Legislation

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.

The Governor vetoed a bill that merely sought to set up a study commission to examine the state’s medical marijuana law and possible ways to provide a safe means for authorized patients to obtain the drug through compassion centers regulated by the state.

Despite the very difficult session for civil liberties as chronicled in the previous pages, it is worth noting that the Affiliate had many successes in keeping damaging legislation from ever reaching the floor.