Brother this information is the kind that causes a bit of a Red Herring when we have these talks, but is an honest mistake made by many.
The real problem with a term like felony is that a lot of people don't understand what that means and there are a ton of urban legends and an even bigger pile of misunderstandings.
Federal law relating to vandalism in parks do ban damage and destruction to park buildings, fences, signs, gates, guide posts, trees, vegetation and mineral deposits. The crime is a only a misdemeanor and the guilty part can face $500 fines and six months in jail.
We had heated debate in Colorado last year at Grand Lodge over this issue where convicted felons can be allowed in. People were not sure what felony meant when they tried to ban it and some of wildest hypothetical were thrown around and 99.9 percent of the information was just blatantly false.
I understand if a Brother is uninformed; but in Colorado for instance, I think the debate would have benefited from men saying, "I am not sure what a felony is, so this makes me uncomfortable" rather than..."I heard if you take more than one newspaper out of a machine its a felony"...."Oh God! I've done that, I think I'm still a good Mason!"....and so on and so forth.
I think its okay to admit we don't know something and research it, but before we provide, if even by accident, a falsehood, we should as Dionysius of Halicarnassus said, "Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent."