Kentucky Auditor sues Gov. Beshear for not implementing kinship caregiver law
Kentucky’s Auditor of Public Accounts is suing Gov. Andy Beshear for allegedly refusing to enact a kinship caregiver law, escalating the ongoing tensions in Frankfort over which branch of government should fund the implementation of a 2024 bill.
Auditor Allison Ball, a Republican, filed a lawsuit against the Democratic governor in Franklin Circuit Court on Thursday in order to “compel (Beshear) and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to cooperate with a critical investigation into Senate Bill 151’s lack of implementation,” Ball said in a statement.
The law “creates a much-needed window of time for kinship caregivers to evaluate whether a particular route of kinship caregiving is best suited for them and, most importantly, the child for whom they are caring,” Balls office wrote in the 90-page court filing. “But SB 151 is in limbo” because Beshear and the Cabinet “refuse to execute it.”
But a spokesperson for Beshear said it’s not that clear-cut.
“The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled the state cannot implement programs and policies if it doesn’t have the funding to do so,” Crystal Staley said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “It’s disappointing the auditor would file a taxpayer-funded lawsuit without even attempting to speak with the administration about the issue first.”
Passed with bipartisan support, Senate Bill 151 is a 2024 law that allows relatives who agree to take care of abused or neglected children more time to apply for foster care benefits.
In order to make those changes, the executive branch must promulgate new administrative regulations and earmark appropriate funding.
But soon after that law took effect last year, Cabinet for Health and Family Services officials and Beshear said the money to make the changes required in the law — an estimated $20 million — didn’t exist. And if it did, it would fall to the General Assembly to allocate that funding, not the executive branch, they said.
“Lawmakers had the opportunity to deliver the funding during the session but chose not to,” Staley said last June.
A year later, that remains the cabinet’s position under Beshear. Additional funding for the law still hasn’t been provided by the legislature.
Beshear and the Cabinet “claim that the General Assembly has not given them enough money to execute SB 151 and, that allegedly being the case, they are under no obligation to carry out the law,” Ball wrote in the lawsuit.
But “as the policy-making body and holder of the power of the purse that determines the proper level of funding to give state agencies to carry out the Commonwealth’s laws, the General Assembly says that Governor Beshear and CHFS have more than enough money to carry out SB 151 and must do so.”
Republicans’ ire over the stalled implementation of the law resurfaced Tuesday at an Administrative Regulation Review Subcommittee meeting, where Sen. Julie Raque Adams, R-Louisville, said the executive branch is statutorily obligated to fund policy passed by the legislative branch.
“Do you see a problem, that you are required by statute to file administrative regulations and you have not done so?” Adams asked DCBS Director of the Division of Protection and Permanency Melanie Taylor at the Tuesday meeting.
“I understand but those regulations are filed at a different level from me, from the commissioner’s office and the secretary’s office,” Taylor said.
“I just want to point out for anybody watching that this is a joke,” Adams retorted. “That the cabinet has full discretion to implement what they want to implement . . . and the governor is not a dictator. He’s not a king. He has to follow the law. In this instance, he is not following the law. So, you can see my frustration.”
In a statement Thursday, Adams praised the lawsuit, calling the cabinet’s and Beshear’s lack of action “unacceptable.”
She cited the cabinet’s recent $20 million increase in therapeutic foster care per diem rates, pulled from the general fund.
“Yet when it comes to SB 151, officials continue to claim they can’t act without a full cost estimate or additional appropriations,” she said.
“You can’t call a program too expensive when you haven’t even begun building it,” Adams said. “The cabinet has the full authority and flexibility to phase in SB 151. If they can act for one group of caregivers, they can act for another. These families shouldn’t have to keep waiting while the state drags its feet on a law that’s already in place.”
But Staley said that while Beshear supports the bill, he raised the question of funding before the bill passed in 2024: “Prior to the signing of the bill, he made the General Assembly aware it would cost millions of state dollars to provide the services. His administration relayed this information to the bill sponsor, committee chairs, (Legislative Research Commission) staff, and members of the General Assembly on multiple occasions.”
Staley added, “lawmakers had many opportunities to deliver the funding during both the 2024 and 2025 legislative sessions, but chose not to.”
Ball launched a formal investigation in October to find out why the executive branch still hadn’t implemented the new law. The lawsuit Thursday demands Beshear and the cabinet comply with her investigation.
“This issue goes beyond funding and bureaucratic delays,” Ball said. “I started this examination to determine why a lawfully passed bill meant to help children and families was not being faithfully executed. Governor Beshear’s (cabinet) refuses to cooperate with the examination and today I am asking the court to step in to require them to follow the laws of our Commonwealth.”
At the Tuesday subcommittee meeting, Senate Majority Whip Mike Wilson of Bowling Green agreed with Adams.
“The executive branch cannot choose to implement or to not implement what they desire to do,” he said. “They have to implement what is passed by law. When they don’t do that, they are not functioning in the role they are elected to do.”
Chairman Sen. Stephen West, R-Paris, piled on.
“The majority part of this committee is very frustrated with the governor of not funding and implementing (Senate Bill) 151, which under the constitution he’s obligated to do.”
This story was originally published May 15, 2025 at 2:07 PM.
