General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., June 20, 2018

Filed in Delaware, Featured by on June 20, 2018

Some days suck more than others. Yesterday, the Senate voted down an assault weapons ban, with the Senate’s answer to the ‘Get Off My Lawn’ guy, Brian Bushweller, dealing the death blow to the bill, thus enabling weapons wielders to deal literal death to victims in volleys of ammo.  Whatever was Bushweller’s legacy has shrunk to near-nothingness in recent years.  While voting against a decent minimum wage and against prospective victims of deadly weaponry, he has single-mindedly pursued bailouts for his bleeping Dover casino. To quote a certain President, ‘Sad’. So much for the momentum of Parkland. A Carperbot who only cares about racino owners can cavalierly dismiss the students who saw their classmates shot down. What a smug, self-satisfied asshole.

That pretty much closes the book on gun control for this session. The record will show that, when confronted with mass shootings throughout the land, the Delaware General Assembly largely stood with the bullies, the people who support every American’s right to possess a weapon of war. That’s a fail, with no safe. When it comes to school shootings, this is what passes for ‘protection’. Pathetic.

Here is yesterday’s Session Activity Report.  The Governor signed several bills, including Sen. McDowell’s bill enabling electric and gas utilities to raise rates w/o PSC permission under certain circumstances.  There was a time when Sen. McDowell would have been the last person to run such a bill. That time, however, was decades ago, which is when he should have retired. His last twenty years in the Senate have largely been a repudiation of his reform efforts that preceded them. Another legacy tarnished.

Let’s look at today’s committee highlights, starting with the House. This will be the last regularly scheduled committee day in the House, so there are bound to be loads of bills to be considered. Because of the press of legislation, I will only highlight House bills in the House and Senate bills in the Senate as we’ve presumably discussed bills crossing over when they were first considered in the house of origin. Here’s what struck my interest:

*HB 450 (Matthews) deserves passage.  It provides for the expungement of criminal records if  “(1) an arrest did not lead to a guilty disposition or (2) an isolated conviction has been followed by a significant amount of time spent staying out of trouble with the law.”  It does more than that. I encourage you to click on the link and read the entire synopsis. Judiciary.

*HB 71 (Kowalko) ‘adds appointed members of the Cash Management Policy Board to the definition of “public officers’ for the purpose of requiring financial disclosure. You see what Pete ‘n Val did here? This was a recommendation of the Joint Sunset Committee back in 2016. Instead of assigning this bill to the Sunset Committee, Speaker Pete buried it in the House Administration Committee, where it has languished since March of 2017. Dick move by a dick.

*HS1/HB 360(Keeley)  attempts to ‘combat sexual harassment in the workplace and to ensure the safety and dignity of all employees in Delaware’ by doing the following:

This bill defines sexual harassment and makes employers responsible for the sexual harassment of an employee by a supervisor or by another employee when the employer knew or should have known about it and failed to take appropriate corrective action. Moreover, this bill prevents an employer from retaliating against an employee for filing a discrimination charge. This bill includes a requirement that the Department of Labor create an information sheet pertaining to sexual harassment that employers must distribute to employees. Employers having more than 50 or more employees in Delaware will be required to provide sexual harassment training to all employees and supervisory employees which must be conducted every 2 years. This bill also empowers the Department of Labor to investigate violations of this Act and gives the Department jurisdiction over all sexual harassment cases which includes an administrative process.

Needless to say, the Chamber and its moneyed minions are bleating the most about undue hardship on business. Labor.

Senate Committee highlights:

*SB 262 (Walsh), aka the ‘Share The Care Act’, ‘permits a responsible caregiver to give permission to an individual employed by a home care agency selected by the responsible caregiver to administer medications to an adult individual who lacks decision-making capacity in the individual’s residence’. Sunset.

*SB 203 (Delcollo) is the Rethugs’ alternative to gun control. Yep, increase the penalties for gun-related offenses. Brochure material. Judiciary & Community Affairs, the same committee that buried the assault weapons bill.

*SS1/SB 207 (Hansen)  essentially seeks to mobilize all state resources to combat oil drilling off the Delaware coast. Betcha that everybody votes for this one. Environmental, Natural Resources & Energy.

*Oh, Christ, guess who has been nominated to serve on the Industrial Accident Board? Vince D’Anna. To paraphrase Larry King, ‘Look up ‘Delaware political hack’ in the dictionary and you’ll find a picture of Vince D’Anna’. How big a hack and for how long? Liberal Geek may remember this one from the Wayback Machine. I’m sure that Nancy Willing remembers this one. If Carney was capable of embarrassment, he would be embarrassed for exhuming this serial scumbag from his political grave. The Senate should summarily reject this nomination. They won’t.  Executive Committee.

Quite the consequential Senate Agenda today. The Budget BillBonuses for State Employees and Pensioners. And two important bills seeking to minimize the use of cash bail to keep non-adjudicated suspects in jail: SB 221 and SB 222, both sponsored by Sen. Townsend.

I can only hope that this legislative day sucks less than yesterday. Tune in tomorrow to see what happens.

 

 

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  1. Although it only got 11 votes and needs 14, it’s probably more like 13. Sokola likely voted no as a parliamentary maneuver to enable him to bring the bill back up for consideration. If Cloutier ever returns, she could be 13. Still one short, though…

  2. Paid family leave for state employees passed the Senate with only 4 no votes. Goes to the Governor, who has already promised to sign it.

  3. I was told to check in here to see for myself this sorry news about Vince D’Anna. WHAT A SHAM.

  4. heh, fun to take the trips down memory lane.

    Here’s a kicker of an email from 2013 that I shared with the Dept. of Justice a few years ago after KHN campaign finance report was published and there was no accounting for her $36k in scattered loans to herself. She still has to account for this money.

    D’Anna works/has worked for known corrupt developer Mario Capano (Lex Wilson reported Vince looking at the controversial-farmland preservation-deal farms out at Port Penn on behalf of a client (Capano) in 2016) although D’Anna denied the relationship in his 2013 email (below).
    ——————————————–
    Fwd: Some questions on BoA independence
    Nancy Willing
    To:
    khnagle444@gmail.com
    Sep 25, 2013 at 12:30 PM

    Karen,

    You have no particular expertise in land use. How closely will you be working with Vince D’Anna in your role with Board of Adjustment.

    Are you still in partnership for political polling etc. with Vince and Carl?

    Was this business relationship made transparent in your application for the BoA position?

    Hope to hear from you, these were reservations / considerations I had on an afterthought. Vince is neck deep into real estate / development vested interests. I would hate to think there was any aspect of your being a puppet for Vince on this Board.

    There is already a perception that Coons and Clark loaded this Board with people responsive to the development community not the civic – public interests.

    Nancy
    ————————————————–

    Karen didn’t answer my email.
    Instead, she forwarded it to Vince who responded thusly:

    —————————————————

    Vdanna@aol.com
    To:
    nancyvwilling@yahoo.com

    Sep 26, 2013 at 12:38 PM

    From: Vdanna@aol.com
    To: khnagle444@gmail.com
    Sent: 9/26/2013 12:35:38 P.M. US Eastern Daylight Time
    Subj: Re: Some questions on BoA independence

    I’m not sure who should be more offended by this obnoxious and condescending email myself or Karen. If you understood the function and role of the Board of Adjustment, you would know that Karen possesses the personal qualities that would make her an ideal member. She’s intelligent, objective dilligent and has good judgement and a person of high integrity that has has represented herself in legal matters in a per se role which will certainly give her more sensitivity to those many applicants who represent themselves on the smaller home owner variances. Further she has the temperament to make people feel at ease.To suggest that she having land use experience is somehow disqualifying is patently absurd. She was approved unanimously without a murmur of concern. You on the other hand would be a horrible board of adjustment member. Cursing the wind does not give you land use experience. You have a clear and acknowledged bias against business and development. your temperament is in many instances is condescending and many times personally insulting. No one would ever accuse you of being objective. If someone were ever foolish enough to nominate you for anything, it would be difficult to imagine you being approved. For your information for whatever your concern ,the polling partnership that you refer to is nearly ready to be incorporated a fact that Karen said she shared with many on council. A s far as” being neck deep in real estate development vested interests(i wish I were}, I have not been involved in a development project for probably 4 years. Should you persist on commenting on my business activities in a negative way that may lead to depriving me of income, i will strongly consider legal action

    ————————————-

    Ergo, D’Anna made my point in how NOT INDEPENDENT KHN is from him. She couldn’t even answer the email by or for herself.

    NOTE: I have never sought to be appointed to any board in city, state or county.

  5. My last comment went into moderation – FYI to admin.