More crime funds to go to victims
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Victims of crime would have access to hundreds of millions more dollars next year under a provision included in the budget resolution that was being considered on Tuesday.
In response to calls from multiple U.S. senators, including Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the budget resolution provides an estimated $2.5 billion in funds to victims of child abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, and other crimes without using taxpayer dollars.
“The Crime Victims Fund was created to help those victimized by crime, but unfortunately it has been used as a slush fund for unrelated budget items for over a decade,” said Corker. “This provision will help address one of the many gimmicks used by Congress, and I am pleased it was included in the budget resolution.”
The Crime Victims Fund supports services to victims of crime, through direct compensation to victims and by funding Child Advocacy Centers, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and other victim service groups.
The fund receives no taxpayer dollars; it is funded by fines and penalties collected from convicted criminals.
The budget resolution includes a provision, modeled after legislation introduced by Senators Corker, Toomey, Ayotte, Crapo, and Gardner, that stops Congress from diverting hundreds of millions of dollars from victims of crime.
Nationally, crime victims will have access to an estimated $2.5 billion, or two-and-a-half times the amount the president requested in his budget proposal.
Lawmakers delay boosting cost of open records
Sponsors delayed action on legislation that could have made accessing public records more expensive for citizens and news media, but lawmakers in the 109th General Assembly moved ahead on other changes to the state’s public records law, according to the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government (TCOG) on April 28.
A new exemption was added to make performance evaluations of more state employees confidential. Another was added to make sure student academic and health information remained private. And yet another reinforced already existing exemptions to protect credit card numbers and email addresses of citizens held by government.
The most far-reaching public records bill was one that never made it to committee for discussion — a proposal to impose new fees on citizens who asked to inspect public records.
In late March, State Sen. Jim Tracy (R-Shelbyville) and state Rep. Steve McDaniel (R-Parkers Crossroads) put the brakes on the proposal. Instead, they asked the Office of Open Records Counsel and the Advisory Committee on Open Government to study the issue more comprehensively and hold hearings later this year.
The original bill was a top legislative priority for the Tennessee School Boards Association and called for eliminating the right of citizens to look at public records for free and for allowing government to charge per-hour labor charges if a request took more than one hour of a staff person’s time and involved more than 25 pages of documents.
Currently, the law only allows a person to be charged “reasonable” fees if he or she requests copies of a public record, but specifically prohibits charges if someone simply wants to view a public record.
See more information online at http://bit.ly/TennOpenRecords.
Veto-proof Iran Act in debate
Appearing on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom” on April 30, Sen. Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the reason Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif doesn’t want the U.S. Congress and the Amer-ican people to review a final nuclear agreement is because Iran thinks it can get a better deal straight from the Obama administration.
The Senate is currently debating Corker’s legislation, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, that requires President Obama to submit any final deal to Congress before being able to waive or suspend congressional sanctions. The bill now has 67 Senate sponsors, giving it enough votes to override a potential presidential veto.
“I think [Iran’s Foreign Minister] feels that if he deals directly with the administration and does not come through the United States Senate, like my bill will cause us to do, I think he feels like he can get a better deal,” said Corker. “I think if he knows we are going to be checking all the details … that this deal is going to have to be a lot tighter and therefore not as much in their favor, and obviously he is upset about that.”
Corker also sees it as important to restrict the president’s ability to waive congressional sanctions while lawmakers in the Senate and House of Representatives consider whether to approve or disapprove of any final agreement.
“The president has the unilateral ability today to do whatever deal he wants to do with Iran and go straight to the U.N. Security Council … without Congress — on behalf of the American people — playing any role,” added Corker. “We have a bill to take back that national security waiver … and say, ‘No, we want to go through these details on behalf of the American people. We want to put a stay on your ability to lift these sanctions before we have a chance to weigh in.’”
For more information on the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, visit http://bit.ly/IranAct.
