Bluegrass Politics: Kentucky’s latest DOGE targets & Rep. Andy Barr on Medicaid cuts
This is the March 5 edition of the Bluegrass Politics newsletter. Sign up for free and get this delivered straight to your inbox every Wednesday morning.
A number of high-profile bills are finally making moves in the General Assembly, with this year’s session more than two-thirds of the way done.
Chief among them is this year’s attempt to ban diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at Kentucky’s public colleges and universities, which got its first committee vote Tuesday. As you may recall, similar bills died in 2024 when the House and Senate couldn’t agree on which version to give their final approval to.
There are a number of education-related bills we’re keeping an eye on in these final few weeks of session:
House Bill 424, a bill that would require public colleges and universities to implement a performance evaluation system for faculty members — including tenured professors — passed out of the state House last week. (And if you need a refresher on tenure, we’ve got that for you, too.)
One representative is reviving his effort to ban the use of cell phones in K-12 classrooms.
Kentucky schools could get five disaster relief days under this bill.
KY DOGE, regulations and library controls
Anyone else here notice there sure are a lot of bills moving for this being a so-called “short” legislative session.
(I assume you are all currently agreeing with me!)
Here are some other bills we’re paying close attention to:
- Critics of a Senate bill that would make it easier to pollute more water sources in Kentucky hope to change the bill before it goes to a House committee.
- House Republicans passed a bill last week that would limit the regulatory power of state agencies. A backer of the bill said it should “remove all doubt that the most powerful branch of government is the branch that has the most elected people in it.”
- Here are 12 bills that could reshape state or local government in Kentucky.
- Kentucky’s version of DOGE — Senate Bill 257 from Sen. Lindsey Tichenor — is one step closer to becoming a reality.
- County judge-executives would have more authority over local library boards if this Senate bill becomes law.
- Some members of the legislature would like to make it a crime to disrupt the legislature.
- Anti-abortion Republicans are urging their peers to hold the line on Kentucky’s current ban, saying there’s no need to add exceptions.
Federal cuts in Kentucky
As Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency continues to cut federal spending, we’re beginning to see what offices in Kentucky will be affected by said cuts.
Last week, it seemed as if two Social Security offices would close — one in Hazard and one in Campbellsville — as a part of a push to close at least 45 such offices.
Now, one of those offices will stay open and DOGE will instead close only a small portion of the space that is designated for hearings.
DOGE has also targeted seven mine safety offices across the commonwealth for possible closure.
Finally, after the U.S. House passed a GOP-backed budget resolution that would cut $880 billion from the agency overseeing Medicaid, Rep. Andy Barr said that adults who can work “need to get off the taxpayer rolls and then they need to get into private health insurance and private employment.”
However, a recent review of Medicaid in Kentucky — which covers 1 in 3 people in the state — found that 51% of working-age adult recipients worked either full- or part-time.
“These people have jobs,” one policy analyst told the Herald-Leader. “It’s just that they’re working in jobs that pay so little or have so few benefits they can’t get insurance there, and so they qualify for Medicaid.”
That’s it for this week. See you next Wednesday.
This story was originally published March 5, 2025 at 9:30 AM.