Rep. David Bentz

The Joint Legislative Oversight and Sunset Committee approved a project to work with the Governor's Office throughout 2018 and 2019 to identify antiquated boards, commissions, and councils that need statutory updates or outright repeals. The Architectural Accessibility Board was identified as needing updates to make it easier to fill vacancies and generally update language to modern legislative drafting standards. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.

This Act corrects a technical error in House Bill No. 311 of the 149th General Assembly. HB 311 was intended to allow the grandfathering of licenses under Chapter 39, Title 24 to occur up to 2 years after HB 311 was enacted. In fact, however, HB 311's effective date allowed for only 1 year. Under this Act, the grandfathering period will be for the intended period of 2 years.

The Joint Legislative Oversight and Sunset Committee approved a project to work with the Governor's Office throughout 2018 and 2019 to identify antiquated boards, commissions, and councils that need statutory updates or outright repeals. The Advisory Council to the Division of Developmental Disabilities Services was identified as needing updates to change terms to “up to” 3 years, remove political party balance, and make it easier to fill vacancies. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.

This Act makes updates to the Joint Legislative Oversight and Sunset Act (“JLOSC Act”) to meet modern-day needs and practices. First, this Act defines “highest administrative officer” to clarify that the executive branch, cabinet-level officer of an entity under review must be present at public hearings under the JLOSC Act. Other states have an equal mix of requiring the presence of the cabinet-level official, requiring the presence of the division-level leader, or not clarifying which of the 2 positions must be present. This Act contemplates circumstances under which a person other than the cabinet-level officer may be more appropriate to appear at JLOSC hearings, and therefore authorizes the officer, with the JLOSC Chair’s approval, to appoint a designee to meet the officer’s obligations, or the JLOSC Committee to designate a person other than the officer. This Act also makes changes to specific deadlines that are out-of-step with JLOSC’s practices and needs. In doing so, this Act also clarifies language regarding JLOSC staffs’ duties and requirements for the JLOSC’s draft report. Finally, this Act makes technical changes to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.

This bill changes the standard of proof necessary to issue a civil gun relinquishment order from the Justice of the Peace Court. The preponderance of the evidence standard is the standard traditionally used in civil matters and is, therefore, appropriate here. This also makes the standard consistent with that required for a Lethal Violence Protective Order, which is highly similar in nature.

This bill requires the State food safety standards for restaurants to include a system for requiring healthy beverages to be offered as the default beverage with a combination children’s meal inclusive of a drink, sold together at a unit price. It does not prohibit the restaurant’s ability to sell, or a customer’s ability to choose, a substitute or alternative beverage as-requested by a customer. This effectively creates an “opt in” instead of an “opt out” for many sugar-rich drink choices for children. This bill also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.

This bill updates the real estate appraisers’ practice act to comply with federal law by clarifying the definition of federally-related transaction and adding a definition for federal financial institutions regulatory agencies. Changes to these definitions would render Delaware’s definitions consistent with federal law. Section two of the bill changes the renewal for appraisal management companies (AMC) from every two years to annually to facilitate the renewal procedure for the Division of Professional Regulation. Section three of the bill eliminates the current allowance in Delaware for a revoked or suspended real estate appraiser to have an ownership interest in an AMC, and section four disallows AMCs from removing an appraiser from its appraiser panel without prior notice. Delaware’s law currently allows AMCs to do so if the appraiser was only added to the panel in the previous 60 days. Federal law does not have any such allowance.

This Concurrent Resolution establishes a task force (“Task Force”) to study and make recommendations regarding the policies, rules, structure, and regulations of the Division of Developmental Disabilities Services ("Division"). The Division provides home and community-based services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The Task Force will consider, have access to, and make recommendations on several matters, including: (1) Wages and turnover rates for direct support professionals. (2) Design of systems changes and performance measures. (3) Other trends, analyses, and recommendations. (4) A synopsis of provider violations, probation, appeals, and ultimate outcomes from 2015 through 2019. The data provided to the Task Force are not records or proceedings for the purposes of § 1768 of Title 24, commonly known as “peer review privilege.” The release of data for the purposes of the Task Forces’ work does not waive the privileged nature of the data, which must already omit information that may identify a specific patient or provider before it is provided to the Task Force. This Concurrent Resolution is the result of the Joint Legislative Oversight and Sunset Committee deciding not to review the Division in 2020 and instead allow the Division time to undergo a more brief method of review. This process was initially created as an advisory council through Senate Bill No. 154 of the 150th General Assembly, but was later determined to be better achieved through a task force.

This bill changes the earned income tax credit from nonrefundable to refundable. For tax year 2020 and thereafter, the rate of the credit is in the amount of 5.9 %.

This Act establishes in-person early voting in Delaware beginning January 1, 2022. Registered voters will be allowed to vote in-person during at least 10 days before an election, up to and including the Saturday and Sunday immediately before the election at locations determined by the State Election Commissioner. This Act also charges the State Election Commissioner with determining whether such voting should occur by voting machine or paper ballot. All other procedures relating to conducting voting are the same as for general election voting. Further, this Act requires that for statewide elections there must be at least 1 in-person polling place in each county, and an additional location in the City of Wilmington.