Michigan Votes Forum

Introduced in the Senate on February 18, 2009

The vote was 37 in favor, 0 opposed and 0 not voting

(Senate Roll Call 66 at Senate Journal 0)

Click here to view bill details.

Senator Richardville’s statement is as follows:

I do respect the previous speaker’s comments. I don’t believe that in the case of a child’s death we can err in the way of not having enough people looking at it. Senate Bill No. 259 allows for independent review and analysis of child death data. Today, there are multiple entities, this is true, that annually review the death of children.

This bill will allow for all the information collected to be sent to a central location and reviewed by an independent source at the request of both the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. As indicated in the substitute that we adopted yesterday, this is not a mandate, and any cost would be controlled by the two chambers’ leaders and the Legislative Council.

So I don’t think that this is a redundant operation. I think instead what it does is consolidate a lot of information, allowing us to take a look at it in a combined way, and hopefully, get to the root cause of any deaths of children.

Senator Brater’s statement is as follows:

There is some concern about the fate of children in this state and protecting them from death. I think that is a laudable goal. I am concerned about duplication of efforts, especially since our money for juvenile services in this state is spread very thin already.

If you are concerned about children who experience fatalities, I hope that you are also concerned about children who are alive but living in a living hell. Right this minute in our corrections system there are children who are mentally ill in our prisons for no other reason than that their parents could not get them access to mental health care. They are being preyed upon. Whether they are in youth facilities separated from adults or in adult facilities, they are being preyed upon and victimized right this minute by others in the system who are not ill. Not only that, but they are also at risk of death because some of them commit suicide.

So I hope that you will think very carefully about having a bill before us that deals with an issue that is very easily understood and is a very urgent problem to address. We have had legislation pending on this floor for years now that was meant to take care of children in this state that you have ignored. So I will vote for this legislation, even though it is redundant, with the hope that the House will fix it and the hope that you will pay attention when I ask for you to think about these children who are in our juvenile justice system not getting the proper care.

The following bill was read a third time: