History > 2006 > USA > States > Legislation / Constitutions (II-III)

Louisiana voters

approve flood-protection reform

Sat Sep 30, 2006
11:33 PM ET
Reuters

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Louisiana residents on Saturday approved an amendment to the state constitution to overhaul flood and hurricane protection efforts in the region still struggling to rebuild from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

With votes counted in 58 percent of 3,960 precincts, Louisianians were set to approve 12 of 13 amendments, including a broad measure to consolidate management of a network of levees that protect the state's coastline.

More than 50 levee breaks are blamed for the devastating flooding after Katrina that left 80 percent of New Orleans' neighborhoods underwater for weeks. More than 130,000 homes were destroyed. A year later, rebuilding is moving forward in some neighborhoods while barely evident in others.

The city's population is about half the 450,000 before the storm.

"Flood protection is the No. 1 issue for anyone who wants to come back," said Ruthie Frierson, chairman of Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans, a grass-roots group pushing for more responsible government as the city rebuilds.

"The levees were a man-made disaster. The fractured board system was part of it," said Frierson, a native of New Orleans.

The levee reform amendment merges several existing levee boards in southeastern Louisiana into two boards, one for the east bank of the Mississippi River and one for the west bank. All levee boards in the state will be overseen by a new authority created by the Legislature.

New board members, to be appointed by the governor, will be required to have experience in business, engineering, hydrology, geology or environmental science, ending years of inexperienced, local political appointments.

Passage of levee reform will send "a huge signal to the rest of the country that we are taking responsibility for the rebuilding of the city and are demanding good government," Frierson said.

The federal government has earmarked $1.6 billion to repair the levees and another $3 billion for long-term fortification. Maintenance of the levees is the responsibility of the levee districts.

South Louisiana is home to the nation's largest series of ports and serves as a primary gateway for oil and natural gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico and for crude imports.

Voters appeared set to approve 12 amendments on the ballot, including a measure to set aside increased revenue the state hopes to get from royalties on offshore oil and gas production. The state wants to use the money to restore the coastline by rebuilding wetland areas to serve as natural hurricane protection areas.

The amendment passed even though Congress recessed on Friday without resolving differences in the federal legislation needed to bring additional royalties to Louisiana.

Saturday's election was the first statewide election since Hurricane Katrina.

    Louisiana voters approve flood-protection reform, R, 30.9.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-10-01T033325Z_01_N30285744_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-LEVEES-ELECTION.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-3

Stricter Voting Laws Carve Latest Partisan Divide

September 26, 2006
The New York Times
By JOYCE PURNICK

MESA, Ariz. — Eva Charlene Steele, a recent transplant from Missouri, has no driver’s license or other form of state identification. So after voting all her adult life, Mrs. Steele will not be voting in November because of an Arizona law that requires proof of citizenship to register.

“I have mixed emotions,” said Mrs. Steele, 57, who uses a wheelchair and lives in a small room in an assisted-living center. “I could see where you would want to keep people who don’t belong in the country from voting, but there has to be an easier way.”

Russell K. Pearce, a leading proponent of the new requirement, offers no apologies.

“You have to show ID for almost everything — to rent a Blockbuster movie!” said Mr. Pearce, a Republican in the State House of Representatives. “Nobody has the right to cancel my vote by voting illegally. This is about political corruption.”

Mrs. Steele and Mr. Pearce are two players in a spreading partisan brawl over new and proposed voting requirements around the country. Republicans say the laws are needed to combat fraud, especially among illegal immigrants. Democrats say there is minimal fraud, if any, and accuse Republicans of suppressing the votes of those least likely to have the required documentation — minorities, the poor and the elderly — who tend to vote for Democrats.

In tight races, Democrats say, the loss of votes could matter in November.

In Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest in population, election officials said that 35 percent of new registrations were rejected for insufficient proof of citizenship last year and that 17 percent had been rejected so far this year. It is not known how many of the rejected registrants were not citizens or were unable to prove their citizenship because they had lost or could not locate birth certificates and other documents.

In Indiana, Daniel J. Parker, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said: “Close to 10 percent of registered voters here do not have driver’s licenses. Who does that impact most? Seniors and minorities.”

A law in Indiana requiring voters to have a state-issued photo ID is being challenged in the federal courts, as are the voting laws in Arizona and in many other states.

Republicans say the Democratic complaints are self-serving.

“Democrats believe they represent stupid people who are not smart enough to vote,” said Randy Pullen, a Republican national committeeman from Arizona who championed a statewide initiative on the new requirements. “I do not.”

The new measures include tighter controls over absentee balloting and stronger registration rules. The most contentious are laws in three states — Georgia, Indiana and Missouri — where people need government-issued picture ID’s to vote, and provisions here in Arizona that tightened voter ID requirements at the polls and imposed the proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration.

Several other states are considering similar measures, and the House of Representatives, voting largely along party lines, recently passed a national voter ID measure that is headed for the Senate.

The debate in Washington and the state capitals has been heated, with only one note of agreement: that voting, once burdened by poll taxes and other impediments, is as divisive an issue as ever.

“I have never seen such a sinister plot — I won’t say plot, I’ll say measure — as to target a group of people to try to make it difficult for them to vote,” said Roy E. Barnes, a Democrat and former governor of Georgia who is fighting the new identification law in his state.

Mr. Pearce, the Arizona Republican, said: “We know people are approached to register whether they are illegal or not. We know the left side’s agenda.”

Underlying the debate is the fundamental question of voter fraud and whether people who are not who they say they are — impostors — are voting. Some suggest that the problem is so widespread that the standard methods of proving identification, like a utility bill and a signature, are no longer adequate.

“I know a lot of allegations of voter fraud, especially by noncitizens, that may have been able to tip the balance in favor of one candidate,” said Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado and an advocate of tough immigration laws.

The tighter voting rules appeal strongly to people worried about illegal immigration, Mr. Tancredo said.

There is no data, however, to show more than isolated instances of so-called impostor voting by illegal immigrants or others.

Experts in election law say most voter fraud involves absentee balloting, which is unaffected by the new photo identification laws. Few people, they say, will risk a felony charge to vote illegally at the polls, and few illegal immigrants want to interact with government officials — even people running a polling place.

Of Arizona’s 2.7 million registered voters, 238 were believed to have been noncitizens in the last 10 years; only 4 were believed to have voted; and none were impostors, plaintiffs stipulate in their lawsuit to overturn the law, statistics the state has not challenged. Nor is there evidence of impostor voting in Georgia, Indiana or Missouri.

Advocates for the new laws do not dispute the figures — just their relevance.

Thor Hearne, a lawyer for the American Center for Voting Rights, a conservative advocacy group, who was President Bush’s election law counsel in 2004, says there is little proof of impostor voting because few have looked for it.

Todd Rokita, the Indiana secretary of state, agrees. “Critics will say there is no wholesale fraud, and to that I say you don’t understand the nature of election fraud,” said Mr. Rokita, a Republican. “A lot of this goes unreported. Until you have a mechanism in place like photo ID’s, you don’t have anything to report.”

Arizona’s new rules were passed as part of Proposition 200, a referendum that denies certain state and local benefits to illegal immigrants. It got 56 percent of the vote two years ago, after Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, vetoed a Republican-backed measure passed by the Legislature.

Rooted in the state’s debates over illegal immigration, the measure is the broadest in the country, requiring a driver’s license, a state photo ID or two nonphotographic forms of identification at the polls. Lawyers for the Navajo Nation and other American Indian tribes say the provision particularly discriminates against Indians, many of whom are too poor to drive or are without electricity or telephone bills, alternative forms of identification.

Because the Arizona measures have been in place for less than two years, there is limited documentation of their impact. Lawyers fighting the rules say the measures have prevented thousands of people from registering to vote, particularly in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, a city with many Latino voters.

Supporters of the measures say elections have gone smoothly. Critics point to individual cases, like confusion at the polls in the primary elections earlier this month. They say that people without adequate documentation have been turned away or required to file “conditional provisional” ballots that are counted only if voters follow up — and that not all of them do.

Deborah Lopez, a Democratic political consultant in Phoenix, said that the once simple matter of registering voters at a rally or a fiesta now required labor-intensive door-to-door visits.

It was during a registration drive at her assisted-living center, Desert Palms, that Mrs. Steele learned she could not vote. Disabled, with a son, an Army staff sergeant, on active duty, she left Missouri recently to stay with her brother and subsequently moved into the center.

Lacking a driver’s license, she could get a new state identity card, but she said she had neither the $12 to pay for it nor, because she uses a wheelchair, the transportation to pick it up.

“It makes me a little angry because my son is fighting now in Iraq for others to have the right to vote, and I can’t,” said Mrs. Steele, who submitted an affidavit in the suit against the Arizona law.

Asked if she was a Republican or a Democrat, Mrs. Steele said she was neither: “I vote for the best person for the job.”

Or, she added, she used to.

    Stricter Voting Laws Carve Latest Partisan Divide, NYT, 26.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/us/politics/26voting.html?hp&ex=1159329600&en=b3af93a4c8e03f4d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Across South, Push Is On to Make Dry Areas Wet

August 12, 2006
The New York Times
By MELANIE WARNER

While much of America put Prohibition to rest 73 years ago, large parts of the South have remained strictly off-limits to alcohol sales.

But local and national business interests that stand to profit from the sale of alcohol, including real estate developers, grocery chains, restaurant groups and Wal-Mart, are combining their political and financial muscle to try to persuade hundreds of dry towns and counties to go wet. In the process, they are changing the face of the once staunchly prohibitionist Bible Belt.

Since 2002, business groups have spent upwards of $15 million on campaigns, including professional lobbyists, to persuade voters in some 200 dry towns and 25 dry counties in six Southern states to legalize alcohol sales in stores and restaurants.

Wal-Mart has financed dozens of local elections, contributing from $5,000 to $20,000 a campaign, said Tim Reeves of Beverage Election Specialists, which supports local alcohol referendums.

Wal-Mart, based in a dry county in Arkansas, forbids drinking at events held at corporate headquarters. But the giant retailer has made a push in the last year to sell more liquor, along with beer and wine, in its stores.

Attempts by Wal-Mart and others to allow alcohol sales in other places that remain dry — 415 counties in the South and in Kansas still prohibit such sales — are meeting fierce resistance from some church groups and religious leaders. They argue that returning to the days when liquor flowed will mean more family violence, under-age drinking, drunken driving and a general moral decay in the community.

But voters are increasingly likely to follow their pocketbooks rather than the words of their pastors. Alcohol proponents often make the case that liberalizing laws will increase tax revenue and reduce the need for property tax increases, an issue looming large in voters’ minds.

More dry-to-wet measures have passed than have been defeated in the last four years in Texas, Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kansas, the states where the battles are concentrated. “The communities who effectively make arguments about economic development and tax dollars typically win the votes,” said John Hatch, a political strategist based in Austin, Tex.

Some churches are taking a moderate stand on drinking. The Rev. Mike Hunter, senior minister at the First Christian Church in Lufkin, Tex., said he was invited by some of the more conservative clergy members in town to participate in meetings to oppose legalizing alcohol, but declined. “It’s a decision we leave up to individuals,” he said. “The legal, responsible consumption of alcohol is not a pulpit point in our congregation.”

The issue is now playing out in Lufkin, an old railroad town in the heart of the Texas Bible Belt 115 miles northeast of Houston. On a recent Monday night, 175 citizens gathered at the town’s civic center to voice their opposition to a referendum proposal, scheduled for a vote in November, that would allow sales of beer and wine in stores and drinks in restaurants all across Angelina County. Lufkin is the county’s largest town, with 35,000 people.

“This is an unprecedented attack against the family,” the Rev. Ronnie L. Frankens, pastor of Homer Pentecostal Church in neighboring Diboll, said of the alcohol vote. “We are going to fight this tooth and nail.” His rousing words were greeted with cries of “amen” and “praise Jesus.”

Like many in attendance that night, Linda Jones, who works for the city of Lufkin and whose husband is a pastor at the First Baptist Church in nearby Moscow, said she thought the measure, if passed, would invite more pernicious forms of commerce, like bars, nightclubs and liquor stores. She says she considers drinking to be a sin and does not partake. “My grandmother was an alcoholic and I never wanted to be like that,” she said.

On the other side of the debate are people like Sarah Strinden, who moved to Lufkin in the 1980’s from Madison, Wis. She says that most people she knows are moderate drinkers and would just like the convenience of being able to buy beer and wine on their regular shopping trips. Currently, she says that getting some wine to go with dinner involves a 40-minute round-trip drive to a liquor store in Nacogdoches.

In restaurants in dry areas of Texas, diners who want to order drinks can do so only if they become members of the restaurant’s “club.” Such memberships are usually free to the customer, but restaurants must spend up to $20,000 a year for record-keeping and fees to the alcoholic beverage commission. “Lufkin needs to come into the modern age,” Ms. Strinden said.

Across the South, some business groups seem to agree with her, backing efforts to nudge dry towns and counties to go wet.

“It’s going to be much harder to attract restaurants and grocery stores to your town if they can’t sell alcohol,” said Mr. Hatch, the political strategist who has been hired to help get the measure passed in Angelina County.

Mr. Hatch and other proponents say their campaigns have been financed by a diverse group that includes grocery chains like Albertson’s, Kroger and Safeway; and restaurant groups like Brinker International, which owns Chili’s Grill and Bar, and Darden Restaurants, owner of Red Lobster and Olive Garden.

And, of course, Wal-Mart. “I think Sam Walton, being the family-oriented man he was, would be rolling over in his grave about this,” Mr. Frankens, the pastor of Homer Pentecostal Church, said in a telephone interview, referring to the Wal-Mart founder. “I’m really disappointed in Wal-Mart as a company.”

Wal-Mart does not break out revenue from alcohol, but according to A. C. Nielsen, at the end of 2004 Wal-Mart had United States alcohol revenue of $1 billion out of total domestic revenue of $229 billion.

Retailers and restaurants say the ability to sell alcohol is not a precondition for choosing a new location, but it is a factor. For casual dining chains, the average restaurant check doubles when someone orders an alcoholic beverage, according to the research firm NPD Group.

The Distilled Spirits Council, the Washington-based trade group for liquor manufacturers, says it has participated in half a dozen local elections, providing some combination of financial assistance and economic data.

In Duncanville, a Dallas suburb of 36,000, voters bought the argument made by a group called Citizens for Shopping More and Less Taxes, which was financed by town residents, local convenience stores and real estate developers, as well as Safeway and Kroger. The group said the town would get some a much-needed tax boost by allowing beer and wine sales in grocery and convenience stores.

The town is now seeing that boost. Before the vote in September 2003, Duncanville had experienced four years of declining sales tax revenue. But revenue rose slightly in the first two years, and is up 15 percent for the first seven months of 2006 compared with the period in 2005, according to the Texas comptroller. The Duncanville city manager, Kent Cagle, estimates that beer and wine sales are bringing in $500,000 a year in sales taxes.

“This extra revenue has kept us from cutting new services and we’re starting to put back some of the things we had cut, like parks maintenance, some city positions and street maintenance and signs,” Mr. Cagle said.

Those who fight against alcohol sales say the extra tax revenue comes at a cost. Lee Miller, a leader of Angelina Citizens for a Better Community, the group vowing to defeat the measure, points to data from the state of Texas showing that for every $1 in revenue the state received from alcohol, $9 is paid out for expenses like treatment for alcohol abuse, law enforcement services and motor vehicle crashes.

“This will not benefit us as a community,” Mr. Miller said. “It costs us more money in expenses and in the lives of our children.”

Mr. Miller, who does not drink, says he is concerned that if the vote passes, his 12-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son will have easier access to alcohol.

Mr. Hatch, the political strategist, argues that Mr. Miller’s cost revenue figures paint an inaccurate picture because they do not consider the additional sales taxes from alcohol purchases, only revenue from alcohol excise taxes, the bulk of which flow to the state.

Oscar Dillahunty, a 69-year-old, one-time beer distributor who hired Mr. Hatch and started Angelina County Citizens for Responsible Business, has estimated that the county could rack up at least $15 million in annual beer sales alone, which would translate into $225,000 in sales tax revenue for Lufkin and $75,000 for the county. He says his estimate is based on sales in a similar county in Mississippi, where he previously owned a beer distributor.

As for concerns about social consequences, studies that have linked increases in the number of alcohol outlets to violence or drunken driving draw the strongest correlation between such problems and bars. Most of the recent dry-to-wet proposals in the South do not allow for bars.

Many officials in towns and counties that recently went wet say they have not seen an increase in reported crime or drunken driving. Mr. Cagle, the city manager in Duncanville, said the town had not devolved into “Drunkenville,” as church groups claimed it would.

Three police chiefs — David Walker of Fort Payne, Tex.; Benny Womack of Albertville, Ala.; and Eddie Phillips of East Ridge, Tenn. — all say they have not seen any increase in law enforcement problems since alcohol sales began in 2004.

But just as the feared public mayhem wrought by alcohol abuse often fails to materialize, the economic prosperity is often absent, too. In Albertville, Ala., the Rev. Willis Kelly, who preaches at Douglas First Baptist Church, says he is still waiting for the town’s financial boom.

“The folks that wanted it to go wet campaigned on the idea that it would bring in money to build a new school,” Mr. Willis said. “Last year they collected only a little over $100,000 in extra taxes. That wouldn’t even buy toilet paper.”

Mr. Willis says no new restaurants have opened in Albertville, a town of 18,000 people 65 miles from Birmingham, since the vote in June 2004, and only one of the two grocery stores in town opted to sell beer and wine.

Jon Howard, director of finance for Albertville, would not confirm Mr. Willis’s tax numbers and Mayor Carl Pruett declined to comment on the town’s economy.

In Lufkin, where in recent years the economy has been surging without the help of alcohol sales, some citizens just want their town to be a bit more like the rest of the country and a little less Bible Belt. “This is the 21st century,” said Ernest Rowe, a 70-year-old retired forest worker. “I just want to be able to buy my case of Coors Light, come home and pop open a cold one.”

    Across South, Push Is On to Make Dry Areas Wet, NYT, 12.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/12/business/12dry.html?hp&ex=1155441600&en=df48b4194b0c4d72&ei=5094&partner=homepage

    15 States Expand Right to Shoot in Self-Defense        NYT        7.8.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/us/07shoot.html?hp&ex=
1155009600&en=3466fb01a2227803&ei=5094&partner=homepage

15 States Expand Right to Shoot in Self-Defense

August 7, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

In the last year, 15 states have enacted laws that expand the right of self-defense, allowing crime victims to use deadly force in situations that might formerly have subjected them to prosecution for murder.

Supporters call them “stand your ground” laws. Opponents call them “shoot first” laws.

Thanks to this sort of law, a prostitute in Port Richey, Fla., who killed her 72-year-old client with his own gun rather than flee was not charged last month. Similarly, the police in Clearwater, Fla., did not arrest a man who shot a neighbor in early June after a shouting match over putting out garbage, though the authorities say they are still reviewing the evidence.

The first of the new laws took effect in Florida in October, and cases under it are now reaching prosecutors and juries there. The other laws, mostly in Southern and Midwestern states, were enacted this year, according to the National Rifle Association, which has enthusiastically promoted them.

Florida does not keep comprehensive records on the impact of its new law, but prosecutors and defense lawyers there agree that fewer people who claim self-defense are being charged or convicted.

The Florida law, which served as a model for the others, gives people the right to use deadly force against intruders entering their homes. They no longer need to prove that they feared for their safety, only that the person they killed had intruded unlawfully and forcefully. The law also extends this principle to vehicles.

In addition, the law does away with an earlier requirement that a person attacked in a public place must retreat if possible. Now, that same person, in the law’s words, “has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force.” The law also forbids the arrest, detention or prosecution of the people covered by the law, and it prohibits civil suits against them.

The central innovation in the Florida law, said Anthony J. Sebok, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, is not its elimination of the duty to retreat, which has been eroding nationally through judicial decisions, but in expanding the right to shoot intruders who pose no threat to the occupant’s safety.

“In effect,” Professor Sebok said, “the law allows citizens to kill other citizens in defense of property.”

This month, a jury in West Palm Beach, Fla., will hear the retrial of a murder case that illustrates the dividing line between the old law and the new one. In November 2004, before the new law was enacted, a cabdriver in West Palm Beach killed a drunken passenger in an altercation after dropping him off.

The first jury deadlocked 9-to-3 in favor of convicting the driver, Robert Lee Smiley Jr., said Henry Munnilal, the jury foreman.

“Mr. Smiley had a lot of chances to retreat and to avoid an escalation,” said Mr. Munnilal, a 62-year-old accountant. “He could have just gotten in his cab and left. The thing could have been avoided, and a man’s life would have been saved.”

Mr. Smiley tried to invoke the new law, which does away with the duty to retreat and would almost certainly have meant his acquittal, but an appeals court refused to apply it retroactively. He has appealed that issue to the Florida Supreme Court.

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the N.R.A., said the Florida law had sent a needed message to law-abiding citizens.

“If they make a decision to save their lives in the split second they are being attacked, the law is on their side,” Mr. LaPierre said. “Good people make good decisions. That’s why they’re good people. If you’re going to empower someone, empower the crime victim.”

The N.R.A. said it would lobby for versions of the law in eight more states in 2007.

Sarah Brady, chairwoman of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said her group would fight those efforts. “In a way,” Ms. Brady said of the new laws, “it’s a license to kill.”

Many prosecutors oppose the laws, saying they are unnecessary at best and pernicious at worst. “They’re basically giving citizens more rights to use deadly force than we give police officers, and with less review,” said Paul A. Logli, president of the National District Attorneys Association.

But some legal experts doubt the laws will make a practical difference. “It’s inconceivable to me that one in a hundred Floridians could tell you how the law has changed,” said Gary Kleck, who teaches criminology at Florida State University.

Even before the new laws, Professor Kleck added, claims of self-defense were often accepted. “In the South,” he said, “they more or less give the benefit of the doubt to the alleged victim’s account.”

The case involving the Port Richey prostitute, Jacqueline Galas, turned on the new law, said Michael Halkitis, division director of the state attorney’s office in nearby New Port Richey. Ms. Galas, 23, said that a longtime client, Frank Labiento, 72, threatened to kill her and then kill himself last month. A suicide note he had left and other evidence supported her contention.

The law came into play when Ms. Galas grabbed Mr. Labiento’s gun and chose not to flee but to kill him. “Before that law,” Mr. Halkitis said, “before you could use deadly force, you had to retreat. Under the new law, you don’t have to do that.”

The decision not to charge Ms. Galas was straightforward, Mr. Halkitis said. “It would have been a more difficult situation with the old law,” he said, “much more difficult.”

In the case of the West Palm Beach cabdriver, Mr. Smiley, then 56, killed Jimmie Morningstar, 43. A sports bar had paid Mr. Smiley $10 to drive Mr. Morningstar home in the early morning of Nov. 6, 2004.

Mr. Morningstar was apparently reluctant to leave the cab once it reached its destination, and Mr. Smiley used a stun gun to hasten his exit. Once outside the cab, Mr. Morningstar flashed a knife, Mr. Smiley testified at his first trial, though one was never found. Mr. Smiley, who had gotten out of his cab, reacted by shooting at his passenger’s feet and then into his body, killing him.

Cliff Morningstar, the dead man’s uncle, said he was baffled by the killing. “He had a radio,” Mr. Morningstar said of Mr. Smiley. “He could have gotten in his car and left. He could have shot him in his knee.”

Carey Haughwout, the public defender who represents Mr. Smiley, conceded that no knife was found. “However,” Ms. Haughwout said, “there is evidence to support that the victim came at Smiley after Smiley fired two warning shots, and that he did have something in his hand.”

In April, a Florida appeals court indicated that the new law, had it applied to Mr. Smiley’s case, would have affected its outcome.

“Prior to the legislative enactment, a person was required to ‘retreat to the wall’ before using his or her right of self-defense by exercising deadly force,” Judge Martha C. Warner wrote. The new law, Judge Warner said, abolished that duty.

Jason M. Rosenbloom, the man shot by his neighbor in Clearwater, said his case illustrated the flaws in the Florida law. “Had it been a year and a half ago, he could have been arrested for attempted murder,” Mr. Rosenbloom said of his neighbor, Kenneth Allen.

“I was in T-shirt and shorts,” Mr. Rosenbloom said, recalling the day he knocked on Mr. Allen’s door. Mr. Allen, a retired Virginia police officer, had lodged a complaint with the local authorities, taking Mr. Rosenbloom to task for putting out eight bags of garbage, though local ordinances allow only six.

“I was no threat,” Mr. Rosenbloom said. “I had no weapon.”

The men exchanged heated words. “He closed the door and then opened the door,” Mr. Rosenbloom said of Mr. Allen. “He had a gun. I turned around to put my hands up. He didn’t even say a word, and he fired once into my stomach. I bent over, and he shot me in the chest.”

Mr. Allen, whose phone number is out of service and who could not be reached for comment, told The St. Petersburg Times that Mr. Rosenbloom had had his foot in the door and had tried to rush into the house, an assertion Mr. Rosenbloom denied.

“I have a right,” Mr. Allen said, “to keep my house safe.”

    15 States Expand Right to Shoot in Self-Defense, NYT, 7.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/us/07shoot.html?hp&ex=1155009600&en=3466fb01a2227803&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Albany Strategy Lets Rich Evade Donation Limits

August 4, 2006
The New York Times
By DANNY HAKIM

ALBANY, Aug. 3 — As a candidate for governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer is barred from taking more than $50,100 from any single donor.

But that has not stopped wealthy donors from legally circumventing these state contribution limits to shower six-figure donations on the Spitzer campaign. Their technique? Using limited liability corporations as a vehicle to give well above the maximum the state allows.

In fact, this year’s statewide political campaigns are awash with donations from L.L.C.’s, which are business entities that can be set up for as little as a couple of hundred dollars and provide special tax benefits and limits on financial liability. Six of the eight major-party candidates for governor or attorney general have taken donations from individuals who have contributed the maximum and then donated further through L.L.C.’s.

The donations are legal in New York State races, but restrictions have been put on them at the federal level and in New York City races. Election watchdog groups say the donations violate the spirit of campaign finance laws that seek to limit the influence of wealthy donors.

“It’s yet another loophole that makes our already weak campaign finance laws meaningless,” said Rachel Leon, executive director of Common Cause New York, which has prepared an analysis of these donations and shared its findings with The New York Times. “We have the highest contribution limits of any state that has limits, but even those laws you can get around with these loopholes.”

Several donors to Mr. Spitzer, the leading candidate for governor, have gone above the $50,100 limit on personal donations by contributing through L.L.C.’s that often have the same address as the donor. A hedge fund manager, Barry Rosenstein, and his wife, Lizanne, have contributed $120,000 to Mr. Spitzer, while Howard Markel, a Manhattan lawyer, and his wife, Joan Mintz, have contributed $190,000. Jeffrey L. Berkowitz, the former business partner of Mr. Spitzer’s friend Jim Cramer, has donated $68,000.

Asked if the practice was in keeping with the spirit of the law, Christine Anderson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Spitzer, said, “Eliot’s made it very clear that he believes that New York’s campaign finance laws should be reformed to limit individual campaign contributions.”

Until campaign finance laws are changed, however, she said Mr. Spitzer “will continue to abide by the law.” All told, the Spitzer campaign has collected more than $600,000 from contributors who legally exceed the individual limit by also contributing through L.L.C.’s.

The phenomenon of statewide candidates’ accepting such donations was previously reported by The Times Union in Albany in April, and since then, the candidates have revved up their fund-raising, with their July campaign finance reports showing the breadth of the practice.

The $50,100 limit is for a candidate in an election with a primary. Candidates who do not face a primary have a limit of $33,900.

One of the biggest beneficiaries has been Charlie King, a Democratic candidate for attorney general. Mr. King, a lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor four years ago, has taken in nearly $560,000, or nearly a fifth of all of his fund-raising since 2003, from an old friend from Brown University named Kent M. Swig, a prominent real estate developer, or Swig family members, or L.L.C.’s connected to him or to his partners.

The contributions can take the form of either cash or donated office space. In fact, Mr. Swig appears to be using a network of L.L.C.’s that have ownership stakes in Mr. King’s campaign headquarters at 48 Wall Street to donate office space on a rotating basis so as not to exceed the contribution limit, effectively giving Mr. King free rent. One of Mr. Swig’s business partners, the real estate development firm Allied Partners, also has a stake in 48 Wall Street and has contributed office space.

“I’ve known Charlie for over 25 years,” Mr. Swig said in a statement. “We share the same vision for New York and I am proud to support his campaign.”

Caitlin Klevorick, a spokeswoman for Mr. King, said, “There is a need for meaningful campaign finance reform and Charlie wholly supports a system modeled after New York City’s, but until then we will be arguing every campaign season about how much is too much, from L.L.C.’s, from unions, from corporations and from individuals.”

Stephen L. Green, a Manhattan real estate developer, and his wife, Nancy, have donated $165,000 to the attorney general candidacy of Mr. Green’s brother Mark, with the help of L.L.C.’s, and $135,000 more to the campaign of Mr. Spitzer, who has not endorsed a candidate to succeed him. Other Green family members have donated more than $200,000 to Mark Green as individuals.

New York’s limit of $50,100 per candidate is already the highest among the 37 states that have a donation limit and far above the $2,100 limit for federal campaigns, according to a recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law. While corporations have a donation limit of $5,000, L.L.C.’s have the same limit as individuals in New York State.

In tightening restrictions on these donations, regulators at both the federal level and in New York City have either banned such giving through L.L.C.’s donations or factored them in with individual donation limits.

Is it not clear how many of the L.L.C.’s are legitimate businesses — many clearly are — and how many are simply set up as a channel for donations. But there is nothing to prevent an individual from setting up multiple L.L.C.’s for the express purpose of donating well beyond the individual limit, according to the State Board of Elections.

Candidates criticize the practice, but also do not seem inclined to disarm while other candidates take in huge donations.

“The L.L.C. exemption is a loophole big enough to push the Titanic through it,” said David Chauvin, press secretary for Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi, a Democrat running against Mr. Spitzer. “This is a dysfunctional system and Tom has a plan modeled on New York City’s program that will fundamentally reform and clean up the state’s campaign finance laws.”

Mr. Suozzi himself accepted $15,000 from Steven M. Napolitano, an executive at First American Title Insurance of New York, $50,000 from Mr. Napolitano’s wife, Lisa, and another $50,000 from Carnap L.L.C., which is listed at their home address. First American paid a $2 million fine in May and took a number of other steps to settle an investigation by Mr. Spitzer’s office into its business practices.

Andrew M. Cuomo, a candidate for attorney general, has accepted money from several donors who have given their legal limit and then donated through L.L.C.’s.

They include his former employer, Island Capital, a real estate investment fund, its chief executive, Andrew L. Farkas, and an additional L.L.C., which have donated a total of $125,000 to the Cuomo campaign.

“They are friends and supporters of the campaign,” said Wendy Katz, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cuomo.

The developer Melvyn Kaufman donated $33,900 to Jeanine F. Pirro, the Republican candidate for attorney general. Because Ms. Pirro is unopposed on the Republican side, that was the maximum amount allowed, but an L.L.C. controlled by Mr. Kaufman, Wyojet, also contributed the limit with a $33,900 donation.

The only major statewide candidates who have not accepted these donations are the Republican candidate for governor, John Faso, and Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democratic candidate for attorney general. That might say more about the lack of fund-raising momentum for the two men, who are far behind in polls.

Susan Del Percio, a spokeswoman for Mr. Faso, said the campaign had no policy against such donations, adding, “It’s just in this case it hasn’t happened.”

Mr. Maloney tried to claim higher ground.

“I certainly don’t have any misgivings about being the only candidate here not using shadowy funding schemes,” he said.

    Albany Strategy Lets Rich Evade Donation Limits, NYT, 4.8.2006,http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/04/nyregion/04donate.html?hp&ex=1154750400&en=3175d305e7ee783d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Colorado Court Upholds Ban on Parolees Voting

July 31, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:48 a.m. ET
The New York Times

DENVER (AP) -- The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday upheld a state law that prohibits convicted felons from voting while they are on parole, a ruling that will keep some 6,000 people from casting ballots this year.

Colorado law denies felons the right to vote while they are serving their sentences, and the justices said in a unanimous opinion that parole must be considered part of a sentence.

The ruling affirmed a lower court's interpretation of a 1995 state law.

The American Civil Liberties Union's Colorado chapter challenged the law on behalf of two nonprofit groups and Michael Danielson of Fort Collins, who was paroled in 2003 following a conviction on drug and theft charges.

Attorneys for Danielson, the Colorado Criminal Justice Coalition and Colorado-CURE argued that under the state Constitution, prisoners' voting rights should be restored when they are released from prison, even if they are still on parole.

But the Supreme Court agreed with the secretary of state and Denver District Judge Michael Martinez, who said convicted felons have not served their full sentence until all components -- including parole -- are completed.

''Of course we agree with Danielson that parole did not exist at the time Colorado adopted its constitution, but this does not mean that the General Assembly was constrained from punishing crimes with sentences that include custody while the convicted person is being transitioned to community and before restoration of his or her full rights,'' the ruling said.

------

On the Net:

State courts: http://www.courts.state.co.us 

    Colorado Court Upholds Ban on Parolees Voting, NYT, 31.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Parole-Vote.html?hp&ex=1154404800&en=251974f75d870fca&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Washington Court Upholds Ban on Gay Marriage

July 27, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK and TIMOTHY EGAN

In an angrily divided 5-to-4 decision, the Washington Supreme Court yesterday upheld a state law banning same-sex marriages.

The justices issued six opinions in the case, with some in the majority emphasizing that the Legislature remained free to extend the right to marry to gay and lesbian couples.

The four dissenting justices said the majority relied on speculation and circular reasoning to endorse discrimination.

Massachusetts remains the only state that sanctions same-sex marriages. New York’s highest court, by a vote of 4 to 2 earlier this month, upheld state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. The New Jersey Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the legality of same-sex marriages there.

Legal scholars said the closeness of the Washington and New York decisions suggested that the legal status of same-sex marriages would remain unsettled and controversial. That alone, they said, represents a significant change in public and judicial attitudes.

When the Washington courts last addressed the question of same-sex marriage in 1974, by contrast, an appeals court unanimously voted against the plaintiffs and the State Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

“You’ve gone in 32 years from something that was more or less a slam dunk to where the court is almost evenly and very bitterly divided,” said William B. Rubenstein, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of “Sexual Orientation and the Law.” “The issue is in play.”

Opponents of same-sex marriage said yesterday’s decision demonstrated that the public and the courts remained opposed to altering the traditional definition of marriage.

“Today is a great day for marriage and the family,” said Mathew D. Staver, the chairman of Liberty Counsel, a group that opposes the legal recognition of same-sex marriages. “We are pleased that this latest attempt by the homosexual agenda to radically redefine our culture has been stopped dead in its tracks.”

The decision consolidated two cases in which state trial courts had struck down a 1998 state law prohibiting same-sex marriages. The cases were brought by 19 gay and lesbian couples seeking the right to marry or to have their marriages from other jurisdictions recognized. State and local laws in Washington protect people there from discrimination based on sexual orientation and provide some benefits to same-sex couples, but the state has no civil-union law.

Beth Reis, one of the plaintiffs, said the decision was a setback for her, her partner, Barbara Steele, and their four children.

“We are saddened that the court has said that my 28-year committed relationship and my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren aren’t entitled to the same legal protections and obligations as other Washington families,” Ms. Reis said.

The controlling opinion in yesterday’s decision, signed by three justices, reversed the lower court’s, holding that the 1998 law, the Washington Defense of Marriage Act, was supported by rational reasons.

“Limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples,” Justice Barbara A. Madsen wrote in that opinion, “furthers procreation, essential to the survival of the human race, and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by the children’s biological parents.”

In a dissent signed by three other justices, Justice Mary E. Fairhurst questioned the logic of that assertion. “Would giving same-sex couples the same right that opposite-sex couples enjoy injure the state’s interest in procreation and healthy child rearing?” Justice Fairhurst asked.

Justice Bobbe J. Bridge, also dissenting, equated the majority’s position with the endorsement of racial discrimination. The majority, Justice Bridge wrote, contended “that it is not our place to require equality for Washington’s gay and lesbian citizens.” Under that reasoning, she said, “there would have been no Brown v. Board of Education,” the 1954 United States Supreme Court school desegregation case.

Justice Madsen repeatedly emphasized the limited nature of the court’s ruling. All that was required for the 1998 law to pass constitutional muster, she wrote, was some rational basis.

“We see no reason, however,” Justice Madsen added, “why the Legislature or the people acting through the initiative process would be foreclosed from enacting the right to marry to gay and lesbian couples in Washington.”

The justices who signed the controlling opinion said they were sympathetic to the fact that “many day-to-day decisions that are routine for married couples,” including ones involving children, health care and death, “are more complex, more agonizing and more costly for same-sex couples.”

The decision seemed to invite targeted constitutional challenges to the denial of equal treatment to homosexual couples.

Jane Schacter, a law professor at Stanford, said the reaction to the 2003 decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalizing same-sex marriage there might have left other courts gun-shy about making sweeping rulings.

“There is a real self-consciousness in this decision and the New York decision about the role of the courts,” Professor Schacter said. “We’ve traditionally looked to the courts to buck public opinion to defend liberty and equality, but we’re not seeing that here.”

Gary Randall, the president of the Faith and Freedom Network and Foundation, a Washington religious group, took the opposite view, saying the decision was “a decisive victory that upholds the values of the faith community.”

Two justices in the majority, James M. Johnson and Richard B. Sanders, took a harder line in opposing same-sex marriage in a concurring opinion. There is, Justice Johnson wrote, “a compelling governmental interest in preserving the institution of marriage.”

“This conclusion,” he continued, “may not be changed by mere passage of time or currents of public favor and surely not changed by courts.”

    Washington Court Upholds Ban on Gay Marriage, NYT, 27.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/us/27gay.html?hp&ex=1154059200&en=a12efe7a97e6e4e6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Judge Temporarily Blocks Georgia Sex-Offender Provision

June 27, 2006
The New York Times
By BRENDA GOODMAN

A federal judge has temporarily prevented the State of Georgia from forcing eight sex offenders from their homes Saturday — the day a law that prohibits sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of school bus stops goes into effect. According to a brief filed by the plaintiffs' lawyers, the provision would make nearly 9,000 sex offenders and their families homeless because there are virtually no housing arrangements that meet the law's requirements.

    Judge Temporarily Blocks Georgia Sex-Offender Provision, NYT, 27.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/us/27brfs-004.html?ex=1154059200&en=1fca7551a4bcbbf7&ei=5070

Law Restricting Sex Offenders Clears a Hurdle

July 26, 2006
The New York Times
By BRENDA GOODMAN

ATLANTA, July 25 — Noting that his ruling would probably cause “delay, confusion and inconsistent actions,” a federal judge in Georgia said he could not keep the state from enforcing a new law that makes it illegal for registered sex offenders to live near school bus stops, because Georgia has no school bus stops as defined by the law.

“There is no evidence in the record to indicate that any local school board of education has designated school bus stops pursuant to the act,” wrote the judge, Clarence Cooper of Federal District Court.

To enforce the law, Judge Cooper said, school board members would first have to “designate” bus stops, a responsibility most districts delegate to a transportation director.

Though Judge Cooper denied the injunction, his ruling was still a backhanded and likely temporary victory for the 11,000 registered sex offenders in Georgia, many of whom had been notified by local sheriff’s offices that they would have to move or face up to 10 years in prison.

Representative Jerry Keen, a Republican who is House majority leader and sponsor of the bill, issued a statement with the speaker of the House saying he was pleased by the ruling and was confident school districts would “take whatever steps necessary to officially designate school bus stops with the goal of locating those stops as far as possible from the residences of convicted sex offenders.”

But in January, as he argued for the bill, Mr. Keen seemed to hope it would accomplish something different. “We don’t want these types of people staying in our state,” he said.

Judge Cooper’s ruling sets the stage for more legal battles over what the Southern Center for Human Rights calls a “sloppily written and counterproductive” law. Lawyers for the center, which is representing a class of the state’s registered sex offenders, have said the law is unconstitutional.

“The court has very clearly ruled that this issue is not over yet,” said Sarah Geraghty, the main lawyer for the plaintiffs.

    Law Restricting Sex Offenders Clears a Hurdle, NYT, 26.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/26/us/26sex.html

Stem Cell Work Gets States’ Aid After Bush Veto        NYT        25.7.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/us/25stem.html?hp&ex=
1153886400&en=0a4ddc283632d4a8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Stem Cell Work

Gets States’ Aid After Bush Veto

July 25, 2006
The New York Times
By JODI RUDOREN

CHICAGO, July 24 — President Bush’s veto of legislation to expand federally financed embryonic stem cell research has had the unintended consequence of drawing state money into the contentious field and has highlighted the issue in election campaigns across the country.

Two governors seized the political moment Thursday, the day after the veto, to raise their ante for stem cell research.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican who helped Mr. Bush win a second term but has long disagreed with him on this research, cited the veto as he lent $150 million from the state’s general fund to pay for grants to stem cell scientists. In Illinois, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, a Democrat opposed to most every White House initiative, offered $5 million for similar grants in his state.

Before the announcements, the only money available was $72 million that five states had allocated for the research and $90 million that the National Institutes of Health had provided since 2001 for work on a restricted number of stem cell lines.

Several other governors, including one Republican, M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut, denounced the president’s veto, his first, in a sign of the political potency of the stem cell debate.

Within hours, too, the issue sprang to the forefront of some crucial campaigns, including ones for governor, senator and representative in Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri and Tennessee.

In many cases, Republican moderates, mindful of consistent polls showing public support for expanded stem cell research and expecting the promised attacks from Democrats, sought to distinguish their positions from their president’s.

For Mr. Schwarzenegger, who is running for re-election in a state dominated by Democrats, support for stem cell research has helped position him as a centrist, but his Democratic opponent, Phil Angelides, the state treasurer, tried to one-up him by taking credit for the loan.

Sean Tipton, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, the lead lobbyist for the bill Mr. Bush vetoed, said, “In terms of actually getting some resources to the scientists, it turns out like it may be a good week.”

“I also think there’s symbolic significance,” Mr. Tipton said. “It sends a strong signal to patients that there are some politicians that care about them and want to see them taken care of.”

Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, said of the president, “While he recognizes that states have the legal power to use their own funds for embryonic stem cell research, he hopes researchers and entrepreneurs will focus on developing effective cures,” including those “that don’t involve controversial practices.”

Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee dismissed the initiatives in Illinois and California as a “public relations gimmick” to divert attention from a debate over whether scientists should be allowed to create embryos through cloning.

“It’s regrettable,” Mr. Johnson said, “but it’s really a matter of their trying to focus public attention on an issue that is significant but is not really the front line of this battle.”

In Florida, stem cell research is a rare point of contention between two Republicans vying to succeed the president’s brother Jeb as governor. But when one of them, Attorney General Charlie Crist, announced that he “respectfully” disagreed with the veto, his rival Tom Gallagher, the chief financial officer, accused Mr. Crist of taking “every opportunity to disagree with the governor and the mainstream of the party.”

Meanwhile, Rod Smith, the Florida state senator who is the Democratic candidate for governor, promised, “When I become governor, we are absolutely going to do stem cell research and we are going to fund it in this state.”

In Maryland, Democratic hopefuls in the governor’s race responded to the veto with visits to the homes of quadriplegics and patients with Parkinson’s disease who could benefit from stem cell research, while the Republican incumbent, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., pointed to his support of the research as evidence that he did not “govern from the right or the left but the center, where most of us are.”

In Colorado, Representative Diana DeGette, a Democrat and a sponsor of the vetoed legislation, staged a protest rally on Friday when the president visited her district for a $1,000-a-plate luncheon on behalf of Rick O’Donnell, a Republican who supports his position.

Nowhere is the issue hotter than in Missouri, where voters in November are likely to face a ballot initiative supporting stem cell research, and where Senator Jim Talent, a Republican who is seeking re-election, opposes it. Mr. Talent’s Democratic challenger, Claire McCaskill, the state auditor, highlighted the issue last week when she delivered the Democrats’ radio address and then initiated a conference call with national reporters to spotlight her support.

The moves in California and Illinois continue the patchwork pattern of public financing for stem cell research since 2001, when Mr. Bush announced his policy restricting how federal money could be used in the arena.

More than 100 bills have been considered over the past two years by dozens of state legislatures, with one, South Dakota’s, banning such research altogether and five — in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey — allocating state resources to the effort. Other states, including Indiana, Massachusetts, Virginia and Wisconsin, have taken steps to support stem cell science without directly paying for research, while Arizona, North Carolina and Virginia have formed groups to study their state’s role in the emerging field.

Mr. Schwarzenegger’s announcement on Thursday of the $150 million loan will provide the single largest public pot yet available.

“I think with one stroke, the president energized” the program, said Zach W. Hall, the president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which had an anemic $14 million to spread among 16 training grants before the veto, and which will soon be flush. “It’s not what we would have wanted, but it did have that beneficent side effect.”

For California, the $150 million is half the $300 million per year that would be provided under a decade-long, $3 billion bond issue that 59 percent of voters approved in 2004. Taxpayer groups sued to block the bonds and appealed a verdict in May that favored the state. At the same time, “bond anticipation notes” floated in the interim found little favor in the market. The $150 million loan is intended to fill that shortfall and would be repaid by bond proceeds, presuming the state prevails in court.

“Arnold is supposed to be a Republican, so I don’t understand his thinking here with President Bush. It seems like he’s going against the party line,” said Dana Cody, executive director of the Life Legal Defense Foundation, one of the groups suing the state. “It’s very inconsistent with the governor’s platform, if you will, of ‘we’re tired of being taxed.’ That’s $150 million coming out of the taxpayers’ pocket for something that is questionable at best because of the litigation.”

Asked at a news conference in Sacramento on Friday about the political implications of making such a forceful public move to oppose the president he has previously supported, Mr. Schwarzenegger said, “You don’t have to agree with someone on every issue.”

“It doesn’t matter to me what the president thinks about it, or what any party thinks about it,” the governor added. “I always try to do what’s best for the people of California.”

In Illinois, the $5 million would come out of the administrative budget in the Department of Healthcare and Family Services, and would be added to $10 million in grants awarded in April to hospitals and universities. A five-year, $100 million investment that Mr. Blagojevich pushed has been stalled in the Legislature.

Mr. Blagojevich, who was vacationing in Michigan when the new money was announced via a news release, declined an interview request, through a spokeswoman, Abby Ottenhoff.

“It was after the veto that the governor determined there were no more options,” Ms. Ottenhoff said. “This research is too important to put on hold until there is a new leader in the White House.”

Even with the limitations on federal financing, the overall financing available for stem cell research could be described as fairly robust, given that the research is still at a basic stage and that in addition to state money, philanthropies like the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have made contributions. Moreover, in the private sector, biotech companies like Geron, Advanced Cell Technology and Athersys conduct research on embryonic or adult stem cells.

While stem cell scientists applauded the states’ efforts, they cautioned that such an approach was not ideal.

“In the long term, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have individual states trying to mount efforts which are going to be more piecemeal, less effective and take more time than a federal effort,” said Douglas A. Melton, co-director of the Stem Cell Institute at Harvard University. “I don’t think states should mount their own militias either.”

Dr. Arnold Kriegstein, director of the Institute for Regeneration Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said that the $150 million was “absolutely a boon,” but that “if you’re an investigator in another state, besides Illinois or California, I think you’d be very frustrated right now.”

Candace Coffee, a Los Angeles resident who has suffered partial blindness, paralysis and constant headaches from Devic’s disease, appeared with Governor Schwarzenegger on Friday at his news conference.

“President Bush’s veto stole my hope,” Ms. Coffee said. “But just as quickly as our hope was stolen, it was renewed.”

    Stem Cell Work Gets States’ Aid After Bush Veto, NYT, 25.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/us/25stem.html?hp&ex=1153886400&en=0a4ddc283632d4a8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Senate to Pass Parental Notification Law

July 25, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:44 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A pregnant 14-year-old from Lancaster, Pa., decides to keep and raise her baby. Her boyfriend's parents drive her to a New Jersey abortion clinic to get around her home state's parental notification law. They then refuse to take her home until she ends her pregnancy.

It happened -- and a national parental notification law could have stopped it, the girl's mother, Marcia Carroll, told a House panel last year.

A year after the House passed the measure, a similar version is heading toward Senate approval Tuesday with widespread public support.

Opponents, however, say the legislation would cut off an escape route for pregnant teens with abusive parents and punish confidants who might try to help them.

''We should not criminalize the grandparents or clergy members to whom a teen in trouble might turn for help,'' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who will introduce an amendment to protect such confidants from prosecution.

No one knows exactly how many girls try to cross state lines to end pregnancies to circumvent parental notification and consent laws back home.

Polls suggest there is widespread public backing for the bill, with almost three-quarters of respondents saying a parent has the right to give consent before a child under 18 has an abortion.

''This is clearly not an issue divided on pro-life or pro-choice lines,'' said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., the bill's original sponsor. ''There is broad and consistent support to preserve the rights of parents.''

Under the bill, anyone who helps a pregnant minor cross state lines to obtain an abortion without the knowledge of her parents could be punished by unspecified fines and up to a year in prison. The girl and her parents would not be vulnerable to criminal penalties. The measure contains an exception for those who help underage girls get such abortions to avoid life-threatening conditions.

Democrats will present several other amendments, including one that would add exceptions for anyone helping girls to end pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

The states without parental notification or consent laws are: Washington, Oregon, New York, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, plus the District of Columbia.

The bill passed the House 270-157 in April 2005 after lawmakers rejected an amendment similar to Feinstein's.

The bills are S. 403 and H.R. 748.

------

On the Net:

Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov

    Senate to Pass Parental Notification Law, NYT, 25.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Interstate-Abortion.html

Colorado to Ban Child Marriages

July 19, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:11 a.m. ET
The New York Times

DENVER (AP) -- Gov. Bill Owens signed a measure banning child brides, ending an uproar sparked by a court ruling that said 12-year-old girls could enter common-law marriages in Colorado.

The state Court of Appeals ruled on June 15 that Colorado had no stated minimum age for common-law marriage but said the state has adopted English common law, which makes girls as young as 12 and boys as young as 14 eligible for marriage.

''It was imperative that Colorado change its law concerning the minimum age for common law marriage. The age of consent for marriage should be consistent in our statutes and, most importantly, our young children must be protected,'' Owens said as he signed the bill Tuesday.

The bill to close the loophole passed without major opposition during a special session on illegal immigration. Lawmakers said the issue could not wait until lawmakers return to work in January. The law raises the minimum age for common-law marriage to 18 or 16 with parental consent and a judge's approval and goes into effect Sept. 1.

The court ruling came in the case of Willis Rouse, 38, who was 34 years old when he applied for and received a license to marry a then-15-year-old girl with the consent of the girl's mother.

A judge granted a motion to invalidate the marriage, saying anybody under the age of 16 had to obtain judicial approval for either common-law or ceremonial marriages. The Court of Appeals agreed Rouse could marry the girl, but left the question of whether their union was valid to a lower court.

Rouse is serving a four-year prison term after pleading guilty to stalking the girl and has asked a judge to release him in light of the Appeals Court ruling.

    Colorado to Ban Child Marriages, NYT, 19.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Teen-Marriage.html

Under rulings, Georgia can't require voter photo IDs this year

Updated 7/12/2006 9:56 PM ET
AP
USA Today

ROME, Ga. (AP) — The same federal judge who threw out Georgia's voter ID law last year blocked the state Wednesday from enforcing its revised law during this year's elections.

The ruling came less than two hours after the Georgia Supreme Court denied the state's emergency request to overrule a state court order that blocked enforcement of the new photo ID law during next week's primary elections and any runoffs.

U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy's ruling, which he delivered verbally from the bench, was much broader, also including the Nov. 7 general elections and any runoffs.

If the rulings stand, Georgia voters will not have to show a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot this year. The state's primary election — which would have been the first election for which the IDs were required — is scheduled for Tuesday. The general elections are Nov. 7.

Murphy said the state's latest attempt at requiring voter photo IDs discriminated against people who don't have driver's licenses, passports or other government IDs.

"That is the failure of this legislation as it stands," he said.

The judge last October rejected a more stringent voter ID requirement, saying it amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax because of the fees associated with getting the required ID. The Legislature this year passed a new law that made the IDs free and available in all counties.

Murphy commended lawmakers for addressing problems with the previous version but said more work is needed. The latest version still denies citizens equal protection under the law, he said.

"The court never said there cannot be a proper voter ID law," he said.

Mark Cohen, the state's lead attorney, declined to comment on whether the state would appeal. Unless the ruling is reversed, Murphy's injunction will remain in place through the November runoff elections.

Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue and other supporters of the IDs had argued they were needed to prevent election fraud. Civil rights groups challenged the law in both federal and state court, arguing that it discriminated against poor, elderly and rural voters. They also argued that voter fraud in Georgia stems from absentee ballot voting, an issue not even addressed by the law.

"They have chosen deliberately to legislate only in an area where there was no problem," Emmett Bondurant, the critics' lead attorney, told Murphy in court.

Cohen argued that Georgia must restore confidence in the election system.

"The public in general in this country has a great distrust for the voting system," he said. "People are questioning whether voting is going on properly."

He also said the law does not deny Georgians the right to vote, because voters may cast an absentee ballot.

On July 7, a county judge issued a temporary order blocking Georgia from enforcing the voter ID law in the primary and any runoffs.

The Supreme Court's decision pertained only to that order and does not prevent the case from coming before the high court again.

    Under rulings, Georgia can't require voter photo IDs this year, UT, 13.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-07-12-voter-ID_x.htm

Vote on Same-Sex Marriage Is Delayed in Massachusetts

July 13, 2006
The New York Times
By KATIE ZEZIMA

BOSTON, July 12 — The Massachusetts legislature on Wednesday postponed until after Election Day what promises to be an impassioned debate and vote on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, which has been legal here for two years.

Meeting in a joint session, legislators spent four hours debating matters scheduled ahead of the marriage amendment, which was next to last on the agenda, and voted, 100 to 91, to recess until Nov. 9.

If the amendment is approved by one-quarter of the legislature this year and next, it will be placed on the ballot as a referendum in November 2008.

The postponement infuriated opponents of same-sex marriage and galvanized its supporters.

“We now have four more months to show legislators how well marriage equality is working in Massachusetts,” Marc Solomon, a spokesman for the main group opposing the amendment, said in a statement. “The legislature should dispense with this undemocratic, discriminatory amendment and move on to the real concerns facing Massachusetts.”

Arline Isaacson, chairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, said, “We do feel like we dodged a bullet, because had there been a vote today we would have lost.”

Lisa Barstow, a spokeswoman for voteonmarriage.org, which gathered 170,000 petition signatures, a state record, said the legislature ignored the will of the voters.

“It’s a travesty,” Ms. Barstow said. “Whenever the people want their voices heard, the legislature stalls, delays or sends to the political graveyard whatever citizens are asking to be heard about.”

A spokeswoman for the Senate president, Robert Travaglini, said that legislators worked through much of the agenda and that he was committed to having a vote on the marriage amendment by the end of the year.

Gov. Mitt Romney, an opponent of same-sex marriage who last week pushed for a vote on the issue at a news conference with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, said then and again on Wednesday that he was trying to ensure that the issue would be voted on.

“In a democracy, the people are sovereign,” Mr. Romney, a Republican, said in a statement. “Tens of thousands of citizens have petitioned the government for the right to have their voices heard. They have played by the rules. This issue won’t go away until the people are heard.”

Opponents of same-sex marriage said they planned to use the recess as a campaign issue, as the entire legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, is up for re-election this year.

“We want to make sure there is a bright line drawn between those who wanted to recess and those who wanted to get the job done today,” Ms. Barstow said.

Ms. Isaacson said supporters were not worried.

“They cannot make a campaign issue out of legislators’ simply postponing debate until a later date,” Ms. Isaacson said. “No one’s saying it won’t be voted on. They just said we’ll do it later.”

Supporters of same-sex marriage challenged the legality of the measure, saying an amendment could not challenge the ruling of the state’s highest court, which ruled in 2003 that same-sex couples had the right to marry under the Massachusetts Constitution. The same court ruled on Monday that the petition was legal and should be heard by the legislature.

    Vote on Same-Sex Marriage Is Delayed in Massachusetts, NYT, 13.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/us/13gay.html

A Deal in Colorado on Benefits for Illegal Immigrants

July 12, 2006
The New York Times
By KATIE KELLEY

DENVER, July 11 — Colorado legislators have struck a compromise over illegal immigration law, forging a deal that Democrats and Republicans said could be the most far-reaching state overhaul in the country.

The law will restrict nonemergency benefits like food stamps, supplemental security income and Medicaid to legal residents of Colorado who are 18 or older. Children will be exempt from the law, which takes effect Aug. 1. Colorado has an estimated 250,000 illegal immigrants.

Business owners will be required to provide proof that their workers have legal immigration status.

The agreement, approved late Monday by the State House and Senate, which were meeting in a special session, will also place two other measures on the ballot in November, ensuring that immigration will remain a heated debate topic through the summer.

One of the measures would allow the Colorado attorney general to sue the federal government if existing federal immigration laws are not enforced. The other measure would require businesses to confirm the legal status of their employees to receive deductible business expenses.

Republicans had sought tighter rules and wanted to put all the measures before voters. The deal puts some of the changes in place without a referendum.

Debate during the five-day session was often intense, with accusations of racism among some lawmakers. The Senate president, Joan Fitz-Gerald, a Democrat, said the issue transcended party politics.

“This goes beyond being a political problem; it’s also a moral challenge to do this correctly,” Ms. Fitz-Gerald said.

The special session of the Legislature, where Democrats control both chambers, was called by Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, after the State Supreme Court last month removed an initiative from the November ballot on whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to receive some state benefits. The ballot measure was proposed by members of Defend Colorado Now, a group opposed to illegal immigration, but was removed after the court said it was unconstitutional because it dealt with more than one subject.

Across the nation, lawmakers have introduced more than 500 pieces of immigration legislation this year, enacting 57 bills, according to the National Conference of State Legislators.

“Collectively they are a strong statement of state interest and getting something done on this issue,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonpartisan organization that follows national immigration legislation and promotes stricter policies.

Mr. Stein stopped short of saying the overhaul was the toughest in the country, saying, “It’s certainly one of the strongest bills passed out of state legislature, but that’s the best you could say.”

    A Deal in Colorado on Benefits for Illegal Immigrants, NYT, 12.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/us/12colorado.html

State Legislator Faces Charges She Took Bribes

July 11, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL BRICK

A state assemblywoman from Brooklyn was charged yesterday with conspiracy and receiving bribes, accused of having sought a $500,000 home from a developer in return for helping the builder acquire city land.

The assemblywoman, Diane M. Gordon, Democrat of East New York, surrendered to the authorities at 6 a.m., her lawyer said. Six hours later, at a hearing in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, she pleaded not guilty and was released on $35,000 bail.

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said at a news conference that Ms. Gordon was confronted in April with evidence of bribery and agreed to resign from the Assembly, but that she had reneged. Her lawyer, Bernard H. Udell, denied that any such agreement had existed. He said that she still intended to run for re-election this year.

An indictment describes six meetings between Ms. Gordon and a developer between October 2004 and November 2005. The developer, who was not named, wore a concealed camera when meeting Ms. Gordon in her district office, prosecutors said. Portions of the videotapes shown at a news conference yesterday showed Ms. Gordon urging the developer to keep the deal a secret.

“I’ve been around long enough to know, “ Ms. Gordon said on one recording, “that if you want a dream to come true, you got to keep your mouth shut.”

According to prosecutors, Ms. Gordon promised to help the developer secure a vacant tract of land on Livonia Avenue from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The parcel, which is intended for low-income housing, was valued at $2 million.

“There was a quid pro quo,” said an assistant district attorney, Kevin Richardson.

In exchange for her help, investigators said, Ms. Gordon requested a $500,000 single-family home that would be built to her specifications in a gated community in Queens; she marked up schematic renderings of the home with stairs, balconies and measurements in square feet, investigators said. Prosecutors said that she had also accepted a set of French doors for her office, worth $600, as part of the bribe.

The plan to execute the deal on the house shifted over time, but the terms remained the same, prosecutors said. At first, Ms. Gordon offered to pay $1. In later meetings, she asked to set a price of $200,000, with a mortgage held by the developer and canceled after the developer received his city property, prosecutors said.

Later, Ms. Gordon took her mother, Helen Staggers, to meetings. Citing advice from an unnamed lawyer, she suggested consummating the transaction in Ms. Staggers’s name to conceal it, prosecutors said. “Because anything I purchase, buy, whatever like that, he says they check,” Ms. Gordon said on the videotape. “The state has the right to check into everything, the whole company, the history, this, that.”

The developer gave Ms. Gordon $7,500 in several cash payments, which Ms. Staggers used to open a bank account, investigators said. Later, the authorities said, Ms. Staggers signed a letter of intent to purchase the home and Ms. Gordon returned $7,000 — $500 less than they said she had received.

Mr. Hynes described the lawyer and Ms. Staggers as unindicted co-conspirators.

A lawyer named in the indictment, Mitch Alter, said that he had attended only one meeting, adding, “I don’t know too much about this transaction.”

Prosecutors described the return of the money as part of a ploy to avoid a down payment, but Mr. Udell portrayed it as exculpatory evidence. “Ms. Gordon returned every cent that was given to her,” Mr. Udell said in court.

Ms. Gordon became the third Assembly member from Brooklyn to be charged with a crime in recent years. One, Assemblyman Roger L. Green, pleaded guilty to false billing of the state for travel expenses, resigned, ran for the seat again, won, and is now running for Congress. Another, Clarence Norman Jr., was the Democratic Party’s Brooklyn leader but resigned that post and his Assembly seat last year. He was convicted in his first two trials but is appealing the verdicts; he was acquitted of other charges in March in a third trial, and a fourth trial is pending.

Ms. Gordon’s appearance at the defense table yesterday served as a strange reminder of the second trial of Mr. Norman, the former party chief and assemblyman. The defense called Ms. Gordon to the witness stand, but she refused to testify without a grant of immunity from prosecutors. None was given, and she invoked the Fifth Amendment.

At the hearing yesterday for Ms. Gordon, 56, prosecutors asked for $50,000 bail. In a 12-count indictment, she was charged with felonious conspiracy and receiving bribes.

“This indictment represents an elected official’s attempt to self-deal,” Mr. Richardson said, adding that the conduct of which Ms. Gordon is accused “represents a most egregious breach of trust.”

Mr. Udell, gesturing toward a group of preachers and family members assembled to support Ms. Gordon, said that she had breached no one’s trust and intended to fight the charges.

“Except for Election Day,” Mr. Udell said, “Diane Gordon doesn’t run.”

Rose Gill Hearn, commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, said a city employee had first reported a concern about corruption by Ms. Gordon. That report, law enforcement officials said, led indirectly to the enlisting of the developer in the investigation.

The final meeting described in the indictment took place last Nov. 22, one day after Ms. Gordon backed out of testifying in the trial of Mr. Norman.

After her arraignment, Ms. Gordon was escorted from the courthouse by supporters who shielded her head with a jacket. She ignored questions, got into the back seat of a blue sport utility vehicle and rode away.

    State Legislator Faces Charges She Took Bribes, NYT, 11.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/nyregion/11bribe.html

Proposal to Ban Same-Sex Marriage Renews Old Battles

July 11, 2006
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK

BOSTON, July 10 — Massachusetts, the only state in which same-sex marriage is legal, is bracing for a vociferous battle this week over a proposal to ban it.

At a constitutional convention on Wednesday, more than two years after the first gay and lesbian couples took their wedding vows, legislators will consider a proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage as solely between a man and a woman. If a quarter of the legislators approve it this year and once more before 2008, the amendment will be presented to voters in November 2008.

The outcome is hardly a foregone conclusion, and after last week’s sizable defeat for gay rights supporters in New York — a court ruling that the state’s Constitution does not require a right to same-sex marriage — what happens in Massachusetts is being watched closely.

“This is a potentially cataclysmic point in the history of this issue,” said Jeffrey M. Berry, a political scientist at Tufts. “There’s been such uncertainty around who had the votes and what the outcome would be that it’s heightened a lot of the anxiety.”

The amendment drive, sponsored by the Massachusetts Family Institute, a conservative public policy group, gathered 170,000 petition signatures, a record in the state. For the referendum to get on the ballot, the amendment must get the votes of at least 50 of the state’s 200 legislators this year and in another constitutional convention in 2007-8.

People on both sides say the amendment has a strong chance of getting 50 legislators’ votes in this state, where the largely Democratic legislature is heavily Catholic and not as overwhelmingly liberal as many outsiders think. Although the leaders of the House and the Senate are against the amendment, some rank-and-file members support it, while others oppose it but want citizens to get to vote on it.

“We’re very confident that we have the votes,” said Kristian M. Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute.

Arline Isaacson, co-chairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, said a vote on Wednesday to approve the amendment “would be devastating” because gay advocates would then have to spend time and money fighting the issue for months, through elections for governor and the legislature in November and the next constitutional convention.

“We are facing a very serious threat to retaining our right to marry,” Ms. Isaacson said.

While gay rights advocates are lobbying legislators to vote no, they are also considering other strategies. One tactic is for legislators to spend all day on the 19 items before gay marriage on the agenda and then postpone the marriage amendment to a later session. Another strategy involves adjourning before the marriage amendment comes up, a move requiring at most 101 votes, not the 151 needed to defeat the amendment.

But adjourning could set off a tug of war with Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican opponent of same-sex marriage who has been emphasizing his conservative views as he considers a run for president.

If the legislature adjourns, Mr. Romney could call it back into session. He cannot force legislators to vote on the measure, political scientists say, but can try to embarrass them by accusing them of shirking their responsibilities.

Mr. Romney renewed his call to put the amendment on the ballot at a recent State House appearance with the Boston archbishop, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley.

“Is there anything more fundamental to the commonwealth and this country than the principle that the power is reserved for the people, that government is the servant, not the master?” the governor asked.

About 8,000 same-sex couples have married since their doing so became legal in May 2004, said Marc Solomon, campaign director of MassEquality, a group leading the anti-amendment effort. Polls of state residents since then have generally found that just over half of those surveyed support same-sex marriage, but about the same number want the amendment to go before voters.

Backers of the amendment are supported by the state’s bishops, and have lobbied legislators with meetings, phone calls, e-mail messages and newspaper and radio advertisements. “I’ve had legislators complain to me about the volume of e-mails, which is a good thing,” Mr. Mineau said. “It shows they are taking notice.”

Gay rights supporters asked Massachusetts’ highest court, which legalized same-sex marriage, to throw out the amendment on the grounds that citizens could not challenge a high court ruling. But on Monday, the court ruled unanimously that the amendment could be considered by the legislature.

Now, advocates of a right to same-sex marriage say they hope their lobbying efforts will pay off. Those efforts include a full-page advertisement in The Boston Globe on Monday signed by 165 of the state’s most prominent business and community leaders, including the owner of the New England Patriots and the heads of major hospitals and banks.

One signer, Ralph C. Martin II, a Republican former district attorney, said same-sex marriage was “a powerful, emotional issue for some people, certain constituencies, and there are good people who are just opposed to this.”

But Mr. Martin added: “I think at a certain point it’s important to recognize it as an issue that has been decided in the courts, and, you know, there’s been an open and complete discussion. I guess I’m one of several people who believe that we need to move on.”

MassEquality has also arranged meetings between same-sex couples and legislators and has enlisted couples and volunteers to go door to door in swing legislative districts asking people to sign postcards and call their legislators.

Jenni White, 41, of Holyoke, Mass., met last week with State Representative Michael Kane, a Democrat who has voted against same-sex marriage, telling him, “There’s been marriage for two years, and society hasn’t fallen apart at the seams.”

And on Saturday, Paul Meoni, 46, and Tom Kidd, 54, a married couple from Randolph, Mass., walked Nantasket Beach asking sunbathers and swimmers to sign postcards opposing the amendment. Most people signed, especially women, but one woman told Mr. Meoni, “Live the way you want, but marriage is out of the question.” Another muttered, “What is this world coming to?”

Mr. Meoni said he found those responses “disturbing,” but added, “We just have to keep moving on and find people that support us.”

Debate Reopened in California

By The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO, July 10 — A California appeals court reopened the legal debate over same-sex marriage on Monday in a review of six cases that seeks to determine the constitutionality of a state law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Arguments before a three-judge panel of the First District Court of Appeal focused on a need to retain the definition of marriage because of tradition. Same-sex couples said domestic partner laws did not provide the same protection as marriage.

Deputy Attorney General Christopher Krueger said the law did not discriminate against same-sex couples because they are granted equal rights as domestic partners. Therese Stewart, the chief deputy city attorney of San Francisco, called the dual approach discriminatory.

Katie Zezima contributed reporting for this article.

    Proposal to Ban Same-Sex Marriage Renews Old Battles, NYT, 11.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/us/11gay.html

States try to block illegal workers

Updated 7/10/2006 8:58 AM ET
USA TODAY
By Charisse Jones

At least 30 states have passed laws or taken other steps this year to crack down on illegal immigrants, often making it harder for undocumented workers to find jobs or receive public services.

Acting while Congress struggles to set policy regarding the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, states have enacted at least 57 laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and a USA TODAY analysis. Among major themes of the state legislation: fining businesses that hire undocumented workers and denying such companies public contracts if they don't verify the legal status of employees.

"The trends ... have leaned toward the punitive side," says Ann Morse, an immigration expert at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "The No. 1 topic has been employment in terms of deterring employers and employees."

Examples:

•A Colorado law enacted in June prohibits awarding state contracts to businesses that knowingly employ illegal immigrants.

•A Louisiana law approved in June subjects businesses that have state contracts and more than 10 employees to fines if they don't fire workers known to be undocumented.

•A Georgia bill enacted in April has a phased-in requirement that public employers and government contractors and subcontractors verify information on newly hired workers through a federal program.

The U.S. Senate and House have passed widely divergent immigration bills. The Senate's legislation would put most undocumented immigrants on a path to citizenship. The House bill would make illegal immigrants felons and increase penalties for hiring them.

Some lawmakers and advocates of stricter immigration enforcement say the flurry of legislation reflects states' mounting frustration with federal officials.

"State and local politicians and the grass-roots in those states are up in arms over Washington's conspicuous lack of leadership," says John Keeley, spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter controls on immigration. "Immigration ... is a driving factor for the three biggest budget items states face: education, health care and criminal justice."

Under federal law, states must provide some services to illegal immigrants, including public education and emergency medical care. States do not have to provide commercial licenses, food assistance, health care, unemployment benefits or other services.

States' focus on workers' documentation is unfair, says Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights group. "It feels like we're back to the days when it's OK to discriminate against minorities," he says.

    States try to block illegal workers, UT, 10.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-07-09-states-illegal-workers_x.htm

Massachusetts Court Backs Gay Marriage on Ballot

July 10, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:19 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BOSTON (AP) -- The same court that made Massachusetts the first state to legalize gay marriage ruled Monday that a proposed constitutional amendment to ban future same-sex marriages can be placed on the ballot, if approved by the Legislature.

The ruling was the result of a lawsuit brought by gay-rights supporters who argued that Attorney General Tom Reilly was wrong to approve the question, saying that the state constitution bars any citizen-initiated amendment that seeks to reverse a judicial ruling.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Judicial Court said the constitution does not bar citizen initiatives from making prospective changes to the constitution, even if that effectively overrules the effect of a prior court decision, because that change would not be a reversal.

The state Legislature is expected to take up the question Wednesday during a constitutional convention.

Citizen-initiated ballot questions must be certified by the attorney general and then approved by two consecutive legislative sessions. Before the marriage question could be placed on the 2008 ballot, supporters would need to win the votes of 50 lawmakers -- 25 percent of the Legislature -- in two consecutive sessions.

Lee Swislow, executive director of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, said she was disappointed but knew it would be an uphill battle. She said the fight is not over.

''So now obviously the focus is going to turn to the Legislature, which has a chance on Wednesday during the constitutional convention to do the right thing and defeat this amendment,'' said Swislow, whose organization filed the lawsuit in January.

With a landmark 2003 ruling, the state's highest court cleared the way for same-sex marriages to begin in Massachusetts in May 2004. More than 7,000 gay couples have married since.

    Massachusetts Court Backs Gay Marriage on Ballot, NYT, 10.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Gay-Marriage.html

Judge Blocks Requirement in Georgia for Voter ID

July 8, 2006
The New York Times
By BRENDA GOODMAN

ATLANTA, July 7 — For the second time, a judge has blocked a Republican-sponsored effort to require Georgia voters to present government-issued photo identification cards before they can cast a ballot.

The judge, Melvin K. Westmoreland of Fulton County Superior Court, said the requirement violated the State Constitution by placing an undue burden on the fundamental right to vote.

Although the legislature passed the requirement, Judge Westmoreland said, such a change would require citizens to approve an amendment to the State Constitution, which now says only that voters must be 18 years old, mentally competent and state residents.

The judge's temporary restraining order was in response to a legal challenge against the requirement filed by former Gov. Roy E. Barnes, a Democrat. Mr. Barnes argued that the requirement would make it harder for minorities, the elderly and the poor to vote.

State officials immediately vowed to appeal the ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court. Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican who signed the measure into law earlier this year, said it was needed to ensure the integrity of the ballot box.

"The sad fact is that dead people have cast votes in Georgia and — before this law is implemented — there was no way to tell how many deceased voters, felons or even illegal aliens may have been casting ballots in Georgia elections," Mr. Perdue said.

The law also faces a challenge in federal court, where a consortium of voter rights groups have sued on the grounds that it also violates the United States Constitution.

Since it was first passed in March 2005, the voter ID law has whipsawed between the legislature and the courts, with lawmakers struggling to find a way to put the measure into effect without violating federal or state voter protections. Its first version required voters to have a driver's license or other government ID, or to buy a special state card.

That law was struck down in October by a federal judge, who said the requirement that voters buy the card amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax.

The law was then rewritten by the Republican-led legislature to make the ID cards free. But the new version continued to draw strong criticism. Civil rights groups say those who lack a photo identification are more likely to be black or Hispanic, poor, or elderly — groups that traditionally cast their ballots for Democratic candidates.

"The law continues to impose an unnecessary burden on voters and does nothing to protect against fraud in voting," said Neil Bradley, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project in Atlanta. Secretary of State Cathy Cox, a Democrat who oversees Georgia's elections and who is also vying for the Democratic nomination for governor, said there had not been a proven case of voter fraud in the state in nearly a decade. Her office has estimated that some 676,000 otherwise eligible voters lack a driver's license or state-issued photo ID.

Without dwelling on the political implications of the law, Judge Westmoreland agreed with critics who said the legislature had pushed past constitutional protections in passing the measure.

"The General Assembly has wide latitude to legislate unless it undertakes to act where the Georgia Constitution enumerates a clear and unmistakable right to Georgia's citizens," the judge wrote. "It is a given that any illegal restriction of the fundamental right to vote is prohibited."

Mr. Perdue said the state's appeal would rest on ballot security. "I respectfully disagree with Judge Westmoreland and believe that Georgia's law is not only constitutional, but a common sense, prudent protection of the election process," he said.

The restraining order means the law will not be in effect for the state's primaries on July 18. He referred the matter back to state court for a civil trial.

    Judge Blocks Requirement in Georgia for Voter ID, NYT, 8.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/08/us/08voter.html

Georgia Court Upholds a Referendum Banning Same-Sex Marriage

July 7, 2006
The New York Times
By BRENDA GOODMAN

ATLANTA, July 6 — In a unanimous reversal of a lower court decision, six justices of the Georgia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state's 2004 ban against same-sex marriage was constitutional.

Seventy-six percent of Georgians who voted in a referendum in November 2004 supported the ban, but a Superior Court judge ruled in May that it violated the Georgia Constitution because the ballot question addressed more than one issue, including civil unions.

The Supreme Court ruling was expedited at the request of Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican, who had threatened to call a special legislative session if the court did not act on an appeal by August. Critics said it was a move to rally conservative voters for his re-election race.

"I'm delighted that they ruled unanimously in favor of the people of Georgia, that they clearly understood what they were voting for," Mr. Perdue said at a news conference.

Gay and civil rights groups had hoped the court would toss out the sweeping amendment because they said its dual purposes — to limit the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman and to refuse legal benefits and protections to same-sex couples in civil unions — were unfairly linked in the referendum. They said this forced voters who might have agreed with only one part to have to approve both.

Moreover, the section of the amendment dealing with those legal benefits and protections was not printed on the November 2004 ballot or posted at polling places. Voters could see only the section that limited marriage to a man and a woman.

The opinion came on the same day the New York State's highest court, the Court of Appeals, decided that the state had no legal obligation to recognize same-sex marriages.

"I was very disappointed," said Karla Drenner, a Georgia state representative who led the fight against the amendment here. "It's a very sad thing when the empire state of the South and the empire state of the North decide to discriminate on the same day."

Ms. Drenner, a Democrat, said, "I think the public was deceived here in Georgia."

The Georgia Supreme Court, however, ruled that voters had not been misled by the two-part question.

Justice Robert Benham, who wrote the court's opinion, found that the section on civil unions did not "address a different objective than that of the amendment as a whole," and thus did not violate state law. One of the court's seven justices, Harold D. Melton, did not participate in the ruling.

    Georgia Court Upholds a Referendum Banning Same-Sex Marriage, NYT, 7.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/us/07georgia.html

The Mayor

Bloomberg Vows to Press for a Change in State Law

July 7, 2006
The New York Times
By DIANE CARDWELL

The issue of gay marriage is one that haunted Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as he ran for re-election, with his Democratic opponents and gay-rights advocates criticizing him for appealing a court decision that could have allowed same-sex couples to marry in New York.

But yesterday, as the state's highest court essentially followed the reasoning of the city's Law Department and ruled that the State Constitution does not give gays the right to marry, Mr. Bloomberg said that he was working to devise a strategy to guarantee that right by law.

"I will personally campaign to change the law," he said at a news conference. "I've talked to some people in the gay community that want to get the law changed, and we've started to work on a strategy, but it will eventually mean trying to convince the people in the Legislature that they should change the law."

Though Mr. Bloomberg has a record of supporting gay rights, his reluctant journey to supporting gay marriage has been tinged with an ambivalence that has cost him some trust among advocates of the issue.

His support for gay causes goes back at least to his days running Bloomberg L.P., among the first media companies to offer benefits for domestic partners. As mayor, he has signed laws recognizing gay marriages and civil unions from other jurisdictions and adding transgendered people to those protected under the city's human rights law.

But for years he refused to express an opinion on gay marriage. In 2004 he told an audience of gay and lesbian journalists that he favored changing state law to legalize same-sex unions. But a few days later, while saying that civil unions should have the same protections as marriage, he shied away from further detailing his views, saying, "I've gone back and forth in my mind as to where I really stand, but I think everybody deserves to have the same rights."

It was not until last year that Mr. Bloomberg said he thought gay marriage should be legal, a position he announced as he explained the city's decision to appeal a state court ruling that opened the door to such marriages in New York. His explanation was that the appeal was necessary to clarify the scope of the law.

By authorizing that appeal, Mr. Bloomberg in some ways accelerated the push to change state law, an approach some advocates of same-sex marriage call a more lasting way to ensure the right to marry.

And though he has already convened a meeting of gay leaders to discuss strategies for pushing the change through Albany, it is not clear how central he will be.

"The strategy will now be determined, and it will be determined by leaders of the L.G.B.T. community," said City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, the city's highest-ranking openly gay official, referring to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people. "We began to have some discussions about that strategy when we had breakfast at Gracie Mansion with the mayor, but that is really up to us now to come up with the strategy, and then to reach out to people like the mayor."

It remains to be seen how much Mr. Bloomberg wants to make the battle his own. His response to the ruling yesterday was muted, even as he cast it both as a vindication and a call to action. He spoke of the need to sway Albany legislators to change the law, but expressed little of the determination he has displayed on other issues. "If they do, that's great; and if they don't," he said, "that's what it will be."

    Bloomberg Vows to Press for a Change in State Law, NYT, 7.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/nyregion/07bloomberg.html

Albany

Spitzer Says He Would Do What Pataki and Courts Have Not

July 7, 2006
The New York Times
By DANNY HAKIM

ALBANY, July 6 — Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Thursday that he would draft and propose legislation to legalize gay marriage in New York State if elected governor in November. His comments came after the State Court of Appeals deferred to the Legislature on the issue, leaving the fate of gay marriage in New York to elected officials.

Although the right of gay couples to marry has widespread support among Democrats, it has little chance in the Republican-led Senate, with the majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, reiterating his opposition on Thursday.

Any possibility of changing the law in New York State could hinge on the ability of Democrats to overturn the 35-27 Republican majority in the Senate, a development that many in politics do not see as likely in November. Mr. Bruno, however, has been known to change his mind, and gay-rights advocates and lawmakers said his views on civil rights for gay people had shifted markedly during the nearly dozen years he has been majority leader.

Supporters of gay marriage rights in New York have often pinned their hopes on the courts to legalize such unions, perhaps mindful of the opposition of Gov. George E. Pataki. Now that the courts have rebuffed them, the effort to change the law through legislative means may gain new steam, particularly with Mr. Pataki leaving office.

Mr. Spitzer, who holds a commanding lead in opinion polls in the race for governor, restated his support even though his office had argued against gay marriage in its official capacity representing the executive branch.

"I believe same-sex marriage should be constitutional, should be legal, should be authorized statutorily," he said on Thursday. "I think in New York there is recognition that this is the right thing to do from a civil rights perspective, and whether that will be sufficient in both the Assembly and the Senate, we'll have to wait and see, but it is something I will draft and propose."

Mr. Spitzer's signal that he will actively back the legislation could help its prospects among Albany lawmakers, although many Republicans remain committed to defeating such legislation.

The Republican candidate for governor, John Faso, praised the court's ruling and said, "If elected governor, I will work to ensure that marriage remains a relationship between a man and a woman."

The Nassau County executive, Thomas R. Suozzi, Mr. Spitzer's Democratic challenger, said he did not support gay marriage, but hoped "we can come together to find other ways to provide gay and lesbians in long-term committed relationships the same economic rights and legal protections."

The measure is not even a foregone conclusion in the overwhelmingly Democratic Assembly, where gay marriage bills have stalled for several years, though approval there is far more likely than in the Senate.

"The Court of Appeals decision is going to put this issue on the front burner for the Legislature, so while there has not been a focused effort to move the bill out of committee in the past, that changed this morning," said Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried of Manhattan, the sponsor of a gay marriage bill.

"I would suspect there would be a strong majority for the bill on the floor of the Assembly, but I don't know if anyone has done a head count," he added.

Advocates have been frustrated that the Assembly has not already passed legislation. "Their excuse has been they've been waiting on the courts," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the former executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, the main lobbying group for gay rights in the state.

"The reality is there has been no leadership on this issue, or very little," he said.

Bryan Franke, a spokesman for Speaker Sheldon Silver of the Assembly, said: "The speaker plans to take up the issue of gay marriage with his conference. He thinks it's premature to talk about the matter without first discussing it with the members of the Assembly."

But the main battleground would certainly be in the Senate, which has emerged as the unpredictable force in Albany as its Republican leadership courts more moderate voters in the efforts to remain in power.

"I am opposed to gay marriage because I believe in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman," Mr. Bruno said on Thursday.

But he has softened his stance considerably over the years. When he became majority leader in 1994, Mr. Bruno rescinded domestic partner benefits for Senate staff members and also repeatedly blocked hate crimes legislation from coming to a floor vote. But he later reinstated domestic partner benefits and supported hate crime legislation.

In 2002, he spoke out in favor of the long-stalled Sexual Orientation Nondiscrimination Act, known as Sonda, saying, "Maybe I have become more enlightened."

"I am going to vote for this legislation to express tolerance, antidiscrimination, and just to recognize that people have the right to live their lives as they see fit," he added at the time.

Senator Thomas K. Duane, a Manhattan Democrat who is gay, said of Mr. Bruno, "He has absolutely evolved in his thinking, and without his support, hate crimes, Sonda, would not have come to the floor."

"On the issue of marriage, he never made a commitment to me, but he never closed off a discussion, and he never tried to dissuade me," he added.

Mr. Foreman said Mr. Bruno had moved "180 degrees on his empathy for gay people, but he will not move before the Assembly does."

Political pressure, and money, should not be discounted.

While the Conservative Party has opposed gay marriage, gay donors have been flexing their financial muscle. Alan Van Capelle, the executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, said his group's political contributions grew from $40,000 two years ago to an expected $300,000 this year, including contributions to candidates and spending on voter outreach. Recipients have included Senator Michael A. L. Balboni, a Nassau County Republican, who has sponsored legislation supported by the gay-rights groups. The group has also been courting and receiving support from major union leaders.

"Undoubtedly, this is going to be a major debate that we are going to have to take up in the next session," said Senator Nicholas A. Spano of Yonkers, another Republican who has sponsored legislation supported by the gay rights groups in the past.

"There's no doubt this will be a difficult debate," said Mr. Spano, who said he supports domestic partnerships but has "not taken a position on gay marriage."

Karen James and Jennifer Medina contributed reporting for this article.

    Spitzer Says He Would Do What Pataki and Courts Have Not, NYT, 7.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/nyregion/07albany.html

The Judges

Pataki Gets a Decision He Wanted on the State's Highest Court

July 7, 2006
The New York Times
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

From the time he took office, Gov. George E. Pataki vowed to remake the state judiciary, calling it too liberal and too eager to usurp elected officials' powers. In his 12th and final year in office, yesterday's decision on gay marriage may be the most important step New York's highest court has taken in the direction the governor charted.

The Court of Appeals ruled that it was up to the Legislature, not the courts, to decide whether to allow same-sex unions. That was exactly the sort of conclusion that the governor, a Republican, has advocated under the banner of judicial restraint, in cases ranging from school financing to the death penalty.

And it was mostly his appointees who delivered it. Three judges chosen by Mr. Pataki and one named by his predecessor, Mario M. Cuomo, formed the majority in the 4-2 decision. One Pataki appointee did not take part, and the two dissenters were named by Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat.

People in both parties have wondered aloud what legacy Mr. Pataki can claim. He arrived as a fiscal conservative but presided over big increases in spending. His death penalty law was overturned. Almost five years after the World Trade Center was destroyed, the future of the ground zero rebuilding project remains questionable.

A more conservative judiciary is one thing Mr. Pataki will leave behind, especially at the Appellate Division, the intermediate appeals court. At the Court of Appeals, the transformation has arrived more slowly, in fits and starts.

The governor has been able to fill just four of the court's seven seats, whereas Mr. Cuomo had named all seven judges who sat on the bench when he left office. And the Cuomo appointees Mr. Pataki has been able to replace included relatively conservative judges.

"The Court of Appeals is largely a centrist court" that has changed over the last decade, "but not radically," said Stewart E. Sterk, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.

At times, the court plays the role Mr. Pataki intended for it — as it did yesterday — but the makeover is incomplete. He gained a majority on the court in early 2003 with his fourth appointment, but that did not guarantee that he would get his way. Five months later, the court ruled against him, 4 to 1, in finding that the state had not met its obligation to finance New York City schools, and the next year, on a 4-to-3 vote, it overturned the death penalty law the governor had signed.

Both times, a Pataki appointee, Judge Albert M. Rosenblatt, joined the judges named by Mr. Cuomo to form the majority. Judge Rosenblatt recused himself from the marriage case. His daughter, a lawyer, has argued in favor of gay marriage before the courts of several other states.

Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, a Cuomo appointee, has often been able to pull together coalitions that included more conservative judges, "but that's been breaking down," said Vincent M. Bonventre, a professor at Albany Law School who studies the court. In the marriage case, she wrote an impassioned dissent, joined by Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick.

Two Pataki appointees, Judge Victoria A. Graffeo and Judge Susan Phillips Read, had backgrounds in state government as aides to Republican officials, and they have been the most reliably conservative votes on the court, said Mr. Bonventre, who signed on to a brief in favor of the gay couples in the marriage case. He said the other two, Judge Rosenblatt and Judge Robert S. Smith, "have been more independent and unpredictable, especially in criminal cases, where they side with the defendants much more often."

Mr. Pataki will have a chance to put his stamp more firmly on the court in September, with the expiration of Judge George Bundy Smith's 14-year term. Judge Smith, a Cuomo appointee and the court's only black judge, is hoping to be reappointed. He is often described as the most liberal of the seven, but he joined the majority in ruling against gay marriage yesterday.

One striking feature of this Pataki court is the prominence of the newest judge, Robert Smith, who joined the bench two and a half years ago, after a career as a trial lawyer, replacing an earlier Pataki appointee.

He wrote the dissent when the court threw out the state's death penalty law. He wrote the majority decision when the court sided with the governor in a fundamental power struggle with the Legislature over who can write budget bills. And he wrote the majority opinion in yesterday's gay marriage ruling.

Judge Smith's opinion included passages that could spark arguments from both the left and the right. He referred to "the common-sense premise that children will do best with a mother and father in the home," and he also wrote that "there has been serious injustice in the treatment of homosexuals."

Neither his opinion nor a concurring one by Judge Graffeo contain the kind of strongly antigay language found in some state and federal court opinions in recent years.

"They are going out of their way to say they are not prejudiced, which you would not see in most states," said Joanna L. Grossman, a professor and associate dean at Hofstra University Law School, who has closely followed gay marriage cases around the country.

"I think it's a pretty conservative view that children need to have a mother and a father, but the New York court would not be considered that conservative in a lot of states."

    Pataki Gets a Decision He Wanted on the State's Highest Court, NYT, 7.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/nyregion/07justices.html

New Jersey Lawmakers Summoned to Resolve Budget Crisis

July 4, 2006
The New York Times
By RICHARD G. JONES, LAURA MANSNERUS AND JOHN O'NEIL

TRENTON, July 4 — Gov. Jon S. Corzine today told the legislators he had summoned to a rare joint session that he was "willing to work within the structure" of a budget compromise put forward by Senate Democrats that would devote half of Mr. Corzine's proposed 1 percent increase in the sales tax toward property tax relief.

But that would mean that another $600 million in spending cuts or new revenues would be needed, he said, adding that he would not agree to measures that would fall short of putting the state on a sound financial foundation.

"I'm willing to meet the Legislature halfway, but I'm not willing to compromise and compromise and compromise just to have a budget finished," Mr. Corzine said.

The state's budget was due on Friday, and on Saturday Mr. Corzine began a phased shutdown of government services that will take full effect on Wednesday, when state parks and Atlantic City's casinos will be forced to close, along with all non-essential government offices.

Mr. Corzine's $31 billion budget has been stalled over the proposed sales tax increase, which he says is needed for the state's long-term economic stability. Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr. has insisted such an increase is not the way to balance the budget.

Mr. Corzine today acknowledged the impact of the government shutdown, which he said would soon block reimbursement of pharmacies for state-subsidized prescriptions and make it impossible for home purchasers to close on their transactions.

"It means more than inconvenience," he said. "Make no mistake, people are being hurt."

Mr. Corzine also acknowledged that he was asking legislators to take a politically risky step. "No one, no one is seeking to increase taxes because they want to," he said.

But he said it was impossible to deal with problems like property tax relief and school construction until the budget was based on "predictable, reliable, recurring streams of revenue."

Although essential operations like prisons, mental hospitals and the state police are still operating, the shutdown has led to the closing of the Motor Vehicle Commission, and road construction projects have been stopped. Courts have been ordered to stop all but emergency operations.

In all, about 45,000 of the state's 80,000 employees have been ordered to stay home without pay.

Unless the Legislature reaches an agreement on Tuesday, all 12 Atlantic City casinos are to be shuttered at 8 a.m. Wednesday, a move that a State Supreme Court justice affirmed on Monday by rejecting the industry's appeal. Gambling will not be allowed but hotels and restaurants will remain open.

The closings will cost the state more than $1 million daily in tax revenue in addition to the $2.2 million a day that is being lost by the closing of the state lottery.

On Monday, the two sides appeared to have moved slightly farther apart. Negotiations between Governor Corzine and top legislative leaders lasted less than a half-hour with neither side encouraged that the impasse could be broken any time soon.

Asked if a compromise was imminent that might end the shutdown, Senate President Richard J. Codey, who attended the meeting, replied, "I don't think so."

Mr. Codey and the Senate Democrats have generally supported Mr. Corzine on the critical item in Mr. Corzine's proposed budget, an increase in the sales tax. It was a compromise proposal by Mr. Codey — that the sales tax be increased, but that half of the new revenues be used for property tax relief — that Mr. Corzine said today he was willing to accept as a basis for negotiations.

But on Monday, Mr. Corzine's main adversary, Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr., had stepped up his opposition to the governor's proposal to help balance the budget by raising the sales tax to 7 percent from 6 percent.

In a day of several unusual moves, Mr. Roberts — who has led the opposition among Assembly Democrats to the tax increase — challenged the governor to identify the members of the Legislature who support the tax increase.

"If the governor can demonstrate that legislative support is there, then I will post his sales tax bill in 24 hours," Mr. Roberts said in a statement that was made public moments after he entered the meeting with Mr. Corzine and Mr. Codey.

Mr. Roberts questioned whether Mr. Corzine had sufficient support in either chamber for the increase to be approved, even though Democrats have a 49-to-31 advantage in the Assembly and a 22-to-18 edge in the Senate.

Mr. Corzine dismissed Mr. Roberts's demand to identify legislators who support the measure, saying that he remained committed to keeping government closed until the Legislature approved a budget that he felt was fiscally sound.

"He's asking for a vote," Mr. Corzine said of Mr. Roberts's demand. "I think the budget committee should put a bill on the floor. It won't be everything that I want. But let's see whether it meets the general principles of recurring revenue matching recurring expenditures."

Later, Mr. Corzine said that if a budget has not been voted on, "one has to ask why that isn't happening."

Mr. Roberts said in an interview that the Assembly Budget Committee — which must report out a budget bill so that it can voted on by both chambers — had not acted in part because the governor had asked several Democratic members not to release a bill unless it had a proposal to increase the sales tax in it.

However, the speaker declined to identify the committee members who had been approached by Mr. Corzine.

Mr. Corzine's press secretary, Anthony Coley, said that Mr. Corzine had not made any such requests.

The speaker's challenge to Mr. Corzine underscores the persistent bitterness of the budget talks, which is particularly noteworthy because all of the major players are Democrats.

The dispute has exposed a rift in the party, prompting rampant speculation about the political consequences for Mr. Corzine and Mr. Roberts. Because Mr. Corzine is the de facto leader of the party in New Jersey, some have questioned whether Mr. Roberts — a veteran of nearly 20 years in the Legislature — might be replaced as speaker, a post he assumed in January.

Asked if he supported replacing Mr. Roberts, Mr. Corzine replied, "I'm not in favor of that."

For his part, Mr. Roberts said that he had no concerns about his political future. "I'm not nervous at all," he said. "I think my good friends here are going to look out for me, and we'll be fine."

Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, the state Democratic chairman and a supporter of Mr. Corzine's budget, defended Mr. Roberts's leadership position.

"We have different views here, but that doesn't mean he's a bad speaker," said Mr. Cryan. "He'll be a great speaker for years to come."

For their part, Republicans have complained that Mr. Roberts has treated them dismissively since becoming speaker in January.

"I don't think there's any tears being shed for the prospect of Joe Roberts being in trouble in my caucus," one Republican legislator said.

Richard G. Jones and Laura Mansnerus reported for this article from Trenton and John O'Neil reported from New York.

    New Jersey Lawmakers Summoned to Resolve Budget Crisis, NYT, 4.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/nyregion/04cnd-corzine.html?hp&ex=1152072000&en=8d0a03005d3b2ac2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Court Overturns Arkansas Ban on Same-Sex Foster Parents

June 30, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., June 29 (AP) — Arkansas cannot bar gay men and lesbians from becoming foster parents because there is no link between their sexual orientation and a child's well-being, the State Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

On a vote of 7 to 0, the justices agreed with a lower court judge that the state's Child Welfare Agency Review Board, which adopted the ban in 1999, had improperly tried to regulate public morality and had violated the separation of powers between the executive branch and the General Assembly, Arkansas's legislature.

In approving the policy, the board had said children should be in traditional two-parent households headed by a man and a woman because, it said, they would be more likely to thrive. Four Arkansas residents, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed suit claiming discrimination and privacy violations against gay men and lesbians who otherwise qualified as foster parents.

The justices agreed Thursday, saying the ban was "an attempt to legislate for the General Assembly with respect to public morality."

"There is no correlation between the health, welfare and safety of foster children and the blanket exclusion of any individual who is a homosexual or who resides in a household with a homosexual," Associate Justice Donald L. Corbin wrote in the opinion.

In addition, the court said, the testimony of a member of the child welfare board demonstrated that "the driving force behind adoption of the regulations was not to promote the health, safety and welfare of foster children but rather based upon the board's views of morality and its bias against homosexuals."

The court also said that contrary to what the state had argued, being raised by homosexuals did not cause academic or sexual identity problems.

Julie Munsell, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the child welfare board, said that the ban had not been applied since the lower court ruling in 2004 and that the plaintiffs had not sought foster-parent status since then.

    Court Overturns Arkansas Ban on Same-Sex Foster Parents, NYT, 30.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/us/30gays.html

A Few Things Lawmakers Can Agree On

June 23, 2006
The New York Times
By JENNIFER MEDINA

ALBANY, June 22 — Property taxes are soaring and upstaters are fleeing New York. But lawmakers decided that they had to tackle the ladybug question first.

The state's official insect, a nine-spotted ladybug, would no longer fly in that role: it is extinct in New York State. So legislators took a break from bickering over health care spending and property taxes in the waning days of the session and found common ground on the issue of designating a new state insect, making it the pink spotted ladybug instead.

They passed other laws, too: The snapping turtle would become the state's official reptile. And the striped bass would henceforth become the state's official saltwater fish.

The rush to designate official state critters came amid a crush of activity as lawmakers put aside some more pressing problems, but it showed how things often get done in Albany. The sponsor of the ladybug bill, for instance, did not know it had a chance until it suddenly came to the floor for a vote.

Why? Because she is a Republican in the Democratic-controlled State Assembly, and members of the minority party often find it impossible to get their bills passed.

But pass it did, almost unanimously — though a few members did not vote. It must also be acted on by the Senate.

"I know it's not earth-shattering," said the assemblywoman, Nancy Calhoun, who represents parts of Orange and Rockland Counties.

Ms. Calhoun says she was just trying to right a wrong. Lawmakers first adopted the state's official bug in 1989, but the nine-spotted ladybug had already become extinct in the state. Ms. Calhoun was alerted to the error by a reporter a couple of years ago and she submitted a bill to rectify the matter.

"Why do we want to get something like this wrong?" Ms. Calhoun said. "It would be like having a dinosaur as our state reptile."

On the reptile front, Assemblyman Jeffery Dinowitz, a Democrat from the Bronx, came to the rescue.

Mr. Dinowitz said the bill to make the snapping turtle the official state reptile was the result of a competitive process — an election among elementary school students. Mr. Dinowitz acknowledged having his doubts about sponsoring the legislation.

"I said this was goofy and I didn't really want to end up in the newspaper talking about this kind of thing at the end of session," Mr. Dinowitz said, as he sat at his desk on Thursday, talking about this kind of thing to a reporter. And besides, he noted, the state already had an official muffin, so why not a state turtle?

So why does this kind of bill always come at the end of the session?

"Don't ask me that, please," he said.

    A Few Things Lawmakers Can Agree On, NYT, 23.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/nyregion/23ladybug.html?hp&ex=1151121600&en=5964fd05fe6d5b9d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

State Lawmakers Reach Accords

June 21, 2006
The New York Times
By DANNY HAKIM and JENNIFER MEDINA

ALBANY, June 20 — State lawmakers rushing to finish their regular session agreed Tuesday night to overhaul the state's pursuit of Medicaid fraud, eliminate the statute of limitations in rape cases and broadly expand the state's DNA database of criminals.

The deals broke a logjam between the Republican-led Senate and the Democratic-led Assembly over what had been some of the thorniest issues facing lawmakers this year. They came just three hours before a midnight deadline to conclude Legislative negotiations in order for the session to end this week, though further negotiations are expected Wednesday since the governor can waive a requirement to print bills three days before they are voted on.

"We are pleased that both houses of the Legislature came to an agreement on these three critical items that will help improve the lives of New Yorkers," Gov. George E. Pataki said in a statement Tuesday night. "In particular, the expansion of the DNA databank and the elimination of the statute of limitations on rape are two critically important crime-fighting initiatives."

The chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Peter S. Kalikow, was also approved by Senate Republicans for a new six-year term, one of the governor's more than a hundred nominations approved Tuesday by the Senate for state authorities and judgeships. Mr. Kalikow said he would not step down if asked by the next governor, saying he wanted to make sure a number of projects were far along before he chose to depart.

Democrats accused Mr. Pataki of trying to influence policy-making well into the next governor's term as several key state authority appointees were approved for terms of several years — charges the governor's staff was swift to dismiss.

Republicans in the Senate appeared to win a major concession from Democrats in the area of combating Medicaid fraud, which is seen as contributing to the state's ballooning $46 billion Medicaid budget. Republicans beat back a Democratic demand that would have allowed whistle-blowers to sue on behalf of the government as a way to fight fraud, a practice followed by the federal government and several other states.

The agreement reached by lawmakers would broadly expand what is a minimally financed inspector general's office, infusing it with resources to root out fraud in the Medicaid program — a program that is by far the largest single expense in the state's budget.

"I feel great, because this is a reorganization of a totally dysfunctional system that exists in terms of Medicaid fraud," said Senator Dean Skelos, a Long Island Republican and the Senate's deputy majority leader. "I believe taxpayers are going to save hundreds of millions of dollars a year."

Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, a Manhattan Democrat who helped preside over often-contentious hearings on Medicaid fraud alongside Mr. Skelos, said, "We yielded on some issues and they yielded too, in the interest of getting things done," he said. "Cooler heads are prevailing. We will return in the next session to do more."

Democrats did win what they saw as an important concession when Republicans dropped their insistence that the inspector general have a fixed term of office, instead of serving at the will of the governor. With Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a Democratic candidate for governor, holding a commanding lead in polls, Democrats were resistant to the idea of an inspector general appointed by Governor Pataki serving in a potential Democratic administration.

Democrats also agreed to a major expansion of the state's DNA database, which now includes samples from people convicted of only the most violent offenses. Governor Pataki and the Senate wanted the database to include DNA samples from anyone convicted of a crime. The deal tentatively reached Tuesday would let the authorities collect DNA from all convicted felons, a move the Assembly had already supported in its own legislation.

But they also agreed to include petty larceny, a misdemeanor that the governor had highlighted as a crime that was often committed by people who went on to become more-violent offenders.

The Legislature also resolved a dispute over expanding the statute of limitations in rape cases, which is now five years, among the shortest in the nation. Under the agreement, that statue of limitations would be eliminated in criminal cases. For civil cases stemming from rapes, the statute of limitations was increased from one to five years.

New York State's Medicaid fraud problem has been well documented, and was highlighted in a series of articles that appeared in The New York Times last year. Shortly after that series, Mr. Skelos and other legislators requested a federal audit of the state's Medicaid system.

Responding to the request, a branch of the federal Department of Health and Human Services released a scathing report earlier this month criticizing the state's commitment to fighting fraud.

The report found that the state had been sharply cutting the staff dedicated to pursing Medicaid fraud even as Medicaid spending increased by 55 percent in less than a decade. New York's Medicaid program is the nation's largest.

Assembly Democrats, in pushing for allowing whistle-blowers to bring suits, as they can in other states, like Texas, argued that many instances of Medicaid fraud would not be found without providing financial incentives. They also pointed out that the architect and champion of using whistle-blowers to pursue government fraud is a powerful Republican, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.

Mr. Skelos has repeatedly rejected that argument. In a testy exchange at a Medicaid hearing on Monday, he said "call me old-fashioned, but I believe people have a civic responsibility to report fraud and abuse."

Mr. Gottfried responded by calling that "an amazingly naïve view of the world."

The sides continue to negotiate several issues, with the Legislature seeking to restore budget cuts made by Mr. Pataki to hospitals and nursing homes and the governor intent on luring an Advanced Micro Devices microchip manufacturing plant to the Albany area. The plan could bring up to 2,000 jobs, officials said, but would cost about $1 billion.

Officials in the Legislature also were inching toward breaking a stalemate on a bill requiring that insurers cover treatment for mental illness and addictions and were negotiating bills to encourage organ donation, including providing tax credits for families of donors.

The Assembly and the Senate did agree on legislation to overhaul the state's notoriously bumpy budget process, proposing several of the less-controversial changes from a constitutional amendment voted down last year. The measure would create an Independent Budget Office with a director appointed by the Legislature and require the governor to submit quarterly financial plans.

Michael Marr, a spokesman for the governor, called it "a transparent attempt to revive what the governor vetoed twice and the voters soundly rejected last November."

    State Lawmakers Reach Accords, NYT, 21.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/21/nyregion/21albany.html?hp&ex=1150948800&en=58a148381a45767a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

As Session Nears End, Lawmakers Deal With the Easy Issues

June 20, 2006
The New York Times
By DANNY HAKIM and JENNIFER MEDINA

ALBANY, June 19 — The State Legislature opened the final week of its regular session by agreeing to toughen drunken-driving laws. But lawmakers also agreed to allow beer sales earlier on Sunday mornings.

Those two agreements came on a day in which the Legislature failed to resolve the largest issues that divide lawmakers, or their disagreements with Gov. George E. Pataki, including restoring several hundred million dollars' worth of budget cuts to hospitals and nursing homes, the structure of a new office to fight Medicaid fraud, and the Legislature's billion-dollar-a-year property tax rebate. In fact, the Republican-led Senate and the Democrat-led Assembly seem unable even to agree on what day to end the session, Thursday or Friday.

Instead, they focused on some of the less contentious bills on their agenda, reaching agreement on a requirement that child safety alarms be installed in pools and on the measure that would allow beer sales starting at 8 a.m. instead of noon on Sundays, ending one of the last vestiges of the so-called blue laws that limit alcohol sales on Sundays.

But in a separate measure aimed at curbing the impact of drinking, the Legislature reached an agreement on a package of bills increasing penalties for drunken drivers. The legislation would create the new crime of "aggravated driving while intoxicated" for drivers with a blood-alcohol content higher than 0.18 percent, with up to a year in jail and a fine of $2,500, increasing the current penalty by $1,500. It also creates regulations to penalize repeat offenders.

"This goes after the worst of the worst, the recidivists," said Assemblyman Paul A. Tokasz, a Democrat from Buffalo and one of the sponsors of the legislation.

A driver on probation would be required to install an alcohol sensor on the dashboard that prevents a car from starting if the driver's alcohol level is too high. The legislation would also lengthen the amount of time a repeat offender's driver's license could be revoked.

In some circumstances, the measure would permanently revoke the license of anyone who has been convicted of drunken driving or who refuses to take a Breathalyzer test several times. And drivers who agree to plead guilty to driving while ability impaired, a lesser charge than driving while intoxicated, would be required to complete an alcohol and drug rehabilitation program.

Mr. Pataki called the legislation "a significant step forward," but said it was "weaker than it should be."

But he also said that a "whole long list" of issues still remained unresolved, including how to allocate federal aid to needy families and how to allocate environmental protection funds. He has also been pushing to create a center where sexual predators could be confined after their prison terms expired, and to increase the number of charter schools in the state from 100 to 250, a proposal that has dim prospects in the Assembly.

The Legislature is supposed to end its session on Thursday. Because of laws requiring that bills be printed three days before they are voted on, bills would have had to be completed by Monday evening to be acted upon. But extra days are common in Legislative sessions, and the governor can effectively waive the three-day period, though lawmakers are often hesitant to ask him for help.

The Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, is pushing to end the session on time, while the Assembly appears in no particular hurry.

"I don't know anybody who seriously thinks we're not going to be here on Friday," said Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, a Manhattan Democrat, during a Medicaid hearing in the afternoon.

Senator Dale M. Volker, a Republican from Western New York, replied, "I do; his name is Bruno."

"Whether or not we reach agreement on these things, I can't say," he said. "Today is obviously crunch day."

Mr. Pataki also has still not agreed to sign the Legislature's billion-dollar-a-year property tax rebate package, saying there are "technical things we can do better" on the measure. But he focused his press conference on criticizing the Assembly for its legislation on expanding the state's DNA database. The Assembly's legislation would leave out many criminals convicted of misdemeanors, while Mr. Pataki has pushed for their inclusion. The Senate has passed legislation closer to what he wants, and he indicated that he would call a special session if the Assembly did not follow suit.

"Quite simply it's not good enough," Mr. Pataki said of the Assembly's DNA bill. "I am going to continue to work to see that we get the all-crimes bill. If it means coming back, it means coming back."

In a possible peacemaking bid, the governor invited the entire Legislature to a lunchtime barbecue at the executive mansion on Tuesday. After a half-year of contentious relations between the governor and the Legislature, the invitation was met with skepticism even from some Republicans.

"The irony here is delicious," said Senator Michael A. L. Balboni, a Long Island Republican, noting that he and his colleagues would be in session Tuesday afternoon. " 'I'll have hot dogs and hamburgers, but you won't be able to come.' I hate to break this to you, but we work afternoons."

    As Session Nears End, Lawmakers Deal With the Easy Issues, NYT, 20.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/nyregion/20albany.html

NYT        June 5, 2006

With Gay Marriage Ban, Conservatives Keep Score        NYT        6.6.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/06/washington/06bush.html

With Gay Marriage Ban, Conservatives Keep Score

June 6, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, June 5 — President Bush's push for the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage that is being debated in the Senate this week comes as many Republicans and religious conservatives are beginning a campaign to help lawmakers who support it during this year's elections — and to punish those who do not.

Though people on both sides of the debate say they do not expect the amendment to come anywhere near winning approval this week, both sides say they expect it, and an anticipated version in the House, to be used as a conservative litmus test in elections this fall.

"It is true what this vote will do will be to help the voters identify who is and is not supportive of the family," Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, said in an interview on Monday. "And I think those that are not are going to have to answer for it."

Dr. Dobson's group is already running advertisements against senators who do not plan to support the amendment, including one against Senator Ken Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, that says, "Why doesn't Senator Salazar believe every child needs a mother and a father?"

Republican Party officials in several states have released statements attacking Democrats who are not expected to vote for the amendment. And another conservative group, the Family Research Council, is planning to ask lawmakers to take "a marriage protection pledge" and then tell voters who signs it and who does not.

Dr. Dobson and other proponents of the ban got a boost on Monday afternoon, when Mr. Bush called on the Senate to approve the measure. "The constitutional amendment that the Senate will consider this week would fully protect marriage from being redefined," Mr. Bush told a room of religious leaders and advocates.

His speech came as the Senate began to debate the proposed amendment, which would define marriage as being between a man and a woman and would prohibit judges from requiring states to grant same-sex couples the legal benefits of marriage.

It was the second time in three days that Mr. Bush made an address supporting the measure. His speeches were part of an effort by the White House to re-energize culturally conservative voters who have long supported Mr. Bush and his Congressional allies, but who are expressing frustration that their issues have not been pushed strongly enough since 2004.

Pollsters have cited demoralization as a major reason for the low opinion ratings for the president and his party this election year, when Republicans are trying to keep control of the Senate and the House.

Republican officials are hoping that the marriage debate will help them as it did in 2004, when 13 state ballot initiatives banning same-sex marriage or civil unions were credited with drawing many conservative voters to the polls and propelling Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans to victory.

Democrats have called the Republican push for the amendment a diversionary tactic that will not work this year, when voters are focused on other matters like rising gas prices and the war in Iraq. And some pollsters say the issue may not resonate as it did in 2004.

"People are so disillusioned with Iraq and $50 tanks of gas that I don't think it's as much of an attention grabber," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.

But Republican officials note that up to eight states may have ballot measures to ban same-sex marriage, including Alabama, South Dakota, Virginia and Tennessee, where a court decision on a referendum is pending.

Chris Devaney, executive director of the Tennessee Republican Party, said a ballot measure would help drive turnout for whoever wins the Republican Senate primary in August. "People voting for this are generally more conservative," he said. "It will definitely have an effect."

The Democrat seeking the open Senate seat, Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., supports the amendment being debated this week.

Elsewhere, some moderate Republicans, including Senators Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, have not supported the amendment and are also coming under fire from conservative groups.

The Senate debate on Monday showed just how contentious the issue could become.

"Our nation would be better served if we refrained from divisiveness that is wielded like a weapon in order to score political and emotional points before an election," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

Republicans argued that the state of marriage and the American family was exactly the sort of fundamental issue that Congress should take up. "It is not bigotry to define marriage as a union of a man and a woman," said Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas.

Carl Hulse contributed reporting for this article.

    With Gay Marriage Ban, Conservatives Keep Score, NYT, 6.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/06/washington/06bush.html

No Compromise in Sight on Plan to Fight H.I.V.

June 4, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID W. CHEN

TRENTON, May 31 — In every legislative session here but one since 1992, at least one bill has been introduced to allow drug users to exchange used syringes for new ones. And though the details have differed from year to year, one goal has remained constant: to reduce the spread of H.I.V. in a state with one of the nation's highest infection rates.

But 14 years later, New Jersey remains one of only two states — the other is Delaware — that still prohibit both needle exchanges and access to syringes at pharmacies without a prescription.

No one disputes that H.I.V. and AIDS are major public health problems in New Jersey. The state has the country's highest rate of H.I.V. infection among women, who make up 36 percent of the cases among New Jerseyans over 13, and the third highest among children. Over all, almost 33,000 people in New Jersey have AIDS, up from 26,000 at the end of 1998. Forty-one percent of all cases resulted from injection drug use, according to the state health department.

Yet in New Jersey, the effort to make needles freely or more easily available has been blocked repeatedly over the years. Gov. Christie Whitman, a Republican, adamantly opposed the idea, for instance, while Gov. James E. McGreevey, a Democrat, dropped his support in the face of opposition from police chiefs and some legislators.

Now Gov. Jon S. Corzine and the State Assembly are determined to legalize needle exchanges. But once again, the effort is being blocked, this time in the State Senate, where Ronald L. Rice, a Democrat, has struck an alliance with Republican lawmakers, who are in the minority, to keep the legislation bottled up in committee.

To Mr. Rice and other critics, including John P. Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, making needles more accessible suggests that government is condoning an illegal — and destructive — activity. They favor educational campaigns and treatment programs to discourage drug use.

"Needle exchange is a form of keeping people junkies the rest of their lives," said Mr. Rice, a former Newark police officer.

"You don't wipe out a whole lot of people by gassing them," he said. "And you don't wipe people out like the Tuskegee Institute, where we had a bad experience.

"That's what you're doing with this needle exchange," Mr. Rice said. "Those aren't offensive statements; those are examples of what people have been doing to people, and it shouldn't be."

Supporters of needle exchanges counter that they are backed by just about every major scientific or medical organization, including the National Institutes of Health, the American Medical Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, closer to home, the New Jersey Hospital Association.

In New York City, studies have shown that such programs had reduced the rate of new H.I.V. infections by roughly 75 percent since the 1990's, according to Dr. Don C. Des Jarlais, the director of research for the Baron Edmond de Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center.

He cautioned that individual studies might have had flaws, but emphasized that "the sum of these less-than-perfect studies is sufficiently conclusive: All of the research syntheses have come to the conclusion that the programs can and do work."

Across the Hudson, meanwhile, Governor Corzine has said that one of his biggest disappointments since his inauguration in January has been the lack of progress toward a needle exchange program.

Other officials have voiced similar complaints.

"It's a disgrace, a disgrace, that we are so far out of step with other states," said Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr., a Democrat from Camden County.

Noting that California recently made it easier to buy syringes without prescriptions, Mr. Roberts added: "That great liberal voice Arnold Schwarzenegger has been able to tackle this issue, but New Jersey hasn't. We've allowed a few people who have had very loud voices to demagogue the issue and to tie it up, and people are dying each and every day."

The late Senator Wynona M. Lipman, a Democrat, introduced the first needle-exchange bill in 1993. Republicans controlled the Legislature for most of the 1990's, though, and Governor Whitman was one of the most vocal opponents.

In 1996, Mrs. Whitman appointed David W. Troast, a wealthy businessman and social acquaintance from Somerset County, as the head of the state's Advisory Commission on AIDS. But much to everyone's surprise, he endorsed needle exchange after interviewing experts in public health, AIDS prevention and epidemiology.

"There is nothing that we can come up with as effective as a clean-needle program and the retail distribution of needles," Mr. Troast said at the time, a stance that prompted a public spat with Mrs. Whitman.

By the time the Democrats regained control of the Legislature in 2002, needle-exchange supporters were more optimistic. But it was not until after Mr. McGreevey announced plans to resign in August 2004 that he got behind the effort and issued an executive order authorizing pilot exchange programs in Camden and Atlantic City.

Mr. Rice and three Republican legislators, including State Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr., who is now running for the United States Senate, quickly went to court and blocked those programs.

"If the governor could go so greatly beyond his executive order to obviate criminal standards, that was a very bad precedent," Mr. Kean said. "It sends the absolute wrong message to the youth of our state."

Mr. Rice has often worked with Republicans on the Senate health committee, like Mr. Kean, to prevent his Democratic colleagues from garnering a majority of votes. There are five Democrats and three Republicans now, so Mr. Rice's opposition virtually guarantees a deadlock.

Senate Democrats tried earlier this year to expand the health committee by adding Senator Loretta Weinberg, a Bergen County Democrat and needle-exchange advocate, but the proposal fizzled out. Some legislators and aides have said that Democrats were uncomfortable expanding a committee just to push through one bill.

One ardent needle-exchange supporter, Senator Nia H. Gill, a Democrat, has vowed to use her privilege of "senatorial courtesy" to block nominees to various governmental entities when they are from her home county, Essex, and are supported by the Senate president, Richard J. Codey, also from Essex.

She wants him to use his power to bring the needle measure directly to the Senate floor for a vote, bypassing Senator Rice and his Republican allies. But Mr. Codey, a supporter of needle exchange, has been loath to do so, in part because it would break Senate protocol.

"It's about invoking your power and using it for people who have little or no voice in the process," Ms. Gill said.

In another maneuver, some legislators and aides say Mr. Roberts, the Assembly speaker, may be holding up passage of one of Mr. Codey's signature causes, a stem cell research bill, until needle-exchange legislation passes. When asked about a possible link, Mr. Roberts demurred and said only that "we're going to get this done, and I need some help in the Senate to get it done."

But he also said that he was "hopeful they'll both be advanced before we leave in June."

In recent weeks, Mr. Corzine has also made more noise, prompting speculation that he, Mr. Codey or Mr. Roberts might try to find a creative compromise soon. "He has signaled a more aggressive stance and a willingness to speak out," said Anthony Coley, Mr. Corzine's press secretary. "We have an opportunity here to save people's lives, and that's not overstating the case."

Mr. Rice says he is frustrated that his $100 million proposal for residential substance abuse treatment centers has gotten no traction, while proposals on mental health and stem cell research totaling more than $400 million have either become, or are close to becoming, a reality. Yet he says he also knows that his longtime efforts may come up short.

"I may lose the battle at the end, but I'm never going to vote — never," said Mr. Rice, who recently lost the Newark mayor's race. "I'll die before I give a vote to give free needles to people."

Richard G. Jones contributed reporting to this article

    No Compromise in Sight on Plan to Fight H.I.V., NYT, 4.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/nyregion/04needles.html