10/11/2004 Legislative Committee Meeting
My hopes were dashed -- they didn't discuss absentee voting reform. Sigh.

However, they did discuss a few other interesting pieces of legislation. The first, fast-tracked by the Mayor (apparently) was "false fire alarm" legislation modeled on the burglar alarm legislation of many years ago (search for "burglar" on that page). This is a fine idea, and was inspired by the recent epidemic of false alarms from one of the apartment buildings, but I'm a little worried about the exact structure of the law, and its penalties.

The law seems to say that if the Fire Department responds to an alarm, and they find there is no emergency when they arrive, they can write a $500 ticket. They can decide not to for a wide variety of reasons (storms, etc.) but "accidental trigger" doesn't seem to be an option. So, as I read it, if the smoke detector connected to my alarm system decides to flake out and send in an alarm, I could be staring at a $500 ticket even though it was the first indication that anything was wrong. I'm hopeful that this legislation will be improved before it makes it to the entire council.

The second piece of legislation discussed was Councilman Kiernan's campaign finance legislation that's been kicked around for the last several months. This legislation could use a little bit of polish, but it's essentially complete and should be discussed by the whole council. The legislative committee didn't have many comments on it. Mayor Tiberio reportedly has comments but "wants to present them in public" (translation: he wants to harass Kiernan rather than actually do something productive).
- posted by Alan K. Thompson @ 7:27 PM