General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Thurs., Jan. 30, 2020

Although the bill hasn’t been introduced yet, legislation restoring the death penalty in Delaware is on its way.  It’s expected to be filed sometime during the break for Joint Finance Committee hearings.

Here’s yesterday’s Session Activity Report.  Aside to Nancy Willing: Both the Governor’s budget and a one-time supplemental budget have been introduced.  If my head stops throbbing, I’ll try to take a look. But you’re really good at spotting skulduggery in these bills. Let me know what you find.  I think that the supplemental bill is likely to house some pet projects, you know, of the ‘budget-smoothing’, one-time only kind. Uh, Nancy? Never mind. As of now there is no there there.  Just the bill title and the enactment clause.

The House and Senate are playing ping-pong with the landfill limitation bill. Yet another Senate amendment was added yesterday. The bill goes back to the House for the third and, hopefully final time. Hopefully, they’ll work it under suspension of rules today.

The Senate unanimously passed legislation sanctioning revenge porn.

We’ve got a fairly weighty and lengthy House Agenda today.  Whether all the bills get worked today prior to the six-week break for budget hearings remains to be seen.  But there are some bills that I like.

HB 263(Bentz) ‘requires that individual, group, and State employee insurance plans cap the amount an individual must pay for insulin prescriptions at $100 a month and must include at least 1 formulation of insulin on the lowest tier of the drug formulary developed and maintained by the carrier’.

HB 277(Longhurst) ‘establishes the crimes of possession of an unfinished firearm frame or receiver with no serial number, possession of and manufacturing a covert or undetectable firearm, possession of and manufacturing an untraceable firearm, and manufacturing or distributing a firearm using a three-dimensional printer’.  Two R’s are sponsors on the bill: Rep. Michael Smith and Sen. Cathy Cloutier.

HB 285(Longhurst) ‘requires all public and charter schools which have students in grades 6-12 to provide free feminine hygiene products in 50% of the bathrooms used by students who can have a menstrual cycle’,

Those are three pretty good bills. It will be interesting to see how many Second Amendment dead-enders oppose HB 277.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I also support SB 96(McDowell), which ‘Act creates the Division of Civil Rights and Public Trust within the Department of Justice which will be separate from the other Divisions within the Department of Justice and have a Director who reports directly to the Chief Deputy Attorney General, to avoid conflicts of interest with the work of the other Divisions’. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate, and I expect a similar result in the House.

I’ve already discussed the notable bills on today’s Senate Agenda. 

I’m gonna take a 12-hour Mucinex and wander around in a fog all day…see you in six weeks after the JFC hearings.