Three potential laws that make sense
Often, our General Assembly does things that make us scratch our collective heads. We frequently find ourselves questioning the motives of our elected representatives.
But sometimes they also do things that make complete sense. Take three bits of legislation in various stages of the approval process.
The first, which clearly provides the greatest opportunity for quibbling, involves providing a level of legal immunity for drug users who call for medical assistance for a user who is overdosing.
In discussing the bill, the Senate wisely set a limit on the amount of illicit drugs the 911 caller could be holding — just enough for personal use — so that dealers wouldn’t be off the hook.
There were 805 overdose-related deaths in 2007 in Illinois, many of them in the suburbs, which is up from 2000. With stories of fatal heroin overdoses beginning to creep back into the pages of this newspaper, we view this as an important step in curtailing the worst outcomes of drug use.
Drug users don’t exhibit particularly good judgment as it is, but if such a law were approved and were well publicized in the drug-using community (think education on the perils of sharing needles), this hopefully would mean fewer people left to die when other options were available, fewer lives destroyed when deaths are concealed by petrified friends, more people in rehab and fewer in the morgue.
Some would argue this coddles drug users and removes the disincentive to use.
We say it will enable compassion to overrule self preservation and, in the end, save some lives.
That bill goes to the House now.
A second bill seeks to ban politicians from using state money to put their names on projects they help usher through. This comes as a direct result of the Rod Blagojevich tollway signs.
In 2009, the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority removed or covered up 33 Blagojevich Open Road Tolling signs, which cost about $15,000 each. At the time, Gov. Pat Quinn called the signs an “irksome manifestation of imperial government.”
Political self-aggrandizement is more impalatable the worse the economy gets.
The legislation says nothing about politicians using campaign funds for the same purpose, but that’s between them and their — hopefully — skeptical donors.
That proposal now awaits Quinn’s signature.
A third is a Senate bill that would add Illinois to a list of states that would allow nurses to practice freely across state lines. Wisconsin is one of 24 states that already has adopted the Nurse Licensure Compact, so this would be of real benefit for nurses living in Lake County who wouldn’t have to be licensed in both states. But it would also mean that nurses who want to help in out-of-state disasters will be able to do so without worry about being licensed in that state.