Sen. Bryan Townsend

This bill allows Delaware Department of Transportation authorized vehicles to be able to use the shoulder of the road when responding to emergencies. Department of Transportation staff must respond to emergencies along the road to assist police, fire and paramedics with establishing maintenance of traffic. By allowing the use of the shoulder of the road staff will be able to respond in a timely manner.

This Act requires health insurance policies to cover any medically appropriate drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of stage 4 metastatic cancer without requiring a patient to first prove that the patient failed to respond to a different drug or drugs. This Act is based on a similar bill in Georgia that was inspired by President Jimmy Carter’s recent battle with cancer.

The purpose of this bill is to make full time paid firefighters in volunteer fire companies in this State eligible to join the Delaware County and Municipal/Police/Firefighter Pension Plan.

This legislation modernizes Delaware's Self-Service Storage Facility Act to account for the wide proliferation of online news and auction sites, as well as to establish frameworks for: (1) towing of certain property for which rent and other charges are in default; (2) use of information contained within property sold or otherwise disposed of; and (3) contractual provisions relating to limits on the value of stored property and to late fees, as well as transparency related to both.

This bill will add 4 new check-off donation boxes on the Delaware personal income tax return whereby individuals may choose to donate a portion of their tax refund, or designate an amount in addition to the tax they owe that will be transferred by the Division of Revenue to one of the following organizations: Food Bank of Delaware, Sussex County Habitat for Humanity, Central Delaware Habitat for Humanity, or Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County.

Mothers who give birth to monoamniotic twins are often hospitalized as early as 26 weeks into the pregnancy due to the risk of complications of having twins share a single amniotic sack. Mothers who give birth to multiples of 3 or more often have the same issue of requiring extensive medical pre-natal care. As a result, the benefits provided under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) are often exhausted by the time the mother and children are discharged from the hospital. This bill provides that mothers who are full time state employees may have up to six weeks of unpaid leave following the newborn(s) discharge from the hospital even if their FMLA benefits have been exhausted.

Criminal and administrative enforcement of laws and ordinances relating to the condition of real property and abatement of violations thereof is a significant expense of local governments. The growing number of vacant and abandoned properties has increased these costs to local governments. The owners of vacant and abandoned property routinely fail to respond to the issuance of violation notices, citations, and tickets. Thus, the local government, at taxpayer expense, is left to maintain the property in a condition that will protect the public health, safety and welfare and minimize the deleterious effect the unmaintained property has on the local community. When a property owner fails or refuses to maintain real property according to minimum code standards, the costs incurred by local government for enforcing its codes and abating violations thereof, should be borne by the property owner rather than the taxpayers. Thus, this bill is intended to clarify that costs associated with enforcement of local laws and ordinances relating to the condition of real property and abatement of violations of those laws and ordinances shall be a lien against the property subject to the enforcement action. Recoupment of costs associated with the enforcement of building, property maintenance, zoning, drainage, sewer, housing, or sanitation codes is a lengthy and expensive process for local governments. This bill clarifies that local governments may include the amount of the lien on the local tax billing of the property subject to the enforcement action may collect the lien in the same manner as other property taxes.

With the implementation of land banks in the State of Delaware, an increasing number of vacant and abandoned properties will be brought to sheriff’s sales. Many of these parcels will be dilapidated and require investment to render the house habitable. Blight will only be ameliorated if the bidders upon such property acquire it intending to invest in the property, thereby improving the housing in the neighborhood and eliminating blight. If bidders at a tax lien sale have failed to pay taxes when due and have failed to maintain the condition of other real property they own in the same jurisdiction, it is not likely that they intend to invest in and improve the condition of additional property they acquire. Instead they are speculating on a turnaround in the neighborhood based upon the investment and efforts of others. Under current law, New Castle County, or any municipal government, may disapprove of the winning bid for any tax lien sheriff’s sale, at the election of the governmental entity initiating the tax lien sale, for any public purpose or reason. This bill allows any county or municipality to additionally require that bidders at such tax lien sales certify, prior to bidding, that they do not have a record of failing to maintain other real property in which they own an interest, do not have outstanding liens owed to governmental entities in excess of $1,000 at such other property, and do not hold properties that have been vacant for 18 consecutive months unless there is active construction on the property.

Currently, claims that arise at the death of the decedent are treated the same as claims that arise after the decedent's death. This bill changes how claims that arise at the time of decedent's death are treated by including them in the same class of claims that arise during the decedent's lifetime. By making this change, claims that arise at the death of the decedent would need to be based upon the conduct of the decedent rather than the conduct of the personal representative who, at the time of decedent's death, has not yet been appointed.

Section 1 of the Act (i) clarifies that the defined term “agents”, as used in chapter 33 of title 12, consistent with common usage of the term, includes all agents defined as such by the general law of agency; (ii) modifies section 3312 to provide that the rules of that section, permitting certain investments and transactions with affiliates, apply in cases where the investment or counterparty to the transaction is affiliated with an agent having discretionary investment authority over a fund either by reason of a delegation to the agent by a fiduciary or by reason of a direct grant of such discretion to the agent; (iii) adds a new section 3313A, patterned upon section 3313, regarding the duties and liability of a trustee in cases where the trust instrument grants another co-trustee exclusive authority to take specified actions on behalf of the trust; (iv) grants trustees the general power to indemnify lenders as customary commercial loan documents sometimes require such indemnities; (v) clarifies the circumstances in which a trustee may merge trusts pursuant to section 3325(29); (vi) corrects typographical errors in sections 3332 and 3333; (vii) clarifies the circumstances in which certain trust beneficiaries may appoint a successor trustee pursuant to section 3336; (viii) makes section 3338 regarding nonjudicial settlement agreements available to charitable trusts and noncharitable purpose trusts subject to certain limitations described therein; (ix) revises section 3341 to address how a trust merger affects a power of appointment exercisable over property of a trust merged with and into another trust; and (x) revises section 3342 to make certain stylistic changes and address the power of an agent or guardian to consent to a trust modification on behalf of a trustor. Section 2 of the Act (i) revises section 3528 to incorporate a provision, appearing in the recently promulgated Uniform Trust Decanting Act, permitting trustees to effect a trust decanting without creating a new separate trust; (ii) modifies the wording but not the substantive terms of section 3541; (iii) clarifies section 3545 regarding the execution requirements for certain trusts; (iv) corrects a typographical error in section 3546; (v) clarifies that a sale or exchange for full and adequate consideration is not a “disposition” for purposes of Delaware’s asset protection trust legislation meaning that (1) a person engaging in such a transaction does not become a settlor of the trust by reason of the sale or exchange, and (2) such a transaction may not be avoided by a creditor; and (vi) adds a new limitations period for actions against a trustee following the trustee’s departure from office. Section 3 of the Act conforms the tax ordering rules of section 61-107, applicable to express unitrusts, with the tax ordering rules of section 61-106, applicable to unitrusts created by means of the conversion procedure described in that statute. Section 4 of the Act revises Delaware’s “tax trap” legislation (chapter 5 of title 25) to create a new method, in addition to the method already available under current law, by which the donee of a power of appointment over trust property may avoid the application of the general default rule of section 501(a) of title 25 providing that interests in property created by the exercise of such power of appointment are deemed to have been created at the time of the exercise of the power. Section 5 of the Act revises section 1636 of title 30 to create a new rule of application, treating the federal taxable income of an electing small business trust as having been set aside for distribution in future taxable years, for purposes of determining the amount of the trust’s section 1636 deduction for federal taxable income set aside for future distribution to nonresident beneficiaries. Section 6 of the Act provides that it shall apply to trusts whenever created.