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King speaks at TSTC forum |
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Written by Tatiana Torres
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Wednesday, 17 October 2007 |
The Sweetwater Chamber of Commerce hosted a legislative forum on Tuesday with District 71 State Rep. Susan King at Texas State Technical College West Texas.
Also present at the forum, which was open to the public, were several city and county representatives as well as other members of the community.
King gave a brief update of the 80th legislative session. She said Texas is one of only six states in the country that meets on an every-other-year basis and that they are in full session in odd numbered years.
King spoke about the Castle Doctrine, legislation which designates a person’s place of residence or business as a place in which one enjoys protection from illegal trespassing and violent attack, and also gives a person the legal right to use deadly force to defend that place and/or any other innocent persons legally inside it from violent attack or an intrusion which may lead to a violent attack.
Within the legal paradigm, therefore, it functions as a type of justifiable homicide, King said.
King also gave a brief explanation of Jessica’s Law, which is designed to punish sex of-fenders and reduce their ability to re-offend.
King said a version of Jessica’s Law known as the Jessica Lunsford Act has been introduced on the federal level. Among the key provisions of the law are a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison and lifetime electronic monitoring of adults convicted of lewd or lascivious acts against a victim less than 12 years old or the death penalty or life imprisonment with no chance of parole.
At Tuesday’s forum, TSTC and Sweetwater Chamber of Commerce president Mike Reeser thanked King for the vocational classes bill that was passed.
King said the bill was a bipartisan effort to focus on career and technical education, allowing and encouraging students to take a fourth math or science class in high school to be on the vocational side of education and being able to take dual credit classes.
Asked by Mickey Hayes of Sweetwater Teachers Credit Union what Texas is doing to patrol its borders, King said the state plans to send more people to the borders to take care of tracking who comes in and out of the country.
King also talked about the problems of schools around the state. She said some people be-lieve that many prison facilities in Texas are better than some public schools.
In response to a question by Sweetwater ISD superintendent Ronny Beard if she thought the quality of a student’s education should be impacted by where they live, King said in her opinion it should not be and that there should be no discrepancies in local education.
King said her first legislative forum in Sweetwater was very helpful to her. She also asked community members to contact her office if they wanted to have more open forums and thanked everyone who was in attendance Tuesday.
King is the vice chair of the human services committee and is also a member of the public health and rules and regulations committees.
She represents both Nolan and Taylor counties in the legislature. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 18 October 2007 )
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