Saturday, August 06, 2005

HB 420 to be topic during special session

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports today that Governor Blunt will ask the Missouri General Assembly to "fix some of the problems he acknowledges with HB 420." If you remember, the governor signed the bill even though it included a passage that could end up removing all public records from the Internet.
The problem is a provision that would require the removal of phone numbers and personal information about elected officials from the Internet. Since it would be difficult to know just who might be a public official, most government agencies would likely opt to remove all records to keep from violating the law. This would cover everything from real estate records to a city councilman arrested for drunk driving.
For some reason, Blunt signed the bill anyway, then said he would have the legislature fix it. It should be interesting to see if our elected representatives do anything about it since it would prevent the public from being able to effectively research them.
The special session will also deal with abortion issues and with getting the penalty requirements on the new drunk driving laws straightened out so there are not any conflicts.

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