Rep. Paul Baumbach

This Act revises the data collection procedures and authority of the Workers’ Compensation Oversight Panel (“Panel”) to ensure that the Panel is able to obtain the data necessary to perform its statutory duties, without infringing upon the authority of the Department of Insurance to regulate the insurance industry. This Act also protects the confidentiality of data acquired by the Panel from the Department of Insurance or the Department of Labor. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.

This Act, named 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. Under this Act, the responsible caregiver must prepackage the medication by date and time and provide written instructions regarding the administration procedure. And, the responsible caregiver and the person employing the unlicensed assistive personnel must sign an agreement governing the administration or medication.

This Act strengthens the role and responsibilities of the Provider Advisory Board in regard to the implementation and enforcement of The Delaware Child Care Act.

This Act prohibits the manufacture, sale, offer to sell, transfer, purchase, receipt, possession, or transport of assault weapons in Delaware, subject to certain exceptions. One exception relevant to individuals is that the Act does not prohibit the possession and transport of firearms that were lawfully possessed or fully applied for before the effective date of this Act; although for these firearms there are certain restrictions relating to their possession and transport after the effective date of this Act. This Act is based on the Firearm Safety Act of 2013 (“FSA”) passed in Maryland in the wake of the tragic slaughtering of children on December 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The FSA’s assault weapons ban was upheld as constitutional on February 21, 2017, by the full membership of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in the case of Kolbe v. Hogan, 849 F.3d 114 (4th Cir. 2017). The names Newtown, Aurora, San Bernardino, Orlando, Las Vegas, and Parkland, among others, have become synonymous with tragic killing of innocent, unsuspecting Americans of all ages and backgrounds, amidst a framework of federal and state laws that have permitted the purchase of weapons designed for the battlefield — not for our schools, our theaters, our places of worship, or our homes. Safety — both for the general public, as well as members of Delaware's law-enforcement community — is the objective of this Act, as it was for the FSA. And, as with the FSA, a primary goal of this Act is to reduce the availability of assault weapons so that when a criminal acts, he or she does so with a less dangerous weapon and less severe consequences. Relying on United States Supreme Court precedent from District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), as well as the holdings of its sister circuits, the full Fourth Circuit concluded that the assault weapons banned by the FSA are not protected by the Second Amendment. The Fourth Circuit was convinced that the banned assault weapons are among those arms that are “like” “M-16 rifles” — “weapons that are most useful in military service” — which the Heller Court singled out as being beyond the Second Amendment’s reach. The Fourth Circuit concluded that Maryland had presented extensive uncontroverted evidence demonstrating that the assault weapons outlawed by the FSA are exceptionally lethal weapons of war. The Fourth Circuit also concluded that the evidence showed the difference between the fully automatic and semiautomatic versions of military-style weapons is slight. Further evidence considered by the Fourth Circuit that motivates this Act is as follows: (1) Like their fully automatic counterparts, the banned assault weapons are firearms designed for the battlefield, for the soldier to be able to shoot a large number of rounds across a battlefield at a high rate of speed, and that their design results in a capability for lethality — more wounds, more serious, in more victims — far beyond that of other firearms in general, including other semiautomatic guns. (2) The banned assault weapons have been used disproportionately to their ownership in mass shootings and the murders of law-enforcement officers. (3) The banned assault weapons further pose a heightened risk to civilians in that rounds from assault weapons have the ability to easily penetrate most materials used in standard home construction, car doors, and similar materials, and that criminals armed with the banned assault weapons possess a “military-style advantage” in firefights with law-enforcement officers, as such weapons allow criminals to effectively engage law-enforcement officers from great distances and their rounds easily pass through the soft body armor worn by most law-enforcement officers. (4) Although self-defense is a conceivable use of the banned assault weapons, most individuals choose to keep other firearms for that purpose. (5) Prohibitions against assault weapons will promote public safety by reducing the availability of those armaments to mass shooters and other criminals, by diminishing their especial threat to law-enforcement officers, and by hindering their unintentional misuse by civilians. (6) In many situations, the semiautomatic fire of an assault weapon is more accurate and lethal than the automatic fire. Finding this evidence and these conclusions by the Fourth Circuit to be strongly persuasive of the applicable framework of constitutional rights, and firmly believing that promoting the safety of the Delaware public and Delaware law-enforcement is a paramount function of the Delaware General Assembly, Delaware legislators file this Act in the name of public safety and with adherence to core constitutional principles.

This bill permits a County government to impose and collect a lodging tax of no more than 3 percent on hotel, motel, and tourist home rooms located in the unincorporated areas of the County.

This bill makes it a crime to sell, transfer, buy, receive or possess a trigger crank or bump-fire device designed to accelerate the rate of fire of a semiautomatic rifle, making such weapon function more like an automatic weapon. A bump stock was used by the gunman in Las Vegas in October 2017. Violation of this provision is a Class E felony.

This legislation creates a benchmark for determining when a treatment or service is no longer experimental or investigational. When Medicare determines that a treatment is safe for its population, commercial insurers in Delaware may no longer deny coverage on that basis. This bill will remove inconsistencies for properly-evidenced treatments between payers.

This bill changes when the interception of certain communications is lawful. Currently, if one party to the communication gives consent to the interception, such interception is lawful. This bill requires that both parties to the communication give prior consent before the interception is lawful.

This Act amends Delaware’s laws regarding release of persons accused of crimes (Chapter 21 of Title 11 of the Delaware Code) as required in conjunction with the adoption of Senate Bill No. 221, which proposes a constitutional amendment to permit preventive detention of certain persons accused of crimes. This Act both protects defendants’ due process rights and public safety by expanding the list of circumstances for which defendants may be detained pretrial without the opportunity for release and providing adequate due process protections for detention-eligible defendants. This Act protects public safety by permitting courts to detain defendants who are charged with an enumerated offense, or to whom certain enumerated circumstances apply, and who present unmitigated risks of non-appearance in court or danger to public safety. This Act also protects defendants’ rights by doing the following: (1) Requiring the Attorney General to establish by proof positive or presumption great that the defendant committed the detention-eligible offense and by clear and convincing evidence that no condition or combination of conditions of release will reasonably assure the defendants appearance in court or the safety of a witness, a victim, or the community. (2) Ensuring detention-eligible defendants are represented by counsel at the initial detention and subsequent hearings. (3) Requiring courts to hold a full detention hearing within 10 days of the defendant’s arrest where defendants have the right to testify, to present evidence, and to cross-examine witnesses against them. (4) Requiring expedited review of the detention order by Superior Court. (5) Providing speedy trial protections for any defendant who is detained prior to adjudication. This Act also does the following: (1) Improves procedural fairness by permitting courts to make transparent decisions about who to detain and who to release pretrial. (2) Strengthens the strong presumption of pretrial release upon least restrictive conditions for those defendants who can safely be released in the community. (3) Requires data collection and annual reporting of pretrial outcomes that will be available for public dissemination. Finally, this Act makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.

This is the first leg of an amendment to the Delaware Constitution to provide equal rights on the basis of sex. There is no Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution. While Congress passed the Amendment in 1972, it was not ratified by the requisite number of states by the 1982 deadline. Delaware, however, was one of the first states to ratify the Amendment. About half of the states across the country have passed Equal Rights Amendments to their state constitutions in order to provide protection against discrimination based on sex. Without an Equal Rights Amendment, women’s rights and protections are limited. This Amendment is necessary to correct a constitutional shortcoming, reduce sex-based disparities and to codify our State’s value of equality.