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 taking place on the hill twice a week, so she took time on Monday to speak over the telephone about House Bill 352 and OHV vehicle registration.

House Bill 352 is an Amendments to Expungement and addresses the expungement of records. This was a bill that was put into effect about five years ago and since that time there is a long wait list for individuals to have their records expunged. “The Representative wants to put a hold on a certain section of those expungements that need to be done. Get caught up with the most recent because we know some of them at the tail end people have died or don’t even care anymore. We want to hurry and catch up with the front ones and then if you are in there, anywhere and you meet the timeline requirements, if this passes through the Senate. You can go get a piece of paper, just one simple piece of paper, and say this is my name, this was my crime or whatever the number is, and I would like it expunged. You can actually turn that in and it moves you to the head of the line,” stated Representative Watkins. Right now, the state is behind on getting expungements completed and if this bill passes the Senate, it will speed up the process of future expungements.

There was a discussion on OHV registrations and how those can be presented to law enforcement officials. “This one will allow operators of OHV to show proof in multiple ways. One is, they can have the physical registration on them, or they can have a digital copy or photograph of the registration card on their phone or an app that’s going to be approved by the agency, I’m not sure that they have that up app, up an going, but they will,” explained Representative Watkins. This will allow operators of OHVs to have registration information of their vehicle handy and ready to present when asked for.

There is a change that will be going on with Marriage Modification as Watkins explains, “We run into these once in a while and it’s dated in 1965. It was funny in that the bill said back then, okay if you’re married to someone that is a different race or ethnicity, you’re legal up until 1965. Anytime after that you’re not legal. So what we’ve done is what he’s doing is taking this out that you can be married to anyone regardless of their race, ethnicity, national origin, – no sweat.”