Here are some of the bills that passed 3rd reading in the House today:
SB 5 – Disorderly conduct at funerals and intimidation. This is basically an enhancement of penalties for existing crimes. Disorderly conduct becomes a Class D felony when committed within 500 feet of a funeral, burial, memorial service, funeral procession or viewing and has an adverse affect on the event. This is the bill inspired by Fred Phelps who pickets funerals of soldiers, saying that the soldiers’ deaths are punishment for U.S. tolerance of gays. It’s not clear to me that this bill would actually do anything to Phelps or his Westboro Baptist Church. Their speech, while reprehensible in content, does not seem to meet the criteria for disorderly conduct.
SB 6 – Lifetime parole for child molesters. Puts child molesters on lifetime parole after they have served their time. If they have their parole “revoked” two or more times after serving their time, they have committed a Class “D” felony, Class “C” if it’s their second parole violation conviction. Certain offenders have to participate in counseling, avoid contact with persons less than 16 years of age, and be tagged with a GPS monitoring device. Certainly no one is going to lose votes by being tough on child molesters. But I wonder if it is even theoretically possible through this kind of statute or any other for a court to find Indiana’s General Assembly to be in violation of Article 1, Section 18 of the Indiana Constitution which provides, “The penal code shall be founded on the principles of
reformation, and not of vindictive justice.”
SB 33 – Volunteer advocates for incapacitated adults. I am not familiar with it, but there appears to be a program in place for providing volunteer advocates for seniors. This bill creates a similar program for incapacitated adults. The advocate represents and protects the interest of the incapacitated adult and requires the advocate to report to the court and make recommendations.
SB 36 – Reestablishes the Commission on Mental Health until June 30, 2011 to study the delivery of mental health services in Indiana. The Commission had originally been established by what is known as a Noncode provision that expired January 1, 2006. (Noncode provisions are used for legislative acts that are limited in duration. The idea is that you do not want the Indiana Code cluttered up with a bunch of expired provisions. I think the general rule of thumb was that if an act was not going to be in effect for more than 4 years, you tried to put it into a Noncode provision.)
SB 39 – Legal settlement in a school corporation. The parent granted physical custody of a child can elect either parents’ place of residence as the child’s legal settlement for purposes of determining which school corporation the child will go to. The election may be made only once per year.
Lots of other bills I don’t have time to get to:
SB 47 – criminal background checks.
SB 54 – handgun licensing. (Prior commentary on this one here.)
SB 56 – pension relief fund distributions
SB 73 – Indemnity agreements in motor carrier contracts
SB 81 – bungee jump facility inspection
SB 83 – resisting law enforcement
SB 94 – Lakes management work group
SB 111 – student nutrition and physical activity. (Prior commentary on this one here and here.)
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