Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tues. June 26, 2018

This lame session of the General Assembly limps towards its merciful conclusion four session days hence. T, W, Th, and Saturday. If any historians have the stomach to look back, they will blame this session’s myriad embarassments on terrible leadership–a timid visionless governor, a President Pro-Tempore unsuited to the times, and a Speaker who only negotiates after he gives away half the store. We’re stuck with the governor for two more years. One can only hope that House and Senate leadership changes for the better. 

Did I mention that Speaker Pete only negotiates after he gives away half the store?  Here’s an example.  ‘Relief for casinos’. Here’s what Pete’s willing to do:

“Rep. Schwartzkopf has introduced an amendment that would keep part of the bill, effectively halving the fiscal impact by eliminating the $3 million table game license fee split between Dover Downs, Delaware Park, and Harrington Raceway and Casino and lowering the 29.4 percent table game rate to 15.5 percent. Not included are the provisions related to slots.

“The bottom line is this: Right now, they don’t have anything,” Rep. Schwartzkopf said Thursday. “They want the $15 million, they have nothing, I’m offering them $10 million and a passing bill, and I’m also offering that if they don’t make the additional $5 million with the sports betting, then I’ll come back and rework a deal with them. I don’t know that I can do much more than that.”

He’s already doing too much. And given away half the store. We should not bail out a business enterprise like this. We should just legalize the opening of more casinos and let the public decide who survives and who fails. Enough already.

I write this every session,  but it’s important. This is the most dangerous time of year. Beware the introduction of last-minute bills. Beware the resurrection of buried bills (like the one that enables Del-Tech to collect taxes from each and every one of you, a McDowell/Brainard scheme).  Beware, and be aware. Especially in the last days of the two-year session. With that in mind, let’s first look at Thursday’s Session Activity report.  Pay close attention to newly-introduced legislation.  For example, this bill sounds good. But is this just another case of McDowell sponsoring a Delmarva Power initiative? And, if it’s such a good bill, why is it only being introduced now? There may well be good answers, but the questions must be asked. Same holds true for any bill being introduced this late in session.

I have a question about today’s House Agenda. More specifically, the House Consent Agenda. For your newbies, a Consent Agenda is a group of bills deemed so non-controversial that the lot of them can be approved by just one roll call.  Any member may request the removal of a bill from the Consent Agenda, and the request must be honored. In the past, these bill were mostly inconsequential. Technical changes, charter changes, and the like. However, this Consent Agenda includes bills at least as consequential as those on the regular House Agenda.  Hey, the House Rules are the house rules. Just seems awfully early in the week to be rushing these bills through. (Looks like the Agenda is being reworked as I write this, and at least one bill on the Consent Agenda is being moved to the main Agenda).

The Budget Bill should be on the way to the governor by day’s end. It’s on the House Agenda and will certainly pass. Since only Bonini voted against it in the Senate, I look for very little opposition.

Other highlights:

SB 228 restores a program that Democrats should never have cut.  Since the funding was restored in the budget, the bill is really unnecessary. Except, it’s an election year.

After languishing forever, HB 71(Kowalko) finally makes it onto a House Agenda. There’s no good reason to vote no.  Unless some bigwig on the Cash Management Board has something they want to hide.

Today’s Senate Agenda primarily consists of House bills.  I’m a huge fan of HS1/HB 440 (Bentz), which unanimously passed the House.  It is also long past time to pass HB 165 (Baumbach), but somebody’s lobbying against the bill, and it does require a 3/5th vote.  Anyone who has ever traveled to, say California or the Pacific northwest, knows that there are plenty of wineries too small to sell their wines to retailers. The wines are not, and will not be, available in Delaware retail shops.  When people establish a relationship with the winemakers, there is no legitimate reason why they should not be able to enjoy those wines by having them shipped here.  Which means that someone has been throwing around money to prevent this reasonable initiative from passing. The bucks should stop here, today.  Hard to believe (well, that’s not true) that three Rethugs voted against HB 409 (Mulrooney), which ‘creates a state mass layoff and plant closing notice requirement law that ‘requires certain larger employers to provide their employees with adequate notice when they plan to go out of business, close a plant, or lay off a large number of employees’. The three House Rethugs were Briggs King, Collins and Yearick.  Need I point out that virtually any employer impacted by this bill will have received all sorts of state tax breaks, incentives and other taxpayer-funded largesse? Didn’t think so.

A relatively modest start to what I hope to be a relatively uneventful week. (Although the rescue of the assault weapons ban wouldn’t be unwelcome at all.)