Bills that were passed late last night and early this morning include a ban on racial profiling, a governor-sponsored jobs measure and a move to allow Canadian pharmacies to sell to Rhode Island customers.

01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, June 26, 2004

BY LIZ ANDERSON, SCOTT MAYEROWITZ, SCOTT MacKAY, ANDREA STAPE and KATHERINE GREGG
Journal Staff Writers

PROVIDENCE -- Weary lawmakers broke out the iced coffee as both chambers of the General Assembly dug in for the night, slogging through piles of bills in the hope of adjourning early this morning.

At 12:30 a.m., bills were still crossing between the House and Senate en route to expected approval.

Among the measures in flux: two business-related bills that had been on Governor Carcieri's wish list of items he wanted restored in the budget.

The House approved a bill to exempt a Boston financial services company from paying income tax on its investments for the next 10 years, in return for bringing 250 jobs to the state. The bill was returned to the Senate for final passage.

The proposal, which was backed by the governor and the state Economic Development Corporation, was amended from its original version but would still extend tax-free status to Investors Bank & Trust Co. for the next decade.

Originally, the Economic Development Corporation was looking for the authorization to approve more than one company for this tax-free status, but the amended legislation only allows for the corporation to extend the offer to one company by Aug. 31, 2004. The amended version also requires that the company pay each employee no less than $25,000 a year, plus benefits.

Another piece of Carcieri's jobs agenda made it to the floors of the House and the Senate yesterday: a modification of the Jobs Development Act. This change, approved early this morning by the House, was pushed by Carcieri and the EDC with Bank of America specifically in mind.

The legislation would allow companies that are part of an acquisition to retain their tax credits, which are tied to employment levels, even if the acquisition causes state employment to drop. Companies would have two years from the time of the acquisition to reach a higher, preset employment rate.

Bank of America's acquisition of FleetBoston Financial Corp. is expected to cause layoffs in Rhode Island. Fleet currently receives tax credits for the employees it has in the state, and under the original Jobs Development Act, Bank of America would not have been able to retain these tax breaks if the number of employees in the state dropped.

House Finance Committee Chairman Steven Costantino, D-Providence, said the bills were expected to also clear the Senate.

The House and Senate last night also rolled out a proposal for a prescription-drug discount program for uninsured people between 19 and 65 who have incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $24,980 annually for a family of two. The state departments of health and human services are directed to set up the program by next March, with participants to pay an annual enrollment fee of no more than $30.

Lawmakers took their final votes on a package of health-care reforms, including a bill that would place six publicly appointed members on the board of directors of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.

The board would be required to hold annual public meetings to take comments, could not make company loans to its directors or officers, could not be paid, for now, and must adopt a code of ethics. A two-thirds vote of the board would be required for a major business change, such as a sale or a merger of the company, and executives could not claim any incentive if the company is sold.

Other measures, such as caps on administrative costs, were removed from the final versions of the bills; Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy, D-Hopkinton, chairman of the House Corporations Committee, said lawmakers heeded the pleas of Blue Cross executives, who asked them not to "micromanage" the company.

Another bill approved last night requires insurers to give employers of 100 or more people information on their claims experiences, and would allow businesses with 10 employees or fewer to be eligible for small employer health insurance if only three-quarters of their staff signs up.

Other legislation awaiting final passage would set up a new health insurance commissioner within the Department of Business Regulation. The commissioner's duties would include holding public meetings, proposing legislation and approving any future pay arrangement for the Blue Cross board.

Lawmakers also were launching two related studies. One, by the Department of Business Regulation, will look at a variety of insurance-reform models around the country. The other allows the legislature's Joint Committee on Health Care Oversight to continue to study how the state regulates health insurance.

A measure that asks the state Department of Health to begin licensing Canadian pharmacies to sell to Rhode Island customers as of Jan. 1 passed to the governor; Carcieri has said he will sign it into law. Pharmaceutical companies have cited safety concerns as among their reasons for opposing the bills, but supporters, including the Rhode Island Medical Society, said consumers here deserve unfettered access to often lower-cost medications sold in Canada.

The Assembly also agreed to regulate how insurers set up networks that limit the pharmacies at which customers can fill their prescriptions, including requiring those networks to be re-bid every three years. The measures evolved from so-called pharmacy "freedom of choice" bills that would have mandated insurers have open networks that allowed all customers to use any pharmacy they wanted.

Receiving final approval early this morning was a compromise that would allow the police to get a search warrant to obtain DNA from samples of blood, saliva, hair, bodily tissues, bodily fluids or dental impressions from anybody suspected of a crime.

The bill was proposed by the attorney general after the Supreme Court ruled in February that blood could not be considered "property" under Rhode Island's existing search warrant law. The compromise applies the provision only to "investigations and prosecutions, initiated subsequent to passage," not pending cases.

In other action:

The Assembly was expected to vote to push back the effective date for new lead paint regulations by one year, to July 1, 2005, to allow more time for a public awareness campaign and for landlords to take a three-hour class on lead poisoning.

Providence police and firefighters would no longer be required to live in the city, effective immediately, under legislation passed by the House and Senate. "The mayor's very upset about this," said city lobbyist Tom Palangio of Mayor David N. Cicilline after the bill cleared the Senate at midnight.

The state's insolvency fund was allowed to borrow up to $14 million a year from Rhode Island auto insurers to finance an anticipated shortfall of nearly $1 million in its workers' compensation account under the compromise bill. The provision would last until the end of 2005; the bill also sets up a study commission to look at the issue.

Insurance companies must contribute a portion of their annual premiums, up to a maximum of 2 percent, to the fund. But the state's largest insurer, Beacon Mutual Insurance Co., which has 76 percent of the Rhode Island workers' compensation insurance market, is not covered by the fund and therefore does not contribute.

The House killed a measure that would have changed how witnesses view police lineups, including spelling out what instructions they should receive. The bill was introduced on behalf of the public defender's office, and had passed the Senate.

The state would have to continue paying health-care benefits to state employees who are deployed for military service, under legislation proposed on behalf of Lt. Gov. Charles J. Fogarty and passed last night. The Assembly also approved a Fogarty-backed measure to create a tax checkoff to help financially strapped military families.

A proposal that would require lobbyists and the companies that employ them to disclose anything of value they give any "major state decision-maker" throughout the year has headed to the governor's desk. The measure also spells out explicitly that advertising expenses must be listed, clarifying a dispute about the letter of existing law.

The House also forwarded to the governor a bill that would spell out which "major decision-makers" at the state and municipal level must file financial statements with the Ethics Commission.

Towns would be allowed to ban so-called "pub crawls," where partygoers roam from bar to bar. The legislation, passed last night by the Senate, now goes to the governor.

People with disabilities would be able to go to work, but still access health care through a Medicaid buy-in, under measures approved last night. The bills were dubbed the Sherlock Act, after the late House Finance Committee Chairman Paul Sherlock, a Warwick Democrat.

The Senate approved the so-called "budget-trailer" bill, voting to restore a $50-a-month payment to welfare families for whom the state collects child support. The bill also included a new version of Article 1, the appropriations section of the budget, and several other minor budget changes. It follows the budget to the governor's desk.

Lawmakers were expected to set up a joint legislative commission to create a new education aid formula, with a reporting date of October 2005.

A pair of bills to ban "racial profiling" by the police in traffic stops passed the House and Senate early this morning.

But not all bills seemed headed for such rosy futures.

Advocates from the Coalition Against Domestic Violence rallied in the afternoon outside the Senate chamber, singing, "We shall not be moved," in an attempt to breathe new life into bills that would allow a judge to order a person under a permanent domestic-violence restraining order to surrender his or her guns. Another chant, directed at members who voted against the bills: "How much pay from the NRA?"

But the bills, killed a day earlier in the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not resurface.

Other once-debated proposals that stalled out included a bill from Senate President Joseph Montalbano to impose a $25 limit on gifts to public officials, and "separation-of-powers" legislation to revamp scores of state boards and commissions to remove lawmakers from their ranks. Both passed the Senate but saw no consideration in the House.

Bills to allow gay marriage in Rhode Island and to define marriage as between one man and one woman stayed on the sidelines.

And despite the efforts of the Rhode Island Medical Society, the Hospital Association of Rhode Island and Carcieri, lawmakers took no action to change procedures for medical malpractice lawsuits. Among other things, the Medical Society-supported bill would have required that lawsuits against doctors be filed within one year of an injury; required that an expert certify the suit has merit; and set interest rates lower than the current 12 percent on judgments.

The House and the Senate also did not address the confirmation of Carcieri's nomination for a Supreme Court seat, William P. Robinson III, although leaders had indicated they might have time for the matter later.