Delaware
Major bills loom as Delaware lawmakers face final day of session
Why Should Delaware Care?
As lawmakers face their final working day of the year, a slew of significant bills have yet to be considered. Any bill that is not approved by both chambers as of midnight June 30 is officially marked dead, and must be reintroduced in the next General Assembly that begins in January.
As the final day of the 2026 legislative session approaches on Tuesday, several bills face uncertain futures, including a slate of property tax reforms and legislation that seeks to rein in healthcare costs.
Also pending is the state’s often-contentious capital budget that would distribute nearly $1.26 billion dollars to state building projects.
The list of pending legislation remains despite a lively penultimate week in Dover during which lawmakers passed immigration enforcement reform, gun control legislation, and affordable housing requirements for municipalities.
Lawmakers also shockingly failed to advance a proposed amendment to the Delaware Constitution that would enshrine the rights to gay and interracial marriage in the state. Both are currently legal in Delaware, but an amendment would make it considerably harder for lawmakers to remove those protections.
In all, the final days of the 2026 legislative session cap off a generally subdued year of lawmaking – particularly when compared to last year’s fights over the state’s corporate franchise, the Port of Wilmington and control of zoning rules for marijuana shops and a wind-farm substation.
The session also heads toward a close as several lawmakers prepare for what is expected to be hard-fought campaigns for reelection.
What passed this week?
Lawmakers passed a slew of significant bills this past week relating to land use, immigration, education funding and part of the state’s 2027 fiscal year budget.
Those bills now will all advance to Gov. Matt Meyer’s desk to be considered for signatures or vetoes.
Senate Bill 23, which generated substantial pushback from local governments across the state, passed the House on Tuesday with an unusual mix of bipartisan support. If signed into law, the bill would require municipalities to increase housing density and incorporate additional affordable housing reforms in their comprehensive plans.
Lawmakers also passed Senate Bill 13, which would greatly increase the number of patients eligible to receive free or reduced-price treatment – often called charity care – from the state’s nonprofit hospitals.
That bill was introduced months after a Spotlight Delaware investigation called into question the charity care practices at the state’s largest healthcare system, ChristianaCare.
A pair of immigration reform bills passed the Senate on Thursday, following a lengthy debate about the role of local law enforcement in federal immigration policy.
House Bill 368 would prohibit local and state law enforcement officials from detaining individuals simply because of their immigration status. People accused of serious crimes could still be held for prosecution. House Bill 94 would ban law enforcement from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in specific spaces — schools, churches and healthcare facilities.
Two bills focused on the funding structure for public schools unanimously passed the House on Wednesday, following up on long-debated changes to how education is funded in Delaware.
Senate Bill 302 allows the state to begin implementing the new hybrid school funding formula, which allocates more money for schools with more low-income or English-language learning students. Senate Bill 303 charges the Public Education Funding Commission to continue studying education funding in future years.
Both chambers also passed the fiscal year 2027 operating budget with relatively little fanfare. The budget includes a 6.3% spending increase from last year, above the 5% growth that Gov. Meyer called for in his original budget proposal in January.
What’s left to do?
Several bills are left to be considered during the General Assembly’s final working day on Tuesday, including the state’s billion-dollar capital budget.
That bill, which requires a three-fourths majority vote in order to pass, presents a rare opportunity for Republicans to exert power over the negotiations. Democrats are currently one seat short of a three-fourths majority in the Senate and four seats short in the House, requiring them to receive at least some Republican buy-in on the final proposal.
There could be a few sticking points in bond bill negotiations, including $35 million earmarked for the expansion of Legislative Hall. It would be the third largest appropriation anywhere in the bond bill.
John Flaherty, a director of the Delaware Coalition for Open Government, decried the lack of public notice or input for such a massive project in the waning days of the legislature.
“The Delaware General Assembly is in full session for just 43 days out of the entire year. Spending $35 million to expand a complex that sits largely empty or underutilized for more than 300 days a year is an indefensible use of state revenues, especially when community-facing infrastructure projects face strict funding limits,” he said in a statement.
Other bills left to be considered include a slate of property tax reforms that were introduced earlier this month in response to the fallout from last year’s first-in-a-generation property reassessments.
Those bills, which were filed following months of committee hearings to investigate what exactly went wrong in the aftermath of reassessment, include a proposal to indefinitely extend New Castle County school districts’ controversial ability to tax commercial and residential properties at different rates.
Another healthcare-focused bill, Senate Bill 1, also remains up for consideration in the House.
A primary care reform bill that also includes price caps for government-regulated insurance plans, SB 1 was scaled back from its original form through months of negotiations with the state’s healthcare lobby.
Those changes would delay the implementation of price caps on hospital procedures, limit some state oversight in setting those caps, and completely exempt some hospitals from the law altogether.
The bill unanimously passed in the Senate last month, but it has not yet been considered in the House.
Lawmakers in both the House and Senate are set to reconvene for the final time this year at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, June 30. Those hearings could extend long into the night depending on how readily legislators can strike deals, reach consensus or find compromise on any number of the proposals remaining before them.