GOP senators say Democrats are skirting a legal compromise reached last year when they signed off on giving DelDOT employees who work along Delaware roadways hazard pay.
The two parties reached an agreement last year while negotiating an infrastructure plan to not spend Transportation Trust Fund money on new initiatives without a three-quarters vote.
Dubbed a so-called "lock box" provision, lawmakers passed a temporary bill preventing such spending until later this year, while also approving a constitutional amendment outlining the same guidelines.
That amendment still needs to be approved by the next General Assembly before it takes effect.
“First test on a lock box, we fail. Up is down, down is up, depends on which attorney you bring up, what you want to say. We failed on the first test of this lock box," said Senate Minority Whip Greg Lavelle (R-Sharpley), who zealously pushed for the compromise last year.
Kelley Huff, a senate attorney, says the bill doesn’t need more than a simple majority to pass because it’s not directly spending money itself.
“What this bill does is add some people that would be covered by that plan, but it does not actually call for a specific appropriation for those people,” Huff said.
Other Republican lawmakers simply balked at the new spending, which a fiscal analysis estimates would cost about $2.5 million each year.
Should the bill be enacted into law, Lavelle says he won’t sue over the legality of how it was approved.
