General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., January 11, 2023

Both the House and the Senate passed series of Resolutions to organize for the upcoming legislative session.  They can conduct business now.  For legislative newbies, if you click on the previous link, you will find the Legislative Activity Report from yesterday.  I link to the most recent one every day.  You can find all legislative action, including new bills introduced, committee activity, and the results of each chamber’s Agenda.  Everything that happened the previous day in one convenient location.  Delaware’s Legislative Council does an excellent job on this.

Let me just take a look at the House Ethics rules, you know, just to make sure that the Toxic Twosome isn’t going all MAGAt on us…never mind.  All you need to know is that the House Ethics Committee is comprised of at least two members (Longhurst and Ramone) who have behaved in blatantly unethical fashion.  The foxes are in control of the hen house here.  The Rules themselves look OK, even though it doesn’t matter.

Before we look at today’s House Committee meetings, here’s just another note you might find interesting. Or not.  Why, you may be asking yourselves, is the first House bill introduced this season HB 25, and why is the first Senate bill SB 26?  The answer is that legislators can reserve bill numbers in advance.  Meaning that both HB 25 and SB 26 are the first available numbers that haven’t been previously reserved.  It’s possible that some of the reserved bills won’t be introduced for months yet.

Ho-kay.  Here are today’s scheduled House committee meetings. (The Senate has no publicly-scheduled activity today.)

The key bills are in the House Education Committee.  Might as well start with the only worthy bill of the lot. HB 34 (Williams) ‘requires school boards, including charter schools, to permit public comment on each agenda item presented for a vote at a school board meeting. The public comment period must take place before the school board vote on an agenda item. The school board may reasonably restrict the time, place, and manner of the public comment period.’  Pretty sure this bill will pass.  I mean, even the looney toons probably like the idea of this bill.

The three other bills are yet more tax break carve-outs, meaning less $$’s for public education:

HB 31 (Bush) has such a poorly-worded synopsis that I’m gonna use the more intelligible language from the Fiscal Note (fiscal notes are added to bills when there will be a change in General Fund revenue should they pass):

Currently, homeowners aged 65 or over who have resided in Delaware for a minimum of 10 years are eligible for a credit on their property taxes equal to 50% of the school tax levied or $500, whichever is less. This Act extends the existing credit by adding a new tier for those homeowners aged 65 or over who have resided in Delaware for 3 – 10 years. The credit is equal to 50% of the school tax levied or $400, whichever is less.

The reason why the 10-year minimum was established was to eliminate an incentive for people to retire here and reap immediate tax breaks.  This bill would enable more than 11,000 recent retirees to immediately become eligible for the break to the tune of over $8 mill in lost education revenue annually.  It, like its sponsor, sucks.

HB 30 (Bush) ‘removes the 3 year residency requirement to qualify for the disabled veteran tax credit.’  Again, the residency requirement was established to discourage people, in this case, veterans, from moving to Delaware to reap a tax break bonanza.  From the Fiscal Note:

3. There are 711 disabled veteran homeowners who have received this credit since its inception. Of this amount, 242 recipients are in New Castle County, 307 are in Kent County, and 162 are in Sussex County.

4. As of January 2021, there were approximately 2,270 disabled veterans living in Delaware with a 100%disability rating. Specifically, it is estimated that there are 987 in New Castle County, 767 in Kent County, and 516 in Sussex County. This figure shows a growth of approximately 7.1% annually, or 292 more eligible disabled veterans than the 1,978 eligible disabled veterans living in Delaware in 2019.

(Source: National Center for Veterans Analysis & Statistics’ January 2019 & 2021 report on VA Disability Compensation Recipients.) For purposes of this analysis, it is assumed that the 7.1% annual growth of eligible disabled veterans will continue.

While the loss in education funds is likely to ‘only’ be around $100K a year, the principle remains the same.  ‘Retire to Delaware, get a whole bunch’a tax breaks for doing absolutely nothing.’

Wait!  We’re not done yet.  Rep. Hensley and a bunch of MAGAts, along with (take note) D’s Bush, Bolden and Hoffner, are looking to excise yet another $8 mill annually from public education.  HB 29 (Hensley) ‘increases the Senior Real Property Tax credit to $750 from $400.’ Again, the rest of the synopsis makes no sense.  But the Fiscal Note does.  (Since I can’t link to PDF files, you can simply access fiscal notes by clicking on the links in the bill synopsis.)

There’s a ‘pass-the-buck’ bill in the so-called Public Safety & Homeland Security Committee today.  HB 35 (K. Williams) ‘charges the Department of Safety & Homeland Security, in cooperation with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and the Department of Transportation, to present a report and plan to the General Assembly no later than October 1, 2023 for a comprehensive motor vehicle noise and abatement program.’  Hey, we all hate excessive noise, right?  So let’s pass a bill requiring a bunch of bureaucrats to come up with a solution.  Hmmm, were I given to overthinking, I might conclude that the legislators themselves have bupkus. But I’m not given to overthinking.

In the same committee, check out HB 28 (Morris).  IMO, this bill raises the profound question–out of the thousands of porn sites out there, why is only Whitetails Unlimited getting their own special license plate?

But, I digress. Nothing outrageous in the House Administration Committee today, which is progress of a sort. Though it won’t last. Perhaps won’t last as long as it takes you to peruse the pulchritudinous pleasures over at Whitetails Unlimited.