State Law

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine didn't much like wearing seat belts and was in a rip-roaring hurry to play an indispensable role in moderating the meeting between Don Imus and the Rutgers women's basketball team. The results were excruciating for him but educational for the rest of us. Corzine suffered a broken collarbone, leg, sternum, vertebra and about a dozen ribs when the state trooper driving his SUV at speeds that reached 91 mph crashed April 12. And the state's editorialists have been beating him up - in the figurative sense - ever since.

The head of the state Injured Workers Insurance Fund has issued an edict to the agency's employees, warning them that they could face criminal penalties if they make unauthorized disclosures to the press or public.Paul M. Rose, president of the agency, issued the order last week after a series of articles critical of the agency were published recently in The Sun. The stories, which Rose noted in his memo, quoted from internal IWIF documents, including the minutes of IWIF governing board executive sessions and inspection reports for IWIF owned and leased vehicles.

TAKOMA PARK -- By a 5-to-1 margin, voters in a mock election called on the City Council to enact a ban on handguns.The petition question on Tuesday's ballot lost its authority when a Montgomery County Circuit judge ruled that state law prohibits local jurisdictions from passing gun control laws in all but a few circumstances.However, at least two City Council members say they will attempt to draft an ordinance that complies with state law but allows Takoma Park to ban handguns within 100 yards of public places.

A coalition of neighbors filed suit yesterday to block construction of the 41-story Wyndham Hotel, alleging that the city violated state law when it approved the project.The suit filed in Baltimore Circuit Court alleges that when the project was reviewed by the City Council's land-use committee Nov. 20, city officials did not allow opponents to ask questions and did not keep a transcript of the hearing -- both required under state land-use laws.The lawsuit filed by the Scarlett Place Residential Condominium Association and the Waterfront Coalition -- an umbrella group of nine homeowner and business groups -- asks that the ordinances enacted as a result of that hearing be stricken from the city's books.

WASHINGTON -- The national "motor voter" law -- a sweeping election-law change that in one year has added some 10 million voters to the rolls -- withstood its first constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court yesterday.Under the law, states must allow people to register to vote when they apply for driver's licenses. State welfare offices, and other agencies that distribute benefits, also must offer the option of registering to vote.The court turned aside, without comment, an effort by Gov. Pete Wilson of California and members of Congress from that state to scuttle the National Voter Registration Act -- a measure that deeply divided Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

THE SUPREME COURT may not be able to say what exactly is "too much" in a punitive damage award. But, to paraphrase a famous remark by a former justice attempting to describe pornography, it knows "too much" when it sees it.By a narrow 5-4 majority, the court threw out a $2 million punitive damages award handed out by an Alabama jury to a doctor who learned after he bought a BMW that his car had been partially repainted to repair damage incurred in shipping....

OAKLAND -- Steve and Flora Dirlik found their idyllic vacation retreat 200 miles from home, on 5 wooded acres in the mountains of Garrett County. But the Silver Spring couple didn't go far enough to escape the problems of suburbia.Traffic on their gravel road is increasing. Someone broke into their log cabin. The deer, bear and beaver that were once their neighbors are fleeing to a nearby state park.And the Dirliks wonder whether the flow of Baltimore and Washington suburbanites to the county will ever end. "I'd like to see a way to stop the growth," Flora Dirlik says.

A 6-month-old law requiring new-house sellers to disclose hazardous materials on their sites is up for repeal at today's Baltimore County Council meeting.Repeal is favored by the residential-building industry and several council members, who say environmental testing already is done on projects as they are developed and that the law was a hastily considered pre-election bill that adds nothing but paperwork to selling houses.But that view is opposed by a former council member who sponsored the law and by people who contend that buyers of new houses should have the same rights as those buying older ones.

A photo caption in yesterday's editions stated incorrectly that under state law alcoholic beverages would not be sold during primary election polling hours.The Sun regrets the errors.Perfect weather is forecast today for the Maryland primary election to choose Democratic and Republican candidates for governor, U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and for scores of state and local offices.The state's 1,702 polling places open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Registered voters are reminded to bring identification.

Philadelphia. -- The protester is at his regular post, holding a full-color placard of a fetus beside the doorway to the Planned Parenthood clinic on this downtown street.The women who pass by this self-appointed sentinel and assemble in the small conference room are a quiet and a young group. The oldest of them is a mother in her early 30s sitting at a tense distance from a daughter in her early teens.At 11:45, Dr. Cathy Dratman opens the counseling session -- now required by state law -- with an apology.

You pay your money and you take your chances. In the case of the 2007 law that nearly doubled some fishing license fees in return for a review of state fisheries operations by a task force of citizens, it wasn't exactly an instance of us having any say over the opening of our wallets. One could argue that over the years, the General Assembly neglected its responsibility for all Department of Natural Resources operations and then papered over its willful disregard with another helping of anglers' money.

People convicted of driving while impaired twice within five years will have their licenses suspended for a year, according to a state law that will go into effect Oct. 1. The change is among new laws announced Monday during a news conference at the Howard County Detention Center in Jessup. Noting that 152 people were killed last year on Maryland roadways in alcohol-related fatalities and that there were 68 DUI arrests made per day throughout the state, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown said drunken driving is "a public health issue, it's a highway safety priority and it's a crime."

While state law soon will allow ownership of electronic control devices, commonly known as Tasers, Baltimore County has enacted a ban on purchasing the weapons for personal use. The County Council voted unanimously Tuesday to outlaw the devices and made the law effective Sept. 21. The prohibition adds the newest electronic devices to the county's existing ban on the use, possession, sale or discharge of a stun gun, officials said. Violators face a $1,000 fine and the possibility of six months in prison.

The county's General Assembly members are conflicted over the mix of local and statewide issues in the roller-coaster effort to petition to referendum a County Council bill permitting a larger grocery store at Turf Valley. They say they don't want a missing middle initial or the use of a nickname to disqualify an honest signature on a petition. But they're leery of retroactively changing state law. "The whole situation is troubling," said Del. Guy Guzzone, who chairs the House delegation.

SEATTLE - The annual Northwest Folklife Festival is a throwback to hippie days, a mellow celebration of folk music, grilled salmon and sandals with socks in a city that considers laid-back a point of civic pride. So when Joshua Penaluna, 19, felt a sharp pain in his wrist as two men came at him through the crowd at the festival in May, he assumed he had broken a bone as he fell. "Then I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, he's been shot,' " Penaluna recalled. Two other people, including Penaluna's girlfriend, were also hit. The shootings, in a city where sporadic but horrific street crime rattles its culture of progressive cool, sent Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels on a mission: Next month, he will hold a public hearing on a proposed order to ban guns on city property, including at parks, sporting events and street fairs.

When Tubi Retton, 21, approaches ex-felons and offers to sign them up to vote, she says that most decline politely, believing they are barred from casting a ballot. "They'll be like, 'I'm all right' " she said yesterday while conducting a voter registration drive on North Avenue in West Baltimore. "It's not that they're not interested, they just don't know they can vote." She gives a little speech, explaining that a Maryland law was approved and now they can participate, as long as they've completed their court-ordered sentences.

Thousands of Marylanders have had their arrest records removed from public view because of a new state law that requires automatic expungement for those who are detained and released without charge. Proponents say the nine-month-old law is working as intended, removing potential barriers to obtaining employment, housing and loans. Another major change in state expungement law takes effect Oct. 1, when some criminal convictions in Maryland can be wiped out without a pardon from the governor.

It is a crime with an ominous ring - human trafficking - and it occurs when boys and girls and men and women are forced to have sex with strangers or work in unimaginable conditions under the threat of physical harm or some other form of intimidation. Outreach workers and law enforcement officials say they suspect that human trafficking is a growing problem in Baltimore, but, until recently, Maryland's law against it lacked teeth. Pimping a child for sex with adults was a misdemeanor, and forced labor wasn't adequately addressed.

SEATTLE -- Patients using marijuana for ailments such as chronic back pain and cancer are allowed by Washington state law to possess a two-month supply of the drug. But medical marijuana doesn't come with a standard dose or even a standard method of taking the drug. The 1998 law has never spelled out how much usable pot, or how many plants, make up a 60-day supply. Now the state Legislature has demanded an answer to the question by July, and the state is holding hearings to ask experts and citizens for their opinions on how to determine a two-month supply.

Gov. Martin O'Malley signed into law one of the most restrictive smoking bans in the nation yesterday, putting to rest four years of wrangling between public health advocates concerned about secondhand smoke and restaurateurs who claimed the measure would hurt neighborhood mom-and-pop operations. The law requires bars and restaurants, as well as private clubs such as American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars halls, to be smoke-free by Feb. 1. Some businesses eligible for financial hardship waivers from the state would get a three-year extension but must be smoke-free by 2011.