General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Thurs., June 7, 2018

Greg Lavelle and Dave McBride.  The two senators who made sure that wielders of assault weapons will be able to mow down children, teachers, ordinary citizens, police, and others.  What they did was unconscionable. McBride, by using his position as President Pro Tempore to place the assault weapons ban in a hostile committee. And Lavelle, for voting against the vast majority of his constituents by voting to kill the bill in committee. Oh, and Lavelle, who is as smarmy as they come, then blamed McBride for making Lavelle cast the deciding vote b/c, of course, McBride was just playing political games. From the Delaware State News article:

Sen. Lavelle accused President Pro Tempore David McBride, a New Castle Democrat, of hoping “to pin its demise on me for political gain in an election year,” noting the president pro tem could have placed the bill in any number of committees.

Well, yes. Or Lavelle could have voted to release the bill from committee. But Greg is posing as a constitutional expert this week in order to mollify the NRA, so apparently that just wasn’t possible. Lavelle has a vote, a vote entrusted to him by his voting constituents.  Yesterday, Greg Lavelle voted with those who would permit weapons of war to remain in the hands of potential mass murderers. McBride didn’t make him do it. The Devil presumably didn’t make him do it. He did it. Here’s something YOU can do.

As to McBride, he simply can’t function as President Pro-Tem any more. With the likes of Tizzy Lockman and Laura Sturgeon in the Delaware State Senate next year, you can be sure that his first term will be his last. Only PAL Longhurst rivals him in ineptitude. Neither should be in leadership.

A revised version of the Equal Rights Amendment passed the Senate yesterday.  Two lawyers, Senators Hansen and Delcollo, combined to craft an amendment that presumably paved the way for the bill’s passage.  Who knows what gloryhound PAL Longhurst will do in the House now that her bill has been amended? She doesn’t like her bills to be amended. Think she’ll swallow this one, though.

Here is the complete incomplete Session Activity Report from yesterday. Incomplete b/c committee reports are not generally read into the record until after the gavel comes down on Thursdays.

The Senate appears poised to pass legislation requiring all sorts of ‘safety’ features in new school construction and school renovations. The requirement comes with a fiscal note that sets the cost at ‘indeterminable’. Better this than getting rid of deadly weapons.

Here’s today’s scheduled Senate Agenda.  A highlight is HB 377 (Mitchell), which ‘permits a County government to impose and collect a lodging tax of no more than 3 percent on hotel, motel, and tourist home rooms located in the unincorporated areas of the County’.  SB 206 (Hansen)  seeks to address addiction and substance abuse disorder by linking:

specific patient care data related to overdose collected by the Office of Emergency Medical Services or the Office of the State Epidemiologist with data in the Delaware Prescription Monitoring Program (“PMP”). This Act will foster best practices in the use of health information, to ensure that consistent, humane, evidence-based treatment and care is available and provided to those suffering from substance use disorder or non-fatal overdose. Linking this data may assist prescribers and pharmacists in the identification of substance use disorder and promote safer prescribing.

Today’s House Agenda  kicks off with the amended Equal Rights Amendment. I appreciate the symbolism, but it’s what passes for substance in this virtually substance-free session of the General Assembly. Its passage will be oversold. The rest of this Agenda is weightier than usual, however.

SS1/SB80 (McDowell), which eliminates that pesky PSC oversight when it comes to certain rate increases sought by electric and natural gas utilities, appears likely to pass.  You know who didn’t seek passage of this bill? Consumers.

It’s about time we finally passed a bill like HB 165 (Baumbach),  which permits ‘wine producers holding a valid license within this State or another state to obtain a license and ship wine directly to Delaware consumers so long as it is done through a common carrier with a carrier permit’.  There is no good reason to prevent this. Consumers want it.

HS 1/HB 222(Bentz):

1) Creates a new Chapter of Title 10, which permits a family member or a law enforcement officer to obtain a lethal violence protective order. (2) Permits a family member or law enforcement officer to obtain an emergency lethal violence protective order in Justice of the Peace Court if the Court finds probable cause to believe that a respondent poses an immediate and present danger of causing physical injury to self or others by owning, possessing, controlling, purchasing, having access to, or receiving a firearm. The order requires the relinquishment of firearms to law enforcement and may prohibit the individual from residing with others who possess firearms, and grant permission to law enforcement to search for and seize firearms.

Clearly a very important bill.

I’m done. Back to work in the aftermath of my daughter’s wedding…the ‘math’ telling me that I have to work.