General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., Jan. 26, 2022
Get yer coffee and set yerselves down to watch a committee meeting or two this morning. They’re starting early. With two major bills being considered.
Paid Family & Medical Leave. 10 AM. The bill will clear committee since all D senators are sponsors or co-sponsors on the bill. The bill will not be run in the Senate on Thursday. Since it is a substitute bill, sponsors want to make sure that there are no technical corrections that need to be addressed, and they want to provide sufficient time for the senators and the public to look at the substitute. It’s a lengthy bill, so that’s a ‘fair play to you’ to the Senate sponsors.
Marijuana Legalization. 11 AM. Should be a marathon. However, based on the committee membership and the bill sponsorship, the bill is likely to clear House committee. All 9 D committee members are on the bill as sponsors or co-sponsors. Gonna try to watch this one, just to see if, and how many, police testify against the bill. Although, it’s possible they may (figuratively, one can only hope) hold their fire til a later date.
Here is yesterday’s Session (Relative In-)Activity Report.
We’re once again solely in Committee meeting mode today. Other Senate Committee highlights:
SB 205 (Gay): Expands the availability of free feminine hygiene products at all public and charter schools. Health & Social Services.
SB 208 (Walsh): Clarifies that an employer is liable to an employee for liquidated damages if the employer does not make wages available on the next payday after an employee quits, resigns, is discharged, suspended, or laid off.
Today’s other House Committee highlights:
HB 283 (K. Williams) disburses money from one of those law enforcement slush funds to provide $100K to the Human Trafficking Interagency Coordinating Council which, frankly has done a piss-poor job of enforcing some pretty darn strong human trafficking statutes. The money comes from something called the Fund to Combat Violent Crimes. That fund gets its money from, wait for it, $15 penalties ‘imposed on and collected from defendants for certain crimes or civil violations’. If that’s not a slush fund, I don’t know what is. Judiciary.
HS1/HB 264 (Griffith) ‘permits a person who has been the victim of non-consensual sexual conduct or non-consensual sexual penetration to apply for a sexual violence protective order if the person has a reasonable fear, based on specific conduct occurring contemporaneously or subsequent to the non-consensual sexual conduct or penetration, that the perpetrator of the sexual conduct will harm the petitioner in the future’. Judiciary.
HB 204 (K. Williams) ‘provides a means by which private schools and youth camps operated by private schools can obtain criminal background checks for potential employees and volunteers…’ and ‘also clarifies that the Department of Education is a child serving entity and its employees are obligated to undergo background checks’. Hmmm, something about the term ‘child serving’ seems a little…off. Why am I reminded of a certain Twilight Zone episode whose alien visitors merely want ‘to serve Man’? Education.
Back tomorrow with what I expect will be two relatively truncated Agendas.
I looked it up, but I’m still not sure what Liquidated Damages means in the context of someone quitting or being fired:
Liquidated Damages are a variety of actual damages. Most often, the term “liquidated damages” appears in a contract, and often is the title for a whole clause or section. Parties to a contract use liquidated damages where actual damages, though real, are difficult or impossible to prove.
It means double damages. If your last paycheck was supposed to be for $600, they would owe you $1200. They would also owe you pre-judgment and post-judgment interest, and if the Department of Labor files the lawsuit on your behalf they’re potentially going to owe $1,000 to $5,000 in civil penalties.
Thanks.
Watching the Paid Family Leave discussion. Senators are actually EXCITED to support this bill.Sens. Pinkney and Gay are pretty emotional. Makes me feel great.
There has to be a story behind the big green light this bill is getting. Ok. Sarah McBride is like the anti-Kowalko in terms of style, but that can’t be the whole deal.
I want the inside dope on how this got so greased that it even picked up a mention from Governor “MY hANdS aRE TieD”
Sen. McBride spent, according to her own account, over 100 hours speaking with people in the business community (as well as loads of time speaking to groups strongly supportive of the concept).
The changes in the bill reflect, at least in part, some of the concerns from the business community.
Having said that, we don’t know if there’s a ‘big green light’ yet. The bill certainly has the votes in the Senate.
Listening to the committee discussion, it sounds more like there is/was a critical mass of support for this bill so large that it was pointless for Carney to push back on it.
An effective legislator WORKS to build this level of support. Sen. McBride did the work. That work looks likely to bring about important protection for a whole lot of Delawareans, especially poorer Delawareans.
How is it funded? that might be a clue. I don’t have time to read the bill today.
All due respect to Sen McBride, but that’s a good point.
From Delaware Business Times:
“Employers would split those contributions evenly with their worker”
I hope that means .08% each?
“businesses with fewer than 20 employees could opt out of the employer portion”
There’s the grease.
I know that the funds are to come equally from employers and employees.
Looking at the bill, that’s no longer in there. I think every covered business is split, but businesses under 10 for parental and 25 for care and medical are not automatically included. I think that’s the compromise. But I think it’s split for every biz in the program in the new version.
Every state paid leave program is funded by a payroll contribution. Some are all on employee. This is split. Are social security and Medicare now bad?
Nope. I think the compromise was to permit employers with fewer than 20 to opt out of their portion.
I believe that this bill is the BEST bill the sponsors believed could pass. It’s a damn good bill.
No, but they’re badly flawed by the design which takes money out of your paycheck instead of taking the entire sum from the employer.
You pay taxes on that portion of your “pay” that goes toward the tax. Your employer gets to write it off. You don’t.
It’s like when you buy liquor in Maryland — the retail price includes the state alcohol tax, on which you then pay the state sales tax. Double indemnity.
Quick math tells me that single people will be up in arms. Split that .8 percent and its $4 out of every $1000 from your paycheck. If you’re making $50K, that’s $200; or $300 at $75K. The singletons will gripe that they’re paying out for a bennie they won’t get to use.
single people have parents who need caregiving and single people have their own medical needs. the bill covers both. this isn’t just parental leave.
Let’s say your $75K person takes 8 weeks of leave. That’s $300 for $9,000 worth of leave (it’s 80% of salary, I believe).
SW.. your math is pretty good but you solved the wrong problem, to put it charitably.
$300 is the contribution of one $75K employee for one year. But presumably the leave will be paid out of the pooled contributions of many employees and employers over many years (assuming it works like Social Security and Medicare).
That does raise the question of where and how the pooled funds are maintained, and who guarantees them. I still haven’t read the bill.
Then read the fucking bill. It’s online. The substitute, not the original. I linked to it. Right up top here.
If your questions aren’t answered, THEN ask them.
JEE-zus.
So what’s the problem?
I am single and childless and happy to have a portion of my paycheck go to my hardworking colleagues who are almost all parents. They deserve it.
This will also help those who care for aging relatives, who get sick, and so much more. Anyone in the workforce indeed could be helped by this bill.