Delegate Keam

Today, Delegate Keam presented two of his bills before his colleagues serving on two different committees.  One bill was voted out unanimously to the House floor and the other was postponed for a week to provide more time for Delegate Keam to work with Governor McDonnell’s team on a potential collaborative effort.

Bill that moved: HB 1133.  This bill would clarify the term, “counsel,” as that word is currently used in the process of placing a child for adoption.  Practitioners of family law in Fairfax County asked Delegate Keam to draft this bill to provide better guidance to courts and lawyers who have found that this word could be interpreted very broadly or narrowly.  And differing interpretations could either protract litigation and raise other unrelated factors into an adoption case or resolve it expeditiously in favor of a child’s welfare.

 The Health, Welfare and Institution Committee and Subcommittee today voted unanimously to adopt the narrower definition as proposed by Delegate Keam.  The bill, with a Committee amendment, now moves to the House floor for consideration by the full body, most likely sometime next week.

Here’s the link to this bill and status: http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?101+sum+HB1133

The bill that was postponed: HB 1123.  This bill would require the Secretary of Public Safety and the Secretary of Health and Human Resources to develop recommendations for statutory, regulatory, and other changes necessary to prepare the Commonwealth to take advantage of funding opportunities to improve prisoner reentry services afforded by the Second Chance Act, which Congress passed in 2007.

Having spent two years as the minority staff director of the U.S. Senate Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitations, Delegate Keam is familiar with the need for state and local communities to provide effective re-entry programs so that ex-offenders don’t fall back into a life of crime after they leave prisons.  Helping them get back into society is not only the right thing to do, but makes economic sense as well.  The Commonwealth spends so much of our resources dealing with corrections for repeat offenders.  We should seek innovative, effective and cost-efficient programs to promote positive re-entry so that these people do not end up back in prison.

Governor McDonnell has made re-entry one of his priority issues as well, as he mentioned it during his first address to the Joint Assembly.  Delegate Keam has spoken with the Governor and his Administration officials to seek ways to work together on this important policy goal.  To provide the Administration more time to consider this proposal, the Militia, Police and Public Safety Committee today delayed voting on Delegate Keam’s bill and pushed it over to next week’s agenda.

Here’s the link to this bill and status: http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?101+sum+HB1123