FEATURING: NICOLE & VAL TRY TO PULL ANOTHER FAST ONE!
But first, some real good news. The Paid Family & Medical Leave Act passed the Senate yesterday. All D’s voted for it. All R’s voted against it. I confess that I don’t understand some of the dismissiveness I’ve seen here on the blog. Some people seem shocked that employees and employers will have to pay a pittance to fund this bill. 0.08% of an employee’s weekly earnings divided equally between employee and employer. A: It’s a pittance; and B: The pittance is more than worth it. True fact: You need a revenue source to generate…revenue.
Here is yesterday’s Session Activity Report.
Oh, you wanna know what ‘Our PAL’ Val Longhurst and Nicole ‘No Longer’ Poore are up to? They’re trying to railroad through a bill that will give Delaware City revenue from an RV Park that might never be built, and should never be built. Introduced on March 3 and scheduled for a committee meeting today, SB 238 (Poore):
‘amends the Delaware City Charter to provide that the Mayor and Council may impose a 3% tax on gross rental income for any lot operating a park for recreational vehicles, load or truck campers, camping trailers, travel trailers, trailers, or motorhomes, located within the boundaries of the city. The Act further amends the Delaware City Charter to provide that the Mayor and Council may impose a tax, of no more than 3%, on rents or lease payments from apartments and other leased premises that are not subject to City property taxes and that are located within the boundaries of the city.
Thanks to annexations that should never have been permitted to happen, virtually all of the proposed ‘Underground City At Ft. DuPont’ is now within Delaware City limits. Please remember that the state gave this land away. Sen. Gay should remove this bill from today’s committee agenda until and unless all those who are concerned about this project, especially the residents of Delaware City, have their concerns heard. For those of you unfamiliar with just how ethically-sleazy, environmentally-dangerous, and legally-dubious this project is, here’s some cool reading material for you:
BTW, Our PAL Val? She’s jettisoned Delaware City from her district in the latest reapportionment, but she’s still running interference for all her cronies who she’s wired into the project. Wonder how Representative-To-Be Mimi Minor-Brown feels about that.
(Deep cleansing breath.)
Other than possible consideration of a few nominations from the Governor, today is entirely devoted to committee meetings.
Jeezus.
SS1/SB 188 (Mantzavinos) ‘increases the $2,000 pension exclusion otherwise available for military pensioners under age 60 to $12,500,
providing an incentive for military retirees under age 60 to locate in Delaware. This Act is effective for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2022′.
Uh, why do we want to do that? We don’t have enough retirees here already? A six-fold increase in pension exclusions? What public purpose does this bill serve? We need to fill up the VFW posts and the American Legion halls? Video poker machines just sitting there idle?
Banking, Business & Insurance.
SB 218 (Lopez) ‘prohibits discrimination based on an individual’s status as a living organ or tissue donor in the offering, issuance, cancellation, coverage, price, or other condition of an insurance policy, including a life, health, disability, or long-term care insurance policy.’ Don’t know if this solves a problem, or addresses a possible problem down the road.
Health & Social Services.
Just a reminder: I don’t generally review House bills in Senate committees or Senate bills in House committees if I’ve previously reviewed them. There are, of course exceptions. Hey, it’s my column. I do what I want.
HB 317 (Griffith) ‘directs the Department of Health and Social Services to develop and operate a medical coverage program for children in Delaware who are not otherwise covered, including children who are not documented. A child resident in the state whose family income is low enough that they would qualify on that basis for Medicaid or CHIP coverage, but is not eligible for Medicaid or other federally funded coverage, is eligible for coverage and medical care under this Act’. Once fully operational, it is projected that the bill will provide coverage to about 2000 children annually. Don’t need to tell you that I think this is a
great bill.
Health & Human Development.
HB 324 (Bush). Yet another bill creating yet another protected class with longer sentences attached to it. This bill ‘further defines Assault in the Second Degree to include other health care treatment providers and employees and hospital security personnel who are injured while performing their work-related duties’. I guess it’s cyclical. A shitload of these bills get enacted, the prisons get overcrowded, some of the bills get rolled back. What a way to run a railroad.
Public Safety & Homeland Security. BTW, wouldn’t you like to see the term ‘Law Enforcement Accountability’ added to the name of that committee?
HS1/HB 144 (K. Williams) ‘increases funding for preschool children with disabilities who are not counted in either “intensive” or “complex” special education units by revising the current ratio of 12.8 students per unit to 8.4 students per unit for children 3 years of age and older enrolled in a preschool program.’
Education.
HB 238 (Kowalko) ‘repeals the ability of a charter school to give preference in student admissions to students residing within a 5-mile radius of the school’. Makes sense. Repealing what an essence is an unfair advantage that some students have. The sponsors are all education progressives, but there aren’t a lot of them. We need more progressives.
Education.
HB 300 (Longhurst) ‘establishes a mental health services unit for Delaware middle schools.’
Education.
HB 301 (Longhurst) ‘requir(es) the Department of Education, with the approval of the State Board of Education, to establish and implement statewide mental health educational programs for each grade, kindergarten through grade 12, in each school district and charter school in this State.
Education.
Back tomorrow, presumably with a couple of agendas to review.
Uh…I don’t get how this is progressive. I’m sure it is me, but allowing Wilmington Charter (for example) to give a boost to students within 5 miles would seem to improve the chances for students from lower income families.
I’m guessing it’s because they AREN’T giving preference to low-income students, they’re likely creaming. Remember (for example) Wilmington Charter is right down the street from Westover Hills and only a hop/skip/jump from Centreville.
Here’s how it works:
The charter gets to CHOOSE which preferences they use and in which order they use them.
The five-mile radius has only ever really been invoked by Newark Charter to specifically exclude kids from Wilmington. I’d think a court would have ruled this illegal years ago because it specifically deprives tax-paying residents of the Christina School District who live in the city the ability to attend a charter school WITHIN the Christina School District.
Now, let’s look at another school. First State Montessori Academy, located in downtown Wilmington, uses the five-mile radius, but in the REVERSE way. They have it far down on the list of preferences SPECIFICALLY because they don’t WANT poor, Black Wilmington kids to attend because they’d likely require more services. They allows LETTERS OF INTEREST to take precedent over the five-mile radius. So, any suburban affluent white person who would have paid PRIVATE TUITION to send their kids to a Montessori school now just needs to WRITE A LETTER to the school showing an INTEREST and they bump to the top of the list.
The five-mile radius needs to be stricken down ASAP. The fact that so many Dems have fought Kowalko on this over the better part of the last decade is disturbing.
Thanks for explaining. Each school gets to choose its own mode of discrimination.
I guess we all owe this to Jack Markell.
Correct. They’re known in Code as “enrollment preferences.”
Actually, you owe it to Tom Carper.
And Newark Charter’s use of the 5-mile preference does more than exclude kids who live in the city portion of the Christina district. It’s also a way to keep out kids who live along a section of the Route 40 corridor (you know, “near Bear” and whatever the former Brookmont Farms is called these days).
Also, Newark Charter is as close to the MD border as possible, making their 5 mile radius a semi-circle. It stretches from the wedge, to Brookside, to Fox Run and Old County Rd.
Very good assessment. You should comment at the committee meeting
Rep. Kowalko
Wilmington Charter is 80% white or Asian. Black and Hispanic students account for about 16%, and the rest are multiracial.
I am not the education expert around these parts, but I seem to remember that the charter school initiative, and Wilmington Charter specifically since it was the first, was going to take the best ideas and implement them into the traditional public schools. Has that happened at all? I am genuinely curious.
No. Most charters are not very successful. For the elite charters, the secret ingredient is selectivity and exclusion, which regular public schools cannot copy.
The number one predictor of academic success is income level of parents.
Right on
Rep. Kowalko
This old post is evergreen:
http://delawareliberal.net/2015/09/10/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words-poverty-and-the-smarter-balanced-assessment/
I compared standardized test scores to levels of poverty in the school. Red Clay and the charters were almost perfectly predictive.
The post is 7 years old. Nothing significant has changed AFAIK.
I agree with you. I’m getting old, but I remember that as one of the big selling points before it opened. It’s clear that has not happened.
Charter school advocates will say the answer is “yes,” but the only significant example I heard — maybe 10 years ago — was Brandywine using a math curriculum used at Kuumba Academy.
Ron Russo, the founding head of Charter School of Wilmington, would probably say “no” or “very little,” and I’d have to agree.
Listen to how the charters promote themselves. They talk about being nimble, unfettered by the bureaucracy of the traditional districts, able to flex to meet the needs of their students. You don’t hear them talking about sharing their innovations with the traditional public schools.
The problem with the charters is that while they may have started as “innovation laboratories,” they soon pivoted to become niche academies — with focuses on Greek culture, junior ROTC, business and finance, public safety, Montessori, science, the arts, whatever. This smorgasbord of niche programming, in the name of “choice,” has peeled layer after layer of kids from the traditional public schools.
I’m not saying that charters are bad. Some of their programming is really good. But I am saying that they have weakened the traditional base of public education.
For this, I fault the local school districts. They have always had the authority to issue charters for new schools within their boundaries but, except for Red Clay, they have abdicated this power, leaving the state in charge. If the districts controlled the charters within their territory, I’d venture that the outcomes would be quite different. Two examples: Newark Charter, if part of Christina, might well have become a bastion of excellence in science and the arts, but it would serve the entire district and have an enrollment more representative of the district as a whole. First State Montessori, in the Wilmington portion of Christina, wouldn’t have been opened by the district because Christina then had a small Montessori program in one of its Wilmington buildings.
Chistina, you may have read, recently began crusading for a moratorium on charter schools, largely because it’s concerned about more enrollment losses. This view is totally misplaced. Christina ought to be banding with other districts to ask the General Assembly to take control of charters away from the Dept. of Education. Give the districts oversight of the charters and then the promise made in 1995 of sharing charters’ innovations with the traditional schools might finally be fulfilled.
The 5 mile radius preference used by Newark Charter (a public school? located in the Christina District) to preclude and exclude school-tax paying families in the CSD from being allowed to enter the lottery.
Rep. Kowalko
Wondering how the fight in the house will go down for SB 1. They need every single dem to vote for it, and I just don’t see that happening. Any chance they could pull one or two R’s?
They can afford to lose one. They need 25 to get to the 60% mark. I kinda think they will, but it’s not certain.
Is it a bad omen that Peter C. Schwartzkopf is not a sponsor?
Not necessarily. It of course, would be a BETTER omen if more D’s were signed on as sponsors.
how can more old people increase JOBS JOBS JOBS?
Right. Why in the fuck do we want to create an incentive for retired military to move to Delaware?
My second question: Where did that bill come from?
Retired military have these things called pensions. Guaranteed income they spend in our restaurants bars and beaches. Also when they buy here they pay in with transfer taxes. No problem growing the tax base. Kind of a weird bill to have a beef with
Only if you haven’t seen what all these retirees have done to Suxco. We’re already overrun with them. Let’s see how much more we can destroy the quality of life downstate.
Please enlighten us. How have veterans in sussex country “destroyed the quality of life”
It’s not that they’re veterans per se. It’s that we’ve already seen the results that poorly-planned growth and a huge influx of retirees have done to Sussex County.
We also know that many of these retirees have no real Delaware ties and care only about their own quality of life, not improving conditions for others. So, tell me again why we should recruit such retirees to Delaware.
They wanna move here? Fine. But we shouldn’t bribe ’em to move here.
Kind of a bad take som…if the Democratic Party watns to fight tax breaks for veterans have fun with that politically.
Also you sound very sussex yourself taking about “out of staters” That’s bumpkin talk. Half of new castle county is out of staters these days.
You’re getting dangerously close to troll purgatory. We shouldn’t be adding NEW incentives for retired veterans to move here. Which is what the bill does.
‘Eating at our restaurants’ will easily be offset by increased congestion, growing healthcare costs, and further degradation of our coastline. Why would we encourage that?
Delaware already gives that break to retired military over the age of 60. The only people who will get this break are those who are under 60.
The question is, why do we need to cater to them? Most other states don’t tax military pensions. Is there some evidence that this is a problem, or is it — as it usually is — a case of some whiner gaining a sympathetic ear?
“Guaranteed income they spend in our restaurants bars and beaches. ”
Is that worth their right-wing politics and their votes against every school funding referendum?
Well when all theses old people come into the state and they get feeble and infirmed they rise the cost of the states budget through the states share of Medicaid which is 40% of total costs. Maybe nows a good time to see if the old family land down in Laurel is ready to be developed into Plantations North.
Lot’s of service jobs for people who want to make min wage wiping the bed ridden asses of the greediest generation. Huzzah!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sylviaannhewlett/2011/10/17/the-ticking-time-bomb-of-eldercare/?sh=5a0123cf28db