General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., June 20, 2012
Well, that sucked. SB 205(Ennis), which would have provided some protections for manufactured homeowners facing exorbitant rent increases, went down, and went down hard in the House. 14 Y, 22 N, 5 Not Voting. I had been told that the bill was within a vote or two of passage. Turns out I was misinformed. Feudal landlords remain free to literally make thousands upon thousands of Delawareans’ lives a living hell with a wink and a nod from the General Assembly. Looks like those campaign contributions came in handy. This is a victory for cynicism and reflects badly on the Democratic Party. If Democratic legislators will not stand up for people who are essentially defenseless, you can bet the Rethugs won’t. Rethugs like Greg Lavelle:
Republican House leader Rep. Greg Lavelle said SB 205 would have an undue impact on landowners who play fair with tenants. Instead, he said, the Legislature should investigate some way to help manufactured home residents who are struggling to pay rent.
“…(S)hould investigate some way to help manufactured home residents who are struggling to pay rent.” Uh, Monsignor, since you would never support state funds to go for this purpose,what the bleep do you mean? Nothing, just more meaningless blather to fill an otherwise empty graf in the News-Journal.
It’ll take a lot of showers to wash away this stench.
Oh, and this stench. The House unanimously passed legislation apparently designed to give Bail Bondsman Bob Bovell a competitive advantage over those eeee-vil out-of-state bail bondsmen. The same Bob Bovell who is currently challenging Rep. Dennis P. Williams in Wilmington’s Democratic mayoral primary. Won’t be challenging Williams much longer, I predict. This bill was introduced on June 5 and now heads to the Senate. If this bill is not just a blatant quid pro quo, will someone please deign to inform us of what sudden threat to the heretofore beyond-reproach bail bonds industry (snark intended) led to this urgent introduction and passage?
Oh, and this stench. At least Rep. Lumpy Carson will make it to Happy Hour on time now.
Here is the entire Session Activity Report. Let me just say that the three examples listed above illustrate everything that is wrong with the Delaware General Assembly. Screw the defenseless b/c they don’t have money to fill your reelection coffers; essentially bribe a candidate into dropping out of a race by passing special interest legislation especially for him; and quell a legislator’s road rage by getting those pokey drivers out of his way. Some days, I just hate this (non-paying) job.
Time to quote Samuel Beckett: “I can’t go on. I must go on”:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7HprDT_mOw[/youtube]
That picked up my spirits a bit.
We’ve got both committee meetings and full agendas that are full a…something, so let’s get started.
HB 333(Viola), which will legalize internet gambling in Delaware. Senate Executive Committee.
SB 250(McDowell), which creates an exemption from motor vehicle documents fees for fuel efficient vehicles. Senate Highways & Transportation Committee.
Uh-oh, we’re back to the old Senate trick of posting meeting notices with no list of bills. The culprits? The Insurance Committee (Bushweller), Labor Committee (Marshall), and Revenue & Taxation Committee (Marshall). And you were doing so well…
House committee highlights:
HB 386(Q. Johnson), would leverage investment of state funds in small businesses into access to private capital for such businesses. House Administration Committee.
HB 395(Scott). Just gonna quote the synopsis b/c I think this is an important and welcome bill:
This Bill prohibits the warrantless search of electronic devices, particularly mobile telephones. This Bill also prohibits the interception of geolocation information by physical placement of a mobile tracking device or otherwise tracking positioning through available technologies. It is the belief of the General Assembly that the warrant requirement should be observed particularly in light of the sensitive nature of the information stored in mobile phones and other electronic devices. It is also believed that mere use or ownership of electronic devices should not diminish the citizenry’s expectation of privacy in geolocation information. Exceptions are herein carved out for consent and emergent circumstances.
In the House Telecommunication & Technology Committee.
Here’s today’s Senate Agenda. I, of course, support SB 248(Peterson), which would make Delaware the 50th of the 50 states to “provide persons who have deafness, hearing loss, or speech disabilities with telecommunications service for analog communications devices.”
Other than that, little else interests me. As always, YMMV.
Today’s House Agenda once again includes items from previous agendas. There is, however, a new House Agenda II, which features a really bad bill almost guaranteed to pass with little or no opposition. I’ll just quote from last week’s report:
Rep. John Viola is a rare legislator in that, if he is the prime sponsor of the bill, it’s almost certainly a bad bill. HB 181(Viola) gives yet another tax credit to telephone companies, and eliminates one of their taxes altogether in 2014. Just who is paying his salary again?
I’ve previously praised this bill, and hasten to do so again. Rep. Melanie Smith is a serious and effective legislator, and she’s helping to craft effective public policy particularly in the area of criminal justice.
I suppose I should muster some praise for the Joint Finance Committee. Especially since the Budget Bill was introduced yesterday. This gives the public and the General Assembly reasonable time to review the document. I praise the committee’s timeliness, but will defer any more hosannas until after I’ve read the Epilog Language, which is just like the fine print in a contract.
That’s it for today. I’m all played out.
Tags: Bail Bondsman Robert Bovell Delaware, El Somnambulo, FY 2013 Delaware Budget Bill, manufactured housing communities Delaware, Rep. John Viola Delaware, Samuel Beckett, Steve Tanzer Delaware
If this bill is not just a blatant quid pro quo, will someone please deign to inform us of what sudden threat to the heretofore beyond-reproach bail bonds industry (snark intended) led to this urgent introduction and passage?
Not sure why this was urgent, but it has been in the works for abit. And this certainly isn’t a gimme to Bovell. This bill basically provides a better regulatory framework for the ICs office and the courts to be able to supervise agent behavior in the state. The last two paragraphs regarding the disposition of paperwork as well as premiums and commissions as well as the specifics on curtailing “undercutting” is the tell. Since there are plenty of rumors and so on out there that allege a fair amount of underhandedness in the way Bovell does business. If that is true, he isn’t going to benefit from this. Besides — have you seen how many votes this guy gets? There’s not enough to make the effort of a quid pro quo with this guy. He runs for Mayor, he runs for State Rep he runs as a D, he runs as an R, it is largely abit of performance art on his part.
You may be right, Cass. Except…why the ban on so-called ‘out-of-state bail bondspersons’?
As to the performance art bit, in a close primary, every vote counts. He got 44.5% of the vote in his primary against Helene Keeley in 2010. Keeley won, 707-583. That’s a competitive race by any measure. I wouldn’t want someone who could draw over 44% of the vote running against ME.
At least in 2010, Bovell demonstrated he could draw votes in a primary…and his opponent is now the prime sponsor of the bill. It’s either a quid pro quo or a payback.
It’s not a ban. You establish residency by having a principal place of business here. You don’t have to live here. And this isn’t exactly new — if you are an out of state agent, you are *supposed* to be working here accompanied by an in state agent. Defining that and making sure the IC and the courts can deal with that is the point.
Go back and look at the “undercutting” part of the bill. Local agents here have been trying to get someone’s attention over this issue for awhile. Given the tales that get told about how Bovell does business, this bill is certainly *not* going to help him.
And since he is running for Mayor now, he got 27% of the vote to Bakers’s 73%, which is in performance art territory.
But don’t let me get in the way of a good conspiracy theory. I’m pointing out that there is alot more to this bill than the residency requirement and even then it is business residency, not an exactly unusual requirement when regulating something like bonds.
Meanwhile, over at Slate, two lawyers have proposed ending the costly and punitive practice of charging people bail they can’t afford. Might that be a better solution?
http://hive.slate.com/hive/how-can-we-fix-constitution/article/fire-the-bail-bondsmen
I wonder if the problem the Slate guys talk about is a Bail problem or a Drug War problem? I don’t know the answer to that, but it seems to me that it is the criminalization of so much around drug activity so that every politician can ring the bell of Being Tough on Crime and the bail issue is just one more symptom of the overreach.
Don’t worry, Cass, I know you’re tough on crime. 😉
It resonates as a Bovell story in that he was pointedly accused of not living in a district he ran in some years back.
I picked up the budget today and spent some time reading.
Markell is letting O’Mara expand DNREC with a spanking new energy and climate dept. that (supposedly) will be led by a friend of his. I looked through the budget and it looks REALLY expensive.
I also heard that there’s a backroom deal in the works to move the DE Center for Horticulture out to a brownfield on Miller Road. The deal includes DNREC offering to fund the pollution mitigation (to be very costly to clean it up for garden level use).
The deal supposedly stipulates that this will be expensive enough to gut the DNREC HSCA fund.
[Hazardous Substance Cleanup Act (HSCA) Program
http://www.dnrec.delaware.gov/whs/awm/…/SIRB_HSCA_program.aspx The main objective of HSCA is to enable DNREC to address those sites not remediated under the federal Superfund program. DNREC has identified over 700 … ]
So, no money for all the rest of the state’s needs in order to solve the problems of this private and in looking at its board and advisory members, elite organization?
(split the links so the post doesn’t spam)
http://www.thedch.org/ who-we-are/board-directors
http://www.thedch.org/ who-we-are/board-directors/council-advisors
http://www.thedch.org/ support-us/capital-campaign
ATTN: admin. – my post went to spam despite splitting the links.
DNREC’s Division of Energy and Climate is not really a new division, it’s essetially just renaming and transferring the responsibilities of what is currently called
the Delaware Energy Office. The appropriation for this Division in this years budget is virtually the same
as for the Energy office in last year’s budget.
This has been discussed publicly for months. O’Mara has said it’s no new money or jobs: http://delaware.newszap.com/home/112271-84/dnrec-division-name-change?printerfriendly=true
Check out this neat invention called Google, Nancy.
Good summary. I didn’t catch HB395. LOVE that one. Too bad it was tabled. Any idea why?