Some days suck more than others. Yesterday, the Senate voted down an assault weapons ban, with the Senate’s answer to the ‘Get Off My Lawn’ guy, Brian Bushweller, dealing the death blow to the bill, thus enabling weapons wielders to deal literal death to victims in volleys of ammo. Whatever was Bushweller’s legacy has shrunk to near-nothingness in recent years. While voting against a decent minimum wage and against prospective victims of deadly weaponry, he has single-mindedly pursued bailouts for his bleeping Dover casino. To quote a certain President, ‘Sad’. So much for the momentum of Parkland. A Carperbot who only cares about racino owners can cavalierly dismiss the students who saw their classmates shot down. What a smug, self-satisfied asshole.
That pretty much closes the book on gun control for this session. The record will show that, when confronted with mass shootings throughout the land, the Delaware General Assembly largely stood with the bullies, the people who support every American’s right to possess a weapon of war. That’s a fail, with no safe. When it comes to school shootings, this is what passes for ‘protection’. Pathetic.
Here is yesterday’s Session Activity Report. The Governor signed several bills, including Sen. McDowell’s bill enabling electric and gas utilities to raise rates w/o PSC permission under certain circumstances. There was a time when Sen. McDowell would have been the last person to run such a bill. That time, however, was decades ago, which is when he should have retired. His last twenty years in the Senate have largely been a repudiation of his reform efforts that preceded them. Another legacy tarnished.
Let’s look at today’s committee highlights, starting with the House. This will be the last regularly scheduled committee day in the House, so there are bound to be loads of bills to be considered. Because of the press of legislation, I will only highlight House bills in the House and Senate bills in the Senate as we’ve presumably discussed bills crossing over when they were first considered in the house of origin. Here’s what struck my interest:
*HB 450 (Matthews) deserves passage. It provides for the expungement of criminal records if “(1) an arrest did not lead to a guilty disposition or (2) an isolated conviction has been followed by a significant amount of time spent staying out of trouble with the law.” It does more than that. I encourage you to click on the link and read the entire synopsis. Judiciary.
*HB 71 (Kowalko) ‘adds appointed members of the Cash Management Policy Board to the definition of “public officers’ for the purpose of requiring financial disclosure. You see what Pete ‘n Val did here? This was a recommendation of the Joint Sunset Committee back in 2016. Instead of assigning this bill to the Sunset Committee, Speaker Pete buried it in the House Administration Committee, where it has languished since March of 2017. Dick move by a dick.
*HS1/HB 360(Keeley) attempts to ‘combat sexual harassment in the workplace and to ensure the safety and dignity of all employees in Delaware’ by doing the following:
This bill defines sexual harassment and makes employers responsible for the sexual harassment of an employee by a supervisor or by another employee when the employer knew or should have known about it and failed to take appropriate corrective action. Moreover, this bill prevents an employer from retaliating against an employee for filing a discrimination charge. This bill includes a requirement that the Department of Labor create an information sheet pertaining to sexual harassment that employers must distribute to employees. Employers having more than 50 or more employees in Delaware will be required to provide sexual harassment training to all employees and supervisory employees which must be conducted every 2 years. This bill also empowers the Department of Labor to investigate violations of this Act and gives the Department jurisdiction over all sexual harassment cases which includes an administrative process.
Needless to say, the Chamber and its moneyed minions are bleating the most about undue hardship on business. Labor.
*SB 262 (Walsh), aka the ‘Share The Care Act’, ‘permits a responsible caregiver to give permission to an individual employed by a home care agency selected by the responsible caregiver to administer medications to an adult individual who lacks decision-making capacity in the individual’s residence’. Sunset.
*SB 203 (Delcollo) is the Rethugs’ alternative to gun control. Yep, increase the penalties for gun-related offenses. Brochure material. Judiciary & Community Affairs, the same committee that buried the assault weapons bill.
*SS1/SB 207 (Hansen) essentially seeks to mobilize all state resources to combat oil drilling off the Delaware coast. Betcha that everybody votes for this one. Environmental, Natural Resources & Energy.
*Oh, Christ, guess who has been nominated to serve on the Industrial Accident Board? Vince D’Anna. To paraphrase Larry King, ‘Look up ‘Delaware political hack’ in the dictionary and you’ll find a picture of Vince D’Anna’. How big a hack and for how long? Liberal Geek may remember this one from the Wayback Machine. I’m sure that Nancy Willing remembers this one. If Carney was capable of embarrassment, he would be embarrassed for exhuming this serial scumbag from his political grave. The Senate should summarily reject this nomination. They won’t. Executive Committee.
Quite the consequential Senate Agenda today. The Budget Bill. Bonuses for State Employees and Pensioners. And two important bills seeking to minimize the use of cash bail to keep non-adjudicated suspects in jail: SB 221 and SB 222, both sponsored by Sen. Townsend.
I can only hope that this legislative day sucks less than yesterday. Tune in tomorrow to see what happens.