Legislation

In June, the House passed legislation requiring health care providers to report alleged incidents of elder abuse to law enforcement, furthering a trend in recent years of the General Assembly approving legislation weakening the state’s health care confidentiality laws.

In June, the House passed legislation allowing the Department of Corrections to modify the terms of a person’s probation at any time, and for any reason.

In April, the ACLU testified before the House Health, Education and Welfare committee in support of legislation clarifying the ability of nurse practitioners and physician assistants to prescribe medication.

In June, the House approved legislation prohibiting any person convicted of a sex offense with a minor from holding employment in a wide range of jobs, even if that job never involved interaction with a child.

In June, the House approved legislation overhauling the state’s sex offender registration and community notification laws, replacing them with federal standards so costly that few states have chosen to implement them.

A set of bills dealing with the state’s littering laws will result in thousands of dollars of fines for Rhode Islanders, and thousands of dollars in proceeds for local law enforcement.

Legislation creating a task force on employee misclassification and the underground economy contained one of the more dangerous anti-privacy provisions of the year.

In June, the House passed legislation governing the transmission of mental health civil certification records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), the database used to determine who is eligible to purchase a weapon under state and federal laws.

Another part of the Attorney General’s package of legislation dealing with computer crimes carried still more concerns about the breadth of these changes.