Bad Bills Prolific During 91st Session, Despite Debate, Votes

After two weeks of gleaning good bills from the over 1,127 signed into law from the 91st General Assembly, now is the time to focus on some of the bad bills.

Now these bills were passed by the 135 legislators down in Little Rock during the recent session.

Many of these bills, looked at negatively, may overstep legislative boundaries; others are in direct conflict with federal court rulings. A few of the bills are, well, just crazy laws that only a minority of Arkansans might feel should be actual laws.

I’ll mention ONLY the bills that were passed and became laws, not a tip of the iceberg of all the bad bills that were proposed but, thankfully, never got to the Governor’s desk.

Here is the first-of-two installment of bad bills from the Arkansas Legislature.

Act 73 — Concerning possession of a defaced firearm manufactured prior to Jan. 1, 1968.

Act 138 — To grant municipal clerks the authority to administer oaths of office.

Act 140 — To amend the law concerning the recording of documents.

Act 168 — To amend the laws concerning a fetal death certificate and registration of termination of pregnancy; and to amend the law concerning a certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth.

Act 173 — To allow a student who attends a private school or a home school to enroll in an academic course within the public school district.

Act 191 — To amend the definition of employer and the hate offense and retaliation provisions of the Arkansas Civil Rights Act of 1993.

Act 239 — Concerning the carrying of a firearm by a parole and probation officer.

Act 271 — To transfer the Arkansas Energy Office to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.

Act 292 — To amend the membership of the committee responsible for recommending a person to be appointed as Poet Laureate by the Governor and to amend the term length of a Poet Laureate.

Act 310 — To amend Arkansas Law Concerning the filling of vacancies in the office of the United States Senator; and to declare an emergency.

Act 317 — To create the used tire recycling and accountability program.

Act 322 — Concerning the military justice punishment for contempt.

Act 327 — To expand the number of private schools eligible to participate in the succeed scholarship program; and to declare an emergency.

Act 330 — To allow counties to burn storm debris based on county – declared disaster emergencies.

Act 376 — Concerning the confidentiality of emergency preparedness documents created by the Department of Community Corrections.

Act 395 — To amend the book report of the Secretary of State.

Act 417 — Concerning the entry under cause of death on a person’s death certificate when the person was executed due to a sentence for a capital offense.

Act 453 — To allow home-schooled students to participate in interscholastic activities at private schools.

Act 474 — To exempt from the Freedom of Information Act of 1967 certain records of the State Capitol Police.

Act 479 — To require the passage of the civics portion of the Naturalization Test Used by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services before a student may receive a high school diploma or high school equivalency diploma.

Act 483 — To exempt certain records of the Department of Arkansas State Police concerning the Governor’s Mansion and Mansion Grounds from the Freedom of Information Act of 1967.

Act 541 — To establish that emergency or security records or other information for a public school district, public school or state-supported institution of higher education is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act of 1967.

Act 542 — To grant public charter schools a right of access to unused or underutilized public school facilities.

I’ll stop here, this week, and take up next week with of all things:

Act 562 — the Guns on Campus Bill and more ‘bad bills’ passed down in Little Rock.

MAYLON RICE IS A FORMER JOURNALIST WHO WORKED FOR SEVERAL NORTHWEST ARKANSAS PUBLICATIONS. HE CAN BE REACHED VIA EMAIL AT MAYLONTRICE@YAHOO.COM. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.