Weekly Report: 5/27/2024
The legislature is out of session until June 11 for budget markup. Once they come back into session, the last three weeks of June will be a race to the finish line to get legislation passed. Here’s what’s happened recently and what we’re looking to see passed before the session ends on June 30.
In positive news, some good bills have moved forward in the past week.
HS 2 for HB 110, which would require Medicaid to cover abortion care, finally passed the House after being held up since last year.
HS 2 for HB 350, which sets a framework for hospital spending benchmarks and lowering costs for patients, passed both the House and Senate and is awaiting the Governor’s signature.
SB 282, SB 283, SB 284, which repeal certain outdated fines & fees and discharge balances owed, passed the Senate and are now awaiting a House committee hearing. This package of bills is based on the recommendations of the Fines & Fees Task Force implemented following the passage of landmark fines & fees reforms that passed last year (HB 244). These bills are championed by the Campaign to End Debtors’ Prison.
The House Appropriations Committee had a big hearing last week, where several bills were released and one very important bill was blocked.
HS 2 for HB 125, which relates to free school breakfast and lunch, was released from committee and now heads to the House floor. All 6 committee members voted to release the bill on merits. The substitute bill differs from the original bill by removing the previous requirement for all students to receive free breakfast and lunch and instead requiring only students who qualify for a reduced-price meal under the federal School Breakfast Program and National School Lunch Program to receive a free breakfast and lunch every school day. We’re hopeful that we can ensure free meals for all students, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.
HB 280, which reforms civil asset forfeiture (where the police can seize individuals property with little to no recourse) was also released from committee. This law makes the process of civil asset forfeiture more fair to the public in the State of Delaware and has strong support from progressive members of both the State House and Senate.
HB 17, which would have required all employers in the State to provide employees with a minimum of 1 hour of earned sick time and safety leave for every 30 hours workedfailed to make it out of the House Appropriations Committee with just one Democrat, Nnamdi Chukwuocha, voting no. This bill is sponsored by WFP champion Rep. Eric Morrison, and we’re hopeful it will get another chance before June 30 if Rep. Chukwuocha can be convinced to release it from committee.
SB 11 and SB 12 were passed by the Senate last week and now head to the House for consideration. These bills are the second part of a bail package that started a couple of years ago. That bill, SB 7, rolled back bail reform victories from prior years, and these bills seem to reinforce a problematic structure. As discussed on the Senate floor, the Department of Justice and Office of Defense Services were at the table working on these bills, and while Office of Defense Services did get some wins like right to counsel for pretrial detention hearings, there are still significant concerns from criminal justice reform advocates on potentially harmful and regressive bail policies.
We are still waiting for the Senate to vote on SS 2 for SB 4, a comprehensive reform of Delaware’s broken probation reform system sponsored by WFP champion Marie Pinkney. This bill has gone through a lot of changes already, and it’s coming down to the wire to get it passed, so make sure to show your support here.
There’s also recently been quite a bit of controversy with proposed corporate law reforms, which you can read more about here. These bills usually sneak through the legislature without much review, so we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.
Get Involved with a Campaign
Since announcing our first round of candidate endorsements on May 4th, we’ve been out knocking doors with candidates, and we would love for you to join us! Here are some opportunities to get involved this week:
Grassroots Campaign Training - Wednesday, May 29th at 6pm - Join this training to learn why grassroots campaigns are important if you want to make change, what the different parts of a campaign are, and how you can get involved in helping a grassroots campaign. This training is aimed at people interested in either becoming a team member or running for office themselves.
Canvass for Branden Fletcher - Saturday, June 1st at 1pm - Branden is running for an open seat in the 3rd Representative District in the westside of Wilmington.
Canvass for Monica Shockley-Porter - Sunday, June 2nd at 2pm - Monica is running against incumbent Bill Bush for the 29th Representative District in Smyrna/Clayton..
If you want to see other canvasses that we have coming up, you can check out our Mobilize.