Thursday, May. 08, 2008

Beating May 1 deadline is only part of the battle for late bills

FOR ALL the extra hours the House and Senate stay in session during the final days of April, for all the gyrations lawmakers go through to get their bills over to the other body to beat the May 1 “crossover” deadline, the fact is that even the bills that slide in under that deadline have little chance of becoming law.

There are exceptions, of course, primarily when that under-the-deadline passage is the result of opposing sides suddenly reaching a compromise; then the bill might sail through the other body. But generally, a Senate bill that has been ignored by the Senate for the first nine or so months of a two-year legislative session is not a big-enough priority to get a serious hearing in the House during the final days of the session, and vice versa.

That’s a shame, because both the House and the Senate have passed several bills that would have a positive impact on life in South Carolina, if only the other body would go along.

I’m not talking about the cigarette tax and government restructuring and payday lending and other high-profile items — although we’d certainly be better off if those did make it into law; if they don’t make it, it’ll be because too many lawmakers oppose them. I’m talking about the second-tier bills, the ones that tend to get ignored and that die not so much because they’re too controversial to touch, but rather because there’s simply not enough enthusiastic support to push them all the way through. The list is long, but here are a few of the best ideas that still could — and should — make it into law if they get that last little push:

• The sentence for people convicted of criminal domestic violence depends in large part on whether and how many times they’ve been convicted before, but state law counts only convictions in South Carolina. Someone convicted in South Carolina of assaulting his wife after multiple convictions for assaulting the same woman in North Carolina is treated as if this were his first conviction. H.3058 would allow convictions from other states to be counted as well.

• It’s already against the law for most adults to have sex with anyone younger than 16, but school officials would face extra prison time if they had sex with students, and they also could be prosecuted for having sex with older students under H.3715. Of course, even if this bill passes, it would still be legal for 18-year-olds to have sex with 15-year-olds, since Senate negotiators refuse to approve House-passed legislation to close that loophole, along with the loophole that encourages defendants to dodge their own responsibility and shift the blame to the victim when they’re charged with having sex with children.

• Would-be judges aren’t supposed to be able to get legislators to commit to vote for them until the Judicial Merit Selection Commission has vetted them — a protection that was put in place to keep good but less political candidates from being bullied into never even running to begin with. But some people have been exploiting a loophole, by racking up commitments before they officially become candidates. S.105, passed by the Senate in January, would close that loophole.

• Teens will never be the safest drivers on the highways; the combination of inexperience and invincibility is something they simply have to outgrow. But a growing number of schools are at least trying to do a better job teaching them about the dangers of driving, and how to avoid them, through a defensive driving survival course called Alive at 25. S.997 would require everyone younger than 18 to pass a teen defensive-driving course before getting a license. It’d be better still if we raised the driving age and put some more restrictions on when and where kids can drive, but these courses have a good track record and would be a step in the right direction.

• An extraordinary thing happened last year, when the Senate easily passed a bill to prohibit adults from smoking if they have kids locked up in the car with them. The Senate has traditionally been hostile to what it considers infringements on personal liberty, but even the fiercest libertarians agreed that the state had a duty to protect a child who was being held hostage by a smoker. But then S.369 got bogged down in the House, as both sides of the smoking wars tried to use it as a vehicle either to grant cities and counties more power to restrict smoking, or else to rescind that power. Now that the Supreme Court has decided the issue — as most legislators hoped would happen — it’s time for both sides to stop holding this bill hostage: Free the bill, and protect the kids.

• Like riding with a teenager, it’s never going to be as safe to ride a bicycle as an armored SUV. But at least police would have an easier time convicting the people who run over us under H.3006, which makes it clear that bicyclists have an equal right to the highways and requires drivers to keep a “safe operating distance” from them. If we really wanted to make bicycling safer, we’d mandate bike helmets, but I suppose if anyone tried to attach that idea to the bill, the motorcyclists, who need to be helmeted even more, would kill it, for fear that they’d be next.

These are all smart ideas that would make good laws. But time is short, so supporters need to get to work to push them across the finish line.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.

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