General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Thurs., March 17, 2016
A minimally-embellished, if excessively-hyphenated, just-the-facts edition today.
Tuesday’s Session Activity Report-Click on 3-15.
Wednesday’s Session Activity Report-Click on 3-16.
Stuff worth knowing:
The proposed constitutional amendment mandating that $10 mill must go to Agriculture Lands Preservation annually did not come close to a 2/3 majority in the House. 20 Y, 17 N, 4 A. The only upstate D’s to vote for the bill were Gerald Brady (?) and…Bryon Short (!). Oh, did I mention that there are 8,000 Delaware Farm Bureau members? A cheap (it wasn’t going to pass with or without his vote), politically expedient, and intellectually dishonest vote by the least progressive D candidate for Congress in Delaware.
Guess there was no controversy surrounding SB 202 (Sokola) after all. Mitch Crane was right, the bill merely reflects the self-insured nature of the state and its school buses in this matter. Bill passed unanimously in Senate.
Stuff worth knowing:
Will there be any no votes on SB 203 (McBride)? I’m guessing yes, but am prepared to be pleasantly surprised. The bill ‘restores the authority of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (Department) to assess criminal penalties against violators of the Wetlands Act and Subaqueous Lands Act (Acts), when appropriate.’ This authority was inadvertently repealed back in 2013. How can such authority be inadvertently repealed in the first place? Don’t they have lawyers to make sure that stuff like this doesn’t happen? The mind boggles. BTW, it’s a 2/3 bill, so we’ll see if there’s any Rethug obstructionism involved.
Only one bill of importance on the House Agenda. If you guessed SB 200 (Blevins), you’d be correct. The latest in the series of corporate giveaways will be on the Governor’s desk by day’s end.
Tags: Delaware General Assembly, El Somnambulo, Steve Tanzer Delaware
I actually feel that the Agricultural Lands Preservation fund has done a lot of good and I’ve been disappointed by lawmakers decreasing its funding of late. But I’d only support constitutionally guaranteeing its annual funding if we also constitutionally guaranteed funding for the Open Space Council annually.
A constitutional amendment to make Agricultural Lands Preservation the first and most pressing priority of the state government in perpetuity seems a bit much, doesn’t it?
Well, I don’t really see it as a serious attempt at amending the constitution, I more see it as a shot across the bow of the Joint Finance Committee as a warning to stop raiding funds from agricultural lands preservation. It’s such a small amount of money annually that there’s no justification for doing it. But like I said, I only would’ve gone along with it if it included the even more important open space funding.
It’s not the JFC budget that takes out the land preservation money, it is (and has been) Governor Markell’s proposed budgets that have included and recommended this.
Representative John Kowalko
As regards SB 200:
I certainly have not and will not support any of these corporate tax welfare bills. DuPont recently built and opened a $200 million solar panel manufacturing factory in China that employs thousands of Chinese workers and Delaware taxpayers are left with some extremely costly crumbs in Wilmington. Let me point out to the News Journal reporter that there will be opposition to this ravaging of the taxpayers’ wallet and I certainly will do my best to convince my colleagues of the illegitimacy of such policies that offer no return on investment for Delaware taxpayers. In addition DuPont has built and opened a $200 million factory in China that employs thousands of Chinese workers to manufacture solar panels that are sold under the DuPont name.
My point is that making that product (Oreos for instance) Moving 600 jobs from Chicago to Mexico across the border for dirt cheap wages and rueful working conditions benefits only those multi-billion dollar corporations and their CEOs (see DuPont/Dow $80 million bonuses) while idling thousands of American workers who no longer have spendable income to support the consumer spending that is needed for local businesses to survive. Ross Perot was right about that sucking sound. For example: DuPont $200 million factory built in China (recently opened) employing thousands of Chinese workers manufacturing solar panels for sale back here, or Johnson Controls recently constructed and opened battery manufacturing facility ($150 million) in China for distribution from the Delaware distribution center in Middletown that taxpayers invested millions in infrastructural and road improvements. For example DuPont spinoff headquarters staying in Wilmington while a significant majority of the actual jobs of the agricultural research branch goes to Iowa leaving Delaware with 1700 layoffs of well-paid positions and only a potential for job growth with a price tag of $16 million for Delaware taxpayers. The list goes on and on.
Representative John Kowalko
Representative Kowalko,
Believe me, I’m not any happier with Governor Markell recommending slashing the agricultural land preservation and open space council funding. But the Joint Finance Committee is still going along with that. In my view, it’s bad for the budget and bad for Delaware regardless of who shares more blame.