State Legislatures Magazine: June 2001

Editor's Note: This article appeared in the June 2001 issue of NCSL's magazine, State Legislatures. To order copies or to subscribe, contact the marketing department at (303) 364-7700.

Stateline

WHAT CAME FIRST: THE CHICKEN OR THE 'GATOR?
South Carolina is looking at a new way for poultry producers to dispose of dead chickens-alligators. Currently, the chickens have to be buried or burned at considerable expense. The House Agriculture Committee is looking at a bill that would set up a three-year pilot alligator farm program at 10 sites. South Carolina farmers would have to purchase their 'gators from a legal out-of-state captive source at about $20 apiece. Georgia and Florida farmers are already doing it. But there are concerns. "Laundering" 'gators caught in the wild through alligator farms may increase. And alligators might escape and mix with low country natives. South Carolina Alligator Project Supervisor Walt Rhodes warns, "I don't think it is going to be the solution they're looking for. ... The majority of them are just interested in using alligators as garbage disposals."

WHO ELSE BUT THESE GUYS?
Lewis and Clark are working together again. This time in the Indiana Senate. Senators James Lewis and J. Murray Clark have sponsored a bill to officially recognize the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition, coming up in a couple of years. The early explorers and their party of locally recruited followers left what is now Clarksville, Ind., Oct. 26, 1803, for their three-year trek to the Pacific.

THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH
Iowa has recently passed a bill that makes it a crime for a politician to say things about a rival candidate that he "knows to be untrue, deceptive or misleading" in campaign advertising. Under the law, anyone who pays for such ads could face up to a $1,500 fine and a year in prison. Proponents admit the Iowa bill will be hard to enforce and mostly symbolic. "But it's worth the effort," said Representative Pam Jochum. Thirteen other states have had lying bans for years, but no politician has spent jail time for telling a whopper about a rival.

WINDS TAKE DOWN CAPITOL
Winds up to 65 mph ripped across Nebraska in April, peeling a 2-ton ribbon of original copper roofing off the State Capitol in Lincoln. Nebraska's state house, one of four "high-rise" capitol buildings in the country, was finished in 1932. About a ton of the copper sheet remained atop the building, but the other half draped over the side, held in place by scaffolding being used in restoration work. No one was hurt.

A SOLUTION FOR SEPTIC SPRAWL
A legislator in Maine has come out of the water closet with an idea to limit sprawl: tax every toilet connected to a new septic system installed after Jan. 1, 2002. The tax would amount to $750 per toilet connected in a private home and $1,000 per toilet or urinal in a commercial or nonresidential property. Toilets connected to septic systems built within municipally designated growth areas would be exempt from the tax. Representative David Lemoine, sponsor of the bill, says the measure would help equalize the cost of building a septic system with costs incurred by property owners who connect to a municipal sewer system. He hopes the new tax would encourage people to build and live in areas that cities and towns are identifying for future population growth.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING
Satellites are tracking lawbreakers in Kansas who are in a "day reporting" program that allows them to live at home and go to work. If offenders travel where they are not supposed to go, satellites will spot them immediately. To allow authorities to track them street by street, offenders wear ankle bracelets and carry mobile receivers that use signals from satellites to calculate their exact location. The offenders assigned to the day reporting centers have been released from prison, but have violated conditions of their release. The cost per offender is about $10.50 a day; that's one-fifth the cost of keeping someone in prison.

SURVIVAL GEAR AS CONTRABAND
There's a Catch 22 problem brewing up in Alaska around bush pilots carrying guns and Canada's new law banning firearms. A 1949 state law in Alaska requires planes flying 15 or fewer passengers to carry survival gear, which includes a weapon and ammunition. But under new gun regulations in Canada, every person entering the country with a weapon must first register it and pay a fee. That means fully equipped Alaska pilots traversing the international border would be breaking Canadian law unless they divert to a customs office first. The Alaska Legislature is looking at removing the requirement to carry a weapon. And Canadian officials appear to be still working out how the law applies to Alaskan pilots.

MAINE SECURES GIANT EASEMENT
More than 760,000 acres of forest land in Maine will not be developed into subdivisions or anything else thanks to a deal made between the landowners and the New England Forestry Foundation. That's the largest conservation easement in America and bigger than the state of Rhode Island. Pingree Associates, owners of the land, agreed to take $28 million from the foundation not to sell the land to developers. The property, in northern and western Maine, covers 2,000 miles of shore frontage along major rivers and streams, more than 100 lakes, 24,800 acres of deer yards and 72,000 acres of wetland habitat. It took three years to negotiate the deal and another two to raise the money to buy the easement.

KICKING OUT THE KLAN
The Ku Klux Klan was dropped from Missouri's Adopt-A-Highway program in April because it failed to bag any trash along the highway it sponsored. The white supremacist group won the right to participate in the litter pickup program from the U.S. Supreme Court after a six-year battle. But it failed to fulfill its obligation and was sent a letter-similar to those the state sent to hundreds of no-show litter patrols-stating it would be dropped if it didn't agree to pick up trash at least four times a year. Last year, the same stretch of highway was named for civil rights hero Rosa Parks.

KEEPING KEGS FROM KIDS
In a move to crack down on alcohol sales to minors, the Georgia General Assembly recently passed a bill to require purchasers of kegs to present state identification and to sign an affidavit listing the location where the beer is to be consumed and acknowledging that it is illegal to furnish alcohol to minors. The seller is required to record the name, address and date of birth of the buyer. "There are over 22 organizations that have requested we pass this legislation to remind people who buy kegs of beer that they are responsible for keeping track of how that beer is consumed," said Representative Nan Grogan Orrock. The bill awaits the governor's signature.

YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING
Frivolous lawsuits are taxing already overstretched court resources and delaying legitimate claims, according to the American Tort Reform Association. To prove its case, the association named a few recently filed lawsuits you won't believe. There's the Tennessee woman who sued McDonald's after a hot pickle fell from her burger and burned her chin. Her husband claims he "has been deprived of the services and consortium of his wife." A Texas prisoner sued Penthouse magazine because he was "very mentally hurt and angered" when a pictorial of Paula Jones was not revealing enough. And a man serving time for armed robbery of a Taco Bell is seeking recognition as the messiah, a presidential pardon and freedom to come and go as he pleases from the Michigan prison that's been his home for the past 20 years. He claims that as god, he owns everything on earth, so couldn't be guilty of robbery.

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