Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tuesday, June 24, 2025

‘Work Expands To Fill Time Allotted.’  Hmmm, only four days left.  Let’s see if work has expanded…why yes, yes it has.  Check out today’s chock-filled Agendas:

House Agenda:  Before we get to the meat of the Agenda, and it indeed is not for legislative vegans, a couple of questions on the Consent Agenda.  Doesn’t HR 14 (Romer) have to be an HCR?  I certainly don’t have any problem with the intent of the Resolution, but in order to ‘direct’ an agency to do something, I’m pretty sure that it must come from the General Assembly as a whole, not just one chamber.  Sometimes, but not always, it also requires the Governor’s signature, which would make it a Joint Resolution.  Can this be clarified before the resolution is run?  Better to get it right and to have it take effect.

If you want to curry favor with retired police and firefighters without actually doing anything, HB 192 (Michael Smith) might be a good guideline on how to do it.  Gotta love that synopsis:

This Act is being proposed in hopes of allowing for additional disbursements from a special fund created by the General Assembly to ensure adequate pensions for affected police officers and firefighters, and their surviving spouses. This raises the pension level an individual is permitted to receive and still be eligible for a distribution from the special fund from $35,000 or less to $55,000 or less.

The only way these ‘special funds’ would be raised would be if county and/or municipal governments agreed to pay more $$’s into the fund.  Which is why the State is not adding an additional dollar to these funds.  The emptiest of empty brochure material.

Ho-kay, with those out of the way, here’s the big stuff.  The House will consider and certainly pass the Budget Bill today.  It could be unanimous, but there are often a couple of scattered no votes.  I don’t however, expect anything more than that.

HB 182 (Gorman) ‘prohibits law-enforcement agencies from entering into agreements with federal immigration enforcement authorities to enforce immigration violations or share immigration enforcement related data.’  We could well hear some pandering from the House Rethugs on this one.  Remember, kids, virtually all of them give aid and comfort to the ongoing move towards fascism in this country.  I will be disappointed if any D’s vote no on this one.

Now we come to the bill that I will be paying the most attention to today.  HB 210 (Lambert) ‘seeks to update the fine structure for major commercial polluters. In addition, this Act increases the amount of penalty funds directed to communities near facilities with violations.’  Rep. Lambert and a whole lot of others have worked on this bill for a year.  It already represents compromise.   However, as often happens, those who were involved in weakening the bill to an extent now seek to weaken it further.  Lumpy Carson, come on down.  Yep, Delaware’s only gerbil-brained legislator wants to exclude those chicken farmers (let’s be honest, those huge corporate poultry operations) from being accountable for consistent flouting of the law and polluting of the waters.  Of course, you won’t find that in the synopsis of the amendment, which reads:

This amendment removes the changes to Title 3 from House Bill No. 210.

I looked it up so that you don’t have to.  Title 3 refers to, yes, ‘nutrient management programs’.  That’s, uh, the chickenshit run-off that has bedeviled Sussex County.  This, BTW, raises a Constitutional question about the bill–I hope Gary Myers is reading this morning.  Here is the title of the bill:

AN ACT TO AMEND TITLES 3, 7, AND 16 OF THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO THE ENVIRONMENT.

If the Act no longer amends Title 3 of the Delaware Code, would a substitute bill be required?  I know that you can’t amend the title of a bill.

BTW, lest you think that this is no big deal, I invite you to read: This.  This.  BTWBTW, the excess phosphorous in the feed is why phosphate was banned from detergent years ago.  Not only do they befoul drinking water, they create habitat ‘dead zones’.  Kinda likethe space between the ears of Delaware’s Only Gerbil-Brained Legislator.

URGENT UPDATE!!: I have, on occasion, been perhaps not-unfairly accused of crossing the boundaries of good taste into ‘personal attack’ territory.  However, I did not anticipate what has happened this morning.  I have been inundated with calls and e-mails from irate gerbil lovers.  Their little fur buddies have stopped sucking water out of those upside-down bottles.  They’re not eating.  I’ve even heard the term ‘Lysistrata’ bandied about.  (They are, however,  still pooping.)  I have no idea how word gets around the GU (Gerbil Universe), but please!  I am a gerbil lover (No, I’m not posting a photo of Jerry Penacoli here, thankyouverymuch.) My kids got gerbils when they were in kindergarten.  One of them became a proud gerbil mama on our living room floor.  To all you gerbil influencers out there: I meant no disrespect when I compared Lumpy Carson’s ‘intelligence’ to yours.  You, at least, only drink WATER out of the bottle.  Please, just go back to living your very best gerbil lives: Eat, drink, tolerate the occasional cuddle from a human, and, of course, procreate. No, not you, Lumpy.

Oh, and that’s not all.  Word on the street is that the Delaware Chamber of Commerce (“Everything We Do Is Evil, And We’re Proud Of It”) is prepping an amendment that would exempt, wait for it, any business with fewer than 150 employees.   You’re smart. I don’t need to elaborate further.

OK, folks, time to call your Democratic legislators and urge them to support the bill in its current form.  We were told on Saturday at the State Democratic Convention that we should unite around the principle ‘Making People’s Lives Better’.  That’s what this bill would do.   Cleaner water, cleaner air, justice for communities victimized by environmental racism.

Senate Agenda:  Unlike the House, the Senate has largely dispensed with all the Senate Bills that came before it.  A few stragglers are at the top of the Agenda, but nothing major.  Instead, the Senate is set to work through some pretty darn good House bills today.

HS1/HB 83 and HB 82 (both by Wilson-Anton) will likely finally rid the Christina Board Of Education of its Pakistani resident.  As in ‘lives in Pakistan’.  Neither bill would have been necessary had the majority of the Board employed common sense, but they didn’t.  And it was deliberate.  Never thought I’d see a ‘rogue school board’ in Delaware, unless it was a downstate board dominated by flat-earthers.  But I did.

HS1/HB 50(Heffernan) ‘creates the Delaware Energy Fund to provide assistance to consumers whose household income is less than 350% of the federal poverty level. Under 2025 federal guidelines’.  The bill passed in the House on pretty much a party-line vote, with Rep. Shupe being the only R to vote yes.  Look for something similar in the Senate, with Sen. Buckson voting for it and spending a half-hour explaining why his ill-informed Rethug peers deserve to have their concerns listened to.  Spoiler Alert:  They don’t.

There’s other good stuff, too.  And, it appears that there is no ‘bad’ stuff.