General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Thurs., June 13, 2019
Let’s start with some good news: The minimum wage increase bill cleared committee. The Forces Of Ee-Vil were out in force and are just getting revved up to drive a stake through the heart of this bill. I think it may have the votes to pass in the Senate. Don’t see any likely D defectors. In the House, you have DINO’s like Quin Johnson, Andria Bennett, and, most importantly, Pete Schwartzkopf. So its fate remains uncertain. I’d just like to see the bill pass the Senate unamended. BTW, any word from our D governor on this, or is he just ‘monitoring’ the situation? Don’t worry, John. The Chamber can’t take back your Award Of Honor. It’s yours unto perpetuity. You’ve earned it.
Here is yesterday’s Session Activity Report.
Wellwellwell, maybe Delaware will find itself in league with the Maritime Provinces after all. SB 73 (McBride), which would ultimately place Delaware year-round in the ‘Atlantic Standard Time’ zone, passed with only 4 nos. It’s unlikely that this will ever come to fruition as a whole lot of other events have to take place in other jurisdictions for this bill to take effect.
It’s no surprise that most Rethugs don’t want to give released prisoners a fighting chance to succeed upon release. Seven of them voted against SB 123 (McBride), and Sen. Delcollo went not voting. Only Senator Cloutier joined all the D’s in voting yes, which was enough to pass the bill.
Every senator voted to prevent adult establishments from setting up shop in venues that previously housed adult establishments. What can I say? I said it all yesterday.
The most interesting bill on today’s Senate Agenda is the one at the very bottom. HB 73 (Jaques) is the first leg of a Constitutional Amendment that would permit ‘no-excuses-needed’ absentee voting. A 2/3rds vote is required for passage, but I think that R opposition will be minimal. This time. Two years from now, when the second leg comes up, who knows?
I also like SB 141 (McDowell), which ‘… encourages Delaware’s institutions of higher education to assist foreign-born, student entrepreneurs, who are engaged in the development of new businesses and technologies in Delaware, to provide them with assistance in maintaining proper legal status within the United States’. The bill is designed to ‘…encourage the creation and development of new businesses and new technologies in Delaware, without creating a new program with new funding needs’.
Today’s House Agenda features (I think) the first Consent Agenda of the year. OK, newbies, time for a learning opportunity. A Consent Agenda contains several bills deemed by the Speaker to be non-controversial. One roll call will result in the passage of all the bills on the Consent Agenda. Any legislator may request that any bill be removed from the Consent Agenda, and that request must be honored. In this case, due to the nature of the bills on the Consent Agenda, a 2/3 vote will be required. You’re welcome.
…enables a key component of the Take Care Delaware program, a partnership between law enforcement and schools to adopt a trauma-informed approach to children who have been identified at the scene of a traumatic event. The Take Care Delaware program, which will start as a pilot, operates by a police officer or emergency-care provider alerting a child’s school about the child’s presence at a traumatic event that the police officer or emergency-care provider responded to. In order to avoid violations of the State Bureau of Investigation’s dissemination statute and the Victim’s Bill of Rights in Title 11, this bill creates a narrow exception to both statutes that allows police officers and emergency-care providers to send the child’s name to their school district or charter school so that the child’s teachers can ensure the child is handled in a trauma-informed way.
…creates the Delaware Health Insurance Individual Market Stabilization Reinsurance Program & Fund (the “Program”). The Program will be administered by the Delaware Health Care Commission in order to provide reinsurance to health insurance carriers that offer individual health benefit plans in Delaware. The Program will be funded with passthrough funds received from the federal government under the Affordable Care Act, funds provided by the Federal Government for reinsurance, and through a 2.75% annual assessment based on insurance carrier’s premium tax liability.
Uh, that’s about all that interests me today, but YMMV.
Surprising? But maybe not. The Chamber of Commerce team has pulling in a new ally in its never-ending quest to prevent all Delawareans from earning a living wage — the head of the Delaware Alliance for Nonprofit Advancement.
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2019/06/12/raising-minimum-wage-too-quickly-would-hurt-nonprofits-opinion/1431223001/
Her logic is perfect for setting off the dog whistles in Legislative Hall. If you raise the minimum wage, you might have to increase your grants to the nonprofits that now pay many of their employees below-average wages to perform services subcontracted by a state that does so to avoid paying market-rate wages to its own employees to do these jobs.
So much for thinking that the presumably caring people who head our nonprofits care about the economic well-being of their own employees.
FWIW, the author of this opinion piece had total compensation in 2017 of $139,600, according to the agency’s filing with the IRS — and that equals a full 20 percent of the organization’s expenses for the year.
Appalling.
Good pull here. This was brought to my attention yesterday.
This Sheila Bravo is getting the treatment this evening. May preempt the episode we had ready for tomorrow
She’s doing her job which is to advocate for the many smaller nonprofits which make up her membership. I guarantee her position has nothing to do with the state chamber. They can’t raise prices, many live hand to mouth with the crumbs from the general assembly. She is not your enemy.
Fire away.
Wrong. It is appalling that she is allowing her membership to be used like this.
If this is her idea of advocacy, She is terrible at her job and deserves termination for this.
Nah, bruv. Anyone, from chamber ghouls to non-profits grifters, who argue against a fair wage of at least $15 a hour get the full business.
Breila Shavo is taking $130 grand and argues against a living wage.
She is absolutely our political enemy. Watch what we do.
Mrs. Geek runs a grant-funded program in MD.
Every time I talk about the minimum wage, she breaks out into a cold sweat. Her program has mandatory ratios of staff to individuals served (I am being purposely obtuse here).
While she has been pushing her staff’s pay up annually, most still make a few bucks less than $15/hour. She is always bumping against what is earmarked for salaries in the grants and what she can actually pay.
But her fear is always that there will be a $15/hour minimum wage without a corresponding increase in grant funding from the Feds and the state of MD (her grantors).
It’s a valid concern. I suspect that it would be offset by the increased tax revenue, but someone needs to make sure those numbers are being run and that that grants are being fully funded with the new hourly minimum wage (and then some).
My missus also works for a large non profit. Fact is when we say everyone gets a living wage we mean everyone.
When we say everyone gets healthcare we mean everyone.
Etc. Must must think way bigger than this if we’re going to get anywhere.
Bozo Bravo took 130+ grand. That could be rearranged, as a start.
Do you agree that governments must also fund their mandates? Because that is what the DANA woman is saying.
If there is a grant made by the state to a non-profit that is based on $10/hour for employees, and that state raises minimum wage to $15, the funds allocated to the salaries at the non-profit should go up commensurate with the new rate.
Further, there should be a way for grantees to apply for those increases immediately (documentation, etc.) Lots of these grants are renewed every 3 years. The state must have a mechanism for this and it should be part of a minimum wage debate/movement.
The alternative is that these grants (and the poor people that they help) will be crushed between the rules governing their ratios, service levels and wages.
LG: Agreed that governments must fund their mandates (but all too often they don’t).
And the point Bravo is making here is that a $15/hour minimum wage will hurt nonprofits and, by extension, the people they serve, because she does not expect the government to raise its payments for these contracted programs.
Good for her — to the extent that she doesn’t trust the government.
But the problem here is her basic premise: she starts out by saying the minimum wage should not be increased because of the harm it would do to nonprofits. (Substitute “small business” or “restaurants” or “retail stores” for nonprofits and you get the Chamber of Commerce argument.)
What she should be saying is this: employees of nonprofit organizations, just like those who work in food service, at hardware stores, at Walmart, deserve a living wage. And, when the state does mandate a living wage for all employees, it must take the next step and make the appropriate adjustments to its contracts with the nonprofit agencies that provide essential services for Delaware’s citizens.
Instead, as is typical of those making $139,600 a year, she endorses the Chamber’s argument that the working poor should remain just that.
Listen to the podcast tomorrow.
If she wanted to say raise taxes and grant us more dough she could have done that without saying that $11/hr is too much too soon. It’s too little too slowly.
Entire thing is premised on paltry wages rise as the problem to be addressed. That’s not the problem.
I don’t care what the excuses are to pay people poverty wages. Especially when you’re drawing $130,000. Nah, dawg. I do not. Maybe the Delaware Alliance for Non Profit lobbying partnership grift should sign on to Kowalko’s tax brackets to raise revenue for grants then, huh? That would be an interesting op ed. Or an increase in LLC fees.
But no, she chose to frame the problem different. See it now? I bet you did all along.
By the way, I called for her resignation.
You get twisted up in technocratic bullshit and you don’t even have a philosophy that establishes the real issue.
It appears that your trigger sentence was this one:
Which can certainly send some people into a frenzy.
She also said:
Her point, I believe, is that no one in government has done one iota to get that funding secured for non-profits and with 3 year grant cycles, there’s no good mechanism for making up that difference. And I’m sure that her membership is indeed worried and openly complaining about it.
And for chrissakes, let’s stop shaming people that make $130K. Do you know what she does? What her education level is? Her employment history? I don’t, but some people make 130K for work they perform. She’s not some rent-seeking asshole or hedge-fund manager working the system instead of working a job.
My point stands. If you want to argue for more government funds then do it. If you want to use the lowest paid workers as the fulcrum of this argument you can fuck all the way off.
Also, I’m not shaming someone for their pay packet. I’m shaming someone getting that sum and arguing against a living wage for the folks who do her filing and scrub her toilets. Her education or experience is irrelevant in this regard. She embarrassed herself and should resign.
The trigger for me was the implication that she had signed up to lobby alongside the execrable chamber of commerce. I may have taken mediawatch too literally, and if the implication isn’t true, I’d be happy to know it.
At any rate I am duly rebuked.
Jason,
If she walks like a duck and she talks like a duck …
Take out “fast-food worker” or “first-time job holder” and sub in “nonprofit agency worker” and you’ve got the Chamber’s arguments, right down to how we’re going to have to lay some of those people off if we’re forced to pay them more
Sheila Bravo has a lot more in common with Chamber board members than she does with, say, a social worker at the Hicks Anderson Community Center.
I like how you called pointed critique a “frenzy” though. I may use that in some way.
One would think someone of her pedigree and experience could write a bit more clearly in any case.
Is it too much too soon? Do they support it even though they cannot afford it?
Additionally, as long as shit like this is happening where I live, I shame every affluent person as I deem necessary. Buckle up.
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/2019/06/13/group-living-under-95-talk-harsh-reality-illness-addiction/1443576001/
“Also, I’m not shaming someone for their pay packet.”
“Especially when you’re drawing $130,000. Nah, dawg. I do not.”
“Instead, as is typical of those making $139,600 a year, she endorses the Chamber’s argument that the working poor should remain just that.”
“Bozo Bravo took 130+ grand. That could be rearranged, as a start.”
“Breila Shavo is taking $130 grand and argues against a living wage.”
These are pointed critiques, apparently and not at all shaming someone for their pay packet.
Relative to arguing against minimum wage, you mean. If it wasn’t for that op-ed we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I didn’t go and look for it.
Is Sheila your wife? If you’re related you should say so?
Maybe your wife makes more! If so, tell her not to use keeping working people in poverty to make an argument.
Keep going though. You defending these fucking turds amuses me.
Again, I’ll decide who gets shamed, filleted and dragged through the dirt. Your suggestions have been noted and then ignored.
You may be uncomfortable with waging a class war, but rest assured the elites and the Chamber of Commerce are perfectly comfortable waging it against everyone else.
You probably shouldn’t listen to today’s podcast. You’re not ready for it.
In this case “fucking turds” = “non-profits that feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, educate the children of the above”
You’re a goddamn class act.
I’m not going to defend the lack of class. And I don’t disagree with what I think your point is – Non profits aren’t “the enemy”. At the same time, I do see how someone’s salary has some relevance when they are discussing someone else’s wages. No?
I didn’t get the anyone was being shamed for making $140K. I would just hope that anyone making decent money (and over $100K isn’t too shabby) would be looking for ways to push the wages of those less fortunate UP and not give ammunition/sound bites/quotes to be used by others to suppress wages. I’ll go farther and say that it would be even harder to swallow if that concern was voiced by Bloomberg or the Koch brothers. The further you are from minimum wage you are the more it sounds like you’re pulling the ladder up behind you so to speak.
REV wrote:
“Again, I’ll decide who gets shamed, filleted and dragged through the dirt. Your suggestions have been noted and then ignored.”
No, you won’t if you continue insulting people. Just stop doing this.
She’s not making $130,000, she’s making $140,000.
The typical justification is that she could make more in the private sector. In which case, she should do so, and leave the job to someone else. I’m not offended by that amount, because it’s actually low by non-profit standards. But let’s stop pretending that she’s worth that to this organization because she would be worth that to a different one. Bullshit to that argument, friend.
The notion that someone is worth that rate of pay just because they manage the place is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
This is the basic problem with knowledge-worker Democrats — they’re just fine with management salaries far out of line with worker salaries, because they’re often the ones making those salaries.
Which makes them neo-liberals rather than actual liberals.