As the 2024 General Assembly gaveled to a close ahead of a pivotal fall election, legislators managed to approve some key measures related to transparency and accountability in public affairs, but also left some others on the cutting room floor.
Lawmakers were able to introduce new transparency into health care and accountability into pensioner care and public hearings, but efforts to create a new state office to investigate and prevent fraud and waste fell flat again.
Here’s what was on the table.
PASSED
Health Care Cost Review Board
Perhaps the most contentious bill heard this past session was House Bill 350, which creates the Diamond State Cost Review Board that will review hospital budgeting and revenues to determine whether they can trim costs.
Hospital administrators put up a full-court press in opposition to the bill, which essentially takes away some of the decision-making powers of each hospitals’ board of directors.
Approval of the board means that the public will get rare looks at budgets, financial information and utilization rates that haven’t previously been available.
Gov. John Carney signed HB 350 into law last month.
SEBC board reform
For several years, state pensioners have decried the decision-making of the State Employee Benefits Committee, an appointed board that oversees their health care and insurance options. The fight continued this year as the legislature approved House Bill 282, which removes the governor appointee and makes the Secretary of the Department of Human Resources a non-voting member while concurrently adding two members who are active pensioners appointed by legislative leaders. The bill also requires enhanced public notice requirements on meetings, agenda items and quorums.
Gov. Carney vetoed HB 282 upon its passage, citing concerns that adding pensioners to the board would harm its ability to make difficult choices with a state expenditure that has grown enormously. The legislature disagreed, and overrode the governor’s veto last month – the first time that had occurred in Delaware in decades.
DNREC hearings
Following concerns by the public regarding their right to submit comments on controversial projects, such as the development of offshore wind, biogas facilities and even state parks, House Bill 434 requires the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) to conduct in-person public hearings. The department had begun to utilize remote hearings following the COVID pandemic.
The bill requires DNREC to hold public hearings having a physical location allowing the public to attend and testify in person. These hearings may allow virtual participation in addition to in-person participation, but public testimony cannot be limited to less than 1 minute per person.
It awaits action by the governor.
Nepotism prohibition
Following the prosecution of former Auditor Kathy McGuiness in which she was accused of unjustly hiring her daughter, the legislature approved House Bill 319, which requires the executive branch to develop a policy restricting nepotism in state employment and prohibiting supervision of a state employee by a relative.
It further requires the legislative and judicial branches, as well as offices headed by other elected officials to develop and implement comparable policies.
It awaits action by the governor.
FAILED
Inspector General
For the second year in a row, debate was raised over whether the state’s current oversight bodies are sufficiently doing their job or whether a new nonpartisan office needed to be created.
Senate Bill 21 would have created an independent and nonpartisan Office of the Inspector General (OIG) tasked with investigating and preventing fraud, waste, mismanagement, corruption, and other abuse of governmental resources.
Supporters pointed to the recent disclosure of an employee theft of $181,000 from the state’s Unemployment Insurance Fund as yet another example of why the office was necessary.
Critics raised concerns that the office would duplicate work done by the state auditor and attorney general, and would cost more than $1 million a year.
While SB 21 was approved in its first Senate committee hearing in April, it was never considered again.
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