Oh, we're SO back.
Welcome to the final days of session, y'all. Friday is Day 59 of 60 of Kentucky’s 2024 legislative session, so we’re gonna go a lil out of order here by starting with what the expect over the next few days, and then recap the latest round of new laws and vetoes.
The Senate starts at 10 a.m. and the House is expected at noon on Friday. Over the last two days (today and Monday), expect veto overrides, veto overrides, veto overrides, maybe a handful of last-minute votes, some more veto overrides, and maybe a fun lil vote to confirm the new education commissioner.
Since it is so late in the session, don’t expect many committee meetings, but don’t rule out the possibility. For example, the Senate Education Committee is having an information-only meet-and-greet with Robbie Fletcher, the education commish pick, Friday at 3 p.m. The Senate will eventually need to confirm Fletcher before they formally end session by 11:59 p.m. Monday night.
As always, you can check out each day’s full schedule on the LRC website. As of rn, here’s Friday’s:
9 a.m. — Senate State and Local Government Committee
10 a.m. — Senate starts
11:45 a.m. — House Vets, Military Affairs and Public Protection Committee
12 p.m. — House starts
3 p.m. — Senate Education Committee meeting w/ Fletcher
What Beshear is up to
The veto period is over, and the timing of Tuesday’s newsletter was not particularly great because Beshear dropped some big vetoes … like an hour after I hit send. (In my defense, I did say the LRC website was still being updated and I might accidentally miss something, so.)
Let’s start with vetoes.
We’re now up to 21 total vetoes. As always, you can see a full running list of both vetoed bills and veto overrides here.
Here are a few that jumped out at me:
House Bill 5: Beshear rejected the GOP’s big public safety bill, aka the Safer Kentucky Act or the Suffer Kentucky Act, depending on whom you ask.
Important to note that Beshear agreed with some pieces of the bill, saying that those provisions should’ve been put in standalone bills, but noooo, lawmakers chose to put them in “one unwieldy bill that would criminalize homelessness” and just generally be super expensive without providing a clear way to pay for it.
He also called them out for passing something that would have such a tremendous fiscal impact without … doing a fiscal impact analysis.
The budget bills: Beshear line-item vetoed pieces of the budget bills, which are generally the only bills he can say yes to some parts and no to others. (Hence why he needed to reject all of HB 5 instead of keeping the parts he likes.)
I linked the main budget bill, House Bill 6, above. He issued 23 line-item vetoes for that one, all of which can be found in his veto message in the wonkiest of ways because how else can we really lean into the energy of ~the budget~. A lot of them seem pretty specific and in the weeds, so I will simply leave the link above and allow y’all to dig in if you’d like.
House Bill 388: This is the big-ish Louisville-centric bill that would, among other things, make Louisville’s local mayoral and metro council races nonpartisan.
Beshear basically said Louisville’s current set up was selected by folks living in Jefferson County, so why are we messing with it at the state level, and oh, by the way, if it is now good government to have nonpartisan elections, the legislature should make all races in the state nonpartisan.
And now for the new laws
The big update since the last newsletter is really the number of bills that have become law without Beshear’s signature. I haven’t run the numbers, but there generally seem to be more of them this session than I remember from past years. Sadly, unlike with vetoes, we don’t get a written explanation as to why Beshear didn’t necessarily like the bill but didn’t seem to hate it enough to veto it.
One new one that jumped out at me was Senate Bill 2, the latest school safety measure. This was the one that would allow — but not require — school districts to hire armed “guardians,” which would, ya know, have a gun but wouldn’t be a school police officer. This was also the one that would’ve let schools hire “pastoral counselors,” but that part got cut.
The fight over abortion rights suddenly continues?
Uh, surprise, Sen. David Yates — a Democrat who filed a bill early in session that would add a few exceptions to Kentucky’s tight abortion law — is filing a discharge petition to force a full Senate vote on the bill.
If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry, I am literally just learning about the concept. Basically, the GOP leaders of the Senate hasn’t assigned the bill to a committee — which is actually a violation of the Senate’s rules. (Remember how I kept saying that it isn’t news if a Senate bill gets a committee assignment? Apparently it isn’t just a habit, but actually part of the rulebook over there.)
So, since the Senate didn’t follow the rules they created, Yates can file a discharge petition, and if a majority of the Senate sides with him, the Senate would then take a vote on the bill.
It is a helluva Hail Mary; let’s see how it works out for him in the GOP-dominated chamber.
I feel like I’m forgetting something, but if I am, I’ll just add it to Sunday’s newsletter. OK, everyone have fun in Frankie Fort, maybe I’ll see ya there, toodles!