SENATE DEMOCRATIC WRAP-UP FOR THE WEEK OF
September 22, 2003

By a 47 to 1 vote, the state Senate this week adopted a conference committee report on Senate Bill 8, which calls for a tougher blood-alcohol standard for determining drunk driving.

Under Senate Bill 8, the maximum blood-alcohol level at which a person could be charged with drunk driving would be lowered from .10 percent to .08 percent. This comprehensive approach, which also would expand treatment programs, would use a three-tired penalty system that imposes tougher penalties on motorists with higher blood-alcohol levels.

 Enactment would put the state in compliance with a federal dictate that requires states to enact the tougher drunk driving standard by October 1, or forfeit about 2 percent of federal highway dollars.

Each year, over 40 percent of Pennsylvania’s highway deaths are alcohol-related. The bill now returns to the House.

The Senate voted 45-3 to adopt House Bill 297, which authorizes the Department of Public Welfare to implement a monetary assessment on nursing facilities to generate additional revenues so that medical assistance recipients have access to medically necessary nursing facility services.  The bill also establishes the Kinship Care Program within DPW. This program would require county children and youth agencies to give relatives first consideration in placements when the county agency has legal custody of a child or has removed the child from its home under a voluntary placement agency.

The bill now returns to the House. 

The Senate unanimously approved House Bill 318, which repeals an obsolete act dealing with the prevention and spread of rabies.  More up-to-date standards are contained in several other sections of state law.

The bill now goes to the governor.

By a unanimous vote, the Senate approved House Bill 89, which amends Pennsylvania’s estate law to give a special inheritance privilege for people whose spouses died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Under the bill, the surviving spouse would receive the full amount of compensation, rather than the first $30,000 plus one-half the balance of the estate currently in place.

The measure now goes to the governor.