General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., May 17, 2023

Collegiality reigned in Dover yesterday.  Don’t think there was a no vote anywhere on the Agenda.  While collegiality isn’t necessarily ‘good’, as in unanimous passage of the corporate law package, it is in other cases, as in the unanimous vote on SB 9.  Here is yesterday’s Session Activity Report.  Someone even woke up John Carney so that he could sign a few bills.  OK, that’s both unfair and gratuitous.  Unconfirmed reports make clear that Carney is already sharpening up his chops for the Delaware State Fair by watching on average 20 minutes per day of screen shots of Delaware’s finest Delmarvalous chickens. Pre-plucking. He takes these ceremonial duties seriously.  Spoiler Alert: He’ll be wearing khakis:

Don’t think we’re gonna get all unanimous votes on the bills on today’s Senate Agenda.  But I hope and expect that both SB 99 (Pinkney) and SS1/SB 102 (Townsend) will pass.

SB 99 ‘prohibits municipal ordinances that require the eviction of tenants for criminal activity by a tenant, member of the tenant’s household, or a guest. This Act does not change a landlord’s ability to exercise discretion and evict a tenant for criminal activity or other material lease violations under § 5513 of Title 25 and is consistent with, and avoids conflicts with, the protections for victims of domestic abuse, sexual offenses, or stalking under § 5316 of Title 25’.

SS1/SB 102 ‘closes a loophole in the prevailing wage statute that was being used to pay workers below the prevailing wage by performing work offsite instead of onsite, regardless of whether it was necessary to do so’.

Otherwise, today is all committee meetings all the time.  We’ll start with the House Committee highlights:

HB 142 (Morrison) ‘precludes the so-called LGBTQ+ “panic” defense that seeks to partially or completely excuse or justify a defendant from full accountability for the commission of a crime on the grounds that the actual or perceived sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, or sex assigned at birth of the victim is sufficient to explain, excuse, or justify the defendant’s conduct, or contributes to or causes the defendant’s mental state, or that the defendant’s reaction thereto constitutes a mental illness, mental defect, or mental disorder sufficient to excuse or justify the defendant’s conduct (including under circumstances in which the victim made a nonviolent romantic or sexual advance toward the defendant or in which the defendant and the victim dated or had a romantic or sexual relationship)’.  I didn’t know there was such a defense.  But if there is, then I support the bill.  Judiciary.

SS1/SB 2 (Lockman) is the required ‘permit to purchase’ handguns bill that passed the Senate 15-6.  No amendments, please!  Judiciary.

HB 141 (Morrison) ‘requires all candidates for statewide office, the General Assembly, and all elected county offices, to request a criminal history background check, no later than the filing deadline, from the State Bureau of Identification’. Administration.

HB 128 (Baumbach) appears to create a new tax bracket of 6.9% for all income in excess of $100K, and lowers the taxable income for those earning between $2K and $5K from 2.2% to 1.9%.  Yes, please, even though it’ll cost us (hey, my wife’s a pharmacist, what can I say?).  Revenue & Finance.

Today’s Senate Committee highlights:

SS1/SB8 (Mantzavinos) ‘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’.

SB 6 (Huxtable) seeks to protect Cape Henlopen State Park for the purposes that were integral to the founding of the Park.  Check this out:

In 1682 or 1683, the Sussex County Court, created by William Penn, created the land grant that is the subject of this Act (“Warner Grant”). As this Act describes, the Warner Grant consists of land in and adjacent to the City of Lewes largely consisting of what is now Cape Henlopen State Park. As the United States District Court for Delaware would later find, the Warner Grant created a “right of common” held in trust for the benefit the people of Lewes and Sussex County. In the early 1970s, nearly 300 years after the Warner Grant was created, a dispute arose over the meaning of the Warner Grant and who had authority to enforce the right of common under the Warner Grant when the City of Lewes leased land in the Warner Grant to a real estate company for the purpose of constructing a housing development. Lawsuits were filed by members of the public and the Attorney General. Eventually, the 130th General Assembly settled that dispute by enacting Chapter 108 of Volume 62 of the Laws of Delaware to establish the Warner Grant Trust (“Trust”) and set the boundaries of the lands in the Trust, known as the Warner Grant Trust Lands (“Lands”). In light of recent proposals for the use of the Lands, the 152nd General Assembly finds that clarification is necessary as to the permitted uses of the Lands and as to how future disputes are to be litigated. To that end, this Act does all of the following: (1) Makes clear that the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (“Department”), as trustee of the Warner Grant Trust Lands, must administer the Lands for the public benefit and adhering to 3 governing priorities: (1) conservation, (2) nature education, and (3) public recreation. (2) Makes clear that the Department must administer the Lands so that a private benefit or financial gain to a for-profit enterprise or public-private partnership is not detrimental to the public benefit. (3) Provides that the Court of Chancery has original jurisdiction over disputes regarding the Lands. (4) Provides that the Attorney General must represent Delawareans in the enforcement of the Trust and, if the Attorney General declines to do so, any resident of Sussex County may sue to enforce the Trust and the Court of Chancery must award attorney’s fees to the plaintiffs who prevail in enforcing the Trust. (5) Includes a provision in the Delaware Code, § 4523 of Title 7, referencing the Department’s duties under this Act to preserve memory of this Act for future generations.

Environment, Energy & Transportation.

SB 96 (Pettyjohn) is the Rethugs’ screed in legislative form against EV’s.  To (half-)wit: ‘This Act prohibits the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control from promulgating rules and regulations restricting the sale of fuel-powered cars, trucks, and SUVs in Delaware. This Act does not change the emission standards fuel-powered vehicles must currently meet. The provisions of this bill would be retroactive to March 1, 2023.’  Pathetic.  Energy, Environment & Transportation.

SB 128 (S. McBride) ‘establishes the crime of obstruction of justice. Nearly every other state has a statutory crime of obstruction of justice and this Act is modeled on laws that prohibit intentional obstruction of justice and interference with governmental functions under federal law, Chapter 73 of Title 18 of the United States Code, and in Pennsylvania, under § 5101 of Title 18 of the Pennsylvania Criminal Code. This Act addresses actions that powerful individuals and organizations take to silence victims and witnesses and impede investigations into fraud, abuse, corruption, and white collar crime’.  Judiciary.

Gee, I even finished this in plenty of time for you to plan your committee meeting viewing schedule before the first meetings take place.  Unlike yesterday.