Legislation

Budget articles passed by the legislature took some positive steps in addressing the continued overcrowding problem at the R.I. Training School.

One of the ACLU’s major, though not unexpected, defeats involved the passage of a bill that formalizes the establishment of a centralized health records database in the state.

For the third year in a row, doctors pushed to expand HIV testing, while reducing the confidentiality protections in place for patients and severely limiting HIV counseling requirements.

The ACLU was unsuccessful in tightening up language, added at the last minute to a budget article, authorizing the Department of Health to require newborn screening for a variety of unspecified “conditions.”

In one of the most troubling actions of the session, the legislature hurriedly passed a bill making it a crime for any sex offender to live within 300 feet of a school.

ACLU lobbying removed language from an Attorney General bill that would have allowed the names of juvenile sex offenders to be posted on a state website.

In approving a complete rewrite of the regulatory statute governing optometrists, the General Assembly – at the ACLU’s urging – took a modest step forward in eliminating troubling and archaic language that appears in most occupational licensing statutes.

In seeking to close the state’s enormous fiscal deficit, the legislature’s 2009 budget contains a host of provisions significantly streamlining welfare procedures and slashing welfare programs, including RIte Care for the children of undocumented immigrants.

For the second year in a row, the Governor vetoed a bill that would have eliminated draconian mandatory minimum sentences contained in some of Rhode Island’s drug laws, which are the harshest in all of New England.