Today’s all about ‘pass the stuff we’ve gotta pass, then get outta town’. For six weeks of JFC hearings.
Here’s yesterday’s Session Activity Report. Law-abiding Laurel residents can breathe easier now that nominations for Town Alderman and Assistant Town Alderman have been confirmed by the Senate.
Today’s Senate Agenda features one ‘must pass before the break’ bill: HB 49 (Osienski), which:
“provides post-pandemic related relief to both claimants receiving unemployment benefits and employers who are assessed unemployment taxes. This bill will increase the maximum weekly benefit amount payable to claimants seeking unemployment compensation benefits from the Delaware Department of Labor, Division of Unemployment Insurance from $400.00 a week to $450.00 a week. The funds necessary to pay the increased weekly benefit amounts will be paid from the Unemployment Trust Fund. Delaware currently pays unemployment claimants less per week in benefits than claimants are paid in each neighboring state.”
The bill has already passed the House unanimously.
SB 27 (Sturgeon) is the other featured bill. It:
“increases the statute of limitations for filing an action for recovery upon a claim for unpaid wages from 1 year to 2 years, making it consistent with the statute of limitations under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 201, et seq. Many employees who are terminated spend the first period of unemployment attempting to secure other employment. After this focus on finding employment ends, 1 year may have passed or be about to pass, preventing employees who are owed wages from a previous employer from seeking legal redress.”
Good bill. How many Rethugs will vote against it? All six? BTW, this Eric Buckson is trying to affect the manner of Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington”. You should’ve heard his ‘aw, shucks, I’m just the new guy here, just askin’ common sense questions’ demeanor he adopted for the Senate debate on SB 35. Not sure how long it’ll be until the eye-rolling begins. If it hasn’t already.
The two key ‘must pass’ bills on the House Agenda are SB 29 and SB 35. SB 35 is the Mini-Bond Bill that includes unwarranted giveaways and exemptions from state laws. It also includes the Community Workforce Agreements that ran into R opposition in the Senate. It remains to be seen if we’ll see an encore in the House. Gotta say, it’s more than a bad look for D’s when a significant number of Latino employers and workers show up in Leg Hall to oppose the bill. I halfheartedly support SB 29, which tries to gives voice to state retirees and public employee unions when it comes to state retiree benefits. At least we’ll maybe see some results fairly quickly.
Gov. Carney will release his proposed budget today, which will be the starting point for JFC deliberations starting next week.
With that, I’m back into legislative hibernation for the next six weeks. Don’t wake me up.