Since this promises to be the week that the Sheriff of Nuttingham is ordered to stand down, I have one question: What happens if he doesn’t?
Do Jeff Christopher and his followers strike you as the type of people who will simply accept their fate and go gently into that good night? I hope that they are, but I’m concerned that a dangerous standoff could well result. Anyway, we won’t have long to wait. The House overwhelmingly passed HB 325 on Thursday (here is the roll call), and it will likely pass the Senate and head to the Governor either at the end of this week or next week. I hope that the Sheriff and his Posse Comatosis will obey the law they believe they are sworn to uphold. Otherwise, I’m not sure what will happen. Will State Police arrest the sheriff and his Merry Men for impersonating law enforcement officers? I really don’t know, and I hope we don’t have to find out.
The Senate barely, with only 11 yeas, passed legislation enabling the Governor’s Advisory Council on Manufactured Housing to certify whether or not owners of a manufactured home community have provided sufficient evidence to support rate increases above the Consumer Price Index For All Urban Consumers for the preceding year. I would like to provide you with the roll call, but this being the Senate…
Rep. Lumpy Carson’s road rage bill was tabled in the House after three amendments, plus an amendment to an amendment, were added to the bill. Whether he can ever get the bill in a form acceptable to a majority of the House remains to be seen. One can only hope not.
Here’s the entire session activity report for last Thursday. It’s getting to that time of the year when I issue my annual warning: Kids, beware of legislation introduced late in session that the average person cannot decipher. Lobbyists often earn their money by sneaking through special interest bills late in the year that otherwise would receive more scrutiny if introduced earlier. So, please carefully peruse the ‘Introduced Legislation’ portion of the activity report, and remember that many of these bills may not go through committee, but rather could be worked on the floor under ‘suspension of rules’. That way often lies corruption. Or, at least, legislation not in the public interest.
Speaking of showdowns, the Senate will consider two, count ’em, two bills creating the new offense of home invasion. I have already pointed out that there are something like 150 offenses that a suspect can be charged with for such an offense. That, of course, is not enough, especially in an election year, hence the political urgency in creating yet another offense to add to the litany of charges already available. Yet even that is not enough to soothe the feigned outrage of John Sigler and his Rethuglican Party. He argues that the House bill creating the offense does not go far enough, and somehow ‘coddles criminals’ (damn, I wish that, at least, these Rethugs could come up with a new turn of phrase or two), and argues that Sen. David Lawson’s allegedly even tougher bill should prevail. So, in Solomoronic fashion, the Senate has placed both bills on today’s agenda: SB 161(Lawson) and HB 277(Heffernan). Neither bill will have any impact on perpetrators, but partisans hope that they will have some political impact. Me? I’m just interested in the political machinations. Will the Senate pass both bills and punt it back to the House? Hey, you guys love to see me make bold and profoundly incorrect predictions, so I predict that only HB 277 passes, with a lot of D ‘not votings’ on SB 161. Check back tomorrow as I duck for cover…
The other Senate bill of note on today’s agenda is SB 206(Sorenson), which “requires school districts and charter schools to establish a policy on responding to Teen Dating Violence and Sexual Assault, including guidelines on mandatory reporting and confidentiality, a protocol for responding to incidents of Teen Dating Violence and Sexual Assault and training on the issue.”
Here is today’s Senate agenda.
While many of the items on the House agenda are holdovers from last Thursday, there are a couple of interesting newcomers. HB 309(Scott) seeks to keep personal information from networking sites private from public and non-public academic institutions. According to the bill’s sysnopsis, “It is acknowledged by the General Assembly that new technological advances in internet use and social networking require new approaches to protecting reasonable expectations of privacy in personal information.” Good bill, let’s see who disagrees with this basic premise.
SB 185(DeLuca) will no doubt reach the Governor’s desk by week’s end. I, for one, strongly support this lobbyist reform if, for no other reason, I’ll now be able to directly link the special interests to the bills they’re promoting. And I fully intend to do just that, as, I hope, will what passes for the media these days.
BTW, HB 289(Keeley), the payday loan bill, is scheduled to be considered in tomorrow’s Senate Banking Committee. Here are the members:
Chair: Anthony J. DeLuca
Members: Patricia M. Blevins, Colin R. J. Bonini, George H. Bunting, Catherine L. Cloutier, Bethany A. Hall-Long, Harris B. McDowell.
While both DeLuca and Bonini are listed as sponsors, it is not, repeat, not, a slam dunk that this bill makes it out of committee. Far from it. If you see your Senator’s name here, and you support the bill, you know what to do.
So do I. Time to ‘powder my nose’ for my close-up on today’s Al Mascitti Show, 10 am to noon. We’ll discuss the ‘Art of the Deal’, the Sheriff of Nuttingham, big doings at the SEU, and much more.