In ways big and small, how Ky. Republicans are still trying to ‘strip power’ from Beshear
Among the raft of bills passed by Kentucky’s GOP-dominated General Assembly were several targeted at the governor’s powers – but few as obvious as bills from sessions past.
Having already defanged the executive branch from many of its emergency powers in 2021, multiple bills targeted at the governor’s office passed just before the governor’s 10-day veto period.
One replaced most of his appointments on the Executive Branch Ethics Commission, another took away the governor-appointed finance secretary’s power to name highways, a third restricts anyone but the Attorney General from using state funds to challenge the constitutionality of a statute, and another takes a significant amount of power away from the governor in the execution of contracts.
All of the bills to do with governor’s powers this session, Beshear says, constitute a pattern.
In the veto message for House Bill 335, a bill that says a governor has to pick appointees for certain councils from a provided list, Beshear wrote this: “House Bill 335 represents another in a long line of efforts by this General Assembly to strip power away from the governor.”
Beshear said House Bill 248 – which bars anyone but the Attorney General, a post occupied by Republican Daniel Cameron, from using state funds to challenge the constitutionality of a law – violates the Kentucky Constitution in multiple ways.
“This is a blatant attempt by the General Assembly to shield unconstitutional laws it passes from judicial review… HB 248 is an unconstitutional power grab by the General Assembly,” Beshear wrote.
House Bill 334 scraps the current members of the Executive Branch Ethics Commission and shifts the majority of the appointments from the governor to the constitutional officers, all of whom are Republican. Beshear called the bill yet another power grab.
Bills limiting Beshear’s powers, often in favor of the other executive branch constitutional officers who are Republican, are nothing new for the legislature. In 2021, the General Assembly made law a proposal that limited Beshear’s finance secretary’s ability to cancel state contracts, one that forbids Beshear to spend Coronavirus-related federal funds without their express authority, another that curbed the governor’s powers related to COVID-19 pandemic mitigation efforts, and more.
A bill that shifted appointments to the State Fair Board from Beshear to Republican Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles is still in the appeals process after an initial ruling against that bill.
As for the new bills just vetoed by the governor, Senate GOP Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, said that he was giddy to override them. As of now, Thayer said he foresees overriding all Beshear’s vetoes but is open to considering the merits of each as they come in before the legislature’s final two days of business.
“We are working to override all those vetoes,” Thayer said. “I can’t wait. I love making the motion (to override), it’s the best part of my job.”
In both veto messages and at a press conference on Thursday, Beshear called several of the bills limiting his powers unconstitutional. He also called their actions mean and vindictive.
“Our constitution was set up with three branches of government because this was expected, right? Three branches of government were created so power wasn’t consolidated in one… Our drafters of the most recent Constitution had seen different branches try to become the dominant branch. What you see when that happens, when people don’t feel like they’re answerable to anybody including another branch, is you see meanness and vindictiveness.”
When asked if the laws were targeted more at Beshear specifically or the governor’s powers as a whole, Thayer responded “both.”
“COVID-19 revealed weaknesses in the law that give the executive branch, specifically the governor, too much power during a state of emergency,” Thayer said. “… With the type of super majorities we have there’s a desire to bring more balance of power between the executive and legislative branches.”
Thayer added that in his opinion the legislature started to “reel in” power from the governor when former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin was in office. He also called Beshear’s arguments that some of the bills were unconstitutional “much ado about nothing.”
Earlier in the session, the Senate also denied Beshear two key appointments – one to the Public Service Commission (PSC) and another to the Fish & Wildlife Commission.
A second appointment to the three-member PSC, which is responsible for regulating the state’s utilities and protecting their customers, also hangs in the balance. Amy Cubbage is a prominent Louisville-area attorney who has served in the Beshear administration, including as the governor’s general counsel. Cubbage was appointed to the PSC in August 2021, but if the Senate does not take up her appointment the PSC will be without a quorum until Beshear appoints new members– all while the commission has a case before it, in the sale of Kentucky Power, that’s one of the biggest utility sales in recent history.
The senate resolution confirming Cubbage was posted in the orders of the day earlier in the session, the same day that the other two appointments were denied, but was passed over and eventually reassigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee where it has remained inactive for more than a month.
There is some precedent for a General Assembly going against a sitting governor, but you’d have to flip through the pages of history some time to find it, according to longtime state political commentator Al Cross. The partisan shoe was on the other foot, though.
A string of Republican governors in the mid-20th century, he said, were treated similarly to Beshear. Former Republican governor Flem Sampson, who served one term from 1927 to 1931, gained office in part because his opponent was against the racing and alcohol industries, according to the Kentucky Historical Society. Sampson was regularly berated by a Democrat-heavy General Assembly that “shut down most of (his) ideas and overruled his vetoes.”
Fellow one-term Republican Governor Simeon Willis faced a similar fate. Elected after a campaign that promised the elimination of the state’s income tax – a promise that lawmakers 80 years later are now trying to fulfill – Willis fell short in his efforts and was replaced by a Democrat.
