The Iowa and Arizona Senates both took action recently to protect their states’ citizens from domestic violence, as well as to prevent violence from escalating to tragedy.

Iowa’s SF 2357, which passed on a bipartisan 36-11 vote, takes the commonsense step of prohibiting individuals with protective orders or criminal convictions against them for domestic abuse from possessing firearms. As the Democratic Caucus explains, support for this bill is based on the facts surrounding domestic violence:

Since 1995, guns have been used in more than half of all Iowa murders involving domestic abuse. Fifty-four percent of women killed by an intimate partner were shot; 50 percent of men killed by an intimate partner were shot; and 57 percent of children and bystanders killed in domestic violence attacks were shot.

Meanwhile, Arizona Senate Democrats unanimously supported two new bills aimed at making domestic violence easier to prosecute:

SB 1087, which passed 20-8, would add homicide, manslaughter, animal cruelty and sexual assault to the list of crimes that when committed against a family member or intimate partner count as domestic violence.

Given the shameful example of Republican legislators in other states on similar issues recently, it should come as no surprise that all eight of the “no” votes on this bill were cast by Republicans and included both the Senate President and the Republican Majority Leader.

A separate bill approved on the same day would upgrade the choking of a partner to a Class 4 felony. This is an important change for policymakers fighting to end the tragic outcomes that so often follow domestic violence:

[E]xperts consider choking, which can render the victim unconscious in 10 seconds, to be a serious risk factor for escalation to homicide...

Nearly half of female homicide and attempted homicide victims were choked in the past year by their male partner, according to an article in the Journal of Emergency Medicine.

All bills now move on to their respective State Houses for consideration.

We all remember the long, drawn-out recount of the 2008 Senate race in Minnesota. There were issues of signature matching, spoiled ballots, proper registration… and occasionally just the bizarre (remember ”Lizard People?”).

Overall, Minnesota’s electoral system held up quite well through the counting, recounting, and legal challenges. Nevertheless, a process that lengthy will always expose weaknesses in the system, and Minnesota Democrats are working to fix them before the next major election. They’re starting with the source of much of the contention in 2008 – absentee ballots:

Two years ago, election judges rejected about 12,000 absentee ballots, more than 2,000 of them improperly. Those rejected ballots were a major bone of contention in the recount and court case that ended in Democratic Sen. Al Franken's narrow win over Republican Norm Coleman.

The legislation would reduce the number of absentee ballots that are rejected, said Sen. Katie Sieben, DFL-Newport, the bill's Senate sponsor.

"This new system will be less prone to errors," Sieben said.

In 2008, many ballot challenges stemmed from questions about voters' signatures. The bill would replace the process of matching signatures and instead require absentee voters to provide a driver's license or state identification number, the last four digits of their Social Security number or a statement that the applicant doesn't have any of those numbers.

The bill also would shift the responsibility for counting absentee ballots from the more than 3,000 precinct election judges to "ballot boards" in cities and counties. Those boards would consist of election judges trained to handle absentee ballots.

The law also begins the absentee ballot counting process before Election Day, and it requires officials to notify voters if their ballots have been rejected, giving them an opportunity to vote again.

Indiana Speaker Pat Bauer -- a DLCC Board Member -- scored a major victory this week when the state House of Representatives passed his ethics reform proposal by a vote of 97-0.

House Bill 1001 is the most comprehensive ethics plan in Indiana state history:

--The bill requires legislators to report all gifts they receive worth more than $50 — a stricter standard compared with the existing reporting threshold of $100.

--It prevents lobbyists from paying for lawmakers to travel out of Indiana and establishes a one-year "cooling off" period after legislators leave office before they can work as lobbyists.

--Lobbyists who are not lawyers will no longer be allowed to represent multiple clients who might take opposite sides of an issue, and legislative liaisons for state agencies and universities will be required to report their lobbying expenses.
The ethics bill also applies to the governor, other elected state officials and candidates running for those offices.

--Officeholders and candidates will be prohibited from raising campaign funds during odd-numbered years when the General Assembly is writing the state budget. A similar ban already applies to state legislators.

--The bill also forbids those holding statewide office from using tax dollars to pay for radio and television advertisements featuring their likenesses to promote issues and themselves.

The Senate passed HB1001 last week, and the legislation now awaits the governor's signature.

Democratic state legislators across the country made enormous progress on health care reform in 2009, and that trend is set to continue in 2010. Here are some of the state-level reform bills that made headlines this week:

• Idaho: The Idaho House and Senate -- with unanimous support from both Democratic caucuses -- have both passed HB432, a new plan to provide universal access to vaccinations for all Idaho children. Funded entirely by insurance companies and administered by a board of experts, the plan will allow vaccines to be purchased more cheaply and reduce the “free-rider” problem that creates an economic disincentive for insurance companies to cover childhood vaccinations.
  
  
• New Mexico: Democratic-sponsored HB12, which mandates that insurance companies spend at least 85% of their budgets on direct medical care, has been approved overwhelmingly and now awaits the governor’s signature.
  
  
• Ohio: The Ohio legislature has unanimously approved a three-month extension of COBRA health insurance for workers who’ve lost their jobs. The extension will allow Ohioans to take advantage of a 65% CORBA subsidy provided by the federal government for the full 15 months approved by Congress.
  
  
• Wisconsin: The Democratically-controlled Wisconsin Senate has narrowly approved the creation of a limited, state-run insurance program to provide basic coverage for uninsured adults on the waiting list for a more extensive, Medicaid-funded program. BadgerCare Plus Basic would be paid for through individual premiums of $130 per month and would not be supported by tax dollars. The bill, SB484, now moves to the Assembly.

Many states have old laws still on the books that would be wrong and outrageously offensive if proposed today. Progressive California is no exception, which is why Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal introduced legislation to right one such wrong:

AB 2199's targeted section, which was placed into law in 1967, requires the Department of Mental Health to "plan, conduct and cause to be conducted scientific research into the causes and cures of sexual deviation, including deviations conducive to sex crimes against children, and the causes and cures of homosexuality, and into methods of identifying potential sex offenders."

The genesis of Assemblywoman Lowenthal’s bill is also interesting, and it proves once again how important it is for citizens to contact their state legislators about issues that matter to them:

"The fact this language has survived this long is pretty amazing," she said in a news release. "We need to blot it out and make it clear we're moving forward as a society, not backward."

Lowenthal's chief of staff, Will Shuck, said the section was brought to Lowenthal's attention by Equality California, the state's largest gay-rights group.

"This section of the code is deplorable," said Geoff Kors, the group's executive director, because it implies both that homosexuality is an illness and that gays are a threat to children.

Indeed. And one can only hope that no state money is being wasted in search of a so-called “cure” for being gay.

Nearly two years to the day after a twelve-year-old boy literally died of a toothache because of poor access to dental care, a new report by the non-partisan Pew Center on the States grades all 50 states on their success providing dental care to children. 5 of the 6 states that earned Pew’s highest grade have solidly-Democratic legislatures:

Only six states merited A grades: Connecticut, Iowa, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island and South Carolina. These states met at least six of the eight policy benchmarks—that is, they had particular policies that met or exceeded the national performance thresholds. South Carolina was the nation’s top performer, meeting seven of the eight benchmarks. Although these states are doing well on these benchmarks, every state has a great deal of room to improve. No state met all eight targets.

The benchmarks measured each state on various preventive techniques, encouragement for providers to accept Medicaid patients, expanding the number and availability of dentists, and innovation in delivering care more efficiently.

Childhood dental care is often overlooked in the healthcare debate, but it’s also critically important. Early care can help prevent major (and costly) dental problems later in life, and it could have prevented the tragedy two years ago that shocked the nation.

As the Pew report states, all states have room to improve in this area, but we are deeply encouraged by the fact that the six leading states are so diverse. States from every region of the country are represented, as are states with and without large minority populations, rural states, urban states, and states at both the high and low end of the median income scale.

In fact, with the exception of South Carolina, Democratic state legislatures are about the only thing some of these states have in common.

Iowa isn’t the only place where Democrats are holding strong on equality. Over in New Hampshire, whose legislature established civil marriage equality beginning on New Year’s Day, 2010, the Democratically-controlled State House voted down two bills aimed at repealing the new law:

The House voted by a wide margin, 201-135, against a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between one man and one woman. It later defeated a proposed repeal of the state's new marriage, 210-109.

New Hampshire's gay marriage laws passed last year and took effect Jan. 1, two years after civil unions became legal. The laws allow same-sex couples in civil unions to convert their relationship to marriage this year, or wait until the conversion becomes automatic on Jan. 1, 2011.

Sadly, the debate over these bills was marred by several Republican legislators who called the existing same-sex marriages in New Hampshire “a cruel joke,” a violation of “natural law,” or who argued that “homosexuals can change their sexual preference at any time.”

But since equality was the real victor today, we’ll let Democratic State Rep. Robert Thompson have the last word:

"We already have loving, committed same-sex marriage couples in New Hampshire. There has been no detrimental impact to anyone," he said.

Thompson, who married his gay partner on Jan. 2, asked the House, "How has my marriage impacted upon your marriage, or how has it diminished the value of your marriage?"

As DLCC Chairman Mike Gronstal says, it hasn’t – quite the opposite, in fact.

After a court ruling established marriage equality in Iowa, Democrats (lead by State Senate Majority Leader and DLCC Chairman Mike Gronstal) promised to block any bill to ban same-sex marriage in Iowa. A few days ago, Iowa’s Democratic legislators delivered on that promise, effectively blocking a Republican-sponsored marriage ban for the rest of the legislative session:

What Republicans wanted was the right to pull House Joint Resolution 6 out of a committee so that it would be placed on the debate calendar and avoid a legislative deadline this week.

The effort failed in the Senate where a vote was not taken. However, all 18 Senate Republicans signed a petition circulated by Sen. David Johnson, R-Ocheyedan (…)

The House spent almost 30 minutes on a rarely used “call-of-the-House” in which each of the 100 members were ordered into the chambers to vote unless they were previously excused. The House measure ultimately failed in a 45 to 54 vote that was mostly along party lines.

What’s most striking is that each chamber had just a single Democrat willing to go on record supporting the ban. Every other rank-and-file legislator, including many Democrats facing tough re-election campaigns in conservative districts, stood with Majority Leader Gronstal and House Speaker Pat Murphy on the right side of history.

The good folks over at Bleeding Heartland took a moment to acknowledge the role Leadership played in both results:

Murphy and Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal strongly supported the Iowa Supreme Court's Varnum v Brien ruling, and they deserve a lot of credit for holding their caucuses together today. As Gronstal has promised, Republicans will not succeed in writing discrimination into our state's constitution.

Hear at the DLCC, we couldn’t be more proud of our Chairman and all the Iowa Democrats who stood up for equality this week.

While the Washington State Senate considers a Democratic-sponsored jobs initiative, Democrats in the State House are stepping up to support working families in other ways.

Speaker Frank Chopp -- a DLCC Board Member –- kicked things off a few weeks ago by leading the charge against a new ballot initiative to privatize the state-run worker’s compensation insurance system:

House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, said it would be "an absolute tragedy" to privatize the state-run workers' comp system, which has been in place for decades.

"That would be a disaster, and I hope to God the public also agrees on this," Chopp said Thursday.

Washington’s labor leaders prefer the state-run system because it provides more generous benefits than some private plans would, and the plan’s low overhead and efficient operation make it much cheaper compared to costs in other states.

Then late last week, the State House voted to grant collective-bargaining protections to workers at some childcare centers receiving state subsidies:

This measure, House Bill 1329, stirred much controversy in 2009. It passed the House but died after the majority there rejected changes made by the Senate.

House Democrats expect the outcome will be different this time because they are apparently willing to accept revisions pushed by senators a year ago.

If passed by the Senate, this bill would fulfill a promise that slipped through the legislative cracks last year.

Senate Democrats in Washington are focusing on an agenda designed to boost job creation and put the economy back on solid footing in the state:

The plan zeroes in on five elements: Helping small businesses, putting people to work on infrastructure projects, retraining an additional 6,000 workers for high-demand jobs, green jobs and attracting investment in research.

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown told reporters, "Our strategy is like a bull's-eye, putting the existing jobs and businesses that are essential to our recovery at the center, and rippling steadily outward toward the jobs of the future that are the key to our competitiveness over the long term."

The 2010 regular session began in the state on January 11th.