General Assembly

General Assembly

Adjourns Members of the General Assembly have left Richmond. They will return in April to decide what action to take on bills the governor vetoes or amends. The state’s budget for the coming year is fairly similar to what it was when last year’s session finished work on the two-year budget. Among other things this means that the Extension Service is : required to cut $780,000. The county lost the services of an Agriculture Agent last year for several months with a much smaller cut than that. Time will tell what the current cut will mean locally. The bill requiring counties to accept sludge in agricultural zones ; was withdrawn. The bill requiring the county to accept mobile I homes in agricultural zones survived. These bills called LULUs (locally unwanted land uses) by the Piedmont Environmental Council demonstrate the declining influence of rural localities in state politics. A welfare reform bill was adopted. Time will tell what affect it *- has. But if it achieves any of the goals of helping people move from the welfare rolls to productive employment, if will be amazing considering the partisan bickering and last minute compromises that produced it. The assembly adopted a bill which takes away from local judges discretion in approving permits-for carrying concealed weapons. Formerly an applicant had to convince a judge he had a need to carry a'concealed weapon. Apparently some judges were impossible to convince. Presumably this has no effect on laws barring weapons from school buildings and property. However, it means citizens and lawenforcement officers probably should assume people in cars and walking along the public roads are armed. Anyone who is not a convicted felon, a citizen of another country, or someone who has been judged mentally incompetent can get a permit to carry a weapon. This is not a comforting thought. Bills were passed putting car dealers in charge of regulating car dealers, granting immunity from prosecution to companies that report their own environmental violations, requiring sprinkler systems in hospitals, authorizing $96 million in bonds for prison construction, and allowing the sale of bottled mixed drinks, formerly only sold in ABC stores, in any store that sells beer and w ine. For now, citizens of the county can switch their focus from wondering what the state government in Richmond is doing to them to wondering w'hat the national government in Washington, D.C. is doing to them. In the meantime most organizations that are a part of county government arc developing budgets for the coming year. Actions in Richmond and Washington, D.C. have a heavy impact on these local budgets.