Local legislators outline plan for 2006

By Sam Harvey
Staff Reporter

Bunting and Hocker, legislators for the overlapping 20th and 38th Districts (respectively) spoke back-to-back at the Dec. 1 breakfast meeting. They outlined some of the key points that will likely top their agendas in the coming legislative session — some local, others of statewide pertinence.

Hocker spoke on insurance issues and workers compensation, but also briefly on the Assawoman Canal dredging project, Bunting touched on statewide transportation and energy issues statewide, but spent a good bit of time on bridge work at the Indian River Inlet and local beach replenishment.

• Replenishment

According to Bunting, the recently-passed federal appropriations bill contained both bad news and good regarding beach replenishment. First, Congress had allocated $3 million for the Bethany-South Bethany replenishment project, he said — but second, the feds had attacked the “continuing contract clause” this year.

This clause has traditionally allowed partially-funded projects to move forward, even as the Army Corps of Engineers (in charge of these beach replenishment projects) awaits the balance.

“From what I’ve been reading in the papers, it’s a done deal,” he said. “But if that funding doesn’t carry over, if Congress has changed the rules, we’re going to have to go back to some strong lobbying,” he said.

Bunting remembered the late Fish Powell, mayor of Ocean City, and Powell’s comment that if Maryland had to rebuild Ocean City’s beaches every year, they’d do it. At least at that time, he said Ocean City had generated as much in the way of tax revenue as entire counties in other parts of the state.

Likewise in Delaware, he noted, “Without that beach, we’d have some serious business issues.”

Bunting remembered the birth of the accommodations tax, which provides the state share of beach replenishment projects. It was actually sponsored by then-Sen. (now Gov.) Ruth Ann Minner, he said, but opposed by then-Senate President Pro Tem (now Secretary of Finance) Richard Cordrey.

Bunting said he’d offered an amendment to leave replenishment a state/federal matter, and let the towns and counties off the hook. The bill squeaked through, some time around 3 a.m. in the usual special session to extend the legislative session — “It wasn’t pretty,” he recalled.

Bethany Beach was the first recipient. Although the town had to borrow the money, the state paid it back so the only incurred costs were those associated with interest paid on principal, Bunting said.

(Before that, he remembered replenishment in Bethany following the infamous Storm of ’62, which used sand from a borrow pit that would later become Lake Bethany.)

• Inlet bridge

Bunting moved on to the Indian River Inlet Bridge, and giving a bit of a preview for Hocker’s topics, likened it to the Assawoman Canal dredging project.

Legislators have been trying to get the canal dredged for nearly two decades now, he said, but the bridge project wasn’t exactly born yesterday — it is approaching 10 years in the making.

Intense currents through the inlet have now scoured holes more than 100 feet deep around the upright supports, Bunting pointed out.

“We cannot continue to wait and wait on that,” he said. The state could fill the holes, as it did once already, in the 1980s, but that in itself would cost $20 million, Bunting said, and there were uncertainties involved with that temporary fix.

The new bridge design calls for a 1,000-foot clear span (no piers in the channel), and as that would be one of the longest clear spans anywhere, Bunting allowed it would add significant cost. And with it being the biggest construction project in the state, in a season of delayed roadwork, he suggested some legislators toward the northern end of the state might be feeling like the Indian River Inlet Bridge was taking away from their projects.

Things are especially tight around the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT), Bunting noted, what with department’s Transportation Trust Fund fully drawn down, plus rising materials costs and a shortage of available contractors.

Those factors notwithstanding, he stood by the clear-span design. But while earthworks continue along what will eventually become the causeways to the new bridge, DelDOT has shied away from opening the lone bid it had received for the actual bridge portion of the project, back in October. Department officials received early indications the bid was going to blow their $125 million estimate out of the water.

Bunting said DelDOT was trimming some of the design features in an effort to get things moving toward another request for bids. “It might be a little more vanilla than we thought before, but it’s got to be built,” he said of the final design.

• Energy

Residential customers and small businesses will face major energy rate hikes starting in the spring, Bunting pointed out. “It’s anybody’s guess what the power increase will be,” he said. He’d voted against deregulation back in 1999, and was now hoping he’d been wrong.

Reached for comment on Dec. 5, Delmarva Power spokesman Matt Likovich noted industry estimates of a bump between 30 and 40 percent.

A household rolling up 1,000 kilowatt hours per month now pays less than $100, Likovich said, but after May 1 that monthly bill might jump to around $135. If there’s a ray of sunshine, he issued a reminder that Delaware’s residential customers had enjoyed low rates for the last six years.

They received a 7.5 percent rate reduction when the General Assembly moved to deregulate (in 1999), Likovich said. He suggested that was a compromise reached in order to make the deregulation more politically palatable. However, Delaware legislators did move forward conservatively, cautioned by California’s early struggles with deregulation about that time, he continued.

In Delaware, the deregulation is being phased in more slowly — power transmission and service would both remain regulated by the Public Service Commission (PSC), he said. According to Likovich, the PSC will be tracking the base billing. But as of May, Delmarva Power will purchase its power at auction, from the field of now-unregulated providers.

“Bottom line, we’ll be looking for the best deal for our customers,” he said. The rate hikes were inevitable, given increases in the commodities market over the past six years, Likovich noted. Legislators couldn’t have predicted that the price of coal would double, the price of oil would triple and the price of natural gas would quadruple.

He advised customers to start looking into energy conservation, with tips at the company’s Web site, at www.delmarva.com.

Bunting suggested a widespread reluctance to build new power plants was also a factor contributing to the rate hikes. Also, while the Indian River power plant continues to generate a base load, Sussex County still needs additional power from peak load plants elsewhere. Because the utilities hod no powers of eminent domain, and so are unable to obtain straight-line easements, he said zigzagging transmission lines result in a loss of power en route, affecting base prices.

• Growth

Finally, Bunting shone a little positive light on the ongoing development boom.

“I remember coming home in 1966, from the Marines, and there was no work here,” he said. (He ended up working in Wilmington, for DuPont.) There was very little in the way of major medical either, he continued — Sussex now has some of the best medical care in the country.

Even back then, the schools were getting a little worn out. (The state built most of them in the 1930s.) “Now, we have seven new schools, and local kids can go to any college they want to,” Bunting emphasized. “You hear a lot about growth, a lot of criticism of growth, and yes, we need to think about what we’re doing — plan, plan. But I remember a time when, the way it was around here, only a handful of people had the money.”

That was just fine, if you were one of the few people who had the money, Bunting concluded. However, he suggested Sussex’s growth was making it possible for more and more people to share in prosperity.

• Bike/pedestrian safety

Hocker led off by revisiting Ocean View Police Chief Ken McLaughlin’s discussion, back at the top of the meeting. McLaughlin said he was working, with DelDOT and the Office of Highway Safety, to institute a program that should help prevent additional traffic accidents involving bicyclists/pedestrians along Route 26.

After some basic education, McLaughlin said the main hurdle to overcome would likely be convincing seasonal workers (often, foreign students) to wear helmets and/or reflective safety gear.

Hocker remembered one serious accident, just east of Hocker’s SuperCenter, that left the Ocean View Deli employee involved with a limp, likely for the rest of his life. In that case, the motorist had been drinking. However, there were other accidents last summer — including fatal accidents (in the Lewes-Rehoboth Beach area) — where alcohol was not a factor.

Hocker provided free bike lamps, reflective vests and helmets to his employees, but McLaughlin said it was difficult to get 20-year-old students to wear anything so uncool. And he said Hocker’s efforts had uncovered another problem — the students typically wear backpacks, blocking much of the reflective material. He recommended a shift next year to reflective patches, which could be affixed to the packs themselves.

• Millville emergency

Hocker noted continuing efforts to get some year-round medical care in Millville. Beebe’s local satellite, the Millville Emergency Center, provides local care in the summertime, but closes for the winter.

The emergency center stayed open through September in 2004, but Beebe lost money on the deal, Hocker reviewed. They moved back to their Labor Day closing this year.

As Beebe representatives pointed out, the company is a non-profit — but can’t throw money away when there was a critical need for additional beds at the main facility in Lewes.

However, Hocker said the main problem were the extremely quiet overnight hours. As an emergency room, as long as the Millville satellite remains open, it must remain open 24/7. He noted efforts to grant Beebe a special license to operate as a walk-in clinic, with limited hours but year-round service, instead.

Now, the company is looking to expand its facilities (the emergency center is rather shoe-horned into the surrounding mall), and hoping to relocate to a patch of ground somewhere in the vicinity.

“They’re looking for 5 acres, and if anybody wants to donate, I’m sure Beebe would name that center after them,” Hocker noted. That generated some laughs among the Chamber members — striving entrepreneurs for the most part, with hardly a wealthy landowner in the bunch.

• Minimum wage

Hocker reiterated his stance on minimum wage and stumped for workers’ compensation insurance reform — two topics of interest to many small business owners.

“You just look awful if you vote against (an increase to the minimum wage),” he said — indicating he would nevertheless oppose such legislation.

He said such changes tended to initiate a “stair-stepping” chain reaction. (People at the bottom get a raise, people at the top want one, too.)

That in turn fosters inflation, he said, reducing the value of everyone’s money, and that especially hurts people at the bottom of the economic ladder who already have very little disposable income. “The ones you’re trying to help end up the ones you hurt the most,” he said.

• Dram shop

Hocker also reiterated his vow to fight dram-shop legislation, expected to reappear this legislative session. Dram-shop legislation holds responsible taverns and restaurants where alcohol is served when drunk drivers leave those establishments and injure themselves or others.

Delaware has a section of law on the books, titled the “Delaware Responsible Alcoholic Beverage Server Training Program,” but it stops short of holding businesses liable. It is a mandatory program, for all employees who “sell, prepare, dispense, serve or otherwise deliver alcoholic beverages directly to patrons … for on-premises consumption.”

Servers are trained to look for red eyes, slurring voice, shaking hands, general loss of coordination, etc. — and intervene when they see these telltales. Delaware Code requires all businesses that serve alcohol to ensure this training is taking place, at the risk of liquor license non-renewal and administrative fines. Employees can be prohibited from serving alcohol for some period of time, and must thereafter acquire re/certification.

As Hocker has noted in the past, this places a difficult burden upon the business owners, because it creates a large grey area of liability. For instance, offending patrons could enter an establishment already halfway intoxicated and take the one last drink that puts them over the top.

Hocker called dram-shop legislation “anti-business.”

• Health and workers compensation

Hocker also noted House Bill (HB) 146, which would provide a personal income tax credit for individuals who purchase long-term-care insurance, and a possible state-subsidized insurance pool to cover catastrophic healthcare costs.

“This state has got to get the uninsured some insurance,” Hocker said. “Last year alone, the hospitals in this state lost $90 million caring for the uninsured.

“They have to pass that on, so those costs go to the people with insurance,” he pointed out.

Meanwhile, workers compensation rates have risen to among the most expensive in the nation, Hocker continued. Two committees were searching for alternatives to the current structure, but he said one of the two carried a heavy contingent of labor union representatives. “The labor unions are not going to want to change that,” he said.

According to Hocker, there are significant opportunities for abuse in the employee-oriented structure.

He said he’d prefer workers visit a doctor of the employer’s choice, in a managed-care framework where the doctors are more motivated to get employees back to work as soon as possible, rather than continue to generate worker-compensation fees from repeated examinations.

Speaking from personal experience, he advised all business owners in attendance to keep some light-duty work on hand, to flush out the people who were truly abusing the system and simply did not wish to return to work.

Along related lines, he reminded everyone of workers-compensation subcategories that could save people some serious money. For instance, there are different rates for clerical employees versus maintenance workers. Not all insurance agents advise their clients of these subcategories — he recommended business owners take the initiative and ask about them.

All this and more, at one big Bethany-Fenwick Area Chamber of Commerce membership breakfast, Dec. 1 at the NorthEast Seafood Kitchen (NESK) in Ocean View. NESK doesn’t ordinarily open for breakfast, or lunch for that matter, but made a special exception in this case.