utilized elsewhere’.  Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. But saying that it’s clear that the money could be better expended elsewhere doesn’t explain (a) why it’s clear; or (b) that anyone would make sure that it was expended better elsewhere. Not to mention, if that were the criteria for terminating agencies, aren’t there other agencies more worthy of termination? Like the FOIA-exempt public-private partnership that will funnel state money to connected private business interests? Or, any one of dozens of state agencies? Not to mention, isn’t this a job for the Joint Sunset Committee? Something smells about this bill. Education Committee.

*HB 380 (Schwartzkopf) corrects a mistake made in haste during last year’s budget deliberations.  And, you know, the realtors are suffering, and we can’t have that.  The bill ‘allows first-time home buyers to pay their portion of the realty transfer tax at the rate that was in effect prior to the increase that took effect on August 1, 2017. The credit is calculated as 0.5% of the first $400,000 in home value, with a maximum allowable credit of $2,000. This legislation is retroactive for any first-time home buyer who entered into a transaction for the transfer of real estate on or after August 1, 2017’.  Business Lapdog Committee.

*Yet another bill providing special protections for law enforcement that are not available to the general public.  HB 378 (Smyk)  ‘is intended to protect the privacy of law enforcement officers and their immediate family members by specifically exempting their personal identifying information from FOIA’. Of course it does. Administration.

*HB 348 (Mulrooney) limits the senior citizen tax exemption to those who have resided in Delaware for at least 10 years.  Revenue & Taxation.

Highlights of today’s Senate Committee meetings:

*SB 151 (Henry) ‘codifies the current federal requirement that health insurance plans include coverage for contraceptives and applies this requirement to individual, group, State employee, and public assistance plans’. Such legislation might not ordinarily require consideration, but just remember who is President. Banking/Business & Insurance.

*Several energy and utility rate bills will be considered in today’s Senate Environmental, Natural Resources & Energy Committee.  Nothing says ‘Delaware’ more than this one. Quel surprise. “Delaware (is) non-compliant with enforcement of underground excavation violations. This jeopardizes federal funding for the Commissions pipeline safety program”. Why? “Two principal reasons for this have been the lack of notification to State agencies and the lack of enforcement when damage is known.”  Like I said, there’s nothing more Delaware than that.  The state’s not seeking out violations and the state is not enforcing the law when violations are found.  Bill seeks to rectify this. Until the next time.

*Yet another minimum wage bill will be considered in today’s Labor Committee meeting. Was the Senate’s rubber-stamping of Bushweller’s giveaway to Dover Downs enough to earn the putative Democrat’s support for the minimum wage hike? We’ll likely find out. Soon.

The aforementioned ‘expungment’ bill is the only one that I find interesting on today’s Senate Agenda. The bill ‘streamlines Delaware’s juvenile expungement code by providing the Delaware Family Court the option to immediately order an expungement in the event that a felony case was terminated in favor of the juvenile (i.e. a juvenile was found not guilty, or the charges were dropped).’ Only seems fair. Bipartisanship sponsorship suggests that the bill will pass easily.

See ya’ tomorrow.