At 3 p.m. today, local nurses plan to hand-deliver letters of support from nurses in more than 25 states.

Governor Carcieri vetoed the bill, which passed unanimously, in July, citing a nursing shortage and saying at the time that mandatory overtime “should be negotiated through the collective-bargaining process.

In Lynch’s letter to Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva-Weed and Stephen D. Alves, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the Attorney General calls Article 22 “ill-advised” and “myopic.”

But the legislation was enacted into law properly, and it is not flawed, Lynch asserted, and so in his letter he “strongly” recommends that if the law is repealed, it is not done so retroactively.

Since the law took effect July 1, more than thirty-six 17-year-olds have spent at least one night in the state prison, accused of crimes that previously might have resulted in a locked stay at the Training School. Those youths have adult criminal records now instead of a juvenile record that would have been sealed by the Family Court.

The House and Senate posted their calendars yesterday afternoon. The reconsideration of 17-year-olds as adults in criminal matters is on a committee calendar and must clear committee to then go to the floor.