General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., Jan. 25, 2012

Filed in National by on January 25, 2012

A pretty active day in Dover yesterday. The Senate passed legislation doing away with five agencies you never heard of. In addition to passing two City of Dover charter changes, the Senate also passed Colin Bonini’s annual ‘contribution’ to the legislative mix. That’s right. Recognizing Feb. 6 as ‘Ronald Reagan Day’ in Delaware. I got news for the Rethugs. Reagan ain’t comin’ back. And the Party has no spiritual heir. I guess wallowing in nostalgia is all they can do. Thank you, Colin. Now back to that back row.

The House did not pass, nor apparently even consider, HB 222, which would require that the Department of Labor publish the names of employers who have violated the Workplace Fraud Act, by misclassifying an employee as an independent contractor or otherwise. The reason why is that an amendment, which would significantly slow down the release of the names of the employers, has been filed, no doubt to ensure passage. The amendment “clarifies that the Department of Labor would not post the name of any employer that has violated the Workplace Fraud Act until all appeals had been pursued and/or forfeited.” That, of course, could take years. And the employer, of course, could agree to a fine without acknowledging guilt. And the public, of course, would not know that these employers were ripping off employees by classifying them as ‘independent contractors’.  The bill still deserves passage, but my enthusiasm has somehow…waned. You can’t spell wane w/o ‘wan’, which is what this bill has become.

Citizens can no doubt breathe a sigh of relief that the House had no similar reservations when it comes to killing Bambi with handguns. Likely filled with ‘cop-killer’ bullets. This no doubt vindicates the NRA position that there is no such thing as a dangerous handgun. Unless, of course, you’re a deer.  Somewhere, bug-eyed State Rethuglican Chair John Sigler is chugging a beer stein filled to the brim with animal blood. Makes him feel like a man. The three ‘no’ votes were Dennis P. Williams, Stephanie Bolden, and Deb Heffernan. Good for them.

The House unanimously passed HB 239(Schooley), which permanently authorizes the Teach for America (TFA) program as an alternative route to teacher licensure and certification.

As expected, Brad Bennett’s bill adding an additional $100 penalty onto crimes against seniors passed unanimously. Nobody has a political death wish, regardless of how insignificant the impact of this bill will be.

The House also unanimously passed HB 250, which cleans up some technical issues with last year’s redistricting legislation.

The Senate agenda consists of one bill, I think a good one. HB 292, sponsored by Rep. Q. Johnson:

“…makes it an offense to use a handicapped plate or placard issued to another person, unless that person is also in the vehicle. The Bill aims to curb the use of handicapped parking spaces by persons who do not actually need them. Under the Code, a person who violates this provision will “receive a mandatory fine of $100 for a first offense, and for a subsequent like offense, a mandatory fine of $200 or a term of imprisonment of not less than 10 nor more than 30 days, or both.”

Other than that, it’s Committee Day for both houses.

Here is the complete list of scheduled Senate committee meetings. You can click on each respective committee link to see the agendas. I’m particularly interested in the following:

Senate Executive Committee: Will consider several nominations and renominations, including that of Elaine Manlove to serve as State Commissioner of Elections. Now, look, I understand that the respective counties have their own elections departments and that Manlove’s influence over them may well be limited. But there’s no excuse for having, at the state site, such a user-unfriendly impediment to reading campaign and organizational financial reports. Of course, that may be just the way the General Assembly likes it. But it’s wrong, and the public deserves better. I sincerely hope that some senator presses her on this issue today.

Senate Insurance Committee: This bill gives me pause. Why? (1) I don’t understand it, always a red flag for me when it comes to insurance legislation; (2) it is touted as ‘more comprehensive’ by the sponsors, nowhere do I see the word ‘better’; (3) A national group of insurance commissioners crafted this legislation, and it apparently has been put forth by our own *cough*cough* insurance commissioner; and (4) the prime sponsor is the same person who pushed the Highmark legislation through the Senate. In other words, this bill gives me pause b/c it could be bad for the citizens of our state. I freely admit that I don’t know that for a fact, but, Mitch Crane, if you’ve got a couple of minutes, could you let us know what you think?

Senate Judiciary Committee: This bill had seven legislators go ‘not voting’ in the House. HB 70 “increases the minimum fine (from $100 to $250) for purchasing or providing alcohol to a person under the age of 21 and makes performance of community service mandatory for such an offense. The Act also establishes a civil cause of action which would allow a person injured by intoxicated minor (defined as person under the age of 21) to sue the adults which provided alcohol to the minor.” This bill, which ‘enhances’ penalties for certain crimes resulting in property loss, had 4 no votes in the House. I expect that both may at least incite some lively discussion before moving forward to the Senate floor.

Let’s skip across the lobby and see what’s cookin’ in House committees today. I’m drawn to the following:

House Economic Development/Banking/Commerce/ Insurance Committee: I like HB 242(D. Short), which “sets certain regulations for motor vehicle data-reporting devices to prohibit the use by insurance companies of such data for anything other than consideration for premium discounts, requires disclosure to the insured of others who may gain access to such data, and otherwise prohibits insurance companies from releasing such data to others.

House Education Committee: A substantive agenda, including HB 244(Heffernan), which increases the age for mandatory school attendance from 16 to 18; and HB 243(Barbieri), which restores common sense to the reporting of school incidents. I’d love to hear feedback from JC and others over the increase in the mandatory school attendance age. I’m not sure if it benefits other students to have students who have already mentally opted out sharing the same classrooms. In other words, I don’t see it as a slam-dunk. Whaddayathink?

House Administration Committee: A mischief-making bill that I wholeheartedly endorse, and from Monsignor Lavelle, no less. HB 176 “clarifies that the term “public record” as it appears in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) includes information collected or compiled by a State agency regarding the hours worked in a merit position held by an elected official who is also a State merit system employee. ‘Information collected or compiled’ includes but is not limited to electronic-swipe and other time-clock documents that record when an employee enters or exits the workplace.”  Hmmm…wonder who this bill could be aimed at…

As always, check out all the listings as YMMV. It’s not every day that I enthusiastically endorse two bills sponsored by R’s, but today’s that day.

Tomorrow, Bob Marshall’s minimum wage increase, not sponsored by any R’s, hits the Senate floor. See y’all then.

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  1. anon says:

    “I understand that the respective counties have their own elections departments and that Manlove’s influence over them may well be limited.”

    Why would her influence be limited? The county departments are merely divisions of the state department. They’re not run by the counties themselves. The state elections commissioner should be able to give orders and have them carried out. Otherwise, why have the state involved in elections at all?

    I can only assume by the lackluster performance of the department that Manlove just doesn’t give a shit. It would take all of a few days to do an overhaul of the website and its content. If the department is too busy, temporarily detail someone from the GIC over there. It’s not rocket science.

  2. Jason330 says:

    Some possible next bills for Brad to champion:

    – additional $100 penalty for people who punch babies in the face.

    – additional $100 penalty for people who are in front of you at Safeway paying for their groceries with a plastic bag full of nickles and pennies.

    – additional $100 penalty onto people who fix their broken passenger side door with a plastic bag and a role of duct tape.

  3. Mike Matthews says:

    I’m a teacher. And, because I’m on my duty-free lunch, I don’t want anyone to think I’m doing something untoward by commenting!

    Rep. Heffernan’s bill sounds like a slam-dunk, like ‘Bulo said. However, many of my teacher friends are skeptical about this being a “good thing” unless there’s some funding attached to the bill. ‘Bulo is absolutely 100% dead-on. By the time many of these kids have reached 16, they’ve come to the (unacceptable) belief that they should drop out. It’s sad and it happens too much and it shouldn’t happen. But most of these students tend to be behavior issues who are sucking the opportunity from their fellow students who do wish to stay and learn.

    Does Rep. Heffernan’s bill address the needs of those students aside from simply saying we’re going to “make them stay?” Does the bill provide for additional supports in way of psychologists and family crisis therapists for schools that will have to work with these children?

    There are many questions to be asked here and I really wish some of these committee hearings were held outside of the school day. I’m afraid that if this bill doesn’t address any of the points I’ve mentioned above, then I’m likely to classify it as a “comfy-cozy bill.” A bill that kind of sounds good and makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside, but not one that will actually produce positive results.

  4. PBaumbach says:

    I really like Rep. Heffernan. She knows of what she speaks, based on her work on the (Brandywine?) school board. Some of these questions may be answerable by checking out the bill (http://legis.delaware.gov/LIS/lis146.nsf/vwLegislation/HB+244?Opendocument), and if you can’t make the hearings (which I also find very hard to catch), two alternatives to consider are 1) ask DSEA to research it and get back to you, and 2) reach out to Deb, at debra.heffernan@state.de.us

  5. Geezer says:

    MM: Your reservations are the common-sense reservations. The bill is a jobs bill for teachers, which I didn’t realize until the proposal was repeated in the SOTU.

    Some simple math: Delaware has about 110,000 students in public school. Just to make the numbers round, let’s say that’s 10,000 students per grade (it’s actually a bit less). With a graduation rate of 70% (it’s actually a bit lower, but again for the sake of round numbers), that means about 3,000 students per year drop out. If you figure that at 30 students per teacher, that’s 100 extra teachers Delaware will need. Get it now?

    “She knows of what she speaks, based on her work on the (Brandywine?) school board.”

    Not on this she doesn’t, because it hasn’t been tried before in Delaware. Here’s my counter-proposal: Let’s try this on a trial basis first. I propose using Brandywine High School, since that was Ms. Heffernan’s district. If it goes well there, we can expand it throughout the state. Fair?

  6. Sarah says:

    Rep Bennett should charge an additional $100 to any blogger who can’t spell nickel correctly.

  7. Jason330 says:

    Not a bad plan. If the state recived a nickle everytime I splled a word wrong, they have a bout a billlion nickles by now.

  8. Dana Garrett says:

    I’m not sure what I think about requiring kids to attend school until age 18. MM makes many good points. Unlike Geezer, however, I think that the cost for additional teachers is largely irrelevant. *If* it’s in the best interest of the children to keep them school and *if* there is a long-term benefit to society to do so, we should happily pay the cost.

    I am quite certain of this: by far most 16-year-olds are in no position to know what’s in their best interest in making a decision that can so significantly impact the rest of their lives. I am also tired of living in a nation with a large segment of marginally educated people. (Someone should calculate the costs of the lack of productivity and the offshoring of jobs which results from that.) Tbat’s why I can’t reject such legislation out of hand.

  9. Joe Cass says:

    Jasen, how maney dollers is a billian nickles?

  10. AQC says:

    Legislating that kids stay in school until 18 won’t work any better than legislating they stay in school until 16 unless something starts happening to get kids invested in school. Maybe they should quit making all the cuts from extracurricular activities and events that make kids want to be part of their school.

  11. Mitch Crane says:

    I just saw El Somnambulo’s question to me about SB 145-Viaticals. Viaticals became an issue at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the early 1970’s. Those suffering in those days often had little health insurance and no financial or familial support. They did often have life insurance. Like Real Estate Investment Trusts, Viaticals were created as investment tools and they operated by purchasing the life insurance from these terminally ill people. The insured received much-needed dollars and the purchasers turned a huge profit when the formerly insured passed away and the policy was paid off to the purchaser. A desperate and broke person would often sell a $100,000 policy for $10,000-$20,000.
    The original Viatical law was designed to protect the insured and ill person. The law did not prevent just any person who knew of a terminally ill insured from taking advantage of that person’s illness and desperation by offering money and making all kinds of representations. Policies were sold without any understanding on the part of the insured of fairness, value, consequences. This became obvious as treatment for HIV/AIDS meant that most victims were not passing in 6 months to a year but living on-but without money and without support. This also is the case with other diesases that initially were quick death sentences.
    The Consumer Services staff at the Department of Insurance, in 2010, recommended to the Commissioner amendments to the Viatical law when I was still there and was acting Director. Those recommendations did not make it into last year’s legislative packet.
    SB 145 requires that anyone involved in purchasing Viaticals must be licensed by the Department of Insurance. They also would be subject to administrative action if they violate law by using deception or fraudulent practices, demonstrate incompetence or mislead in actions leading to the purchase of these life insurance policies.
    This is a good Bill.

  12. Thanks, Mitch. I now actually understand, and support, the bill.

  13. John Young says:

    HB 239 was amended to re-sunset in 3 years pending a full efficacy report on TFA teachers from the DOE…so as passed it did not grant permanent status to TFA, just another 3 years.