TALLY SHEET: From cutting tax brackets to regulating porn

Staff reports |  As the legislative session heads toward the halfway mark in terms of legislative days, lawmakers for the first time introduced fewer than 100 bills over the past week with the Senate tallying 32 new bills and resolutions and the House eight more.  Among the interesting bills introduced were measures calling for the end of top income tax brackets and regulation of pornography:

IN THE SENATE

Child restraint.  S. 478 (Hutto) seeks to revise the age, weight and position rules for children who must be secured in a child passenger restraint system in a vehicle.  H. 3864 (Bernstein) is similar.

FOI videos.  S. 481 (Hembree) would allow certain video and audio data from police mounted video and audio machines to be considered public information and require police to get a court order to keep them from being disclosed, with several provisions.

Priority projects.  S. 492 (Senn) seeks to get the state’s transportation plan to include priority projects in various categories of its infrastructure plan, with many provisions to reformulate the Transportation Commission’s work.  S. 505 (Grooms) is related.

IN THE HOUSE

Pregnancy accommodations.  H. 3865 (Bernstein) seeks to append state law to accommodate conditions related to pregnancy for women in the workplace, with several provisions.

Income tax brackets. H. 3881 (Pope) seeks to eliminate the 4, 5 and 6 percent income tax brackets and replace them with a 3.75 percent tax, with several provisions.

Pyramid schemes.  H. 3883 (Sandifer) seeks to make pyramid promotional schemes be considered unfair trade practices, with several provisions.

Homeowners’ associations.  H. 3886 (Crawford) seeks to clarify and expand regulation of homeowners’ associations, with many provisions.

Porn.  H. 3887 (Burns) seeks a resolution “to recognize and acknowledge the public health hazard of pornography which leads to a broad spectrum of individual and societal harms” and seek regulations related to pornography.

Workplace freedom.  H. 3891 (J.E. Smith) seeks the “Workforce Freedom Act” to prohibit employment discrimination in several forms.