LEGISLATIVE UPDATE Week 8 of the 2021 Regular Session

SENATOR JASON HOWELL’S LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

Week 8 of the 2021 Regular Session

With the end of the 2021 Regular Session in sight, fellow lawmakers and I are wrapping up legislative efforts by passing a variety of bills and finalizing the state’s annual budget.

As bills move through the process, vetoes are always a possibility. With that, the General Assembly needs to pass most bills by Tuesday, March 16, to consider any veto overrides that may be necessary.

Why so soon? The legislature will recess on Tuesday, March 16 and will reconvene on Monday, March 29. During the recess period, the Governor will have time to consider bills that have arrived on his desk. Upon returning to the Capitol at the end of the month, the legislature will only have 2 days remaining to pass additional legislation and override any vetoes. Therefore, any legislation sent to the Governor during those final days will not be eligible for a veto override, as we are constitutionally required to conclude Regular Session business before April 1 in odd numbered years.

In other news, the House and Senate have overridden the Governor’s vetoes on Senate Bill (SB) 3 and House Bill (HB) 6. Since both of these measures contain what’s known as an emergency clause, the bills go into effect immediately upon becoming law rather than 90 days after adjournment.

Senate Bill 3 moves the Office of Agricultural Policy under the jurisdiction of the Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner’s Office. Moving these critical boards under the authority of the Commissioner of Agriculture streamlines our efforts to strengthen Kentucky Agriculture and help our farmers. The office’s official role is the promotion of interests of agriculture and horticulture, agricultural revenues, and the protection of Kentucky’s livestock industries.

House Bill 6 strengthens an already existing legislative committee which, with the passing of this bill, would become the Legislative Oversight and Investigations Committee. It codifies subpoena powers, gives the committee the ability to maintain the confidentiality of investigative documents, and imposes fines on those in non-compliance with the committee’s efforts.

Several bills are now with the Governor for consideration including:

Senate Bill 102 expands the Kentucky Proud agricultural marketing program to allow products produced from Asian carp, paddlefish, or sturgeon to be qualified to use the Kentucky Proud logo on packaging as long as the fish were harvested from a body of water in Kentucky.

House Bill 312 limits the ability of people who do not live, work or conduct business in Kentucky to obtain records through the state’s open records law. These restrictions would not apply, however, to out-of-state journalists. A second section of HB 312 would explicitly allow open record requests to be made via email. A third would provide a standardized form for the requests but not require that it be used. Under this bill, the time to comply with requests would also be lengthened to five days from three.

House Bill 518 would change the makeup of the Kentucky State Fair Board and clarify how it operates. Not only does the fair board operate the Kentucky Exposition Center where the state fair is held, but it also operates the Kentucky International Convention Center in downtown Louisville. The two properties have an annual $500 million economic impact and generate $40 million in taxes.

The General Assembly took significant steps regarding the one-year State Budget this past week. Biennial budgets, or two-year budgets, are traditionally enacted in even-numbered years, the 60-day regular sessions of the General Assembly. As the budget was being crafted last year amid the pandemic’s onset, legislators did not know what the economic outlook, and therefore, what state revenues would be. Out of an abundance of caution, it was determined to pass only a one-year budget, then return to the 30-day session this year to pass another. This year’s budget will essentially be a continuing budget and will look similar to last year’s budget.

The budget conference committee met to publicly review and discuss decisions regarding the budget proposals from the Governor, the House, and the Senate. This committee consists of Majority and Minority Leadership and Appropriation and Revenue Committee Chairmen from both chambers. You can find the archived video of budget conference committee meetings by visiting www.ket.org/legislature/archives.

These final days of the session will be busy, so I encourage you to utilize the many legislative resources available to the public. Stay up to date on committee meetings and bill activity by visiting the LRC’s website at www.legislature.ky.gov. Additionally, you can stream live legislative coverage by logging onto www.ket.org/legislature.

If you have any questions or comments about these issues or any other public policy issue, please call me toll-free at 1-800-372-7181 or email me Jason.Howell@LRC.ky.gov.

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Note: Senator Jason Howell (R- Murray) represents the 1st District including Calloway, Fulton, Graves, Hickman, Lyon, and Trigg Counties. Senator Howell serves as Vice-Chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on licensing & Occupations. He is also a member of the Senate Standing Committees on Agriculture; Banking and Insurance; and Health and Welfare. Additionally, Senator Howell serves as a member of the Capital Projects and Bond Oversight Statutory Committee. For a high-resolution .jpeg of Senator Howell, please visit: https://legislature.ky.gov/Legislators%20Full%20Res%20Images/senate101.jpg.

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(KY) SENATOR DAVID GIVENS’ LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

For Immediate Release

April 6, 2018

SENATOR DAVID GIVENS’ LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

After a productive 58^th day of the 2018 Legislative Session that saw the passing of several significant bills to benefit the Commonwealth, we have now entered a 10-day “veto recess” where Governor Matt Bevin will have the opportunity to sign and veto bills passed by the Kentucky General Assembly. The most significant measures to pass on Monday, April 2, were a budget and a revenue bill that will dictate how our state collects and appropriates funding for the next two years.

Some of the budget highlights included historical funding levels for state education, including record-high SEEK per-pupil funding, in addition to funding SEEK transportation at historic levels. All the charter school funding language was also removed from the budget. We fully funded the Department of Veterans Affairs and the State Police and shored up our state’s pension systems, including the Teachers’ Retirement System, by fully funding them. This bill also ensures that retired teachers will see no health care premium increases or coverage decreases. Lastly, there are raises for our social workers who are on the front lines of taking care of our state’s most vulnerable.

Kentucky’s ailing pension systems have commanded significant funding increases in recent years and in order to honor our commitment to our retirement systems, we needed to come up with some added revenue to protect other vital government entities from funding reductions. Our approach decreased Kentucky’s tax income rate while broadening the tax base, a shift to a more consumption-based tax system which relies more on spending habits. This allows Kentuckians to keep more of their hard-earned income.

People have expressed concern to me that HB 366, the state’s revenue bill that also includes tax reform, raises the income tax on Kentucky’s most vulnerable. This is simply not the case. This proposal creates a flat income tax of five percent. If you make less than 133 percent of the poverty level (roughly around $18,000 or less) you are exempt from paying income taxes. If you make between $18,000-$75,000, your tax income tax rate will be lowered from 5.8 percent to five percent, keeping more money in the pockets of hard-working Kentuckians.

These are just a few of the biennium budget highlights, but ultimately our focus remained on fully funding education, providing for our public protectors, and ensuring our pension systems are fully funded. In our budget bill, we dedicated approximately $3.3 billion in funding, nearly 14 percent of the total budget, to help fund these ailing pension systems. We made a promise to our state employees, and these two bills help us keep that promise.

In addition to passing the Commonwealth’s budget and revenue bills, we passed a number of other measures this week. House Bill 1 is a comprehensive overhaul of Kentucky’s foster care and adoption system. More than 8,600 Kentucky children are now in foster care and awaiting permanent homes, and the need for such reform has been obvious for a long time. House Bill 1 includes major provisions that would expand the definition of blood relative for child placement.

The legislation would also require more case reviews for each child in foster care, create a “putative father registry” so that a child’s possible (but not verified) biological father can be notified of the child’s prospective adoption, and allow the state to seek termination of parental rights for new mothers who will not seek drug treatment after giving birth to a drug-addicted baby.

Senate changes to HB 1 that made it into the final bill include provisions that would protect a mother from losing her parental rights if she was properly prescribed and using medication that could have caused her newborn’s addiction. The amended bill would also clarify that foster parents and child placement agencies be given a 10-day notice before a foster child is reunited with his or her birth parents or placed in a new home.

Senate Bill 5 was also given final passage this week. This bill levels the playing field for small-town, locally-owned pharmacies. Senate Bill 5, as amended by the House, would make the Kentucky Department for Medicaid Services in charge of setting the reimbursement rates for a pharmacist. The rate is currently set by pharmacy-benefit managers (PBMs) hired by the state’s Medicaid managed-care organizations (MCOs). Kentucky Medicaid spends $1.7 billion annually on prescriptions and SB 5 would help authorities track that money and determine whether locally-owned pharmacies were being reimbursed fairly.

We also passed House Bill 362, which allows for the phase-in of increased pension costs for local governments. Recently, the Kentucky Retirement Systems Board adjusted their assumptions to require cities, counties, and other quasi-governmental entities to increase their pension contributions. If those increased pension contribution costs were not phased in over time, several of these local governments would be at risk of bankruptcy.

Passage of major pension reform legislation in recent weeks allowed us to justify the decision to allow counties and cities to phase-in these costly pension contributions, which was the language passed in House Bill 362. While this measure represented a win for local governments and quasi-governmental entities, it reiterated the need for raising revenue through tax reform, as we did in House Bill 366.

There are only two days left in the 2018 Regular Session. We will reconvene for those final two days on Friday, April 13, and Saturday, April 14. Kentucky’s constitution requires the General Assembly to be adjourned by April 15, and since April 15 is a Sunday and we cannot constitutionally meet that day, we must finish the state’s business by midnight on April 14. It has been an honor to represent you and our district in Frankfort, and I thank you for engaging in the legislative process.

If you have any questions or comments about these issues or any other public policy issue, please call me toll-free at 1-800-372-7181.  You can also review the Legislature’s work online at www.lrc.ky.gov.

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Note:  Senator David Givens (R-Greensburg) represents the 9^th District including Allen, Barren, Green, Metcalfe, Monroe and Simpson Counties.  He serves as a member of the Appropriations and Revenue Committee, the Agriculture Committee, the Education Committee, the Enrollment Committee, and the Health and Welfare Committee. For a high-resolution .jpeg of Senator Givens, please log onto http://www.lrc.ky.gov/pubinfo/portraits/senate09.jpg.

Kentucky Legislative Update

 

 

Legislative Update

Submitted by Senator Reginald Thomas

Now that the 2016 Legislative Session is behind us, I would like to update you on some of the accomplishments made by the Kentucky General Assembly over the past several months. 

Most importantly, we fulfilled our constitutional mandate by approving an executive, legislative and judicial budget. (I shared some of the budget highlights with you last week.) We also passed a transportation plan to help keep the bridges and roads of Kentucky maintained and safe. 

Below is a summary of some of the legislation passed during the 2016 Session:

· Autism. Senate Bill 185 made permanent the Advisory Council on Autism Spectrum Disorders (established in 2013) and the state Office of Autism (created in 2014). The bodies will continue to ensure there are not gaps in providing services to individuals with an autism spectrum disorder.

· Booking photos. House Bill 132 makes posting jail booking photos to a website or including the booking photos in a publication illegal when the person is required to pay to remove them from public view. Damages start at $100 a day for each separate offense, along with attorney fees.

· Budget.  House Bill 303 will guide state spending over the next two fiscal years.  The two-year state budget plan is aimed at creating savings in many areas and using more money to stabilize the public pension systems.  It includes $1.28 billion for the state pension systems.  The budget makes no cuts to K-12 education and increases pre-school eligibility.

· Children locked in cars. Senate Bill 16 protects prospective rescuers from being sued for property damage caused by saving the life of a child left in a locked vehicle.

· Child safety. House Bill 148 allows child daycare centers to receive prescriptions for EpiPen injectors to treat life-threatening allergic reactions.  The bill also gives parents up to 30 days to legally surrender their newborn at a state-approved safe place under the state’s safe harbor laws.

· CPR in schools. Senate Bill 33 requires high school students be taught cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) by an emergency medical professional. The life-saving measure is to be taught as part of the students’ physical education or health class, or as part of ROTC training.

· Disability-related expenses. Senate Bill 179 allows individuals with disabilities to set up an ABLE account to save money for disability-related expenses without it being taxed. Money saved in the account also does not count against Medicaid and other federal means-based benefits.

· Dog fighting. House Bill 428 makes it a felony to possess, breed, sell or otherwise handle dogs for the purpose of dog fighting.

· DUI.  Senate Bill 56 allows law enforcement to look back 10 years to determine prior DUI convictions for penalty purposes instead of five years.   

· Felony expungement.  Under House Bill 40, Kentuckians convicted of low-level non-violent felonies can ask the court to permanently expunge their records 5 years after they have completed their sentence or probation.  Sex crimes and crimes against children cannot be expunged. 

· Harassing telecommunications. House Bill 162 adds electronic communications to those acts that can be harassment, if it’s done with intent to intimidate, harass, annoy or alarm another person. Harassment is a Class B misdemeanor.

· Noah’s Law. Senate Bill 193, also known as “Noah’s Law” after a 9-year-old Pike County boy, extends health insurance coverage to include expensive amino acid-based elemental formula needed by some children with gastric disorders and food allergies.

· Off-duty conceal and carry. House Bill 314 allows current and retired peace officers to carry concealed firearms at any location where current, on-duty officers can carry guns.

· Outdoor recreation. House Bill 38 directs the state to set standards for the use and operation of zip lines and canopy tours.

· Public private partnerships. House Bill 309 allows government and private entities to enter into public-private partnerships – known as P3s – to fund Kentucky’s major infrastructure needs, including transportation projects.

· Sexual assault kits. Aimed at eliminating a backlog of sexual assault examination kits, Senate Bill 63 establishes new policies and procedures for handling evidence. SB 63 requires police to pick up sexual assault kits from hospitals within five days and submit the kit to the state crime lab within 30 days.   The bill also prohibits the destruction of any kits and notify victims of the progress and results of the tests.

· Vulnerable victims. Senate Bill 60 creates a new section of KRS Chapter 501, defining an “offense against a vulnerable victim” and creating a mechanism for charging someone with the commission of an offense against a victim who is under the age of 14, has an intellectual disability, or is physically helpless or mentally incapacitated.

The legislation passed this session will have a positive impact on the lives of all Kentuckians.  We took steps to protect our most vulnerable citizens, maintain our roads and bridges, and invest in education, public safety and job creation across the Commonwealth.

Unless a bill declared an emergency or contains a special effective date, the bills passed by the Kentucky General Assembly will take effect on July 15, 2016.

Thank you for your continued input during this process and helping us move Kentucky forward.  As always, you are welcome to contact me at any time if I can be of any assistance. You can email me directly at reginald.thomas@lrc.ky.gov.

Above, the championship Dunbar basketball team visited us in the final days of session.

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This Week at the Kentucky State Capitol March 14-18

March 18, 2016

This Week at the State Capitol

March 14-18

FRANKFORT—An eventful week at the Capitol saw the arrival – finally – of a full House.

Four new state representatives were sworn in on Tuesday, filling vacant seats in the chamber in time for the legislative scramble as the 2016 General Assembly session heads into its home stretch. The newcomers: Lewis Nicholls, D-Greenup, a former judge and son of a former state legislator; attorney Daniel Elliott, R-Gravel Switch; Jeff Taylor, D-Hopkinsville, an economic development professional; and Chuck Tackett, D-Georgetown, a farmer and former county magistrate.

The ceremony was a prelude to a flurry of legislative action as the House and Senate passed bills focused on improved public safety, civil rights and education as the week progressed. As expected, though, the real focus of the 11^th week of the General Assembly session was the biennial budget as the House passed its version with a 53-0 vote on Wednesday. The budget, House Bill 303, and related budget legislation were forwarded for Senate consideration.

The nearly $21 billion budget bill would roll back some funding cuts proposed by Gov. Matt Bevin to many areas of state government and authorize less debt than proposed in the governor’s proposal. The HB 303 budget would eliminate cuts for constitutional agencies and select education programs while fully funding the troubled Kentucky Employees’ Retirement System by tapping into $500 million the governor wanted to set aside as a permanent fund for future pensions.

With only nine legislative days remaining, the Senate now gets a chance to craft its reply. After next week, March 28-29 are concurrence days set aside for floor passage of bills from the opposite chamber. The 10-day governor’s veto recess follows, with the final two days of the regular session scheduled for April 11-12.

The legislature must agree on a budget before then or face a possible special session.

While much focus was on the budget and associated bills this week, numerous other measures took steps forward, including:

Bible classes in public schools. Senate Bill 278, which would allow public schools to offer Bible literacy classes, passed on Monday. The classes, which proponents say would not be evangelical in nature but focus on the book as literature and a sociological study, would be taught as a social studies elective. The measure has been sent to the House for consideration.

Community college tuition. House Bill 626 would provide Kentucky high school graduates with two years’ worth of paid tuition at a state community college under a bill that passed the state House by an 86-11 vote on Thursday. The bill would create the Work Ready Kentucky Scholarship Program to cover Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) tuition for recent Kentucky high school grads or GED recipients under the age of 19 who complete applications for financial aid, enroll in at least 12 credit hours a semester, and maintain a cumulative 2.0 grade point average. The bill has been sent to the Senate.

Protected rights. Senate Bill 80 states that it would promote the rights of people to exercise their freedom of speech, conscience and religion. The bill, which was filed in response to a case in which a lawsuit was filed against a Lexington custom T-shirt shop for refusing to make shirts celebrating a gay pride event, would prevent lawsuits or punishment in such cases. The bill specifies that it protects the freedom of religion for individuals who offer customized artistic, expressive, creative, ministerial or spiritual goods and services.

Voting. House Bill 290, passed by a 57-37 vote in the House on Monday, would allow no-excuse, in-person voting at least 12 working days – including two Saturdays – before an Election Day. Kentucky currently only allows voting before an election by absentee ballot with a qualified excuse. HB290 was forwarded to the Senate for consideration. The bill has been sent to the Senate.

Coal mines. Senate Bill 297 would end Kentucky’s mine safety inspection program by converting the state’s 62 inspectors to “safety analysts” whose responsibilities would include correcting dangerous practices through “behavior modification” instead of issuing costly citations. State inspectors currently test underground mines for hazards six times a year in addition to the four federal inspections. Surface mines are tested four times: twice by state inspectors and twice by MSHA. The measure, which passed the Senate on a 25-11 vote on Thursday, now awaits consideration in the House,

Sexual assault kits. Senate Bill 63, a measure aimed at eliminating a backlog of more than 3,000 sexual assault examination kits – some as much as 40 years old. The bill also would expedite the testing of new kits, directing police to retrieve the evidence from hospitals within five days and submit the evidence to the state crime lab within a month. The bill has been sent to the House for consideration.

The legislative pace is sure to increase as the 60-day General Assembly heads into its 12^th week. To stay informed on the progress of bills, to offer feedback to lawmakers or to ask questions about legislative topics, call the Assembly’s toll-free message line at 800-372-7181.

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Many ways for citizens to follow (Kentucky) General Assembly’s 2016 session

For Immediate Release

January 5, 2016

FRANKFORT – When the Kentucky Senate and House of Representatives are gaveled into order at noon today, Kentuckians will have many ways to stay connected to action throughout the 2016 legislative session.

The Kentucky Legislature Home Page (www.lrc.ky.gov) is updated daily to provide the latest legislative information. Web surfers can view the issues before lawmakers by browsing through bill summaries, amendments and resolutions. The website is regularly updated to indicate each bill’s status in the legislative process, as well as the next day’s committee-meeting schedule and agendas.

In addition to general information about the legislative process, the website provides information on each of Kentucky’s senators and representatives, including their phone numbers, addresses and legislative committee assignments.

A mobile-friendly version of the website can be viewed by going online to www.lrc.ky.gov/isite/index.html and adding the site to a smartphone’s home screen. The LRC seal that will appear on the home screen allows users to connect to some of the more popular features of the website including the legislative calendar and a directory of the state legislators with their photographs.

Citizens are also welcome to see proceedings in person in the State Capitol’s legislative chambers and committee rooms, which are open to the public.

Those who can’t make the trip to Frankfort can tune in to chamber proceedings and committee meetings on The Kentucky Channel, KET KY. Kentucky Educational Television also provides online streaming of its legislative coverage at KET.org/legislature.

Citizens can also use toll-free phone lines to follow legislative action and offer their input to lawmakers. Those who want to give lawmakers feedback on issues under consideration can call the Legislative Message Line at 800-372-7181. Those who prefer to offer their feedback in Spanish can call the General Assembly’s Spanish Line at 866-840-6574. Citizens with hearing impairments can use the TTY Message Line at 800-896-0305.

A taped message containing information on the daily schedule for legislative committee meetings is available by calling the Legislative Calendar Line at 800-633-9650.

Citizens can write to any legislator by sending a letter with a lawmaker’s name on it to: Legislative Offices, 702 Capitol Ave., Frankfort, KY 40601.

The 2016 session is expected to last 60 working days, the limit allowed by the Kentucky Constitution, and is scheduled to adjourn on April 12.

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This PSA was sent to my email at shereekrider@hotmail.com on 1/5/2016.