Rep. Ruth Briggs King

This Act codifies that the Child Protection Accountability Commission, in conjunction with the Department of Services for Children, Youth, and their Families, is responsible for developing, maintaining, and conducting child abuse mandatory reporting, multidisciplinary response, and related trainings under this Chapter.

This Act requires Delaware Medicaid to provide an enhancement to the acute care per diem rate for psychiatric facilities for hard to place pediatric behavioral health inpatients. The per diem enhancement is limited to an inpatient stay of 14 days. The applicability of the per diem enhancement is determined based on whether admission criteria is met. This Act also creates a Quality Oversight Committee designed to identify quality metrics for facilities admitting patients as well as provide biennial recommendations to the General Assembly’s Joint Finance Committee regarding eligibility categories and enhancement rates.

This Act requires public institutions of higher learning to grant credit for advanced placement examination scores of 3 or higher. An instution may require a score higher than 3 if the credit is to be used for meeting a course requirement for a particular major or program, provided that the student can receive course credit for that examination in an area outside of the student’s major or program area. The institution must publish its advance placement score policies on its website. This Act takes effect on August 1 following its enactment into law.

This Act creates a new offense of Aggravated Criminal Mischief with enhanced penalties (class D felony) applicable when an individual knowingly damages or tampers with critical utility infrastructure intending to disrupt utility services. In recent years, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI have issued repeated warnings about domestic terrorists and extremist groups targeting critical utility infrastructure. Bulletins issued through DHS’ National Terrorism Advisory System in 2022 warned of a heightened threat environment based, in part, on “continued calls for violence directed at U.S. critical infrastructure.” Physical and computerized attacks on electric utility equipment have reached a 10-year high in 2022. Recent attacks in Washington and North Carolina have caused substantial outages and damage to the power grids in both states.

This bill changes the time a holder of a license for the sale of alcoholic liquor for on-premises consumption may sell alcohol from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.

This Act expands the Video Lottery Intercept Program by requiring an operator of a video lottery facility to submit an individual's winnings from sports betting and table games to the Division of Child Support Services to satisfy delinquent child support obligations. The Video Lottery Intercept Program currently only collects video lottery winnings.

This Act provides that any adult day care facility required to be licensed under Chapter 1 of Title 16 is subject to the existing reporting obligations for facilities under Subchapter III of Chapter 11 of Title 16 of the Delaware Code.

In 2016, the General Assembly passed HB 404, the Concussion Protection in Youth Athletic Activities Act (CPYAAA). This Act clarifies the requirements of CPYAAA and enables the Division of Public Health, in consultation with the State Council for Persons with Disabilities, to promulgate regulations to broadly implement the Act. This Amendment adds the requirement for non-scholastic athletic activity organizations to develop policies and procedures for advising athletes, coaches, officials, parents, and guardians of the signs and symptoms of concussion and explaining the risk of continuing to practice or compete in athletic events or activities after sustaining a concussion, as well as providing information about returning to academic and athletic events or activities after sustaining a concussion.

This Act establishes the crime of obstruction of justice. Nearly every other state has a statutory crime of obstruction of justice and this Act is modeled on laws that prohibit intentional obstruction of justice and interference with governmental functions under federal law, Chapter 73 of Title 18 of the United States Code, and in Pennsylvania, under § 5101 of Title 18 of the Pennsylvania Criminal Code. This Act addresses actions that powerful individuals and organizations take to silence victims and witnesses and impede investigations into fraud, abuse, corruption, and white collar crime.

This Act expressly adds the intentional restriction of another adult’s access to economic resources resulting in a loss of financial autonomy to the definition of abuse for protection from abuse proceedings. This Act also specifies that tangible property of the petitioner includes legal documents belonging to the petitioner. In addition, this Act codifies the existing practice of Family Court to allow relief by ordering respondents to return specific legal documents. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.