Northern Kentucky legislators have served notice that they intend to sponsor bills that touch on several hot-button issues, including guns on school property and cell-phone use in cars.

Friday was the last day for legislators to pre-file bills for the 2006 General Assembly session. To make it into the legislative hopper, the bills would have to be filed again once the House and Senate convene in January, but legislators may pre-file to prompt public discussion of issues.

Senate President Pro Tem Katie Stine, R-Fort Thomas, is sponsoring a bill that expands on schools' obligation to post notification that it is illegal to bring a weapon onto school property. Signs would have be posted at public entrances to school buildings and stadiums, on access roads and at unenclosed corners of school property, and prosecution under the law would be prohibited if required signs were missing.

Stine said the bill was intended in part to protect hunters who "may be running afoul of the law because the school system hadn't posted their land." Rep. Marie Rader, R-McKee, who is sponsoring a companion bill in the House, said she was also concerned about protecting parents who may drive onto school grounds in a pickup truck with a gun rack.

"I just feel that if we're going to regulate and we're going to punish those people, the least we can do is mark that property," Rader said. She said the House has passed the bill in previous legislative sessions.

Stine's district includes rural Pendleton County, where the county schools superintendent, J. Robert Yost, said the amount of signage required under the bill could become costly, and schools would have to be vigilant in making sure signs remain posted.

Rader said she asked Stine to sponsor a Senate version of the bill, and Stine said got the same request from people in Western Kentucky who knew she was "for Second Amendment rights." In 2004, Stine co-sponsored legislation that allows firearms dealers to locate anywhere other businesses may legally operate.

Stine said that anyone whom her bill rendered immune from prosecution for illegally bringing a weapon onto school grounds could be prosecuted on other charges if the weapon was used to do harm.

Another bill pre-filed by Rep. Paul Marcotte, R-Union, would prohibit the use of a "wireless communication device" by the operator of a motor vehicle unless it was a "hands-free" model or the driver was making an emergency-service call. Marcotte said a survey conducted last year indicated 62 percent of his constituents support such a measure.

Marcotte also pre-filed a bill that would delete Social Security numbers from the information entered on marriage licenses. He said it was intended as a safeguard against identity theft.

Reps. Jon Draud, R-Edgewood, Addia Wuchner, R-Burlington, and Arnold Simpson, D-Covington, all pre-filed bills placing new restrictions on convicted sex offenders. Draud's would require lifetime parole and monitoring, Wuchner's would require school boards to publish a list of sex offenders living in their counties before each school year and Simpson's would require felony sex offenders to have no contact with their victims.

Increase the cigarette tax from 26 cents to 71 cents and extend it to other tobacco products. Draud, the sponsor, said his main aim is to make tobacco use expensive enough to discourage people from engaging in it. He said the bill is unlikely to pass, "but we need to keep the discussion going."

Amend the law on the justifiable use of force in self-defense. Sen. Richard Roeding, R-Lakeside Park, said he modeled the bill on Florida legislation so that those who use deadly force in defense of their lives or homes "would have to end up in court."

Remove writing portfolios from the state assessment program but require their use as an instructional tool. Wuchner and Roeding each pre-filed a bill on the issue.

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