SENATE OVERRIDES GOVERNOR'S VETO OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA

And as the clock ticked toward a new fiscal year, the Senate also
releases the state's $6.35-billion budget that was signed by Governor Carcieri.

PROVIDENCE -- Working late into the night, weary lawmakers slogged on
toward adjournment yesterday, battling over whether to institute new
controls on prostitution and wine sales, confirming a new director of
the state Department of Environmental Management and holding a Senate
vote to override Governor Carcieri's veto of medical marijuana legislation.

In voting 28 to 6 in favor of the override, senators rejected
objections of Senate Minority Leader Dennis L. Algiere, R-Westerly,
who said that while the governor supports "effective pain management
techniques," marijuana is "an addictive drug" and the override would
mean that "nearly anyone" in the state could grow the plant.

The House sponsor of the bill, Rep. Thomas Slater, D-Providence, said
House Speaker William J. Murphy, D-West Warwick, had agreed to an
override vote, but not today.

With hours to go before a new lead-paint safety law was scheduled to
kick in, the House joined the Senate in voting to delay the law's
implementation to Nov. 1. The bills to do so still need a Senate vote
before they go to the governor.

The debate continued at press time. But first, Rep. Roger Picard,
D-Woonsocket, won what he said was a symbolic vote from his
colleagues in favor of a different bill to delay the law one year,
calling the longer lag a "prudent thing to do."

And with hours to go before the start of the new fiscal year, at
midnight, the Senate released, to the governor, the state's
$6.35-billion tax-and-spending package for the new year. Carcieri
signed the bill last night, marking the first time the budget was
finalized on time since July 2002.

Over loud Republican objections, the House passed a bill giving the
Narragansett Bay Commission the status of a regional agency
controlled by the representatives of the towns it services.

The Bay Commission provides sewage treatment for 360,000 people in
communities, which are Providence, North Providence, Johnston,
Pawtucket, Central Falls, Cumberland, Lincoln, the northern portion
of East Providence and small sections of Cranston and Smithfield.

The commission is building the largest public works project in the
state, a huge underground system to keep sewage from flowing into the
Bay when rainstorms overwhelm existing sewer systems.

The bill, one of several implementing the separation-of-powers
amendment to the state Constitution, would give control over the
commission to a board appointed by the mayors of the communities it served.

Democrats insisted that the cities and towns, whose residents pay the
commission's expenses through their sewer bills, should control the agency.

The Republicans pushed an unsuccessful amendment that would have
given the governor control over the board and the power to appoint
its members. They argued that even though the commission handles its
own finances, the state would end up paying the costs if it failed.

THE HOUSE ALSO battled at length over a bill that would prevent local
wineries from taking Internet and telephone orders from Rhode Island
customers; a prohibition opponents said would also end up blocking
customers in many other states from placing such orders.

The bill was backed by wine wholesalers and liquor retailers as their
answer to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which said states
cannot apply one law to in-state wineries and another to out-of-state
wineries. Rhode Island residents, under state law, must be physically
standing at an out-of-state winery in order to have that wine shipped
to their home address.

House Corporations Committee Chairman Brian Patrick Kennedy,
D-Hopkinton, suggested the state instead open up its ordering laws.
He distributed a letter from state Economic Development Corporation
Executive Director Michael McMahon, who maintained that the
wholesalers' bill, if approved, could cost the state lost sales taxes
and "the benefit of a strong, locally grown and nurtured $2.4-million
vineyard industry.

Lawmakers whose districts include the state's four wineries supported
Kennedy's proposed amendment. They said Internet sales were a small
fraction of the market -- but a crucial one for small businesses
looking to get their product more widely known.

But the sponsor, Rep. Norman Landroche, D-West Warwick, countered
that the state should preserve its "three-tier" system where wineries
sell to wholesalers who sell to retail stores, and its requirement
that there be a "face to face transaction" to purchase alcohol as a
safeguard against selling to minors.

House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, D-Providence, acknowledged the
bill could hurt local wineries but said it was "the only way to
create a barrier" against opening up the Rhode Island consumer market
directly to the world.

Lawmakers voted 20 to 42 against Kennedy's amendment, and then 46 to
19 in favor of Landroche's bill. A similar Senate bill is also
awaiting a House vote.

The House also passed a bill that would require anyone applying for a
massage license to be fingerprinted and undergo a national criminal
background check; allow the state to deny a license to anyone with a
conviction for a sexual offense; and give the state the power to
immediately shut down any massage parlor with unlicensed employees.

The bill, from Rep. Joseph Moran, the Central Falls police chief, is
an attempt to get at a loophole in state law that prevents the police
from arresting people for indoor prostitution. The police say
brothels hide behind a facade that they are "massage parlors" or "spas."

Opponents, like Rep. Arthur Handy, D-Cranston, said the bill casts
"an enormously wide net" that will provide new hassles for legal
masseuses trying to get licensed but will fail to catch prostitutes,
who won't bother with the state paperwork.

But Rep. Joseph McNamara, D-Warwick, hailed it as a "creative
approach to a problem which has been around for centuries." The bill
passed by a vote of 53 to 11; it now goes to the Senate.

IN OTHER legislative action yesterday:

The Senate confirmed W. Michael Sullivan as the new director of the
state Department of Environmental Management. Sullivan, a professor
of agronomy at the University of Rhode Island, is a former state
senator and Richmond town councilor and now the first scientist to
head the DEM.

The Senate sent on to the governor legislation that would prohibit
any community from having a residency law for any municipal employee.

The House voted to give the children and spouses of any Rhode Island
National Guard member killed in the line of duty the right to four
years of free tuition at any state college. The state already offers
the benefit to the families of slain police officers and
firefighters. The legislation now goes to the governor.

The Senate sent to the governor a bill that would give the attorney
general the power to review an ownership change at a public radio
station and, if he determines that a sale or transfer is not in the
community's interest, to level a "conversion fee" based on all
donations plus the station's annual revenue. The bill stems from a
recently canceled proposal by Boston University to sell WRNI-AM in Providence.

The Senate voted in favor of banning the additive MTBE, or methyl
tertiary butyl ether, from gasoline sold in Rhode Island beginning on
June 1, 2007. The additive travels quickly through ground water, and
was responsible for contaminating the drinking water of thousands of
Burrillville residents in 2001. The House has approved similar legislation.

The Senate sent the governor a bill that would make it easier for
landlords to evict students with seasonal leases.