The Rhode Island State House. Photo by Lindsay Lerner
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – A Rhode Island lawmaker wants to repeal a number of outdated state laws, including one restricting how much seaweed residents of one beach town can use as fertilizer and another requiring vehicles to give a “timely, audible signal” to those they pass.
House Majority Whip John Edwards has introduced a bill to create a joint committee within the General Assembly to recommend which are no longer needed. The legislature would consider the suggestions at the start of each year.
Edwards says it’s time to start reducing the laws people have to comply with.
Here are some of the state’s strange-but-true laws still in effect:
-Residents of Barrington may, at all times between the rising and setting of the sun, take up and carry off up to two loads of seaweed each in any one day from the town’s public beach to use as fertilizer.
-Every person who, by previous appointment or arrangement, meets another person and engages in a fight shall be imprisoned for not more than 10 years or be fined up to $5,000.
-The driver of a vehicle overtaking another vehicle proceeding in the same direction shall give a timely, audible signal and pass to the left at a safe distance.
-No person shall feed garbage to swine without first securing a permit.
– It is the duty of the director of environmental management to supervise the movement of live poultry from place to place within the state.
-In municipalities where pickled fish are packed for sale or exportation, the packers of every city or town shall see that the fish have been properly pickled and repackaged in casks.
-The councils of several cities and towns may appoint an inspector of saleratus, or bicarbonate of soda, and cream of tartar.
-Whenever any religious society holds a camp, tent, grove or other outdoor meeting, no person without the consent of the religious society shall hawk or peddle any “spirituous or intoxicating liquors” within a mile of the meeting.
-Every person guilty of profane swearing and cursing shall be fined up to $5.
-No windmill shall be erected, placed, or continued within 25 rods of any traveled street or road.
