Andy Beshear pledges new school board and restored felon voting rights in first week
Democratic Gov.-elect Andy Beshear said Thursday he will act quickly when he takes office next week to dismiss Kentucky Education Commissioner Wayne Lewis and the state Board of Education.
In a 15-minute interview in the august State Reception Room on the second floor of the Capitol, Beshear also said he will restore voting rights for non-violent felons who have served their time during his first week in office and will consider whether to continue the lawsuit current Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton filed against Gov. Matt Bevin for firing two of her top staffers.
Beshear, who will become Kentucky’s 63rd governor and the 59th person to hold the office, also pledged to halt Bevin’s plan to impose work requirements and premiums on many Kentucky Medicaid recipients.
His inauguration Tuesday will mark the first time a father and son have held the office of governor of Kentucky. Andy Beshear is the son of former Gov. Steve Beshear, who held the office from 2007 to 2015.
Elected to office with strong support of many teachers who are not fond of Lewis, an advocate of charter schools, and the state education board members appointed by Bevin, Beshear said he plans to issue an executive order on ‘Day One” to create an entirely new education board.
It, in turn, would dismiss Lewis and begin a national search for a new education commissioner, Beshear said.
“The education of our children is one of the primary obligations of government,” Beshear said. “We have to have both a commissioner and a board that are fully committed to public education. There’s no question that public education was one of the driving forces behind this election.”
Beshear said he was clear in his gubernatorial campaign against Bevin that he “would create an entirely new board that values public education and they would dismiss Lewis.”
“We will do a national search, not just get somebody’s buddy or confidante,” he said. “This is too important. Stay tuned.”
Beshear said he was not concerned about any possible lawsuit to block his effort. He referred to a Kentucky Supreme Court decision this year that said the governor has the authority to reconstitute the state board. As attorney general, Beshear had urged the Supreme Court to rule that Bevin and future governors did not have the authority to summarily dismiss the education board.
Lewis and several board members, including the governor, have voiced support for charter schools that would receive state funding but operate independently of the established state school system. Some educators fear they would take money from public schools.
Lewis told the Lexington Herald-Leader this week that Beshear has made political attacks and smear campaigns about his background, integrity and commitment to education. He said he would not resign after Beshear becomes governor.
Another action early in his administration, Beshear said, will be to restore voting rights of about 140,000 non-violent felons who have served their time.
“They have done their time. They want to be productive citizens of our society,” said Beshear.
In November 2015, then-Gov. Steve Beshear in his last days in office signed an executive order restoring the voting rights of more than 100,000 people with felony records. But in December of that year, newly elected Gov. Bevin overturned that order.
Beshear said he is reviewing lawsuits Bevin pursued to decide if he will continue or drop them, especially lawsuits dealing with abortion.
He said he has not talked to Lt. Gov.-elect Jacqueline Coleman about whether to pursue Lt. Gov. Hampton’s lawsuit over her fired staffers. Hampton filed the lawsuit against Bevin in their official capacities.
Beshear stressed that Coleman will hire and fire her own staffers in the lieutenant governor’s office and in her other role as secretary of the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet.
He said he quickly will reverse Bevin’s proposed changes to Kentucky’s Medicaid program, which were expected to end health coverage for an estimated 95,000 people over the first five years.
Bevin’s long-planned Kentucky HEALTH initiative never got to take effect, although he did briefly end dental and vision benefits last year for several hundred thousand expanded Medicaid recipients before restoring them, following a public backlash.
A federal appeals court in Washington is now considering the second legal challenge to Kentucky HEALTH in as many years.
Bevin’s plan is “both cruel and costly,” Beshear said. He said the state may save more than $270 million in not implementing Bevin’s plan.
“We can do it better and less expensive,” Beshear said, adding that he will be aggressive on trying to lower pharmaceutical prices.
On other subjects, Beshear said he has not yet had a briefing on KentuckyWired, a state-run project constructing more than 3,000 miles of high-speed, high-capacity fiber optic cable in every county in Kentucky to provide broadband Internet access.
Beshear said he believes the project, started by his father, is necessary but would like to hear about its costs and various delays.
He said he is “actively reviewing” the state budget. He has to present his own two-year budget proposal to legislators in January.
Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, has said on the first day of the 2020 General Assembly on Jan. 7 that he will file a measure to direct a comprehensive investigation of Kentucky’s controversial 2015 settlement with drug manufacture Purdue Pharma.
Stivers believes Kentucky was “shortchanged” in the settlement by receiving $24 million while Oklahoma this year settled with the OxyContin maker for $270 million.
The Purdue Pharma settlement became an issue in this year’s race for governor between Bevin and Beshear.
Bevin asked whether the settlement was a good deal while Beshear has said he was not involved with the settlement. Beshear worked for the Louisville-based law firm of Stites & Harbison, which represented Purdue Pharma, before he was elected attorney general in December 2015.
Asked Thursday if he would cooperate with the Senate investigation, Beshear said he was not involved in the settlement but would consider any requests that might come his way.
Beshear said he does not know if he will have all his cabinet members appointed by Tuesday but expects “to have everyone in place by Jan. 1.”
He also has not decided if he will restore the original name of the welcome/education center near the Capitol. His father named the center for his wife, Jane Beshear, who worked on turning what was an old utility shed into a welcome center. The Bevin administration removed her name from the center.
Beshear said his mother got the idea for the center after seeing visiting school children sitting on the Capitol floor while eating their lunches.
Asked what it means to him to follow his father’s footsteps in the governor’s office, Beshear said he does not spend much time thinking about those things. “I like to get to work. It drives my family crazy some times.”
But Beshear said he is “glad I have somebody close to me who has done it before.”
“If you truly want to be the best, you have to talk to people who have been there before,” he said.
On politics, he said he expects legislative leaders and he will try to recruit candidates for office but that it can be done in a “civil” manner without calling each other names and looking at each other as the enemy.
“Politics can be a nasty game,” he said. “We have seen some things over the last four years that have no place in politics. I got into this because I believe we are better than what we are seeing and that we have more in common than what separates us.
“I always remind myself that my kids are watching to see if my words and actions are in line in what I am trying to teach them about being good, compassionate human beings,” he said.
This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 3:51 PM.
