General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., May 3, 2023

Thumbs-up to the General Assembly’s work yesterday.

SS1/SB 2(Lockman) passed the Senate on a straight party line vote of 15-6.   Meaning, both Kyra Hoffner and Russ Huxtable voted for it.  With a seemingly exponential increase in gun violence, the NRA’s wilful mangling of what the Second Amendment means is becoming less popular by the day.  Can’t wait to see the House roll call on this bill…

HB 99 (Heffernan) cleared House committee as well.  I hope for a relatively quick floor vote on this one so that we can officially determine who the climate change deniers are in the House.

Here is yesterday’s Session Activity Report.

Only one bill on today’s Senate Agenda. SB 97 (Sokola) seeks to finish the job of making the Delaware Code gender-silent:

This Act serves two purposes. First, Section 1 of this Act directs and authorizes the Code Revisors to use gender silent techniques to ensure masculine or feminine pronouns are not used in Delaware Code unless the usage requires otherwise. Second, the goal of Sections 2 through 141 of this Act is to complete the process of removing purely masculine pronouns by using gender silent techniques, except in instances where it could not be determined which noun the masculine pronoun applied to.

The bill is sponsored by the D and R leadership in both houses.

Busy Committee schedule today.  Let’s start with the Senate:

SB 74 (Hansen).  Ever have this happen to you?  Your health care professional retires, and you find it almost impossible to track down your patient records.  This is one of two bills designed to put an end to this, the other being HB 105.  SB 74:

…establishes requirements for the handling of treatment records for all of the following health-care providers under Title 24: 1. Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (certified nurse practitioners), Chapter 19. 2. Licensees under the Board of Mental Health and Chemical Dependency Professionals, Chapter 30: mental health professional counselors and associate counselors, chemical dependency professionals, marriage and family therapists, professional art therapists. 3. Psychologists, Chapter 35. 4. Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Chapter 39. Under current law, a patient or client does not have a right or clear procedure by which to obtain a copy of their record when one of these practitioners closes a practice, dies, terminates a patient relationship, or is incapacitated. The requirements established under this Act are modeled on the patient record requirements and procedures for physicians…

Excellent bill.  Health & Social Services.

SB 101 (Hansen) ‘amends the Uniform Controlled Substances Act to establish quantity tiers specific to drug offenses involving fentanyl.’  I recognize the existential threat of fentanyl.  Having been through the excessive stacking of charges that Delaware’s most racist legislators, along with then-AG Jane Brady, enacted back in the day, I just want to make sure that this statute will be enforced responsibly.  We’ll discuss another bill a little later which is more alarming.  I think this bill is fine on its own, just don’t want to see a new trend of stacking charges emerging. Health & Social Services.

HB 104 (Bush) cuts away even more so-called bureaucratic red tape that hinders rampant and rapacious development.  It is being pushed by Gov. Carney, whose legacy can be summed up by the awards he’s received/will receive from the State Chamber of Commerce.  I’ve spoken to some House members who believe they were misled on this bill.  Here’s hoping that the Senate will apply more due diligence.  Housing & Land Use.  If one of your senators is on that list, you might want to contact them. It’s a pretty good group of Senators.

SB 102 (Townsend) closes a loophole in the prevailing wage statute that, of course, had been exploited by non-union contractors.  Because they don’t deal in good faith. Labor.

SB 100 (Mantzavinos) ‘adds Drug Dealing or Possession – Tier 3 to the list of violent felonies under section 4201(c) of Title 11 in recognition of the association of higher drug volumes and gun violence‘.  This is the more-concerning companion piece to SB 100 discussed above.  Defining ‘drug dealing or possession’ as a violent felony only makes sense if violence was committed, right? Exigent circumstances often make for bad law, and this could be one of those situations.  This is a stretch that needs to be considered by committee, in this case, the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Not everything that Sen. Mantzavinos introduces, sucks.  I like SB 8, which ‘protects patients from unfair debt collection practices for medical debt, including prohibiting large health care facilities from charging interest and late fees, requiring facilities to offer reasonable payment plans, limiting the sale of debt to debt collectors unless an agreement is made to keep protections in place, providing minimum time before certain collections actions may be taken, limiting liability for the medical debt of others, and preventing the reporting of medical debt to consumer credit reporting agencies for at least one year after the debt was incurred.’ Right on! Banking, Business, Insurance, & Technology (BTW, I believe that the use of the Oxford Comma is appropriate here, since Insurance & Technology are not of a piece with each other.  What saieth the self-styled stylists?) (BTWBTW, Vampire Weekend did a song about it):

You don’t get this with any other daily review of the Delaware General Assembly! But, I digress.

Today’s House committee highlights:

HB 118 (Hensley) is stoopid.  (How’s that for sophisticated analysis?)  But it is.  Check out this synopsis:

Due to continuing concerns over the negative health effects secondhand smoke will have on the youth of Delaware, this bill adds Smoking Restrictions within vehicles if a person under the age of eighteen (18) is in the vehicle. Also, it makes clear that a police officer will not stop or detain a car solely on suspicion of having violated this Statute.

OK, so Hensley is introducing this bill ‘due to continuing concerns over the negative health effects’ of second-hand smoke’.  By whom? What empirical evidence does he have that this is a problem that needs solving? Say, for example, you have an 18-year-old driving their 17-year old friend somewhere, not an unusual happenstance. The unsuspecting cop spots a faulty turn signal light, and pulls them over, also not an unusual happenstance, and now we’ve got a violation.  I totally understand the need to keep children away from second-hand smoke.  But ‘under the age of 18’ is overkill, not to mention that it’s almost impossible to legislate common sense.  Which this bill lacks. Health & Human Development.

HS 1/HB 83 (K. Williams) ‘requires every public school and charter school to provide students enrolled in kindergarten with an oral health screening by the last student attendance day of each school year. Notification to the parent or guardian must be done and a copy of the oral health screening results sent home.’  Yes, by all means.  Especially since ‘The Division of Public Health (DPH), through the Delaware Smile Check Program, offers school-based oral screenings, at no cost to the school districts, schools, including charter schools, or the students.’ Education.

HB 96 (Morrison) ‘reduces the eligible age of a citizen to vote in school board elections for purposes of electing members to the school board from 18 years old to 16 years old.’  Hey, they’re the consumers.  Shouldn’t they have a say in how the schools are run?  Besides, all the RWNJ parents who oppose their kids getting a well-rounded education will likely have their heads explode if this passes.  Win-win. Education.

HB 200 (Longhurst).  Great bill. Deplorable sponsor.  The very idea that Longhurst has grabbed all these bills for herself when she is responsible for so many mental and emotional health issues among Leg Hall staffers is–so–Longhurstian.  The bill:

…establishes a mental health services unit for Delaware high schools. The unit is phased in over 3 years, beginning in FY2024, to arrive at a final ratio of 250 full-time equivalent students grades 9-12 for a full-time school counselor, school social worker, or licensed clinical social worker.

Education.

If only they paid me by the word…