This Act requires new schools and state buildings over 50,000 square feet to meet certain requirements to ensure that the building's roof is able to support solar energy infrastructure.
This Joint Resolution designates August 31, 2024, as "International Overdose Awareness Day" in the State of Delaware and requires that in observance, the State flag be flown at half-staff at State facilities. By recognizing International Overdose Awareness Day, this Joint Resolution affirms the importance of overdose awareness, remembers those who have died from overdose, and acknowledges the grief suffered from losing a loved one to overdose.
This Act creates the Delaware Grocery Initiative. The Delaware Grocery Initiative is a healthy foods initiative that seeks to provide financial assistance to eligible food resources as designated by the bill. The Act defines food deserts and eligibility requirements for the initiative. The Act authorizes the Division of Small Business to implement the grant and financial support system. This substitute bill does the following: 1. Adds the following terms in the definition section of the Act: Council, food resource, Healthy Foods Retail Initiative, Program, and specialty grocer. 2. Modifies the definition of food desert. 3. Removes terms of grocery store, rural tract, and urban tract in lieu of the new definitions of food resource and food desert. 4. Designates the Division of Small Business, instead of the Office of State Planning, as theagency authorized to implement the Delaware Grocery Initiative and authorizes the Division of Small Business to adopt rules. 5. Replaces the grocery and food desert study with a food access strategy. 6. Subject to appropriation, creates a food access strategy to address food insecurity and requires submission of a report to the General Assembly and the Governor by June 1, 2025.
This Act makes the crime of “patronizing a prostitute” a class E felony rather than a misdemeanor where the person from whom prostitution is sought is a minor.
Due to the rapidly increasing costs of materials and labor, combined with the frequency in which developers have gone out of business or otherwise been unable to complete work required within developments, this Act increases the funding required to be secured by a developer to ensure the developer fulfills the developer's obligations to construct and complete improvements within a subdivision. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.
This Act sunsets the Technology Investment Council ("TIC"). The Joint Legislative Oversight and Sunset Committee ("JLOSC") reviewed TIC in 2022 and, as a result of the review, JLOSC sponsored House Bill No. 357 of the 151st General Assembly. HB 357 updated TIC's statute to streamline operations and prevent redundancies. In February 2024, TIC submitted a memorandum to JLOSC, explaining all of the following: - Redundancies with other State boards or committees, procedures, and efficiencies remain. And, ensuring that TIC has a quorum to conduct business during meetings continues to be a challenge. - Six of the 9 TIC members also serve on the Government Efficiency and Accountability Review ("GEAR") Board, including the Chief Justice, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Secretary of Finance, Secretary of the Department of Health and Social Services, the Controller General, and the Chief Information Officer of the Department of Technology and Information ("DTI"). - GEAR has a subcommittee specifically dedicated to IT efficiency and releases an annual report detailing the progress in this focus area. - TIC convened only once in 2023. - TIC's goals are achieved through DTI processes and collaboration with agencies, OMB, and GEAR. - With no objection from TIC members, DTI requested that JLOSC support the sunsetting of TIC. For these reasons, the Technology Investment Council is sunsetted under this Act.
Sections 1 and 2 of this Act update Chapter 8 of Title 12, the Uniform TOD Security Registration Act. Section 1 of this Act does the following: (1) Adds a new definition to § 801 of Title 12 to define “cash equivalents”. (2) Amends the definition of “registering entity” in § 801 of Title 12 to confirm that registering entities may include securities dealers, banks, savings banks, trust companies, investment advisers, and other financial institutions that maintain securities accounts for customers. (3) Amends the definition of “security” in § 801 of Title 12 to confirm that interests in or obligations of a corporation; a limited liability company or any series of a limited liability company; a partnership, whether general or limited, or any series of a partnership; and a trust, including a common law trust, a voting trust, a business trust, or a statutory trust, or any series of a trust, constitute a “security” for purposes of the Unform TOD Security Registration Act. (4) Amends the definition of “security account” in § 801 of Title 12 to make ministerial changes to the language of the definition and to expand the definition to include investment management accounts, securities accounts, custody accounts, or other agency accounts for the investment or custody of securities maintained with a bank, a savings bank, a trust company, a securities dealer, an investment adviser, or other financial institution. Section 2 of this Act amends § 805 of Title 12 to confirm that registration in beneficiary form with respect to an uncertificated security or a security account need not include the names of beneficiaries if the names of all beneficiaries are otherwise maintained by the registering entity. This avoids, for example, any requirement for the book entry of an uncertificated security or the name of a security account to include the names of all beneficiaries, so long as the registering entity otherwise maintains the names of such beneficiaries. Sections 1 and 2 of this Act are not intended to override provisions of an entity’s operating agreement or governing provisions, and will take effect subject to any implementing requirements of the agreement or governing provisions, such as transfer or ownership restrictions. Sections 3 and 4 of this Act pertain to “letters of wishes” by trustors and add a new definition to § 3301 of Title 12 and a new subsection to § 3315 of Title 12. Letters of wishes have long been created by trustors as a means of assisting fiduciaries to understand the discretionary terms of the trust’s governing instrument, to understand the application of those terms as intended by trustors, and to assist fiduciaries to exercise distribution discretion. Accordingly, Sections 3 and 4 of this Act acknowledge existing and common practice by affirming that the standard of review of a fiduciary’s decision to consider or not to consider a letter of wishes is the same “abuse of discretion” (within the meaning of § 187 of the Restatement (Second) of Trusts, not §§ 50 and 60 of the Restatement (Third) of Trusts) standard described in § 3315 of Title 12. The new provisions recognize that a letter of wishes is a non-binding document intended to provide guidance and insight into the trustor’s intent relevant to a particular trust. New subsection (c) of § 3315 of Title 12 specifically provides 3 safe harbors for determining that a fiduciary has not abused its discretion, by stating that the following do not constitute an abuse of that fiduciary’s discretion: (1) the fiduciary’s decision not to consider a letter of wishes with respect to an unambiguous provision of the trust’s governing instrument; (2) the fiduciary’s decision not to consider a letter of wishes not meeting the criteria of the new subsection (c) of § 3315 of Title 12; and (3) the fiduciary’s decision to consider a letter of wishes meeting the criteria of the new subsection (c) of § 3315 of Title 12, with respect to an ambiguous provision of a trust’s governing instrument. In addition, the new subsection (c) of § 3315 of Title 12 provides that the letter of wishes is not binding on the fiduciary, that the fiduciary has no duty to follow the letter of wishes, and that the fiduciary’s exercise or non-exercise of a discretionary power does not create an inference that the fiduciary improperly exercised such power or abused the fiduciary’s discretion under § 3315(a) of Title 12. Sections 3 and 4 of this Act, however, are not intended to override the Court of Chancery’s decision in Bishop v. McNeil, 1999 Del. Ch. LEXIS 186, 1999 WL 743489 (Del. Ch. 1999), in which the Court declined to take into account a letter to construe the provisions of an unambiguous governing instrument for a trust because the letter was extrinsic evidence of trustor intent. Thus, Sections 3 and 4 of this Act are not intended to affect the law regarding the Court’s interpretation of unambiguous governing instruments for trusts, for which the Court may not consider extrinsic evidence, or to affect the law regarding the Court’s interpretation of ambiguous governing instruments for trusts, for which the Court may consider extrinsic evidence, including any such letter of wishes. Section 5 of this Act adds new paragraph (32) to § 3325 of Title 12 to provide trustees of trusts with a statutory power to hire, retain, and compensate providers of programs and education for trust beneficiaries that may help prepare the beneficiaries for inheriting wealth, by helping to develop wealth-management skills, enhance beneficiary mental health and well-being, particularly as those areas may be impacted by the trust itself, and to reduce the potential for the trust to disincentivize the beneficiaries’ productivity or impact their mental health or well-being. The trustee may provide these programs and services or may hire and pay third parties or affiliates from the trust estate to provide these services and, in each case, without diminution of the trustee’s regular compensation to which the trustee would otherwise be entitled to receive for serving as trustee. Section 6 of this Act amends § 3339 of Title 12, regarding designated representatives, to do all of the following: (1) Provide specifically that when a trustor appoints a designated representative for beneficiaries, the appointment may be with respect to beneficiaries who are minors, who are incapacitated, who are unborn, or whose identities or locations are not known and not reasonably ascertainable. (2) Make clearer that when notice of the appointment is required to be given to parents of the represented person or to a guardian of the property of the represented person, the requirement applies only to those beneficiaries who are minors or who are incapacitated. Section 7 of this Act adds new § 3345 of Title 12 to enable trustors to create what is to be known as a “Beneficiary Well-Being Trust” by expressly referencing § 3345 of Title 12 in the trust’s governing instrument. Section 3345 of Title 12 recognizes a growing concern of trustors that while there are many advantages to passing wealth through generations in trust, such as tax savings, creditor protection, consolidated investment and management, and protection of assets from imprudent waste, trusts may grow in value so that considerable wealth may become available to the beneficiaries, sometimes before beneficiaries have had an opportunity to learn and know the value of money and the personal and social responsibilities that access to wealth entails. The purpose of the Beneficiary Well-Being Trust is to provide wealth management training and services for the beneficiaries’ mental health and well-being and to educate beneficiaries about their family history and legacy, family values and dynamics, family governance, and philanthropy, all as more fully described in § 3345 of Title 12. The governing instrument of a Beneficiary Well-Being Trust may provide for additional powers, duties, rights, and interests of the beneficiaries, trustees, and advisers to the fullest extent permissible under § 3303 of Title 12. The trustees and advisers of a Beneficiary Well-Being Trust may provide beneficiary well-being programs or may hire and pay third parties or affiliates from the trust estate to provide beneficiary well-being programs and, in each case, without diminution of the trustee’s or adviser’s regular compensation to which the trustee or adviser would otherwise be entitled to receive for serving as trustee or adviser. Section 8 of this Act amends § 3547 of Title 12, regarding virtual representation, to extend the principles of the section by allowing a designated representative of a beneficiary under § 3339 of Title 12 to represent virtually those whom the beneficiary could virtually represent, including, under the circumstances already permitted under § 3547 of Title 12, someone who is a minor, is incapacitated, is unborn, or whose identity or location is not known and not reasonably ascertainable; a presumptive remainder beneficiary of a trust; a contingent successor remainder beneficiary of a trust; the holder of a power of appointment over a trust; or the beneficiaries of a trust that is itself the beneficiary of another trust, if there is not a material conflict of interest between the designated representative and those who are to be virtually represented. Section 9 of this Act provides an effective date for this Act and makes clear that this Act applies to trusts created before, on, or after the effective date of this Act.
This Act revises existing animal cruelty laws to include people who knowingly possess, own, buy, sell, transfer, or manufacture animal fighting paraphernalia with the intent to engage in or otherwise promote or facilitate such fighting as guilty of a class E felony. This Act defines “animal fighting paraphernalia” and creates a list of considerations a court may use when assessing whether an item or object qualifies as animal fighting paraphernalia.
Maddy summaryThis bill updates overtime pay rules for non-exempt employees working for the Delaware Department of Transportation. Starting July 1, 2024, these workers will receive time-and-a-half pay for any hours worked beyond 37.5 hours in a single week. The change applies specifically to the DOT and ensures that overtime compensation begins once an employee exceeds the standard 37.5-hour threshold.
This bill amends Chapter 68 of Title 18, related to medical negligence insurance and litigation, to repeal those provisions of the law that are expired or that are no longer used as a matter of practice in medical negligence litigation.
