Beshear seeks compromise with legislators on limiting his COVID-19 emergency powers
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear sent a letter Jan. 20 to state Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker David Osborne to see if they would compromise on legislation he vetoed that limits his authority to issue and enforce emergency orders to curb the spread of COVID-19.
The two-page letter, obtained Tuesday by the Lexington Herald-Leader through an Open Records request, offers suggestions from Beshear to “create a reasonable framework around which to have a conversation” about the vetoes.
Earlier this month, the Republican-led state legislature passed bills limiting the Democratic governor’s coronavirus rules and emergency executive orders.
Beshear vetoed the legislation and Stivers, R-Manchester, later told the Courier Journal that the legislature’s decision to override the vetoes when lawmakers return to Frankfort Feb. 2 could depend on the governor’s willingness to talk to them about other ways to address his emergency powers.
Beshear then sent Stivers and Osborne, R-Prospect, a letter. As of late Tuesday afternoon, the governor’s office had not heard from the legislative leaders. Their offices did not respond to questions from the Herald-Leader.
Beshear said in his letter that his “strong preference is for any legislation to wait until Kentucky has emerged from this deadly pandemic.” Since its start last March, Kentucky has seen more than 347,000 cases and 3,460 deaths.
He said Kentucky has fared better than most of the nation, and better than all of its neighboring states. “Adjusted for population, we have lost half the number of lives as Tennessee” and have been ranked in the top 10 states for distribution of vaccines.
“To ‘mess’ with emergency powers that have helped us achieve this relative success would be like legislating troop movements and tactics in the middle of a battle,” said Beshear. “The inevitable result is less success and more casualties.”
If the General Assembly is determined to pass legislation, he said, “then I recommend we discuss narrowly tailoring” the legislation to address lawmakers’ concerns.
Senate Bill 1 limits a governor’s emergency orders to 30 days unless a legislature extends them. It also says the attorney general would have to sign off on the suspension of state law in an emergency.
Beshear said he was open to discussing “how to potentially index the length of a state declaration in response to a pandemic or extended emergency to the length of the applicable federal declaration with some grace period, perhaps 60 days.”
Beshear told the legislative leaders that the former Trump Administration issued a federal declaration in response to the coronavirus pandemic that is still in effect. “This shows that the length of the current state declaration is warranted,” said the governor.
Other bills Beshear raised concerns about are House Bill 1, which would let businesses, schools, nonprofits and churches remain open providing they meet the least restrictive guidelines set by either the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the state executive branch, and Senate Bill 2, which would put in place more legislative oversight of a governor’s administrative regulations.
Beshear noted that the legislative leaders have raised concerns about “consultation” with the General Assembly.
“If the true goal is consultation — and not control — then formalizing and providing a structure for such consultation should be the goal of any legislation,” he wrote.
He suggested a bill that creates an obligation during a state of emergency for the governor’s administration to report monthly to a statutorily created committee on the state of emergency and the steps employed to address it.
“This would create formalized consultation in a structural and transparent way where legislative committee members could express support or concern to both the administration and the public,” he wrote.
Beshear recently said at a news conference on COVID-19 that his administration has made more than 40 appearances in legislative committee hearings and spent more than 30 hours testifying about the virus.
Beshear also expressed concern in his letter to the legislative leaders about House Bill 5, which would eliminate the governor’s ability to temporarily reorganize boards, commissions, agencies and cabinets when the legislature is not in session.
The legislation “creates a number of issues, from preventing the faithful execution of the law if necessary structures are not in place, to disqualifying Kentucky from federal grants that routinely require new or changed offices or commissions,” Beshear said
He said he would prefer an approach that “would specifically prohibit the reorganization of certain specific state boards that need protection and insulation based on their functions.
“I would be more than willing to discuss what those boards should be, again in an attempt to reach a compromise.”
