More Circus Acts

Finishing up the first 100 proposed changes to the way we live we have the following:

Will we get an Elvis Chapel in the basement of the Capitol Annex to go with this law? Oh, this is an EMERGENCY piece of legislation; someone must need to get married fast in Frankfort.

HB 79/LM (BR 278) - J. Higdon
AN ACT relating to the solemnization of marriage and declaring an emergency. Amend KRS 402.050 to allow solemnization of marriages by a member of the General Assembly who has been authorized by the presiding officer of his or her chamber; amend KRS 402.090 to forbid any legislator to solicit, accept, or agree to accept anything of value in exchange for solemnizing a marriage; amend KRS 402.100 to require all marriage certificates to contain a space where the officiating legislator may affirm membership in the General Assembly and list the date he or she was authorized to solemnize marriages; EMERGENCY.

I’m a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. No, the two are not mutually exclusive. But sometimes the cradle to grave hand holding that is often legislated is just a bit much for me. How about looking at the state budget before worrying about an 18 year old being an idiot with a credit card.

HB 83 (BR 388) - J. Glenn
AN ACT relating to college student financial awareness. Create a new section of KRS Chapter 164 to require public postsecondary institutions to provide new undergraduates with information regarding credit cards and debt management and encourage them to conduct informational sessions; encourage nonpublic postsecondary institutions to provide new undergraduates with information regarding credit cards and debt management and to conduct informational sessions; permit institutions to utilize existing debt education materials from nonprofit entities; and require the Council on Postsecondary Education to assist institutions in identifying appropriate materials and curricula.

What a waste of time.

HB 85 (BR 390) - J. Glenn
AN ACT designating burgoo as the state dish. Create a new section of KRS Chapter 2 naming and designating burgoo as the state dish.

Should we warn them not to use a credit card?

HB 86 (BR 391) - J. Glenn
AN ACT relating to sales and use tax holidays and declaring an emergency. Create a new section of KRS Chapter 139 to provide a sales and use tax holiday for the first week in August each year to exempt clothing with a sales price of less than $100 per item, school supplies, and school art supplies; define terms; EMERGENCY; EFFECTIVE May 1, 2009

Ok, this is going to take a minute to read but bear with me. First we have a bill that claims to relate to agroterrorism.

HB 91/LM (BR 345) - M. Denham
AN ACT relating to agroterrorism. Create new sections of KRS Chapter 247 to define "agricultural equipment," "agricultural facility," "agricultural product," and "agroterrorism"; establish damages for committing agroterrorism; amend KRS 500.080 to define "agricultural equipment," "agricultural facility," and agricultural product"; amend KRS 512.010, 513.010, 513.060, and 527.205 to conform; repeal KRS 437.410, 437.415, 437.420, and 437.429.

The bill really deals with paying farmers damages and filling the pockets of lawyers.

“Any person who commits an act of agroterrorism shall be liable for personal injury and for restitution for the value of the agricultural facility, agricultural equipment, or agricultural product damaged or destroyed, as determined by a court of competent jurisdiction, plus interest, attorney's fees, and reasonable court costs.”

According to a Rand Institute National Defense Research Brief, there are six short- to medium-term recommendations for dealing with agroterrorism.

1. Conducting a comprehensive needs analysis to determine appropriate investment requirements for the federal emergency management infrastructure.

2. Increasing the number of state and local personnel with the skills to identify and treat exotic foreign animal diseases.


3. Assessing how to foster more coordinated and standardized links between the U.S. agricultural and intelligence communities.

4. Focusing attention on issues of law enforcement and the use of forensic investigations to determine whether disease outbreaks are deliberate or naturally occurring.

5. Revisiting the effectiveness of the passive (voluntary) disease reporting system, especially in providing more consistency with indemnity payments to compensate farmers for destroyed livestock.

6. Evaluating surveillance, internal quality control, and emergency response at food processing and packing plants to weigh the immediate costs of improving biosecurity against the long-term benefits of instituting those upgrades.

Since the bill doesn’t address anything close to the recommendations the question becomes this:

Is this bill the product of sloppy research or just an attempt by a clueless legislator trying to impress the fools that put him in office? If you are going to try and pass a law to deal with a potential problem at least do some of the homework first.

And finally when is a tax not a tax; when it’s a disbursement fee?

HB 95/LM (BR 178) - B. Montell
AN ACT relating to child support. Amend KRS 205.721 to require the $25.00 disbursement fee for child support to be charged to the noncustodial parent.