Analysis: Our reporters say Kentucky GOP lowered the temperature (slightly) in Frankfort this session
It’s a cliche often repeated in Frankfort: Every legislative session takes on a life of its own.
It held true for 2025’s session, which was marked by a unified, disciplined GOP and relative uneventfulness – that is, until it exploded and ended in bang-bang fashion.
Republicans own four-fifths majorities in both chambers, and they ticked off much of their checklist in a slow march to the final day they could pass bills able to withstand Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto. Then, in the final days of the session, the tempo changed.
It’s nothing new, really. Sessions usually go late into the night with clocks ticking on both chambers as they bargain with each other to muscle through their priorities.
But the contrast was jarring this year: The first 25 or so days of the 30-day short session were low-key and deliberate. Days 27 and 28, marking the last chance for Republicans to pass veto-proof bills, took some dramatic turns.
A ban on Medicaid coverage for certain aspects of gender-affirming care, a new mandatory work requirement for certain Kentuckians on Medicaid, and a slew of significant revenue measures – all of those were introduced in their final form a couple days or fewer before gaining passage through the legislature.
Other priorities were out in the light of day for a long time.
Take House Bill 1, cutting the income tax rate from 4% to 3.5%. That was telegraphed for several months before swift passage early in the session. Likewise, the legislature had long-signaled an intention to override every single one of Beshear’s vetoes, and that’s exactly what they did to all 29 at the close of session.
All of these bills and trends make the 2025 session one of unique ease among Republicans, but also one defined by a swift, at times chaotic, ending.
We offer this summary with some amount of authority.
We’ve been keeping an eye on Frankfort for a collective 10 legislative sessions. The Republicans steering the ship haven’t shown this level of unity for some time. As a supermajority party (emphasis on the “super” with 80% control), they had shown a fair amount of diversity and difference of thought among themselves on big issues before.
Like every session since the legislature became fully controlled by Republicans in 2016, the group marched the state to the right.
But this time, the first since those early days when the margins over House Democrats were thin, the march was almost entirely in unison.
Death of the GOP aisle-crossers?
If the 2025 legislative session were a movie, it wouldn’t be a suspense thriller.
Gone were the days of last year’s close vote on the “school choice” constitutional amendment, 2023’s cliffhanger-laden back-and-forth over banning gaming machines from convenience stores or 2022’s fight over charter school funding.
Once a consequential bill made it to the floor this session, there was never really a question of whether it would pass. Republicans, whose leadership controls virtually everything about the legislative process, remained in lockstep with each other.
House Bill 495, the most controversial Republican bill related to LGBTQ issues, earned just one Republican no vote. In 2023, the similarly contested Senate Bill 150 got four Republican “no” votes, mostly from suburban Republicans in purple districts.
Perhaps it was because no issues sparking controversy within the GOP ranks were brought forward this year. Or, maybe Republican leadership more effectively got all their members in line. Either way, the result was a more unified front from Republicans in the Kentucky legislature.
Transparency concerns linger
Shell bills, free conference committees, floor amendments and committee substitutes – these words probably mean nothing to your average Kentuckian. They’re legislative inside baseball.
But they’re at the heart of complaints brought against the legislature by such transparency advocates as the League of Women Voters.
Important bills are moving through the legislature too fast and without significant opportunity for public input, they say.
Lawmakers use “shell bills” to hide the true nature of a bill until later in the process. Substitutions are made to change them in committee, amendments to morph them on the floor of the Senate or House and free conference committees to make major changes at the last minute.
These aren’t new tricks, of course. However, they’re being used at a much higher clip over the past 12 years, a League of Women Voters analysis found.
This year was nothing new.
Perhaps the most striking example was House Bill 695. Many of its components were introduced in an earlier version of the bill, or other bills that had been introduced for weeks if not months.
But all of its elements were put together in one package just hours before it could pass and withstand Beshear’s veto with a big twist: A mandatory work requirement for able-bodied adults with no dependents to qualify for Medicaid coverage.
Some small changes could be possible going forward.
At a recent forum on open government, House GOP Whip Jason Nemes, R-Middletown, said he’d be open to requiring committee substitutes be posted online when they’re distributed to members.
That would be a major change to the current procedure, where it can take several hours for the public to see a bill that has already passed out of committee or, in some cases, also passed a floor vote.
Temperature lowers, just a little
Leaders in the legislature often complain that most of the media and public attention gets directed toward the handful of controversial proposals moving through the process.
Readers care about those issues and that legislative maneuvering, so we don’t apologize for the attention.
But it is important to note the majority of the 138 bills passed by the legislature this sesssion were signed by the governor and got the approval of an overwhelming majority of legislators. This session, that wasn’t just true of noncontroversial bills.
One of the Senate’s top priorities, Senate Bill 1, was for the creation of a Kentucky Film Office tasked with marketing Kentucky as a place for filming movies and television shows. That passed with bipartisan support.
Likewise, House Bill 1, cutting the income tax rate down from 4% to 3.5%, passed with no issues. Beshear gave a thumbs-up to the cut despite warnings from budget hawks like the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, so partisan pushback on the top GOP priority was relatively muted.
When asked what he was most proud of passing this session, Senate President Robert Stivers mentioned both of those bills and a third: House Bill 90, which Republicans passed to try and clarify language about when doctors can legally intervene with a “medically necessary” abortion to save a pregnant woman’s life.
Beshear vetoed the bill and most Democrats voted against it, but the bill did not gin up the same level of controversy as other GOP-led abortion bills of years past.
“Even though my colleagues on the other side of the aisle disagree, I think we gave great clarity to people where there had been a lot of false information on what type of procedures were or were not abortions. I think that was a big thing for us,” said Stivers, a Manchester Republican.
Perhaps most importantly, the matter of flood relief went off with little trouble. House Bill 544 gave Beshear access to $100 million in emergency relief funding to help areas hit by historic flooding earlier this year recover. The bill passed the legislature unanimously and Beshear signed it quickly into law.
All of these bills passed during a session that never approached the high water mark of previous protests. Nothing came close to the noise of the teacher “sickout” protests of 2019 or the raucous pushback against the gender-affirming care ban for youth in 2023.
Even bills that everyone following the legislature knew would draw controversy – like the anti-diversity, equity and inclusion House Bill 4 – did not draw significant protest movements.
In fact, the most well-attended protests at the Capitol this year had very little to do with the state government.
People upset with the administration of President Donald Trump and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency totaled well over 100 for a couple February protests in front of the capitol building.
Beshear v. the legislature
They’ve duked it out in the press. They’ve taken each other to court. They’ve passed laws and penned executive orders to stymie each other.
But Beshear’s recent threat to not implement certain bills due to the lack of explicitly appropriated funds for them might be the most bold chapter in the saga so far.
“The omission of an appropriation is the same as elimination,” Beshear wrote. “... If a bill includes new expenditure requirements, it is expected that an appropriation will be provided for its implementation.”
This is the first of the six legislative sessions Beshear has presided over that he’s mentioned this issue of implementation.
It’s possible the timing of it has something to do with Beshear’s interest in potentially running for president. Often listed among a dozen or so viable Democrats to run for the nomination in 2028, the governor has been a mainstay on cable television since former vice president Kamala Harris’ stinging presidential election loss to Trump.
In the ensuing debate over who might become the next great Democratic standard-bearer, Democrats have often asked themselves: How can we get our fight back?
The governor is fairly limited in the policy realm, especially given that the legislature overrode every single one of his vetoes and has done the same for the vast majority over the years.
This could be his answer to a potential debate question of “how did you fight the Republican agenda?”
It also happens that many of the bills referenced in Beshear’s letter to lawmakers about the problem of funding happen to align with some of the most important issues for Democratic primary voters: LGBTQ rights, the environment, Medicaid and labor.
Then there is still the matter of what happens to these bills.
Time will tell if Beshear carries out his word, and if the GOP-led legislature will either take him to court or otherwise push back.
And with the ensuing coverage of this fight, Beshear might score a political point with the Democratic base regardless of whether he notches a victory in the realm of actual policy.
Medicaid takes late center stage
This year’s session was not really about Medicaid. Until it was.
Over the course of the last few days of the pre-veto period, Republicans added language to House Bill 695 that will spur among the biggest changes to the state’s Medicaid program in recent memory. Namely, the addition of mandatory work or job placement program requirements for able-bodied adults who have no dependents.
The key difference in the new law is the introduction of the word “mandatory” to the program for those able-bodied Kentucky adults.
What currently exists is an optional program. What would exist under the bill is a full-on requirement for that population to be able to get their health care paid for by Medicaid. More than $15 billion Medicaid funds flow to the commonwealth.
About one-third of all Kentuckians — and four in nine Kentucky children — are Medicaid recipients.
Republicans made it no secret this session they were to some degree displeased with how the Medicaid program in Kentucky has been maintained under Beshear.
One of their priority bills was House Bill 9, to form a Medicaid oversight advisory committee. Paired with that effort was House Bill 695, which in its initial form would’ve just stopped Beshear from making any more changes to Medicaid without the legislature’s approval. That was a move to “stabilize the program,” as lead bill sponsor Rep. Adam Bowling, R-Middlesboro, put it.
The desire to pare down the number of Kentuckians on Medicaid dates back, at least in recent memory, to former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, whose plans to impose work requirements and premiums on Kentucky Medicaid recipients were dashed when he lost his re-election bid to Beshear.
His predecessor, former Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear, expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
Republicans’ posture for most of this session was: Changes need to be made, but let’s stabilize the program until we know what those changes are.
Then came the final days of session, when House Bill 695 was “Frankensteined,” as they say in Frankfort.
The new law places limitations on behavioral health, including addiction recovery services. And it gives the General Assembly more oversight of the program, which has traditionally been directed primarily by the executive branch.
In addition to the top-down changes, Republicans made granular changes to the program by barring Medicaid dollars from being spent on gender-affirming health care for transgender Kentuckians via the controversial LGBTQ bill, House Bill 495 and Senate Bill 2, which targets trans individuals who are incarcerated and receiving gender-affirming medication.
Both bills are aimed at slapping Beshear’s wrists as much as they are about the trans community.
In addition to the Medicaid portion of the bill, House BIll 495 overturns Beshear’s 2023 executive order banning the use of Medicaid dollars to pay for conversion therapy. And Senate Bill 2 was passed on principle, numerous Republicans said throughout the session, in response to an administrative regulation Beshear OK’d via memo that was outside his authority.
Deregulate, baby
The hubbub around bills implementing a Kentucky version of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) turned out to be mostly bark and very little bite.
None of the touted GOP proposals meant to mirror the billionaire-led federal program dedicated to cost-cutting made it past the finish line or even gained much traction in the legislative process.
But that doesn’t mean the DOGE-esque spirit of deregulation wasn’t a major theme. Two of the most consequential bills of the session were aimed at limiting state-level regulation.
Senate Bill 89, hailed by the coal industry and allies as a needed bulwark against anti-business “red tape,” would reduce the regulatory power of the Kentucky Division of Water by narrowing the definition of the waters it protects to mirror a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court.
The measure drew major criticism from environmental advocates.
Another anti-regulatory bill is potentially more sweeping in its impact. House Bill 6 blocks state agencies from taking action that isn’t explicitly authorized by the Kentucky General Assembly if it costs more than $500,000 over two years.
It was the top priority this year for Americans for Prosperity, a prominent libertarian-leaning advocacy group affiliated with the multi-billionaire Koch family.
The bill could hamstring several different cabinets. The sponsor, Earlington Republican Wade Williams, says the bill only targets a handful of existing regulations. Beshear, in his veto message, begs to differ, painting a broad picture of all the functions of the executive branch that he won’t be able to carry out.
He also called the bill unconstitutional as it attempted to assert, in House GOP Floor Leader Steven Rudy’s words, that the legislature was “the most powerful branch of government.”
