Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tuesday, June 11, 2024

No tiptoeing back into session.  We’ve got two agendas chockful of key bills today.

Starting in the House:

HS 2/HB 125 (S. Moore) ‘requires all public schools to offer only students who qualify for a reduced-price meal, under the federal School Breakfast Program and National School Lunch Program, a free breakfast and lunch every school day.’  This is a significant dial-back of the universal free school meals proposal, no doubt due to John Carney serving as gatekeeper.  Presumably because more free meals mean fewer government-subsidized warehouses.  I mean, look at that fiscal note.  Defines the word ‘pittance’:

Upon enactment, one reduced-price breakfast for one student is estimated to cost the State $0.30. Approximately 210,020 reduced-price breakfasts are expected to be served in Delaware schools during the 2023-2024 school year.

Upon enactment, one reduced-price lunch for one student is estimated to cost the State $0.40. Approximately 435,810 reduced-price lunches are expected to be served in Delaware schools
during the 2023-2024 school year.

Around $250 K a year.  As opposed to the approximate $40 mill a year in the original bill. Carney wins.  Students lose.  Yes, he’s the worst.  Maybe it’s just me, but I have to think that some sort of compromise would have been possible here had the administration given a shit.

HB 280 (K. Williams) goes a long way, but not quite all the way, in getting rid of ‘civil asset forfeiture’, aka ‘cops stealing stuff’.  Meaning, it’s one of the best bills of this session.  The bill:

…repeals the legal presumption that money, negotiable instruments or securities found in close proximity to controlled substances or records or with trace amounts of controlled substances are forfeitable. Such evidence is still admissible and may be considered by the Court in a forfeiture proceeding. It puts the burden of proof on the State to prove all elements of a forfeiture case by a preponderance of the evidence. Under the existing statute, it is the burden of an innocent owner to prove that they did not have knowledge of or consent to the use of their property in an unlawful act. It prohibits the forfeiture of currency less than $500. It prohibits forfeiture unless a criminal charge is brought. It requires the person holding seized property to be financially responsible for all fees associated therewith in the event the property is ordered by the Court to be returned. It allows a claimant property owner who substantially prevails in a forfeiture proceeding to recover reasonable attorney’s fees and costs.

A great bill.  Can’t wait to see the roll call…

BTW, I doubt whether we’d have gotten this far had the AG not put the brakes on the distribution of funds to cop-related causes.  She deserves credit for getting to this point as well.

Pretty much every bill on the House Agenda is praiseworthy.  All the bills on the main agenda, along with the Sunset Committee bills on the House Consent Agenda, are House bills.  This enables the Senate to consider the bills before the end of session.

I’m not sure whether the Senate Agenda is stronger than the House Agenda, but it also features some great bills and/or, in one instance, a bill that used to be great:

SS1/SB 254 (Brown) was a much better bill in its original form.  Both its mission and its funding have been circumscribed in the substitute, which:

…creates the Delaware Grocery Initiative. It directs the Office of State Planning Coordination (“Office”) to study food insecurity in urban and rural food deserts. The Act defines a food desert and directs the Office to expand access to healthy foods in food deserts by providing financial assistance to grocery stores, independently owned for-profit grocery stores, cooperative grocery stores, non-profit grocery stores as well as grocery stores owned and operated by local governmental units.

Fine. Not gonna accomplish much with about $115K a year, as opposed to the original’s fiscal note of about $500 K a year.  Looks like neither Carney nor the Joint Finance Committee understand the concept of penny-wise, pound-foolish.  Or, more likely, they don’t give a shit.  Oh, well, better to get the initiative started with the hope that more enlightened leadership will build on this rickety framework.

SB 215 (Mantzavinos) ‘requires the Department of Health and Social Services to inspect long-term care facilities on an annual basis.’  DHSS was supposed to be doing this already, but, you know, they weren’t.  This is but one more example of the recognition on the part of the General Assembly that this administration has not been doing many things it’s supposed to be doing.  It truly is the Administration About Nothing, and the General Assembly has begun to fill the void.

SB 305 (Sturgeon):

…streamlines and modernizes the State Early Childhood Education Program in § 3001 of Title 14, also referred to as State-funded early care and education, as follows: (1) Adds definitions. (2) Provides the Department of Education (Department) with a general grant of authority to provide early childhood educational services. (3) Subject to available appropriations, § 3001(c) of this Act requires the Department to provide free, full-day early childhood educational services for preschool-age children who satisfy eligibility requirements developed by the Department.

The Fiscal Note sets the price tag as ‘Indeterminable’.  I guess because the Department first has to set the eligibility requirements.

There is one notable, and controversial, bill in committee today.  The Senate Judiciary Committee considers SB 313 (Townsend).  I can’t begin to tell you what the bill does, but I strongly encourage you to read this article in the Delaware Call.  Chancery Court Vice-Chancellor Travis Laster describes the import of this bill:

…the proposed amendments will “significantly affect the governance of Delaware corporations. This is not the annual tweaking of the [Delaware General Corporation Law]. That’s a cosmetic procedure by comparison. This is major surgery.”

From the Call article:

While some law firms have suggested that the revised amendments are necessary to bring Delaware’s corporate law “in line with market practice,” doubts remain about the extent to which these amendments actually solve real problems or just benefit a handful of powerful private equity firms that have already entered into governance contracts that are illegal under existing law but would be retroactively legalized by the amendments. UCLA Law distinguished professor Stephen Bainbridge — author of hundreds of law review articles and one of the most widely cited scholars on corporate law — called for the amendments to be scrapped entirely.

“Memo to the Delaware corporate law council: the proposed amendments to the [Delaware General Corporation Law]. . . is one of the worst examples of statutory drafting I’ve ever seen,” Bainbridge posted on May 10 to the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “It’s a complete mess. It’s hard to parse just from a grammatical standpoint and difficult to apply in a legal sense. Start over.”

Not happening.  The Golden Goose That Must Be Protected At All Costs is the Court Of Chancery’s dominance in the national arena of corporate law, and the attendant substantial benefits to the State’s coffers.  You will note that all members of leadership in both Houses are on the bill as co-sponsors.  This bill is on the fast track to passage–even though not a single legislator understands what’s in it.

It is minor in comparison to the importance of SB 313, but I like SB 312 (Gay), which:

…protects the public’s right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment without abusive, expensive legal retaliation. Specifically, the Act combats the problem of strategic lawsuits against public participation, also called “SLAPPs.” A SLAPP may come in the form of a defamation, invasion of privacy, nuisance, or other claim, but its real goal is to entangle the defendant of a SLAPP in expensive litigation and stifle the ability to engage in constitutionally protected activities. While Delaware has an “anti-SLAPP” law (see §§ 8136 through 8138 of Title 10 of the Delaware Code), the law received a score of “D-“ from the Institute for Free Speech due to limited types of speech it protects and lack of basic protections provided by the Act.

It’s also in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Yet another substantially-weakened bill highlights today’s House Committee schedule.  The bill in question?:  HS 1/HB 248 (K. Johnson).  It’s still a good bill addressing permitting requirements in underserved communities, but the substitute:

… clarifies it is only for new or substantially modified permits and specifies it is only for the following permits: (1) Clean Air permit; (2) Coastal Zone Act permit; (3) Solid waste permit; (4) National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit and (5) Hazardous waste permit.

Meaning despoliation in under-served communities that is already under way may continue.  This is what lobbyists do.  4 pages of lobbying activity on HB 248 in the Public Integrity Commission database.  All the usual bad actors and their paid enablers.  They win, residents in under-served communities lose.  Props to Kendra Johnson, though, for keeping this bill largely intact.

You know how I sense that our readers are losing interest?  It’s when I start losing interest.

I’m there.  We’re done.  Until tomorrow.