Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: May 12-14, 2015

That was quite the interesting little week. HB 50 passes overwhelmingly, Gov. Markell announces he will sign death penalty repeal legislation should it reach his desk, and the General Assembly apparently has come up with a sorta-gimmick to close at least some of the gap in infrastructure spending.  At least the D’s have. And my daughter graduated college with honors in Mathematics and Japanese, and now proceeds to a Masters of Arts in Teaching Program.  She wants to teach and inspire high school students to fully realize their potential in mathematics.  I sorta doubt that she sees the ‘Smarter Better Test’ as a means to that end.

While it looks like there’s gonna be some new funding for road projects, the Rethugs appear hell-bent on getting some sort of ‘right to work for less’ concessions in exchange for votes to close the budget shortfall. Because, you know, nothing furthers economic prosperity more than paying workers less. Hey, it’s why they’re Rethugs.

The big showdown of the week takes place in the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday at 11 am in the House Chamber.  SB 40(Peterson), which repeals Delaware’s death penalty, and has already passed the Senate by an 11-9 margin, will be considered. Here are the members of the Judiciary Committee:

Chair: Mitchell

Vice-Chair: M. Smith

Members: Brady, J. Johnson, Lynn, Outten, Paradee, Potter, Smyk, Spiegelman, Wilson.

Those listed in bold letters are sponsors of SB 40.  Contact them and thank them for their support. If one of the others happens to be your representative, please contact them and urge them to release the bill from committee. Remember, they can vote to release the bill from committee even if they do not plan to vote for it. In fact, it’s pretty standard to do so. The bill has passed the Senate, so it’s not as if the bill is unworthy of consideration by the House.  The committee system is designed to determine whether a bill deserves consideration by the full body.  By any measure, this bill deserves that consideration. Speaker Pete “Respect the Committee Process” Schwartzkopf has stacked the committee with some of the body’s most reflexive reactionaries: Smyk, Spiegelman and Wilson.  There’s a reason that neither Miro nor Ramone are on the committee, and their support for this bill is that reason.  As always, be polite and respectful when contacting your legislators,  and be nice to the person on the phone should you call.

Today’s (still unlinkable) House Agenda features two good bills that likely came from the Attorney General’s office. HB 102(Barbieri)  seeks to protect confidential informants from being outed and placed in jeopardy as a result. HB 75(K. Williams)  allows for more individuals to petition for expungement of their juvenile records, and particularly makes it easier for those who have demonstrated rehabilitation to seek to expunge records with multiple entries.

Sen. Bryan Townsend sponsors the annual corporate law package from the Bar. I’m always an agnostic on these bills as I can’t understand what they do.  I’m guessing that perhaps only Townsend and Melanie Smith do understand them. Today’s (equally unlinkable) Senate Agenda also features a couple of good House bills.  HB 81(M. Smith) requires that information pertaining to the heretofore anonymous (to most people) Federal Title IX Coordinator be provided in Education Profiles Reports. Since the Coordinator’s role includes ensuring that certain protections are provided to students, parents, teachers, and school districts in applicable situations, this is important information. HB 60(M. Smith) provides for the creation of savings accounts with tax advantages similar to 529 accounts, designed to be used by persons with disabilities to save for qualifying disability and education related expenses. HB 90(Longhurst), which provides school personnel with suicide prevention training, is scheduled for Wednesday’s Senate agenda.

Always lotsa action in committees this time of year. Let’s start with the House. In addition to SB 40, here are highlights from this week’s committee meetings. All meetings on Wednesday, unless otherwise noted:

Well, here’s a really bad bill to start things off. A constitutional amendment, no less. HB 124(Wilson) creates a constitutional amendment to guarantee that $10 million in realty transfer taxes are allocated annually  unto perpetuity to the Delaware Farmlands Preservation Fund, which is basically a sop to agriculture. The fund is supposed to ‘conserve, protect, and encourage improvement of agricultural lands within the State’. Seriously, we’re gonna do a constitutional amendment for this? If you guessed that Lumpy Carson was the only D co-sponsor, you were correct. Agriculture Committee. Lumpy’s the chair.

This should be interesting. HB 83(Kowalko):

“…requires that all charter schools not discriminate against applicants based on their homes’ location in comparison to the school. The bill also eliminates the possibility of a preference in the charter. Thus, this bill eases the restrictions on the enrollment process for students residing within a 5-mile radius of the school.” In the Education Committee.

SCR 6(Townsend) proposes that a constitutional convention be convened to overturn the Citizens United decision. In the House Administration Committee.

Whenever a Rethug sponsors a labor bill, you can bet that its purpose is to screw workers.  Let’s take a look at HB 86(Dukes) with that in mind. Yup, thought so.  The bill allows counties and municipalities to opt out of the state’s Public Employment Relations Act. Because nothing grows the economy more than screwing public employees. In the Labor Committee. Where it will stay.

The issue of reimbursement to communities for snow removal has been around for at least 20 years.  Here’s another attempt to adjust the formula.  In the Transportation/Land Use/Infrastructure Committee.

Senate committee highlights include:

SB 79(Sokola) seeks to ensure the privacy of educational information pertaining to students and their parents or guardians. Education Committee.

The Health & Human Services Committee has an eclectic agenda. SB 85(Hall-Long) brings Delaware into compliance with federal child support enforcement law which makes it easier for dependents to collect from responsible parties who live outside the country; the e-cigs bill receives its Senate hearing; and a constituent-driven bill to expand the scope of permissible medical marijuana use is also scheduled. I support the latter, which is sponsored by Sen. Lopez.  I find it just a wee bit ironic, however, that several of the (downstate) co-sponsors are not generally supportive of pro-marijuana legislation.  But when there are points to be scored with constituents, alleged principle is out the window.

Finally, I’d like to talk about this infrastructure imbroglio.  It’s a continuation of R’s just trying to place their political interests ahead of the needs of the citizens they’re supposed to serve.

Rethug hack Greg Lavelle continues with his three-card monte trick of trying to convince the uneducated that, by moving ‘operational costs’ out of the Transportation Trust Fund into the General Fund, more funds will be available for projects.  Of course, he doesn’t mention that a cost-shift does nothing to eliminate costs, it just moves them.  They don’t get funded magically.  The revenue must be raised. So far, the D proposal is as follows:

“The Democratic package includes an increase in document fees charged on car purchases from 3.75 percent to 4.25 percent of the purchase price, an increase expected to generate $12.5 million in additional revenue annually.” (Additional borrowing would raise the amount to around $23 million.

Of course, that doesn’t come close to closing the (according to the News-Journal’s Jonathan Starkey) 6-year, $780 million, funding gap:

Lawmakers continue to discuss higher consumer and wholesale gas taxes, including a 5-cent increase in Delaware’s tax at the pump, to 28 cents per gallon. The goal of legislative discussions was to raise $50 million in new transportation revenue, matched by the same level of borrowing, to generate $100 million in new, annual transportation system funding.

The Rethugs are also pushing for prevailing wage ‘reform’ before they’ll release a vote or two, because nothing helps the economy more than paying people less to work.  This is not addressing a problem, this is holding the people of the state hostage. Which is what passes for ‘legislating’ as practiced by the R’s.

I agree with Speaker Pete here:

“The infrastructure issue is not a partisan problem,” Schwartzkopf said. “It has everything to do with maintaining our state for the citizens of our state, and for visitors. We should have a bipartisan solution. we need to get this thing started. It’s time to get something in writing.”

Me? I’m done writing. For now.