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[Chair Martin LaLonde]: This Thursday afternoon, February 5, and we are going to consider an amendment that representative Donahue has brought on h six two six, and it can be found for those wanting to follow along on today's house agenda. Calendar.
[Rep. Anne Donahue]: Page three. So over
[Chair Martin LaLonde]: to you. Thank you for being here, and thank
[Rep. Anne Donahue]: you for bringing us this amendment. Thank you for having me, representative Van Donahue. I wanna just very briefly reference five separate issues that are things that, there are that came up on the floor that I, at minimum, expressed concerns about. So the first one was about undergarment clad, which you know, it was really a sort of proportionality. I was concerned about how broad that might be. You know? And then with some conversations afterwards, it's actually it may be broad, but it may be way under broad. Maybe there's a lot of things people shouldn't be allowed to do, taking pictures in your private even like your children playing in the backyard when you wanna protect them from being on the Internet in this day and age. So it really ended up being this is something that ought to be addressed potentially in another bill or statute that kind of takes a bigger look at that privacy separate from this. And I also find some of the language that we use is identical in multiple states, as well as this having been there for a long time. Plus my concern with this was tied with some of the liability issues that are being addressed. So the outcome is that when I present this on the floor, the first thing I'm going do is ask for the amendment to be divided, and then I'm going to ask to withdraw the first section. And I'll explain briefly to the body as I just did why I'm not presenting that part. The other two pieces that are not in the amendment, but we may recall them coming up, were both the omission of the civil lawsuit avenue for extortion, even though they were in two other parts. And we got into conversation. I mean, folks on your committee are always good and got into conversation. And there some reasons for considering it separately. And maybe it will or won't be needed to be addressed in the future, but it is something under common law somebody can sue about. So that's why I didn't bring it up or actually some committee members were gonna maybe include it and we're not going there. And likewise with what for me was like a real consistency issue. We've got other variations from the default six years on the look back for statute of limitations that are listed in a portion of civil law. And these ones are in the statute. It turns out, I mean, there are other ones that are only in the statute and other What it all comes down to is kind of that some of the old statutes are in a mess. And we know that about a lot of our old statutes. And so this is not the place to fix it. It does need to get fixed at some point, that whole section of civil law that lists out some changes in statutes of limitation, not others. But it's a bigger issue than here. So no one's proposing anything about that. So that leaves us with the two that are really about the identical issue. And that is the issue I talked about in terms of fairness, in terms of that look back period. And that it really, given the fact that these are crimes that have been created that we're now saying, specifically talking about civil liability and being able to look back, that that look back starting point should be when we baited a crime. The look back is not limited as time goes on. So if it's thirty years from now, the look back may be forty or forty five years, but right now it should only be starting at the point where people are on fair notice. We made this a crime, surprise, you can't do it and protect yourself from being sued. So that's the remaining. And the reason it's second and third is the date of when we enacted that as a crime. They differ between the two sections. One's 2005, the other's 2015. So that's the remaining proposed amendment.
[Chair Martin LaLonde]: Questions? Yeah, Tom. If I thought
[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: somebody wronged me without the crime, it's still fine.
[Rep. Anne Donahue]: Absolutely. You could not file suit against them for something they did twenty years ago if it wasn't a crime yet.
[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: It doesn't have to be a crime for me to sue.
[Rep. Anne Donahue]: No, absolutely. But the standard statute of limitations is six years. And this bill is making it go much further back for this kind of offense, and it's saying, well, but not if it wasn't a crime.
[Chair Martin LaLonde]: Questions for Andy? So it's a crime then, right? No, it is a crime. It's been a crime since 2005 for the '1 and 2015 for the other.
[Rep. Anne Donahue]: So you can go back that far. It makes sense. And in the future, you can still go back that far and it might be forty years.
[Chair Martin LaLonde]: Yep. So any questions for Michelle either? So I would like to take a motion to find the second and third amendment favorable.
[Rep. Anne Donahue]: Second. Is there
[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: a second?
[Chair Martin LaLonde]: Second. All those in favor of finding the second and third amendment found on page three eighty of today's calendar favorable, please raise your hand. Any opposed? Thank you very much for bringing us. That improves the bill, we often see when
[Rep. Anne Donahue]: you bring us amendments. Thank you very much for all of the good dialogue and sorting out the issues. Very much appreciated.
[Chair Martin LaLonde]: Thank you. Alright. So we are adjourned until tomorrow.