Gov. Minner Finishes 2002 Legislative Session With Many Priority Items Completed
Dover – Governor Ruth Ann Minner said early this morning that she had accomplished most of her goals for the 2002 session of the General Assembly and that, for those she had not completed, she would try again in 2003.
In a 3:15 a.m. press conference after the legislature finished its annual session, Gov. Minner thanked the members of the General Assembly for passing a balanced budget that maintained services with no tax increases and for passing many of her agenda items.
“I’m very proud of what has been accomplished in this session. Working with the General Assembly, we have addressed many of the crucial issues of homeland security, public health and public safety that I identified in my State of the State address in January,” Gov. Minner said.
The list of Gov. Minner’s successful legislative initiatives for 2002 includes:
§ A ban on smoking in almost every indoor public place (S.B. 99)
§ The Emergency Health Powers Act, expanding the amount of health information the state collects, clarifying the chain of command in the event of a biological or chemical attack, and insuring the protection of civil liberties in such an attack (H.S. 1 to H.B. 377)
§ Expanding the crime of terroristic threatening to anthax-type hoaxes and heightening the criminal penalties for false threats (S.B. 288)
§ Ensuring that state employees who are called to active duty military service under Operation Enduring Freedom do not lose pay during their service (S.B. 272)
§ Allowing the state to fill temporary vacancies left by employees called to active duty with retirees who do not require training (S.B. 439)
§ Collecting information about work and residential history from cancer victims in order to better study any environmental causes of cancer (S.B. 372)
§ Regulating, for the first time, aboveground storage tanks, like the one that caused the death of a worker at Motiva in Delaware City in July 2001 (S.S. 1 to S.B. 273)
§ Raising the penalties for those who are convicted of drunken driving more than once (H.B. 296)
Administration agenda items that were not completed include: creating a Transfer of Development Rights program; establishing impact fees to curb development; lowering the blood alcohol limit to .08; and banning open containers of alcohol from the passenger compartment of cars and trucks.
“These are ideas that we will continue to work on and that we will return to in 2003, I promise you,” Gov. Minner said.
The Governor said she was also disappointed in the state House of Representatives for not passing two homeland security measures: a bill requiring those who obtain a Delaware driver’s license be in the country legally, and a proposed state constitutional amendment allowing evidence collected by police with a search warrant to remain admissible, even if a judge later finds fault with the warrant.
“The failure to pass the driver’s license bill could have serious consequences for all Delawareans,” Gov. Minner said. “It may be that, because of this, Delawareans are not able to use their driver’s license for identification without a passport or birth certificate.”
Gov. Minner lauded the General Assembly for working with the administration to pass a $2.39 million budget that preserved services without raising taxes or laying off workers, as many states have had to do. The fiscal austerity also extends to the capital projects in the bond bill that funds the state’s capital projects, which Gov. Minner signed early Monday.
“The bond bill that passed tonight is one of the barest in some years,” Gov. Minner said. “But it still shows our priorities, with the majority of the non-transportation funds going to our public schools and with $10 million to continue our efforts to attract new companies to Delaware and $5 million for farmland preservation.”
Over the next several weeks, Gov. Minner will hold bill-signing ceremonies for many of her legislative agenda items.
