Legislation

On a positive note, the Assembly sent a package of sex offender legislation back to committee, killing the bills for the year.

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.

One court has called “civil death” laws “an outdated and inscrutable common law precept” and “a medieval fiction in a modern world,” but Rhode Island is one of only four states to still have such a law.

Despite broad support for the legislation from the General Assembly, the governor also vetoed a bill that would have eliminated the mandatory minimum sentences in place for certain drug offenses.

As has happened in previous years, the House took no action on a Senate bill that would have allowed for the forced administration of blood tests on persons in vehicular accidents involving death or serious injury.

Joining a nationwide chorus, the General Assembly passed harsh, costly and almost-certainly ineffective legislation to further punish sex offenders.

Ignoring Affiliate objections that the bill would significantly erode the privilege against self-incrimination, the General Assembly has made it a crime for a driver to refuse to submit to a breathalyzer test if he or she has been cited once before for not taking the test.