This Act provides that any adult day care facility required to be licensed under Chapter 1 of Title 16 is subject to the existing reporting obligations for facilities under Subchapter III of Chapter 11 of Title 16 of the Delaware Code.
This Act updates the crime of official misconduct to ensure appropriate accountability of public servants who abuse their positions of power and public trust. The statute establishes a grade in the penalty for the official misconduct to be commensurate to the gravity of the misconduct. In addition, this statute conforms the discrimination language to the language used in the Hate Crimes statute. It also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual. This Act will be known as the “Abuse of Power Prevention Act.”
In 2016, the General Assembly passed HB 404, the Concussion Protection in Youth Athletic Activities Act (CPYAAA). This Act clarifies the requirements of CPYAAA and enables the Division of Public Health, in consultation with the State Council for Persons with Disabilities, to promulgate regulations to broadly implement the Act. This Amendment adds the requirement for non-scholastic athletic activity organizations to develop policies and procedures for advising athletes, coaches, officials, parents, and guardians of the signs and symptoms of concussion and explaining the risk of continuing to practice or compete in athletic events or activities after sustaining a concussion, as well as providing information about returning to academic and athletic events or activities after sustaining a concussion.
This Act establishes a wellness program designed to improve the well-being of first responders and first responders’ immediate family members, as well as civilian employees of police, fire, and emergency medical services agencies and their immediate family members, through the provision of wellness program services by trained peer support members. Wellness program services may include counseling, spiritual guidance, and education about financial resources, health resources, legal assistance, and stress management services. This Act extends the confidentiality privileges to include communications made by a first responder, the first responder’s immediate family member, a civilian employee, or a civilian employee’s immediate family member, to a trained peer support member providing wellness program services though a state, county, or municipal law-enforcement, fire, or emergency medical agency’s wellness program. This Act adds chaplains to definition of “first responders”. This Act defines “civilian employee”. This Act updates the definitions section to account for the creation of the wellness program. This Act also revises the confidentiality exception in § 4319(d)(4) of Title 10. In current Code, the exception applies in certain instances where the first offender uses critical incident stress management (CISM) services to commit or attempt to commit “a crime or fraud or mental or physical injury to the first responder who received critical incident stress management services or another individual”. This Act replaces the quoted phrase with “‘crime’, as defined under § 233 of Title 11, or fraud.” This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual. The technical changes include combining the privileges to refuse to disclose any matter and refuse to produce any object or record that are covered in § 4319(b) and (c) of Title 11 in current Code into a single subsection, § 4319(b) of Title 10. This Act updates subsection (c) so that it only contains 1 subject: that the privileges in subsection (b) only apply if the proceedings, communications, or records, including information, are obtained during the provision of critical incident stress management (CISM) services or wellness program services.
This Act expressly adds the intentional restriction of another adult’s access to economic resources resulting in a loss of financial autonomy to the definition of abuse for protection from abuse proceedings. This Act also specifies that tangible property of the petitioner includes legal documents belonging to the petitioner. In addition, this Act codifies the existing practice of Family Court to allow relief by ordering respondents to return specific legal documents. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.
Due to continuing concerns over the negative health effects secondhand smoke will have on the youth of Delaware, this bill adds Smoking Restrictions within vehicles if a person under the age of eighteen (18) is in the vehicle. Also, it makes clear that a police officer will not stop or detain a car solely on suspicion of having violated this Statute.
This House Substitute No. 1 for House Bill 73 provides a 5-year statute of limitations for the Department of Labor to bring civil actions to recover nonfraud overpayment debts and no period of limitations to recover fraud overpayment debts. This portion of the Substitute will apply to overpayment debts for which the statute of limitations has not yet run, which includes those that accrued less than 3 years prior to the enactment of this Act. This Substitute expressly codifies the current law that there is no deadline for the Department to collect overpayment debts by offset of future benefits, by state Department of Revenue offset or by federal Treasury offset of tax refunds, the last of which is mandated by federal law. Finally, this Substitute creates an overpayment waiver program, effective retroactively to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, to give the Department authority to waive non-fraud overpayments of traditional unemployment benefits resulting from either Department error or claimants receiving certain low-income public assistance.
This Act adds the Senate Minority Leader and the House Minority Leader as members of the Public Health Emergency Planning Commission (Commission). This Act also requires the Commission to meet within 30 days of the initiation a state of emergency due to a public health emergency for the purposes of discussing and evaluating, in an advisory capacity to the Governor, the response to the public health emergency. The Commission would be required to continue meeting at least every 30 days until the termination of the state of emergency due to a public health emergency. This Act also defines the term “Commission” in the subchapter-level definition section since the term “Commission” is used in multiple places within Subchapter V of Chapter 31 of Title 20. This Act also adds Commission governance procedures, including length of terms, filling vacancies, and defining quorum. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual, including updating agency names.
This Act allows the State Bureau of Identification to release subsequent arrest notifications to the Department of Education for its employees and contractors. This Act also corrects existing typos in § 309 of Title 31 and makes clarifying changes to the processing of background checks when the Department of Education is the employer.
This Act increases the limits on the dollar amount of awards of compensatory or punitive damages, or both, in cases of employment discrimination, establishing specific caps based on the number of the respondent's employees. This Act also clarifies that the Superior Court may order equitable relief available under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as back pay and front pay, which is an award made for the period between the date of judgment and the date of reinstatement. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.
