The House Housing Committee clears two bills related to landlord-tenant rights and information.

State Rep. Kim Williams (D-Stanton) proposes requiring the Delaware Real Estate Commission to create a statewide rental guide that includes federal, state, county and municipal requirements.

The guide would include information on renters and flood insurance, tenant’s right to legal representation, fair housing laws and school district feeder patterns among other things.

“This is really about information, giving people everything they may need to know. People don’t understand that anyone can get flood insurance. You don’t have to live in a flood zone to get flood insurance, but people don’t understand that. So this is really just providing more information,” Williams says.

The Delaware Association of Relators backs the bill, saying both landlords and tenants will benefit from having one consolidated resource.

While the Delaware Apartment Association says they are also in support, they are requesting a website be created where all the required information can be easily accessed and updated.

The bill was voted out of committee with full bipartisan support of the members present.

The second bill heard was from State Rep. Eric Morrison (D-Glasgow), which would require a landlord to provide a lease option to an employee of an apartment complex if they are terminated without cause.

The legislation applies to employees who initially received an apartment as part of their employment compensation, therefore giving them the option to enter a written rental agreement within 5 business days of their termination.

State Rep. Jeff Spiegelman (R-Clayton) raises concerns on discrepancies between determining if an employee is actually terminated for cause or not.

“By that provision, you’re encouraging the landlord to say, ‘I terminated you for cause,’ even if there’s not, because then I can quickly rent the unit because then if it’s determined I didn’t terminate for cause, I got my way around this because now there’s no unit,” he says

The legislative attorney who drafted the bill argues there’s a good faith responsibility clause under the Landlord-Tenant Code, so the landlord could be subject to penalties if they lied under that scenario.

While Republican committee members either opted not to vote or voted against the bill, it received seven votes in favor.

Both bills head to the House for consideration.

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Hundreds of students and faculty are getting arrested on college campuses nationwide for setting up encampments and protesting against the U.S.’s stance on the war in Gaza. In the Philadelphia and tri-state area, the protests have remained largely peaceful so far, but tensions are beginning to flare.

This week there was a large gathering involving students from several area universities and new encampments have sprouted in some of the universities and colleges in the tri-state area.

Here’s what’s going on at campuses around the region:

University of Pennsylvania

Students at Philadelphia’s Ivy League school have started an encampment at the College Greens in the center of the university just steps away from a statue of American revolutionary Benjamin Franklin. Penn was the final stop of the march across the city Thursday, which included students from Temple University and Drexel University. Later that evening, some students pitched tents, the number of which has now ballooned to dozens.

Late Friday night, the university’s interim president, J. Larry Jameson, ordered students to disband the encampment after a campus statue was vandalized. The student activists have said that they will stay put until their demands for the university to cut financial ties with Israel are met. The university already shut down the local chapter of Students Against the Occupation.

Penn has not fared well during the recent tension at universities related to the war in Gaza. Their last president, Liz Magill, resigned after a poorly received Congressional appearance.

Swarthmore University

Swarthmore University students have also set up an encampment occupying Parrish Lawn with a few dozen tents. Like at Penn, students there are also demanding that the university divest from Israel.

Unlike Penn, however, the university officials have said they respect the students’ right to assemble. “In keeping with the College’s long standing values around peaceful protest and free expression, we have not interfered with the encampment,” Vice President for Communications Andy Hirsch said in a statement to the student paper. In January, University President Val Smith emailed the community that “Peaceful protest and dissent are an important part of the College’s history.”

Princeton University

Students at Princeton started to set up an encampment despite warnings from the school’s Department of Safety. Two graduate students–Achinthya Sivalingam and Hassan Sayed–were arrested. They are facing disciplinary action and have been barred from campus. Hundreds of Princeton students had joined the nationwide walkouts in October.

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This story was supported by a statehouse coverage grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Legislation creating a hospital cost review board passed the Delaware House Thursday after a long and contentious debate that frustrated members of both sides of the aisle.

Speaker Valerie Longhurst’s bill passed 21-16 on a near party-line vote, with three Democrats, Reps. Sean Lynn, Stell Parker Selby and Sean Matthews voting in opposition. After more than three hours of debate, Democrats took a short break, came back into session and then used a procedural maneuver to end debate and force a vote on the bill. Some lawmakers said they were disappointed with how the debate on the bill was handled.

“It’s an embarrassing day,” House Minority Leader Michael Ramone said. “It’s a sad day, and I’m very sad to be a part of this legislature.”

The measure aims to rein in increasing health care costs in the First State by requiring hospitals to submit their budgets to ensure they’re in compliance with government spending benchmarks. The hospital cost review board bill is based on a similar board Vermont created to curb health care costs.

Under Longhurst’s proposal, the board would review each hospital’s budget annually. If a hospital fails to meet spending benchmarks, it would be required to develop a performance improvement plan. Once a hospital meets spending targets for three consecutive years, the board would release it from the performance plan oversight. When a hospital successfully meets its budget goals for three consecutive years, it would no longer be required to participate in the budget approval process.

“This legislation is not about punishing hospitals, but rather ensuring our constituents are able to access quality and affordable health care and to put a system into place to slow down the skyrocketing costs that we have experienced in Delaware,” she said.

The board would consist of seven members, six of whom would be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate. The executive director of the Delaware Healthcare Association would be the seventh “non-voting” member.

Longhurst argued that the only year the benchmark had been met was in 2020 due to COVID, when fewer people were accessing regular medical care.

“Every other year, health care spending has far surpassed the benchmark we set for this date, including years with over 11% growth in health care costs,” she said.

2021 saw an 11% increase as more people resumed health care visits they had put off during the pandemic, according to the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services’ third annual benchmark trend report.

Gov. John Carney set a spending benchmark in 2018, which was an aspirational goal for annual per-capita-rate health care spending growth. The 3.8% benchmark took effect in 2019. It’s since fluctuated to various percentages below 4%.

Opponents of the legislation have said it substitutes political judgment for hospital experts’ expertise and doesn’t focus on cost drivers such as prescription drugs, workforce shortages, and insurance companies. Newark-based ChristianaCare, Dover-based Bayhealth and Lewes-based Beebe Health have recently spoken out in opposition to the board.