Over-Analyzing The First Legislative Pre-File

It’s what I do, and it’s what I like to do.

Here are all the bills that have been introduced so far.

The Senate pre-file is mostly the Darius Brown pre-file.  We’ll get to that in a sec.

But there are two notable House bills I want to address first.

HB 140 (Morrison) is essentially the same End-Of Life options bill that Rep. Baumbach sponsored and that John Carney vetoed.  While I think it could well pass the House in January, it will almost certainly not pass the Senate until at least March.  Why?  Because it only passed the Senate by an 11-10 margin.  One of the eleven, Sarah McBride has already moved on to Congress, and another, Kyle Evans Gay, will almost certainly have been sworn in as Lt. Governor before the Senate acts.  Which also means that the replacements for Sarah and Kyle will have to be yes votes.  I hear that the tentative date for the special elections to replace them will be Saturday, February 15. Since the General Assembly will be on Joint Finance Committee break until the beginning of March, that’s likely the earliest the bill could be considered.  Hey, at least we know that Matt Meyer has promised to sign the bill, and we know that, unlike the unindicted soon-to-be former Lt. Governor,  Kyle Evans Gay won’t ‘take a walk’ if called on to cast the tie-breaking vote.

And now for the first really bad bill of the Session.  Fittingly, it is House Bill 1.  Equally fittingly, the sponsor is Lumpy Carson.  HB 1:

…establishes a new state-level Department of Veterans Affairs led by a cabinet-level Secretary to advocate for and administer programs relating to veterans in the State of Delaware. It is the intent of this legislation that current staff of the Delaware Commission of Veterans Affairs and the Office of Veterans Affairs will continue their work, but as part of the new Department of Veterans Affairs, with the potential for expanded staff and duties in accordance with annual appropriations. Employees of the Department in supervisory positions are required to be veterans. For non-supervisory and casual/seasonal positions, non-veterans may be hired when a qualified veteran is not available. The Commission of Veterans Affairs will continue in its current form, It will continue to oversee the Delaware Veterans Home and will serve in an advisory role to the new Secretary and Department on other matters relating to veterans. The Department will assume the assets, liabilities, and contracts of the Commission on the Act’s effective date. The new Department is tasked with developing and proposing strategies for the provision of alternative elder care or the establishment of one or more additional veterans homes to serve the aging veteran population.

Ho-kay, we’re establishing a new departmental bureaucracy.  Why?  If current veterans’ services provided by the state suck enough to warrant a new department, how will the department eliminate the suckiness?  Also, I’m all for employment opportunities for veterans, but doesn’t requiring that all key employees be veterans run afoul of State of Delaware employment requirements? Plus perhaps eliminate better-qualified people from serving in these roles?  Oh, and the Fiscal Note is incomplete.   Wonder what that price tag will be. There’s loads more unresolved issues with this bill, like what department takes jurisdictional responsibility for certain elements say, like the quality of care at the Delaware Veterans’ Home.  I think that you’d be adding to bureaucratic red tape, not reducing it, if this department actually comes into existence.

Call it what it is–an ill-considered sop to veterans who might not be better off, or even as well off, once this Department is created.  A couple more bills of note:

HB 32 (Shupe).  More cops, ahem, ‘constables’ in schools.  No Fiscal Note yet.  I guess, if there’s a shoot-out in the schools, the sponsors want cops returning fire?  When it comes to police, I tend to err on the side of ‘fewer, not more’.

HB 35 (Lynn).  The latest attempt to render the death penalty unconstitutional in Delaware.  We’re still on the First Leg, which likely gives you a sense of the bill’s prospects this year.  We should do it, but I don’t think the General Assembly is there yet.

We have several proposed constitutional amendments that have been introduced in the Senate:

SB 2 (Brown) ‘is the first leg of a constitutional amendment to specifically authorize early, in-person voting for the general election, a primary election, and a special election filling a vacancy in the General Assembly.’  We have early voting only because the Delaware Supreme Court overrode a lower court ruling prohibiting early voting. By all means, yes.

SB 3 (Brown) ‘is the first leg of a constitutional amendment to eliminate the limitations on when an individual may vote absentee and provide an absolute right to vote by absentee ballot without an excuse.’  By all means, yes.

SB 11 (Townsend) ‘ is the second leg of a constitutional amendment to modernize the bail provisions within the Delaware Constitution and clarify the power of the General Assembly to enumerate certain felony offenses for which, or circumstances under which, pretrial release on bail may not be allowed.’  The first leg engendered some controversy from the progressive community, likely to do the same this time as well.

SB 14 (Hoffner) ‘is the first leg of a constitutional amendment to create an independent redistricting commission to redistrict Senatorial and Representative districts following each federal decennial census.’  We’ll see if this effort has any more success than preceding tries.  As long as self-interested legislators are involved, I’d label those chances as slim.

I also like the following bills, all introduced by Sen. Brown:  SB 26,  SB 29, and SB 31.  I also like the idea behind SB 27, which ‘establishes the Office of New Americans to help improve the lives and economic prosperity of new Americans who come to Delaware and of all Delawareans generally’, just want more detailed information.

You like this stuff?  Well, it’s almost time for the return of the legislative ‘Pre-Game Show and Post-Game Wrap-Up’, which appears here on every session day.