February 16, 2007 CONTACT: Leslie Caudill
COLUMN
SENATE
WEEK IN REVIEW
Submitted by Senator Denise Harper Angel
FRANKFORT — Each week brings new challenges in the
Kentucky State Senate and this week was no different. We turned our attention to several pressing pieces of
legislation this week, from increasing Interstate highway speed limits to
giving citizens a chance to have court cases against the state heard locally.
The recent tragedy in Bardstown, 10 people six of which were
children lost their lives in a house fire, was just the latest in a long line
of fatal fires caused by cigarettes left burning. One in three fire deaths in
Kentucky each year are due to a smoldering cigarette or other smoking
materials, the state fire marshal tells us.
SB 134 would go a long way toward saving future lives by
requiring cigarettes sold here to use a new kind of paper that stops a
cigarette from burning if no one puffs on it after a short period of time. If
someone fell asleep with their cigarette burning, it would likely go out before
it caught furniture or anything else on fire, and many lives could be saved.
Property damage would also be reduced, saving money that all of us pay in
homeowners' insurance. Six states already require fire-safe cigarettes, and
Kentucky could join them at the forefront of fire safety if the House joins us
in approving this bill.
We also took a step this week that will help all of us get
around Kentucky quicker -- and stay within the bounds of the law -- by raising
the speed limit on our Interstates and parkways. Thirty states, including four
of our surrounding states, already have their Interstate speed limits set at 70
miles per hour, and many stretches of Kentucky highway are designed to handle
traffic at that speed. SB 83 would allow our Secretary of Transportation to
raise the limit on Interstates and four-lane parkways in areas where it's safe
to do so.
Under current state law, any citizen who wants to file a
lawsuit against a state agency has to do so at the local courthouse in
Frankfort. That's a huge inconvenience and financial burden to people out in
the state, and we passed SB 75 this week as a way to address the problem. This
bill would allow cases to be heard in citizen's home areas, saving them travel
time and costs, while also allowing judges across the Commonwealth to add their
expertise to the state's case law and relieving the burden on Franklin Circuit
Court.
This week we continued our work to expand the Kentucky All
Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting (KASPER) program by passing Senate
Joint Resolution 48. The
resolution calls for Kentucky to enter into reciprocal agreements with states
nationwide to share prescription drug monitoring information if the other
state's prescription drug monitoring program is compatible with the program in
Kentucky.
We've reached the halfway point of the 2007 Session, so we'll
soon take up House measures while the House looks at measures we've already
passed. The House has already approved a timely piece of legislation,
unanimously passing Senate Joint Resolution 16, which renames I-65 in Jefferson
County as the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Expressway. Coming in the midst of
Black History Month, this is an appropriate recognition of a man whose values
we all try to live up to every day.
The pace of the session is getting more frantic, but we always have time to listen to what the people of Kentucky have to say on the issues we're facing. You can always make your views known by calling our Legislative Message Line at 1-800-372-7181 or by e-mail me at denise.harperangel@lrc.ky.gov.. You can also follow our activities online at http://www.kysenatedemocrats.com.
Senator Harper Angel represents the 35th
Senate District in Jefferson County.
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