Assorted New State Legislation

A few interesting items from yesterday's legislative email:

A new bill spelling out definitions of internet predators and setting up a structure for the state police to keep a registry of their online accounts.  Social networking sites (defined in such a way that might exclude business networking sites, though not being a lawyer I could be wrong on this) can check that registry.  See HB 1233.  From solely a layman's reading this sounds good to me.

The Local Government Committee was busy yesterday.  Several bills, HB 1224 - HB 1231 were introduced.  Several of these concerned how vacancies for township and county elected offices were to be filled, and more importantly, for what reasons people could be removed from office.  Mary Jo Daley sponsored many of these so I'm assuming they are good.  One concern, especially in HB 1227, is that is calls for an appointed replacement county commissioner to serve out the remainder of the term -- no mention of a special election.  But again, I'm not a lawyer so it may be in there and I just don't grasp it.

Those interested in public transit's use of natural gas powered buses should review HB 304.

You can review legislation by typing in bill numbers or keywords at:  http://www.legis.state.pa.us/index.cfm