KY state employees would have to end remote work, return to offices under advancing bill
Kentucky’s more than 33,000 state government employees would have to stop working from home and hit the road for a return to their offices in Frankfort and elsewhere under a bill the state Senate passed Thursday.
Senate Bill 79 now goes to the state House.
State Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, attached a floor amendment to the bill that would prohibit employees of the state’s executive, legislative and judicial branches from remote “telework” unless a state of emergency has been declared.
Tichenor shared the story of a constituent who applied to the state for “kinship care,” a program that helps people who are caring for abused or neglected children. The woman couldn’t get the state to respond to her, Tichenor said. Her application was ignored while the relevant state employee was “on extended leave,” the senator said.
“Unfortunately, we’ve had five years now of broad teleworking across all of our government agencies,” Tichenor told her colleagues on the Senate floor. “This is to bring us back to work.”
There would be a handful of exceptions, including Kentucky Supreme Court justices and state workers whose jobs regularly require them to be outside of an office setting, such as Kentucky State Police, inspectors and information technology workers. Employees also could be exempted as appropriate under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Thousands of state employees shifted to telework at least part time after the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily shut state office buildings in 2020. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear touts “expanded telecommuting options” as one of the benefits of taking a job with the state government.
But Republican lawmakers on Thursday said they and their constituents have grown tired of paperwork backlogs and unreturned phone calls at state offices because too few people are available to assist the public. Construction projects have been delayed because permit applications are sitting in piles, lawmakers said.
State Sen. Craig Richardson, R-Hopkinsville, said he recently toured the offices of various state agencies with other freshmen lawmakers. Richardson said he was struck by all the vacant space.
“You could hear tumbleweeds rolling through the hallways,” Richardson said. “It was empty.”
In Washington, Republican President Donald Trump has issued a similar executive order requiring federal employees back to their offices five days a week. Trump argued that people working from home aren’t always dedicating themselves to the job.
Opponents of the Kentucky measure said Tichenor failed to consult the Personnel Cabinet about how a mandatory return to the office might harm the state workforce. Some state employees took their jobs largely because of the flexibility offered by remote work, so they could attend to the needs of their families, the opponents said.
Tichenor acknowledged after the vote that she does not know how many state employees work from home.
The Personnel Cabinet did not respond to a request for information from the Herald-Leader on Thursday.
“We’re going to do a blanket rule without talking to any of the departments about how this is going to affect them,” said state Sen. David Yates, D-Louisville.
According to a 2023 map published by the Personnel Cabinet, state employees work in all 120 of Kentucky’s counties, although by far the largest numbers are based in Franklin County, where the capital city of Frankfort is located, and in urban Jefferson and Fayette counties.
In an unusual voting method called a “division of the house,” 21 of the 38 senators stood at their desks to signify their support for Tichenor’s amendment, successfully attaching it to the Senate bill.
The Senate then voted 25-to-10 in favor of the bill.
The underlying bill was a state personnel measure that dealt in part with management problems recently reported by the Herald-Leader at Kentucky’s juvenile detention centers in Fayette and Adair counties.
The bill would remove the superintendents of the state’s juvenile facilities from the protected merit system, making it easier for the Department of Juvenile Justice to fire them.
“Public safety and the well-being of youth in state custody depend on effective, accountable leadership in these facilities,” the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, said in a prepared statement. “When repeated failures come to light, the state must respond quickly and decisively to protect the integrity of the juvenile justice system.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2025 at 4:58 PM.
