News from Across the Nation - April 3, 2017

CALIFORNIA

Remember the days when marijuana was a hazy punch line for Cheech and Chong in the ’70s? Nowadays, growing pot is a big, and legit business, and the government aims to keep it that way. The YOLO COUNTY Department of Agriculture will help local marijuana farmers tag and track their plants and products through the supply chain, The Sacramento Bee reports.

The $30,000 county program was created, with help from a Swiss security firm, to help farmers label, register and ship their products. Paid for by fees from cannabis growers, the pilot program is being used to help prevent diversion of weed to the black market.

There are an estimated 1,000 cannabis growers in the county.

 

COLORADO

Where’s Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, when you need her? PARK COUNTY is chipping in to help attract a doctor to its remote location in the Rocky Mountains, KUSA-TV recently reported. A completely outfitted doctor’s office has been sitting vacant after the area’s last doctor retired three years ago. Residents in the county, population 16,000, currently must drive 80 miles to see the nearest doctor.

The county, along with the communities of Alma and Fairplay, have been working together to try to attract a doctor to the area, including leasing out the doctor’s office for $1 per year. Park County Administration Officer Tom Eisenman said the county could find some money in its discretionary budget to help a doctor offset some startup costs.

FLORIDA

â–  HOLMES COUNTY has written itself a prescription for success — the county will soon have a new home for its administrative offices at an old hospital being donated to the county, the Washington County News reported. Doctors Memorial Hospital donated the property, and the county is renovating it with $7 million in grants from the state. The county is also kicking in $900,000 of its own, from a 30-year bond to be paid in $40,000 annual installments.

The old hospital will be the new home for the county commission’s administrative offices, as well as the supervisor of elections, EMS office, tax collector, property appraiser, FEMA, Veterans Administration and the Holmes County building department.

â–  In PASCO COUNTY, tourists may be shedding their clothing, but the county is draping itself in tourism dollars as the “nudist capital of the world.” The county even spends county funds on the annual nude Caliente “Bare Dare” 5K run, coming up in May. Caliente Club and Resort is one of about a dozen clothing-optional communities in the county. This will be the fifth year the county has chipped in funds for the event.

“The clothing-optional industry has a significant economic impact in Pasco County,” Pasco County Spokesman Doug Tobin recently told WFLA-TV. County officials estimate that runners participating in the race will spend at least $25,000 in hotel charges alone. Race participants will get a chance to cover up — at the end of the race — when each will receive a beach towel emblazoned with “Visit Pasco.”

HAWAII

MAUI COUNTY is giving a helping hand to the homeless, by paying them minimum wages to clean local streets, Hawaii News Now reports. The new program “Clean and Safe,” which costs the county $200,000, seems to be a “win-win” for the homeless population as well as a local community that had its share of an overabundance of homeless people and trash.

As part of the program, retired police officer and Wailuku Clean and Safe ambassador Lawrence Kauhaahaa helps clients get connected to social services. Instead of excluding the homeless, he said, the community includes them in their efforts to solve the problem. “When we talked to them that way, they were really willing to work,” Kauhaahaa told the news service. “A lot of them wanted to work, they were just never offered.”

KENTUCKY

â–  After tragedy struck in a nearby county, FLOYD COUNTY has started a new “Checking On a Senior Today” or COAST, program to check on the welfare of senior citizens who don’t have family living in the area. Anyone who knows or is a senior citizen can sign up for the program by contacting the sheriff’s office. “This program is meant to provide the elderly citizens who live alone a sense of security knowing someone will be checking on them in case a tragedy happens,” Floyd County Sheriff John Hunt said at a news conference announcing the new program.

Nearby ROWAN COUNTY started the COAST program last year after two senior citizens passed away of natural causes and were likely dead for a few days before being discovered by law enforcement officials, the Floyd County Times reported. One senior citizen, whose family had installed a surveillance system, thought their father died of a heart attack. After his daughter watched a video of her father, the newspaper reported, it was discovered he had survived for three days after falling. He crawled a short distance but was unable to make it to the phone to call for help.

MISSOURI

They say that necessity is the mother of invention and that seems to be the case in the Show Me State, where counties have teamed up with cities to track the prescription and sale of opioids, because the state won’t do it. The Associated Press reports that while 49 other states are tracking such information, Missouri is the lone state to drop the ball.

Leaders of ST. LOUIS COUNTY, the city of St. Louis, JACKSON COUNTY, ST. CHARLES COUNTY and a few non-urban counties have banded together to start their own monitoring program, which is scheduled to go online next month, the AP reported. Though the consortium includes only a small percentage of Missouri’s 115 counties, it covers nearly 2.5 million of the state’s six million residents.

NEW YORK

â–  Keep your drones away from the WESTCHESTER COUNTY jail.

The Board of Legislators has outlawed them within 1,000 feet of the jail’s outer fence. That no-fly zone will prevent people from dropping contraband to inmates, The Journal News reported. A drone had been used to deliver heroin to an inmate in an Ohio jail in 2015, and a failed handgun and narcotic drop in Maryland.

Those who break the law will face a penalty and a fine. Second-time offenders can be charged with a misdemeanor.

â–  ULSTER COUNTY is considering passing a law against cyber bullying.

County Executive Mike Hein sees it as a natural outgrowth of his suicide prevention and awareness campaign.

The legislation prohibits “the electronic transmission of information that will cause harm to the minor’s reputation,” including video or photos of uncovered “breasts, buttocks or genitals of the minor” and false sexual information about the minor.

First offenders and those under the age of 16 would wind up in Family Court; repeat offenders wills face a misdemeanor charge, punishable by up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine, the Times Herald-Record reported.

PENNSYLVANIA

CRAWFORD COUNTY commissioners are considering allowing inmates in the county jail to rent computer tablets for a monthly fee. The county’s Prison Board has already approved the plan, the Meadville Tribune reported.

The tablets will cost $20 a month, though the supplier will provide 15 free tablets for use by inmates enrolled in the jail’s new GED program. They operate on secure closed intranet systems, which will include law library resources, 10,000 electronic books, podcasts, approved music stations, job-search software and individual games such as solitaire. They cannot access the internet. Jail officials will be able to monitor activities on the individual inmate tablets and can shut them down if necessary.

TEXAS

Backlit by the national debate over immigration, the EL PASO COUNTY Commissioners Court voted to place “Know Your Rights” pamphlets in county facilities for the undocumented, and their families and friends.

The Mexican Consulate will be providing its existing pamphlets to the county free of charge, though the county may pay to present the information on cards, instead. The information within explains how to respond to certain questions and informs readers they have a right to an attorney, KVIA News reported.

County Judge Veronica Escobar pointed out there are constitutional rights that many, even American citizens, are sometimes unaware of.

VIRGINIA

The ARLINGTON COUNTY Board will decide whether to ban or register exotic pets. The legislation has so far changed to allow hedgehogs; to clarify that most birds are not banned; to add certain spiders, scorpions and centipedes to the banned list; and to bar venomous snakes and weigh them rather than measure them.

The proposal, which will be up for a vote in June, would also create exclusions for zoos, nature centers, veterinary clinics and scientific research facilities, according to the Washington Post.

WEST VIRGINIA

â–  A bill in the Legislature would move up the date inmates in regional jails would become the state’s responsibility, saving counties $3.85 million per year.

House Bill 2845 would make the Division of Corrections responsible for the costs of housing and maintaining an inmate beginning the day after the individual’s conviction. Under current law, inmates remain the counties’ responsibility until they are sentenced, The Intelligencer reported.

The bill will cut down on average about six weeks that the counties don’t have to pay for each inmate, which Del. Joseph Canestraro said worked out to $42.85 a day.

â–  CABELL and KANAWHA counties have joined others around the state and in New York in suing pharmaceutical companies for oversupplying their areas with opioid painkillers and creating a public health hazard with the addictive drugs. MERCER COUNTY plans to join once it selects a law firm to represent it.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, claims 40 million doses were dispensed in Cabell County between 2007 and 2012, even though fewer than 100,000 people lived there in 2010. More than 66 million pills were distributed in Kanawha County, which has a population of under 200,000.

The suit names AmerisourceBergen Drug Co., Cardinal Health Inc., McKesson Corp. and H.D. Smith Wholesale Drug Co. as defendants. It also names CVS, Rite Aid, Wal-Mart, Kroger and Walgreens. MCDOWELL COUNTY filed a similar suit in January. 

News from Across the Nation is compiled by Charlie Ban and Mary Ann Barton, senior staff writers. If you have an item for News From, please email cban@naco.org or mbarton@naco.org.