Holden clears desk of remaining bills ahead of deadline

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Gov. Bob Holden cleared his desk of bills Friday, inking into law everything from a state grape to an abduction alert system and new restrictions on annoying e-mail solicitations.

The governor also signed bills providing more oversight of the Department of Transportation and more public notification about the whereabouts of sex offenders.

By the end of Friday, Holden had signed or vetoed all 254 bills passed by the Missouri Legislature during its session that ended in May. The governor had until Monday to act and plans to re-enact some of the bill signings today in southwest Missouri.

During a bill signing ceremony Friday at the Capitol, Holden also announced he had vetoed a bill overhauling Missouri's child abuse and neglect system.

Holden had expressed concerns about the foster care bill and had sought promises from lawmakers to revisit some of the provisions. In the end, he said the bill "would have caused more harm to the system than good."

Republican House Speaker Catherine Hanaway called Holden's veto political and pledged to try to override it in September.

Among the bills signed privately by Holden was one requiring Missouri's existing list of sex offenders to be posted on the Internet. The online registry would be searchable by name, ZIP code and address.

Lawsuit filed

The bill signing came just one day after a group of registered sex offenders filed a lawsuit in Jackson County challenging the constitutionality of the current Missouri law requiring sex offenders to register with authorities in their home counties.

Every state has a version of the sex-offender registration law, known commonly as "Megan's Law" after a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and killed by a convicted sex offender who had moved in across the street.

Also signed Friday was a bill requiring unsolicited commercial e-mail contain the coding "ADV:" in the subject line to indicate that it is an advertisement. If an e-mail contains obscene material, then the subject line would be required to have the code "ADV:ADLT."

The legislation was a toned down version of a proposal by Attorney General Jay Nixon that originally would have established a list of off-limits e-mail addresses similar to the state's popular no-call list for telemarketers

Holden also signed into law a measure in which the state Department of Transportation would be examined by an outside inspector general controlled by the Legislature.

The department already has an internal inspector general who reports to the state Highways and Transportation Commission. That position would remain, even though the law would specifically create a new government job to do much of the same work.

During a public ceremony, Holden signed bills putting into law a method of notifying the general public and other law agencies of some kidnappings. The law largely duplicates a system established last year under an executive order by Holden.

Although it is called the Alert Missouri system here, similar systems nationally have become known as Amber Alerts -- named for a 9-year-old Texas girl who was abducted and murdered in 1996. Some Texas residents believed instant publicity might have saved her, and they later persuaded a radio station to report possible kidnappings.

Other bills signed publicly by Holden establish the Norton/Cynthiana as the official state grape and increase filing fees for court cases to help provide legal aid to low-income defendants.

Another bill tweaks Missouri's elections laws to comply with a federal law that could provide as much as $76 million in grants over four years to Missouri.

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On the Net

Missouri Legislature: www.moga.state.mo.us

Gov. Bob Holden: www.moga.state.mo.us