Castle Country Radio is conducting weekly Legislative updates with Representative Christine F. Watkins while the general session is taking place this year. She will give a brief report on the dealings on the hill twice a week, so she took time on Thursday, Feb. 2 to speak over the telephone.

She began to talk about House Bill 111, Inmate Treatment Amendments. This bill requires county and municipal jails to allow medication assistance treatment by a state-approved entity for inmates who were active clients prior to incarceration. The medication assistance treatment program administers substitute drugs like methadone to help an individual with withdrawals and addiction. “Some of these people forget that they have a warrant out for them or don’t know they have a warrant out or they kind of mess up on something and they get put back into jail. Not for a long time usually it could be a week or a month, but they’ve already been on this program. So if you put them in jail and don’t keep up with this program, they will go through withdrawals. We’ve had too many people end up in jail all over the state and go through withdrawals and die,” explained Representative Watkins. This has gone through committee and had a unanimous vote; it now is set to go to the floor next week. The bill has the backing from the Utah Sheriff’s Association, which is helpful.

Next up for discussion is lights and illuminating devices – duty to display – time. “Well this representative lives up here in the city. They have the same problem we do in rural Utah and that is people either forget that they suppose to have their headlights on or they want to be a little defiant or I’m just going to put on those little baby yellow lights on or I don’t know. There’s a lot of things, is it a half-hour before or half-hour after, half-hour when. So this just simplifies it from sunset to sunrise you have to have those lights on,” stated Representative. Watkins. This bill sailed through the committee and the house floor, so it’s not going to the Senate.

Finally, House Bill 40 which Representative Watkins proposed, it’s called the Indian Child Welfare Amendments. This bill addresses Indian child welfare issues. This has to do with keeping an Indian child who may be up for adoption or in DCFS custody to remain with their tribe/culture. Right now, there is a lawsuit in Texas that is at the Supreme Court that is addressing this very issue over an Indian child being adopted by a white family. “We’ve had the tribes up here, we’ve had the Attorney General’s Office, we’ve had all sorts of people up trying to figure out how to get this bill moving, it’s probably not going to move. I was just speaking with the Chair of the Committee that I presented to that stopped it and he said we really want to work on it during the summer. So I said you know by then we’ll probably have a ruling from the Supreme Court, so we’ll see. We’ll either still be working on it in the summer or the Supreme Court will come out with a ruling,” said Representative Watkins.

To stay informed on what is taking place at the Utah State legislature visit their website at https://le.utah.gov/