This Act directs state agencies to collaborate on the development and implementation of “clean construction preferences” that will allow for the incorporation and consideration of sustainability and carbon impact data in the award of public works contracts.
In 1995, the General Assembly directed the Code Revisors to gender neutralize or otherwise ensure that a solely masculine or feminine designation never occurs unless it could only apply to one gender. The Code Revisors followed this direction and worked to ensure that laws enacted after 1995 were gender neutralized during the codification process. The Code Revisors also began working through the Delaware Code in existence in 1995 to gender neutralize existing law, a process that is not yet complete. Since 1995, the more common legislative drafting technique is to draft laws so that they are gender silent. Gender silent drafting techniques include substituting the noun for which the masculine or feminine pronoun refers. Thus, instead of drafting a law to say, “The Governor may appoint an individual if he or she deems him or her qualified”, following gender silent techniques the law would say, “The Governor may appoint an individual if the Governor deems the individual qualified.” This technique has the added benefit of providing clarity as many times use of multiple masculine or feminine pronouns can result in confusion as to which noun the pronouns refer. This Act serves two purposes. First, Section 1 of this Act directs and authorizes the Code Revisors to use gender silent techniques to ensure masculine or feminine pronouns are not used in Delaware Code unless the usage requires otherwise. Second, the goal of Sections 2 through 141 of this Act is to complete the process of removing purely masculine pronouns by using gender silent techniques, except in instances where it could not be determined which noun the masculine pronoun applied to.
This Act promotes increased capital investment at Delaware casinos by restructuring the table games licensing fee reduction currently received by video lottery agents to allow capital investments greater than the minimum amounts required under § 4815(b)(3)a. of Title 29 of the Delaware Code to count toward the allowable license fee reductions. For ease of administration, this Act also aligns time periods for both table games and video lottery calculations.
This Concurrent Resolution recognizes May 20, 2023, as Armed Forces Day in Delaware.
This House Resolution recognizes and commends speech-language pathologists and audiologists throughout this State for their work with citizens of this State to lead independent, productive, and fulfilling lives.
This Concurrent Resolution recognizes May 22, 2023 as “National Maritime Day” in Delaware.
This Senate Concurrent Resolution designates May 25, 2023, as “Africa Day” in Delaware.
This bill is the Cover All Delaware Children Act. Many children who are undocumented do not have access to routine or preventative healthcare, including vaccinations and physicals, because they cannot afford the services. Instead they may rely upon emergency room visits when untreated conditions worsen. Providing publicly funded healthcare coverage to low-income children greatly improves their health and long-term outcomes. Medicaid coverage is linked to fewer chronic conditions, better overall health, improved oral health, and fewer hospitalizations and emergency room visits. This Act directs the Department of Health and Social Services to develop and operate a limited medical assistance program for children in Delaware who are not otherwise covered, including children who are not documented. A child resident in the state whose family income is low enough that they would qualify on that basis for Medicaid or CHIP coverage, but is not eligible for Medicaid or other federally funded coverage, is eligible for coverage and medical care under this Act. The coverage would be co-extensive with that provided by CHIP and Medicaid, except that it would not include in-patient care at a hospital or other healthcare facility. The Act also directs the State to submit a plan amendment to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services so that the state can take advantage of the federal CHIP option to include coverage of pregnant women regardless of immigration status.
This Senate Concurrent Resolution designates the month of May 2023 as "Lyme Disease Awareness Month" in the State of Delaware.
The State of Delaware previously offered an employer match for state employee contributions to the deferred compensation program. The purpose of the match was to help state employees save and build wealth for retirement and to enable state government to recruit and retain talent by offering a valuable retirement savings benefit. In July 2008, during the Great Recession, the State suspended the employer match to cut costs. Every year since fiscal year 2008, the General Assembly has written in the annual appropriations bill: “It is the intent of the General Assembly that this program be reinstated when funding becomes available.” This Act updates the laws governing the employer match in anticipation of the General Assembly restoring the match this session and increases the maximum match to $20 per pay period. This Act also eases restrictions on which participants are eligible for the match. To help employees who are unable to save for retirement because of their student loan burden, this Act enables a match for employee’s student loan payments with employer contributions to their deferred compensation account. Congress enabled employers to make this type of matching contribution with the passage of the SECURE 2.0 Act, which was included in the Federal Fiscal Year 2023 Omnibus Appropriations Bill. This Act provides the Plans Management Board with the discretion to determine which plan the matching contributions should be deposited into.
