Yesterday, I was present to see the Governor sign two bills that were major priorities for me.
The first bill was Senate Bill 31, a landmark bill making Delaware the fourth toughest state in America on the practice of using credit in the setting of insurance rates. As I told the supporters present for the bill signing, this bill has been a long time coming. When Senator Margaret Rose Henry and I unveiled it on January 7, 2005, I had been in office for all of three days. The Denn boys had been born for only seven days. I hadn’t even had time to have my formal swearing-in ceremony: my friend Joe Schoell came over to the house on the morning I took office and administered the oath in my living room before I even had time to put my socks and shoes on. Michele was at the hospital, so our pug Lenny was the only witness. (Yes, there is a picture of this event taken with an automatic timer, including Lenny, and no, it will never be publicly displayed.)
But I digress. The reason this bill took so long to get passed was that the insurance industry fought it, as they do every credit scoring bill introduced in every state. The bill that was ultimately passed wasn’t the outright ban on credit scoring that Senator Henry and I had sought, but it did move Delaware from having no law and a toothless regulation all the way to having the fourth toughest law in America. Not bad. The other folks in the picture are Representative Helene Keeley, who was the sponsor of the bill in the House of Representatives and did great work to get it through, and Reverend H. Ward Greer, the senior pastor at Ezion Mt. Carmel United Methodist Church and president of the Interdenominational Ministers Action Council. In short, a man of God who you do not want to mess with—and a vocal supporter of the bill.
The second bill signing was for Senate Bill 78, which requires insurance companies in Delaware to cover medically necessary nutritional supplements for Delawareans who suffer from a rare metabolic disorder known as PKU. If people who have PKU don’t maintain a strict diet that eliminates almost all forms of protein, they can suffer mental retardation and other serious neurological problems—but the nutritional supplements they must take are extremely expensive. This bill is going to dramatically change the lives of some Delaware families. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of these families while the bill was making its way through the General Assembly. They are great people, and their personal lobbying for the bill is what got it passed.
I finished off the day at a meeting of the Progressive Democrats of Delaware, an outstanding group whose members have always been very supportive of my efforts. When I got up to speak, three people yelled “where’s Lenny?”. I have never taken a Toastmasters class, but even I could figure out that if the crowd is shouting for my dog before I have even said anything, that’s a sign to keep the remarks brief, so I did. Among the attendees was Jason Scott, who is the overseer of the Delawareliberal blog. I chastised Jason for failing to acknowledge my blog, and he admitted that he feared that once people know about mine, his readers would desert him. OK, that isn’t true; he actually just said that he hadn’t gotten around to it—but I could sense a tremor in his voice. [Update: he has now given me a shout-out.] I also got a chance to catch up with some of the remarkably talented young people who we have working for our state party and for various political campaigns. Both Sheila Grant of the Markell campaign and Erin Kernan of the Carney campaign said that they were regular readers of this blog, and asked for me to acknowledge that they are “cool kids.” They are.
Today some guy is coming to my office and making me do sit-ups, push-ups, and run on a treadmill while I am hooked up to a bunch of electrodes. Sometimes my job is very strange. I will explain later.
The first bill was Senate Bill 31, a landmark bill making Delaware the fourth toughest state in America on the practice of using credit in the setting of insurance rates. As I told the supporters present for the bill signing, this bill has been a long time coming. When Senator Margaret Rose Henry and I unveiled it on January 7, 2005, I had been in office for all of three days. The Denn boys had been born for only seven days. I hadn’t even had time to have my formal swearing-in ceremony: my friend Joe Schoell came over to the house on the morning I took office and administered the oath in my living room before I even had time to put my socks and shoes on. Michele was at the hospital, so our pug Lenny was the only witness. (Yes, there is a picture of this event taken with an automatic timer, including Lenny, and no, it will never be publicly displayed.)
But I digress. The reason this bill took so long to get passed was that the insurance industry fought it, as they do every credit scoring bill introduced in every state. The bill that was ultimately passed wasn’t the outright ban on credit scoring that Senator Henry and I had sought, but it did move Delaware from having no law and a toothless regulation all the way to having the fourth toughest law in America. Not bad. The other folks in the picture are Representative Helene Keeley, who was the sponsor of the bill in the House of Representatives and did great work to get it through, and Reverend H. Ward Greer, the senior pastor at Ezion Mt. Carmel United Methodist Church and president of the Interdenominational Ministers Action Council. In short, a man of God who you do not want to mess with—and a vocal supporter of the bill.
The second bill signing was for Senate Bill 78, which requires insurance companies in Delaware to cover medically necessary nutritional supplements for Delawareans who suffer from a rare metabolic disorder known as PKU. If people who have PKU don’t maintain a strict diet that eliminates almost all forms of protein, they can suffer mental retardation and other serious neurological problems—but the nutritional supplements they must take are extremely expensive. This bill is going to dramatically change the lives of some Delaware families. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of these families while the bill was making its way through the General Assembly. They are great people, and their personal lobbying for the bill is what got it passed.
I finished off the day at a meeting of the Progressive Democrats of Delaware, an outstanding group whose members have always been very supportive of my efforts. When I got up to speak, three people yelled “where’s Lenny?”. I have never taken a Toastmasters class, but even I could figure out that if the crowd is shouting for my dog before I have even said anything, that’s a sign to keep the remarks brief, so I did. Among the attendees was Jason Scott, who is the overseer of the Delawareliberal blog. I chastised Jason for failing to acknowledge my blog, and he admitted that he feared that once people know about mine, his readers would desert him. OK, that isn’t true; he actually just said that he hadn’t gotten around to it—but I could sense a tremor in his voice. [Update: he has now given me a shout-out.] I also got a chance to catch up with some of the remarkably talented young people who we have working for our state party and for various political campaigns. Both Sheila Grant of the Markell campaign and Erin Kernan of the Carney campaign said that they were regular readers of this blog, and asked for me to acknowledge that they are “cool kids.” They are.
Today some guy is coming to my office and making me do sit-ups, push-ups, and run on a treadmill while I am hooked up to a bunch of electrodes. Sometimes my job is very strange. I will explain later.
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