Legislation

A bill that would have allowed domestic partners of state employees access to their partners’ pensions, thus providing further security, stability and protections for same-sex families in Rhode Island, overwhelmingly passed the General Assembly, but was vetoed by the governor.

In a disturbing development, the 2007 budget includes $1 million in tax breaks to businesses making donations to scholarship organizations that provide financial aid to students attending private and parochial schools.

After a vigorous and spirited debate, the House approved on a 36-25 vote a bill that would have restricted state and local police from collecting or maintaining information about the political associations or activities of individuals.

ACLU lobbying helped to decisively kill one of the most dangerous bills of the session, a pet proposal of the State Police to give law enforcement broad authority to secretly obtain subscriber information, including bank and credit card numbers, from Internet service providers without a warrant.

Prompted by an ACLU lawsuit, the General Assembly has completely revamped the state’s campaign finance law as it relates to ballot question advocacy.

No action was taken on an ACLU bill designed to address the state’s racial profiling problem; among other things, the bill would have strengthened the remedies available to victims and required continued data collection of traffic stops by police.

The Governor’s callous budget proposal, opposed by the ACLU, to cut approximately 4,000 undocumented children off the RIte Care health insurance rolls met with only partial success.

For the second year in a row, the Governor has vetoed an important privacy bill that would restrict the state and municipalities from making use of “radio frequency identification” technology to track students, employees or clients.