Sen. Anthony Delcollo

This bill changes the earned income tax credit from nonrefundable to refundable. This bill creates a table for the percentage of earned income credit for tax years 2018 and after. Currently, if spouses file a joint federal return but separate State returns, only the spouse with the higher taxes due can use the State earned income tax credit. This bill eliminates that limitation starting with tax year 2018 and provides that the credit shall be divided equally between such spouses.

The continued existence and dissemination of a juvenile criminal record hampers an individual’s ability to become a successful and productive member of society. These criminal records are a hindrance to employment, education, housing, credit, and military service. This Act streamlines Delaware’s juvenile expungement code by providing the Delaware Family Court the option to immediately order an expungement in the event that a felony case was terminated in favor of the juvenile (i.e. a juvenile was found not guilty, or the charges were dropped). Delaware law currently allows the Court to do this for misdemeanor and violation cases.

Individuals who are released from prison face many hurdles as they re-enter the community, including difficulty obtaining identification documents. Lacking identification imposes additional hurdles as these individuals attempt to find housing and employment. This Act requires the Department of Correction to provide individuals who are being released from the custody of the Department of Correction ("DOC"), after 6 months of incarceration following conviction, with a Delaware Personal Credential Card ("Personal Credential"). An individual may present the Personal Credential to receive one free certified copy of the individual's birth certificate and one identification card or driver's license, if otherwise eligible to receive those documents. This Act builds on the pilot that has been in place since 2012, when the DOC partnered with the Division of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Health and Social Services to obtain identification for individuals who volunteer to participate in the I-ADAPT re-entry program. Currently, individuals in I-ADAPT receive a Prisoner Re-Entry card, valid for 1 year, that can be used to obtain to obtain a free copy of their birth certificate, if they were born in Delaware, and a free identification card, if otherwise eligible to receive one.

This Act stabilizes revenue for the Hazardous Substances Cleanup Act ("HSCA") Fund ("the Fund") by minimizing the wide swings in revenue due to oil prices changes. Under this Act, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control ("the Department") is prevented from receiving a revenue windfall when oil prices rise, while minimum funding for the Brownfields Grant Program is protected when oil prices are low. The legislation ties HSCA funding to a median benchmark and authorizes the Division of Revenue to adjust the tax rate up or down for the following year to smooth the revenue stream and avoid the roller coaster effect of oil price changes. This Act caps the HSCA tax rate at 1.675% and allows the lowest rate to drop to .675%, versus the current HSCA rate of .9%. This Act sets aside a minimum of $5,000,000 annually in HSCA funds for the Brownfields Grant Program, which has leveraged private investment of 16 times the public funds expended in cleaning up polluted sites and returning them to productive use, generating jobs and tax revenue.

House Substitute No. 1 for House Bill 440 differs from House Bill 440 only in that it locates the Overdose System of Care and the Overdose System of Care Committee in Chapter 97 of Title 16 instead of in Chapter 10 of Title 16. House Substitute No. 1 for House Bill 440 establishes an overdose system of care to improve care, treatment, and survival of the overdose patient in State of Delaware. This Act allows the Secretary of the Department of Health and Social Services to establish stabilization centers that can receive overdose patients from Emergency Medical Services and designate acute health care facilities, freestanding emergency departments, and hospitals that meet established requirements as an overdose system of care centers. This Act also establishes a standing Overdose System of Care Committee to assist in the oversight of the overdose system of care and provide recommendations for its implementation and maintenance.

This Act establishes the Delaware School Safety and Security Fund to allow certain eligible public schools to partially or fully fund projects intended to improve school facilities and training relating to safety or security. The Department of Education shall administer the fund. This Act is effective upon appropriation.

This Act establishes the High Needs Educator Student Loan Payment Program. The Program allows qualified applicants to apply for a payment from the State to the applicant’s lending agency, to pay a portion of the applicant’s student loan debt. The purpose of the Program is to encourage Educators to work and remain working in certification areas in which Delaware has a shortage and to encourage Educators to work and remain working in Delaware’s hardest-to-staff Schools. The amount of the award shall be no less than $1000 and no more than $2000. This substitute redesignates the chapter where this language will be placed in the code.

Since 1973, § 9605(b) of Title 9 of the Delaware Code (“§ 9605”) has prohibited the recordation of instruments that restrict the sale, gift, transfer, assignment, conveyance, ownership, lease, rental, use, or occupancy of real property to or by any person because of the person’s race, color, creed, sex, national origin, or ancestry. This Act provides a mechanism for owners of real property subject to an instrument that contains a provision that restricts property rights based on the list of characteristics included in § 9605, including the governing documents of a common interest community, to redact and strike the unlawful restrictive covenant language from instruments recorded with a county recorder of deeds before the original enactment of § 9605 or in violation of § 9605. This Act also amends the list of characteristics included in § 9605 that may not be used to discriminate in the sale, gift, transfer, assignment, conveyance, ownership, lease, rental, use, or occupancy of real property to make it consistent with Delaware’s fair housing laws. However, this Act makes clear that provisions that are permitted by the exceptions to the Delaware Fair Housing Act are not prohibited from being recorded by a recorder of deeds. Finally, this Act makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.

This Act fulfills recommendations made by the Joint Legislative Overview and Sunset Committee by making amendments to the statute governing the Board of Occupational Therapy Practice to make Chapter 20 of Title 24 consistent with other Title 24 boards and delete antiquated sections that are no longer applicable, including: - Adding the duty to report conduct that constitutes grounds for discipline or inability to practice. - Removing "censure a practitioner" as an available sanction. - Removing references to temporary licenses, because the temporary license section of the statute was repealed in 2005. - Removing § 2015(c) and § 2017(c) because they are covered under the Administrative Procedures Act. - Revising the reciprocity language to address situations where a licensee holds a current license in a state that is no substantially similar to Delaware. In addition, this Act includes several amendments to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual, including deleting unnecessary words, correcting grammatical errors, and improving consistency and clarity.

The state is currently funding service providers at 75% of the market rate established in a 2014 study that was done by DHSS. This bill would mandate an increase in the rates paid to service providers according to the recommendations of the market study, so that by fiscal year 2021 the state would fund service providers at 100% of the benchmarked rate. These rate increases are necessary to increase the hourly wages of Direct Support Professionals (DSPs), to improve recruitment and retention of these positions, to decrease staff turnover, and to decrease position vacancies. Along with the corresponding costs for program oversight, direct supervision of DSPs, and training, stabilizing the DSP workforce with increased pay is essential to keep people with I/DD safe and integrated to the maximum extent possible in their local communities. The bill also requires that the adequacy of the rate system be evaluated against performance measures that are commonly used to assess program quality.