KY lawmakers race to override vetoes, starting with bills on racism, transgender sports
The Republican-led General Assembly on Wednesday dove into the work of overriding Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s vetoes of roughly two dozen different bills, with less than 48 hours remaining in its 2022 session.
The legislature overrode nearly all of the governor’s vetoes, including:
▪ Senate Bill 1 gives Kentucky school superintendents more authority over the selection of curriculum and the hiring of principals, shifting power away from parents and teachers who sit on site-based decision making councils.
The bill also includes the text of Senate Bill 138, a controversial measure setting limits on how Kentucky schools can teach about American history as well as racism, equality and economic opportunity. Under the bill, school districts are required to incorporate 24 specific writings and speeches into history classes at age-appropriate levels.
The nonprofit Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence discovered that Class A misdemeanor criminal penalties were tied into this part of the bill. The sponsor, Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, on Wednesday called this “a drafting error” and said it will be corrected shortly with passage of another measure, House Bill 44.
▪ Senate Bill 83 bans transgender girls and women in Kentucky from competing in girls’ and women’s sports from sixth grade through college. The bill declares that school sports designated for females won’t be open to students who were born biologically as male.
The Kentucky High School Athletic Association already has a policy requiring students to participate in sports based on the gender on their birth certificates unless their gender legally has been reassigned, as demonstrated through certified medical records, a driver’s license, a passport or other formal documents.
The NCAA announced in January that it supports a sport-by-sport approach to participation by transgender athletes that defers to the national governing body for each sport. It requires schools to submit proof of athletes’ hormone suppression, as well as lab results showing athletes’ testosterone levels.
▪ House Bill 9 creates a funding mechanism for public charter schools in Kentucky.
Beshear called the bill unconstitutional in his veto message because public taxpayer dollars can only go to public schools. Advocates for public charter schools say that they provide needed options for parents in school districts that may currently lack educational options.
The bill initially passed on a razor-thin 51-47 margin in the House, where exactly 51 votes are needed to override a veto. In the House’s override, it picked up another supporter in Rep. Michael “Sarge” Pollock, R-Campbellsville, to gain a 52-46 advantage. The Senate voted to override Besehar’s veto 22-15, with some rural Republicans joining Democrats to vote no.
▪ House Bill 8 sets Kentucky on a path to completely eliminate the state’s personal income tax while expanding the sales tax.
In his veto message, Beshear said it would “threaten Kentucky’s future economic security.” The bill would radically alter Kentucky’s tax structure, as it envisions eliminating the source of 40 percent of the state’s tax revenue.
Advocates say the shift is much-needed and will encourage investment and population growth in Kentucky. Fiscal analysis from the state on sponsor Sen. Chris McDaniel’s latest version of House Bill 8 indicated that the legislation will create a negative impact of over $800 million to state coffers in lost tax revenue. The House overrode Beshear’s veto of House Bill 8 by 72-to-25, with only two Republicans voting against it. The Senate overrode the veto in a 28-to-8 vote.
▪ House Bill 7 puts stricter eligibility rules on Kentucky’s public benefits for the poor, chiefly food stamps and Medicaid.
The bill’s initial restrictions were somewhat watered down in the legislative process.
House leadership said they agreed to drop several parts of the bill that were controversial and, in some cases, potentially expensive, because they would have required additional record-processing staff to be hired at the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services. The bill was easily overridden on the House floor. The Senate voted 28-to-9 to override the governor’s veto.
▪ House Bill 594 would require the state of Kentucky to consider the financial costs to private industry before enacting new regulations without also considering the possible public benefits, such as better consumer protection, community health or workplace safety. The governor’s veto was overridden by a largely partisan vote, with GOP members voting in favor, by both chambers on Wednesday.
▪ The General Assembly voted to give an 8 percent pay raise to its members by rejecting a line-item veto of House Bill 243, the legislative branch budget bill.
Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, was quick to point out that, technically, legislators weren’t giving themselves a raise, they were giving a raise to those who win elections in 2022. Democrats and some Republicans protested the idea of giving themselves more money, but the veto override was passed with 56 yes votes in the House and 24 in the Senate, all from Republican members.
Multiple Democrats said that the raise does not look good in light of the state budget not mandating teacher raises.
Stivers, frustrated with the key Democratic talking point, said that he bets that teachers will get a raise as a result of the bump the legislature provided to the state education per-pupil funding formula, SEEK.
▪ Two bills containing a measure that allows most candidates to only file annual campaign finance reports during non-election years, significantly decreasing the amount of reports candidates are required to file, passed in veto overrides of House Bill 740 and Senate Bill 216.
Senate Bill 216 is largely an election security bill; however, a Senate committee substitute added the campaign finance provision as well as one that put the Secretary of State back as chair of the State Board of Elections.
▪ Beshear vetoed almost 30 different line-items in House Bill 1, the $16 billion state executive branch budget bill. The legislature voted to override most of those line-item vetoes, more than 20 of 27. The ones that remained were technical changes, while substantive line-item vetoes overridden include language on the 8% raise for elected officials, including constitutional officers like Beshear.
▪ The legislature moved to override all of the bills Beshear vetoed on the grounds that they unnecessarily, and even unconstitutionally, stripped the executive branch and the Governor of certain powers. Included in that group of bills was House Bill 248, which prohibits anyone but the Attorney General from spending state funds to challenge the constitutionality of a law.
This story was originally published April 13, 2022 at 4:38 PM.
