Senator Grendell responds to child advocates' concerns

Trouble at the last minute
Another of example of legislating without benefit of enough thought
Ohio.com, June 22, 2011.

Red flags should go up whenever legislators make last-minute additions to bills during the final legislative stages. Chances are, such insertions are ill-considered. It is a disservice to the public when they slip amendments into legislation without the benefit of full airing.

The chairman of the Ohio Senate Criminal Justice Committee, Timothy Grendell, added to the criminal sentencing bill, House Bill 86, a notification provision so broad it promised to increase the stigma on foster children who must be placed in new communities due to no fault of their own.

With little time left on the legislative calendar to consider the House-approved sentencing bill, Grendell added language that required children services agencies, when they placed foster children with mental, emotional or behavior problems in new communities, to notify the school superintendent and private school officials within the district, plus the juvenile court, the county sheriff and the chief law enforcement officer of the municipality where the foster home was located.

In short, as child protective agencies quickly pointed out, the amendment applied a notification policy more relevant to the state's sex-offender registry to foster children, whether or not they have had problems with the law. The agencies argue correctly that without any justification, the notification measure would single out and further stigmatize children who already are traumatized by their experiences and need therapeutic care to rebuild their lives in a new environment away from home.

The criminal sentencing bill, including the foster-care notification, is scheduled for a vote on the Senate floor, most likely before the end of the week. Thankfully, Grendell has acknowledged the concerns raised by child advocates. He significantly scaled down the scope of his initial proposal. More reasonably, the proposed notification now would be limited to foster children who are adjudicated delinquent for violent crimes.

Better still would be removing the provision, the proper assessment still lacking, the episode illustrating again the trouble with legislating by stealth.