Why Should Delaware Care?
As Delaware gears up for the legislative session, major items and fallout from the previous session will follow legislators into 2025. In a bipartisan panel hosted by Spotlight Delaware, legislative leaders shared their opinions on some of the biggest issues going into the session.
The top brass in Delaware’s legislature are preparing for their first session with a new governor for the first time in eight years. They’re doing so at a time when Delaware’s state budget will balloon to $7 billion, and the state continues to face affordability challenges.
At Spotlight Delaware’s inaugural Legislative Summit, state legislators discussed their priorities and reservations when it comes to state budgeting, rising health care costs and their ambitions for the first session with a new governor.
State Senate President Pro Tem David Sokola (D-Newark), House Speaker Melissa “Mimi” Minor-Brown (D-New Castle), State Sen. Eric Buckson (R-Dover) and House Minority Whip Jeff Spiegelman (R-Clayton) would all discuss these topics in a panel moderated by Spotlight Delaware senior reporter Karl Baker.
Budget
One of the first questions posed to legislators was on their upcoming budget priorities, as the Governor’s Recommended Budget for Fiscal Year 2026 will top $7 billion and the legislature has routinely exceeded recommended budget increases due to growing revenues.
However, budget estimates in recent months have suggested that Delaware’s revenue will begin to soften in the next year or two, making absorbing such increases much more difficult.
With that in mind, legislative leaders were asked if they might pare budget requests this year or consider raising taxes.
Sokola, who serves on the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council that projects revenue, said that some of those projections come from an overly cautious approach.
“We’ve been hearing every year since I’ve been on DEFAC that the revenues are going to go down and for some reason they just haven’t,” he said, also noting that he’s hopeful that a new efficiency study could help save millions in public spending.
Spiegelman tackled this question, alluding to the fact that much of the proposed 2026 budget from Delaware’s executive office may change, as Governor-elect Matt Meyer is set to take office next week.
He would also address an item on the 2025 budget for a new $150 million parking garage and underground tunnel into Legislative Hall, which drew the ire of a Delaware transparency group.
Trying to cross the street into Legislative Hall from different parking spots is “treacherous at best,” Spiegelman said, and the goal of the tunnel and parking lot is to make that environment a little safer.
“So do we continue to have a building that’s too small but inadequate parking, or do we spend $150 million on a parking garage and not have the tunnel there, and have somebody get run over there, and then it comes back on us. But then if somebody doesn’t get run over there, then the tunnel is a gigantic waste of money,” Spiegelman said, smacking the microphone on his head.
Minor-Brown would also be asked about where specific cuts or where Delaware should cut back, but declined to answer directly, pointing instead to the rising cost of living in the state. Shortages in affordable housing, rising health care costs and childcare were all at the front of the discussion.
She added the goals of a future budget would be to spend money in areas that would lessen the burden on taxpayers, and to avoid passing too many costly bills.
“Is Delaware really winning if we’re broke and now we have to raise taxes?” Minor-Brown said. “No, we’re not.”
Health care costs, HB 350
Minor-Brown, who is a registered nurse, also addressed rising health care costs in Delaware and a pending ChristianaCare lawsuit against the state for its approval of the Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board.
She said Delaware is one of the costliest states for health care yet health outcomes don’t match. To address this in the coming legislative session, she said her goal is to ensure transparency and manage costs.
Sokola said that one piece of the lawsuit that is an “oversimplification” is that ChrisitanaCare argues the review board would be able to veto hospital budgets that don’t bring costs down. He said within the law, those hospitals would have the option to appeal those kinds of decisions.
He pointed to the model used for the review board, Vermont’s Green Mountain Care Board, and how it put a “little bit of a curve” in prices there. Sokola also said he’s willing to talk about amendments to the bill, seeing as it just recently passed and its members have yet to begin their work.
“Getting the law passed is one thing, getting it implemented is another thing, and getting feedback on what changes need to be done is a third thing,” Sokola said. “And we’re responsible.”
Buckson would add that he gave kudos to the bill’s authors for getting the attention of the state’s health care systems, but now it was time to get them in a room and tell them to figure it out or the state would do it for them.
This, he believed, would allow representatives to come into the new session with the information they need to make the proper adjustments. But because the bill was introduced in March, he said he didn’t think there was enough time to consider all of the concerns from stakeholders.
“This rush to do some things, to say we did something, made no sense,” Buckson said. “So that’s where I am.”
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