Rep. Eric Morrison

This bill allows liquor stores, farm wineries, brewery-pubs, microbreweries, craft distilleries, and wine auctions to provide curbside service for the sale of alcohol, but makes clear that all sales must comply with all of the regulatory provisions of Chapter 7 of Title 4, including the prohibition against sales to intoxicated persons and persons under 21 years of age.

This Act amends the Department of Services for Children, Youth & Their Families (“DSCYF”) required drug testing statute to gain parity in pre-employment drug testing procedures across state agencies that provide services for children and secure care for children or adults. Secure care positions in the Department of Correction, Delaware Psychiatric Center, and DSCYF’s Prevention and Behavioral Health and Youth Rehabilitative Services facilities are historically hard to fill. Because of the sensitive nature of these positions, there is a thorough application and vetting process for applicants, the last steps of which are the pre-employment background checks and drug testing. Despite numerous ongoing efforts to recruit and retain applicants for these positions within DSCYF’s facilities, interested applicants often choose to abandon the lengthy application process in favor of opportunities for faster hiring processes at large employers located nearby. Currently, the statute allows DSCYF to make a conditional offer of employment to an applicant who has submitted to the required pre-employment drug testing. This Act would allow DSCYF to conditionally hire an applicant and begin training the person after they have provided proof that they have submitted to the required drug testing. This ability is in line with § 5139 of Title 16 of the Delaware Code, which allows the Delaware Psychiatric Center to conditionally hire an applicant “to maintain an appropriate level of patient care,” and § 8922 of Title 29 of the Delaware Code, which simply states that the Department of Correction must test “all security sensitive applicants and applicant employees.” This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.

This Concurrent Resolution declares the month of February 2022 as Seasonal Affective Disorder Awareness Month.

This bill provides COVID-19 related relief to both claimants receiving unemployment benefits and employers who are assessed unemployment taxes, and extends the end date of the Secretary of Labor’s COVID-19 related rulemaking authority. Section 1 exempts unemployment compensation benefits received in 2021 from the calculation of Delaware adjusted gross income so that unemployment claimants will not have to pay state taxes on the benefits they received during the continuation of the pandemic into 2021. This exemption was previously granted for 2020 state taxes. Section 2 holds the 2022 new employer assessment rate, average industry assessment rate and average construction industry assessment rate at the same rate as 2020 in order to avoid an increase in these rates as a result of the increase in unemployment claims due to COVID-19. Section 3 reduces the unemployment tax assessment rate for merit rated employers to the lowest of their earned rates for 2020, 2021 and 2022, in order to provide further tax relief for employers dealing with the economic effects of COVID-19, but does not provide this reduction for any employers who are paying the delinquency rate of assessment because of a failure to file quarterly assessment reports or failure to pay assessments. Section 3 also allows the Department the administrative authority to reduce employer assessment rates below the delinquency rate and provide responding credits, as necessary to correct administrative errors or address fraudulent claims charged to employers, except for employers who are charged the delinquency assessment rate because they have failed to file any quarterly tax report. Section 4 holds the taxable wage base at $14,500 for 2022, which will reduce the amount of wages on which employers pay unemployment tax assessments into the UI Trust Fund for 2022. The Department has determined that the impact of this change on the UI Trust Fund balance is estimated to be $11.4M in 2022. Sections 5 and 6 extend to December 31, 2022 the provision in HB 65, which authorized the Delaware Secretary of Labor to issue emergency rules amending the Delaware Unemployment Insurance Code to deal with the continuing effects of COVID-19 and implement federal programs providing unemployment benefits to respond to COVID-19.

This concurrent resolution proclaims February 7-14, 2022, as Congenital Heart Defects Awareness Week in Delaware.

This Act requires each school district and charter school to provide each student in preschool, kindergarten, and in grades 2 and 4 an oral health screening by January 15 of each school year. The Division of Public Health (DPH) offers school-based oral screening and fluoride applications through the Delaware Smile Check program at no cost to the school district or charter school or to the student.

This Act commits discretion over the length of certified nursing assistant training and orientation programs to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. This change will facilitate the rapid certification of National Guard members as certified nursing assistants (CNAs) by allowing the Department of Health and Social Services to establish the total required classroom and clinical training and mandatory facility-specific orientation hours. Modeled after a Minnesota initiative, eligible guard members will participate in rapid certification programs through DelTech and be deployed to provide temporary staffing in long term care facilities experiencing staffing shortages under MOUs entered will the facilities. National Guard members have served as a critical part of the state’s response efforts throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Training and deploying National Guard soldiers to work as CNAs will help relieve staffing shortages in health care settings and facilitate the transfer of patients out of Delaware’s hospitals to free up in-patient bed space.

This Senate Concurrent Resolution proclaims January 23, 2022, as "Maternal Health Awareness Day" in the State of Delaware.

This Act requires private and public employers in the State to give any employee who is scheduled to work at least 8 hours on an election day 2 hours of paid leave in order for the employee to exercise the right to vote. The Act excludes employees working for the federal government as well as any private or public employee who is party to a collective bargaining agreement. Employees must give employers 2 working days’ notice in advance of an election that the employee intends to use paid leave to vote. Employers must post notice of the rights created in the Act. For private sector employees, enforcement of the Act is through the Department of Labor; private sector employers who violate the Act will be subject to a civil penalty of a minimum of $500 and maximum of $1,000. A private employer who discriminates against an employee for exercising the rights created by the Act is liable for a civil penalty of $1,000 to $5,000. A public employee is entitle to bring an action for actual damages if the public employer takes an adverse action against the employee for exercising the right to paid leave to vote.

This concurrent resolution remembers and recognizes the life and service of former Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner.