Three Important Bills Pass Delaware Legislature

The news keeps getting better for us here in the First State. I found this in today's DE News Journal:

DOVER -- Even with a gaping $800 million ditch to fill and a toolbox that seemed to have more Tinkertoys than earthmovers, Delaware lawmakers managed to roll some big old boulders off the state's legislative landscape.

Three had seemed especially immobile over the years -- opening the Legislature' s meetings and records to greater public scrutiny, outlawing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and eliminating the much-despised Delaware Student Testing Program.

All three passed this year -- not without debate, not without some dragging feet, wringing hands and pointing fingers, but all three passed.

As a result:

• Any member of the public may attend critical budget negotiations and listen to the debates as they occur (instead of as they leak through a closed door), and review legislative documents that previously were not public. The new law removes a legislative exemption in place since 1985.

• Anyone who loses a job, a housing opportunity, an insurance policy, a public contract or a spot in a public facility because of sexual orientation now has legal remedy. For the first time, that kind of discrimination is no longer legal in Delaware.

• Kids and parents who have dreaded the annual ordeal of state testing in public schools can remove the 11-year-old Dela-ware State Testing Program from the list of things that keep them awake at night. Another test will replace it, but that one -- observers say -- will have more give, more nuance, a faster turnaround for results, and provide a more precise picture of where students are advancing and where they still don't get it.

"The one thing that's common to all three is a sustained push, mostly by constituents but also from advocates and others," said Doug Gramiak, who was chief of staff for former Lt. Gov. John C. Carney Jr. and now is a lobbyist and executive director of Education Voters of Delaware. "The discrimination language, for example -- the Legislature was never let off the hook on that issue. Some issues just go to die. That one wouldn't die. And that's a good example of the community and advocates continuing to work and work and work until they got what they wanted."

Damned right, we did!

Read the entire piece HERE. Yes, it is long, but well worth the read to understand how far we've come in DE.