Legislative Leftovers: A Few Post-July 1 Crumbs

*While the first leg of a constitutional amendment permitting ‘no-excuses absentee voting’ was stalled by Rethugs in the Senate, another bill with much more potential to enable early voting passed both houses and was signed into law.  HB 38 (Bentz) ‘establishes in-person early voting in Delaware beginning January 1, 2022. Registered voters will be allowed to vote in-person during at least 10 days before an election, up to and including the Saturday and Sunday immediately before the election at locations determined by the State Election Commissioner…this Act requires that for statewide elections there must be at least 1 in-person polling place in each county, and an additional location in the City of Wilmington.’

Of course, the devil is in the details. If the Department Of Elections does the bare minimum, which always seems to be the Delaware default, then the results will be less impactful. But if there are enough available locations to forestall long drives, then this could be a difference-maker. Hey, John how about loosening the purse strings? You know, for the sake of democracy?

*Some good news. For now, at least, the burgeoning Trone monopoly was kept on hold by the House. HB 138 (Ramone) was not worked. I’d like to think that our shining a light on this special interest bill might have made a difference.

Which inspires a thought.  We know that some legislation is crafted in a manner to hide the real intent of the bill, and to hide who the beneficiaries of the legislation are. As the General Assembly presumably becomes more transparent, why not add a drafting requirement that the origin of the legislation be included in every bill? We have no way of knowing whether something is a genuine legislative initiative, a proposal from a state agency and/or the Governor, or a proposal from outside government.

To give an example: If this year’s bill to hand a golden parachute to Sam Calagione had provided some information about its intent, it might not have passed. Or, if it did pass, all involved could have been held accountable. However, the bill was designed to hide its intent. Legislators either didn’t know what the bill did, or they did, but were afforded plausible deniability by the bill’s vagueness. All we know is that the two prime sponsors (McBride and Schwartzkopf) and Gov. John Carney were in on the secret.  There is no excuse for this, and it shouldn’t be that difficult to craft a means of letting people know that a special interest bill is a special interest bill, and to let people know who or what that special interest is.  If that’s a bridge too far, how about just putting “By Request” on such bills? There is a precedent for that, but it’s always been up to the legislator’s discretion to utilize the ‘by request’ designation. Make it a drafting requirement. That way, even if they don’t let us in on who the special interest is, we can at least do our detective work. Like Al did on the Total Wines giveaway.

Well. More of these clean-ups as more thoughts occur to me.