House update: Legislative wheels now rolling in 2016 General Assembly
By DAVID FLOYD
50th State Representative
Monday, Jan. 19, 2015, 11:01 a.m. — On Friday, your House of Representatives passed its first two bills of the 2016 session and sent them over to the Senate for that body’s consideration. Both bills originated in the House Judiciary Committee, so it’s reasonable to assume that the Senate Judiciary Committee is where those bills will be assigned.
The first bill is HB 109. According to the sponsor the bill would add to our statutes a “continuing course of conduct” definition in cases of, for example, crimes against children. This definition would be used as a tool by prosecutors. During a trial, a child may not be able to recall details about specific dates and so a defense attorney can pick apart testimony to show inconsistencies and thereby cast doubt on the child’s testimony. However, the bill attempts to create a category of an “offense against a vulnerable victim” and therein we have a problem.
Our rules require that any bill introduced must be screened for any (positive, negative, or neutral) impact it might have on local government, spending, or our corrections system. HB 109 obviously would have a corrections impact, and so the Department of Corrections reviewed the bill and reported back to the legislature. They said that HB 109’s classification of vulnerable victims “literally has no meaning or impact of any kind” and that the bill “is meaningless…” (You can find the impact statements online for any bill – on the lrc.ky.gov website find the link to the bill and notice if beside it there is a “CI”, “FI”, “LM”, etc. and click on the link to open a pdf of the document.)
In studying a bill, lawmakers read the impact statements as well as the text/context of the statutory revision. The Corrections Impact comments on HB 109 should have meant that significant amendments would be made to the bill before presenting it for a vote to the House members. Despite the Corrections impact Statement, HB 109 passed the full House unanimously. Truthfully, it is difficult to vote against any bill, no matter how flawed, that deals with horrible crimes against children. The reasons are simultaneously rational and emotional. (But it is also political; imagine the political post card against a member who voted against protecting children.) We in the House have the advantage of knowing that the Senate, when it takes up the bill, will make the needed amendments and send it back to us for concurrence. Having said all that, the amending process should have been done in the House.
The other bill we passed was HB 40, dealing with the possibility of expungement of certain Class D felonies. Rep Darryl Owens is the bill sponsor, and I’m a principal sponsor. The bill passed 80-11 (there are only 96 representatives for now, and an additional five were absent on Friday.) Plenty has been written on HB 40 over the years, including in this space, so I won’t give a full explanation in this column. The bill has been received in the Senate, where I’m hopeful that it will get a hearing and a vote.
The best part of my job is hearing from you. Call me at home, or leave a message in Frankfort at 1-800-372-7181. Our next “Coffee with Dave” is January 30th at High Grove Grocery. Senator Higdon and I hope to see you there. We start at 9:00.
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