what is THAT?!!
it's the UNKNOWN!!
For days, I tried to find a way to work my current hyperfixation — The Unknown, a now-viral, apparently AI-generated evil candymaker who lives in the walls of Willy Wonka’s factory but only when some dude in Glasgow (not KY Glasgow, the other one) tries to have a Wonka “immersive” experience where the children are offered a single jelly bean and many tears and also, a meth lab-operating Oompa Loompa (s/o to her) — into the world of Kentucky politics, but I fear I have failed.
All I can say is we are now past the two-thirds mark of the 2024 legislative session which means we are heading straight into a very different world of ~the unknown~ where everything is fair game, everything is going to happen all at once, and, like, lettuce prey.
In light of how tbh everything we’ve discussed may very well simply fly out of the window at this point (again, into the UNKNOWN), I’m bypassing a lot of what happened late last week in lieu of sharing a more broad overview of where we’re at rn.
Yeah, so, a broad overview
So, legislative sessions in even-numbered years are considered “long sessions” aka they take 60 total legislative days from early January to mid-April.
Monday will be day 43 of 60. The House and Senate are going to keep meeting each weekday for this week and next, as they generally have been, before starting to meet less.
The veto period — a period where the legislature doesn’t mean so Gov. Andy Beshear, you guessed it, has a chance to review all of their bills and sign or veto them — starts March 29 and runs until April 9.
The legislature then comes back for two days — April 12 and April 15 — and then it is over. (S/O for the prep time for The Tortured Poets Department and/or Thunder Over Louisville.)
What are we watching? (Who is we?)
This session has been quite a bill-heavy session, but thankfully, lawmakers can’t file anything new now. (They can, however, weaponize shell bills and committee subs but …)
It is slowly starting to become make-or-break time for legislation, especially GOP priority bills that the legislature wants/needs to get through before that veto period thing I mentioned. Why? Because if they get it to Beshear before the veto period, and Beshear vetoes it, they can override his veto during the last two days of session and it’ll still become law. If they wait too late, Beshear can veto it after they’ve gone home for the year.
But, on top of that, bills need a certain amount of time to legally get through both chambers and onto the governor’s desk. Each bill needs three “readings” (not even a reading, just an acknowledgment that they exist) on three different days in each chamber, and one chamber’s third reading/vote can overlap with the other chamber’s first reading, so basically five days.
A bill needs five days. OK. If certain bills don’t start moving in, like, a week or so, that’s not good for them.
OK, but yeah, what are we watching?
A lot of the bigger bills this session have started moving, with at least one notable exception and then a few others who moved fast and then lowkey ghosted us.
Aforementioned notable exception: School choice
There are three different bills that would, in some way, shape or form, try to change Kentucky’s Constitution so that public dollars could follow students to whatever school situation they’d like — traditional public, public charters, private schools, etc.
None of them have started to move (aka like they haven’t been heard in committee/gotten their first vote yet).
There’s been a bit of GOP infighting about which is the right way to go. Some folks who lean more liberty and/or tend to be stronger, more hardcore champions of school choice heavily prefer Rep. Josh Calloway’s HB 208. The House GOP leadership — including the House Education Chair — is leaning more toward HB 2. And then there’s also SB 358.
I’m hearing some broad whispers in the wind that this might be the week that we finally see some action on this topic, so stay tuned.
One big issue with watching these bills: Two of the three are in the House, so they haven’t gotten a committee assignment, so we don’t really know which committees to pencil into our schedules. SB 358 is in the Senate State and Local Gov Committee, which typically meets Wednesdays at noon. (Jot down how it isn’t in the Senate Education Committee as a reason it makes figuring out when/where to expect the others in committee.)
I was planning on a doing a full recap of all the bills I’ve ever mentioned even slightly in The Gallery Pass here, but upon further review, I’ve realized that the majority of said bills either haven’t moved at all or moved a bit and are now just hanging out, waiting for their time to shine.
One of the ghosts? The Safer Kentucky Act
House Bill 5 blazed through our skies like a comet early in the session and then just … has been chilling since, I guess.
ICYMI: HB 5 is a sweeping anti-crime measure. You can get a recap here.
It is in the Senate Judiciary Committee, so keep an eye on that. They tend to meet Wednesday mornings.
Also? The budget bills?
Yeah, they cleared the House a lil bit ago and have been in the hands of the Senate for a hot sec. But that’s kinda normal - typically, the Senate changes a lot, passes their version of the budget, the House doesn’t exactly love it, they go to a “conference committee” where they try to reach a compromise, and — well, there can be other steps after that, and there probably will be, but let’s not deal with that quite yet.
A quick recap of late last week
I’ll be honest? My main takeaways from the end of last week are drag queens and Nema getting sued. The latter is probably lowkey definitely turn into another paid subscriber-only post later this week, so give me money plz and thx.
But, for now: The drag queens arrived in full f*ckin’ glam at 8 a.m. on a Thursday morning, for a second year in a row.
One of my favorite things about Kentucky’s legislature is that when anyone in the Senate files a bill trying to even remotely restrict drag shows, it gets assigned to the Senate VMAPP Committee (Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection, but obvs I refuse to type that out), which meets at 9 a.m. on Thursday mornings but it is often packed, so folks get there early, so the Adele quote fits without fail. Iconic.
Yeah, but so, Sen. Lindsey Tichenor’s Senate Bill 147 — which is the closest thing to a “drag show bill” we have this year — passed out of committee Thursday morning, despite our queen Poly Tics showing up, full glam, to testify against it. (At least one other queen showed up in plain clothes, too.)
This is the second year in row where both Tichenor and Poly have needed to discuss drag shows in front of a committee of folks who thought they were here to discuss, like, veterans and … military affairs. (If anyone knows any vets who are now Ky-based drag performers, contact me immediately, I just wanna talk!)
Tichenor changed the original bill, which was already more focused on restricting adult entertainment than last year’s drag bill, which had a heavier impact on performers.
The new version of the bill, which is what the committee passed, plus Tichenor’s testimony finally clarifies that there is, indeed, a difference between just drag and ~sexually explicit drag~, which the bill in question hopes to restrict.
Why it took us literally a full year to answer that simple question, I do not know because I’ve only been raising the question for a full year, but at this point, it is above my paygrade.
SB 147 is up for a Senate vote Tuesday afternoon.
The week ahead
As always, you can find each day’s full schedule on the LRC website. Especially this late in the game, things are bound to change and special meetings will pop up.
Monday:
House and Senate start at 4 p.m.
To the subscribers who have asked, SB 58 is on the Senate’s Orders of the Day, so it is likely (but not guaranteed) to get a vote. Take note!
The House has several bills on its Orders (aka its possible voting schedule for the day). They’re a little bit more likely than the Senate to skip over bills/keep them in purgatory for days on end, so who knows what may or may not actually get a vote.
Tuesday - Thursday:
Committee meetings! Yee-haw! At this point, I’d just expect all of the meetings to happen as scheduled, but what do I know. Here’s the full schedule.
House and Senate start at 2 p.m.
As mentioned, the Senate is expected to vote on the drag show bill Tuesday afternoon.
TBH on the other days.
Friday:
House and Senate are expected to start at 9 a.m.
OK, I’ve kept y’all long enough. Talk soon, don’t forget to subscribe if you don’t already, the cat’s meowing at me, gtg, toodles!