General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Thurs., May 16, 2019

This General Assembly has jumped the shark.  Amoral leadership plus some new members coming up short. It’s become difficult to write about this group of underachievers, but I figure that not writing about them only further enables them.

Some of the latest disgraces:

*HB 46(Kowalko), which finally helps provide manufactured home owner residents a level legal playing field, will receive a final vote in the House today. The disgrace was in the form of an amendment sponsored by, wait for it, Laura Sturgeon, that would have changed from 3% to 5% the rent increase that would have triggered access to the legal fund. She said that she would not support the bill without the amendment. Fortunately, Bruce Ennis was able to work with the homeowners group to craft an amendment that was acceptable and that mollified Sturgeon.  Everybody’s happy now, no thanks to Sturgeon.

*Legislation restoring the death penalty will soon rear its executioner’s mask again.  And, yes, it could well pass.  Delaware’s death penalty was deemed unconstitutional due to the US Supreme Court ruling a similar statute in Florida as being unconstitutional. The bill would address the issues that precipitated the ruling.  And John Carney?:

Gov. John Carney, a Democrat, is against the death penalty but has said he is willing to allow a carve- out for individuals who kill members of law enforcement. His office did not respond to a request for comment.

Hey, even his self-proclaimed ‘Catholic faith’ has its limits.

*The Business Lapdog Committee decides that the chemical industry is more important than children’s lives. As John Kowalko wrote yesterday, legislation was buried in committe that would’prohibit the manufacture, sale, or distribution of children’s products, upholstered furniture used in residences, and mattresses that contain harmful flame-retardant chemicals. These flame retardants have been found to cause cancer, particularly to firefighters who are extinguishing fires that involve products that contain these chemicals’.  Only Paul Baumbach and Ray Siegfried voted to release the bill from committee. Meaning that newcomers Bill Bush, Krista Griffith and Sherry Dorsey Walker joined Usual Suspects Andria Bennett and Quinn Johnson in siding with the industry over public safety. Of course, that’s why Speaker Pete dumped this bill into the Business Lapdog Committee in the first place.

There’s more, but it’ll keep for a few paragraphs.

Here’s yesterday’s Session Report.

Today’s House Agenda heralds hopefully the final pro forma vote on HB 46, which I discussed above.

I support HB 59(Bennett), which ‘requires the Secretary of the Department of Transportation to publish the transaction history for funds allocated to each member of the General Assembly under the Community Transportation Fund’.  Not much more to…w-w-w-wait, is that Gerald Brady‘s name I see as one of the bill’s sponsors? Why, yes it is. Hey, Gerald, if this bill had been in effect during your entire term in office, would it have revealed how you and Bud Freel moved public money around to pave the St. Anthony Senior Center parking lot?  Once a hypocrite, always a hypocrite.

Last and least on today’s agenda is the bill creating a Prescription Opioid Impact Fund with a princely miserly sum of between $2.5 and $2.8 mill a year.  Because, we don’t really want to hurt the companies behind this epidemic, but we want to make it look like we’re doing something b/c ‘corporations’. Oh, and that doesn’t even mention all of the hands trying to get money out of that paltry pot. Literally, the least the General Assembly could do.

Today’s Senate Agenda features the following ‘highlights’:

Can someone explain to me why we can’t just do all these lodging tax initiatives with one bill?  Rehoboth Beach now wants to get that revenue. Fine. Just make the bleeping thing statewide and be done with it.

I don’t generally discuss ordinary house bills when they appear on the Senate Agenda, but I’ll make an exception for HB 40(PAL Longhurst/Nicole ‘No Longer’ Poore). Not necessarily b/c of what this bill does, although it’s couched with enough legalisms to enable some sneakiness, but because of the smarminess surrounding this entire project. Especially for you newbies, read this tremendously incisive piece from perhaps Delaware’s finest commentator. Maybe this bill is innocuous, Maybe it’s not. But this project is far from innocuous, and far from Kosher.

Good, thoughtful legislation from Sen. Lockman which again seeks to undo incalculable damage perpetrated on mostly minorities by the racist cabal of Tom Sharp, Jane Brady, Jim Vaughn and Wayne Smith.

Might as well end on a rare positive note.

Now, I literally need a shower. Smell ya’ later.