KY General Assembly Week 12: Welcome to crunch time at the Capitol
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We’ve now reached the “blink, and you might miss something” phase of the Kentucky General Assembly.
Once-dying bills are finding new life after being attached to others on the move. Floor amendments and committee substitutes are making all kinds of changes and rewrites to legislation. And shell bills are getting stuffed.
Take Senate Bill 185, for example.
Sponsored by Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, SB 185 was originally a bill to add the phrase “and supporting documents” to the end of “Upon request, the Legislative Research Commission shall assist the judicial branch in the preparation of its budget” in KRS 48.030.
Like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, SB 185 entered the Senate Appropriations and Revenue committee Wednesday as a simple little bill and came out the other side transformed into an overhaul of Kentucky State University.
The state’s only public historically Black university, the long-beleaguered KSU has struggled with financial problems. It was under state oversight for several years, its board of regents was overhauled, and a new president was brought on in 2023. An on-campus shooting in December that left one student dead and another injured brought heightened scrutiny to the Frankfort university.
SB 185 will be far from the only bill to get a makeover in these final days, so keep your eyes peeled.
Prosthetics bill passes House
The Kentucky House gave its stamp of approval to a policy requiring health benefit plans include coverage for various prosthetic devices Friday.
Sponsored by Sen. Rick Girdler, R-Somerset, Senate Bill 97 would establish minimum requirements for coverage of custom-made artificial devices that replace missing body parts and for external braces that improve motor function.
On the House floor March 27, Rep. Al Gentry, D-Louisville, who does not have his right arm, said the policy would be transformative for young Kentuckians who have disabilities. Gentry has previously filed similar legislation, which is on the books in a dozen other states.
The representative has spent more than three decades working on adaptive golf, an activity that allows people with disabilities to play the sport with modified rules and equipment. In 1994, Gentry founded the Kentucky Amputee Golf Association and later co-founded the North American One Armed Golfer Association.
“What we really try to get them to do is to be active, to overcome their disability, to do great things,” he said. “... Unfortunately, when you’re growing, you go through different sets of prosthetic devices. These things are very expensive, and I couldn’t understand why insurance companies were wanting to try to limit these.”
The bill passed unanimously Friday.
“If there’s anything that I’d like to share with my colleagues in the minority (it’s that) it is very, very difficult here at times,” Gentry said before the body cast its vote. “Sometimes you think it’s very difficult to get anything done. You never know when something great might happen. So, keep your head up and keep working, people are watching.”
-Reported by Piper Hansen
Self-employed worker benefits
The House advanced a bill Tuesday to reclassify Kentucky’s workers in the hopes those who are self-employed may have better access to benefits. It passed 63-24 on March 24 and awaits action in the Senate.
According to House Bill 732, portable benefit plans — those attached to the worker, rather than the employer — would be provided by third-party insurance companies workers choose. Companies can voluntarily contribute to the plans and workers can use the funds to cover expenses related to health care, save for retirement or take paid time off.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Deanna Gordon, R-Richmond, said Kentucky has 330,000 freelancers, contractors and other self-employed workers who contribute $18 billion annually to the state economy.
“The bill creates no mandates and does not change existing employer obligations,” Gordon said. “It simply adds regulatory certainty.”
But the regulatory certainty the bill promises is what Democrats on the floor had issue with.
The bill redefines self-employed workers as those who earn “his or her living from an independent pursuit of economic activities, rather than from a separate company or individual.”
As part of the new definition, company contribution to benefit plans would not be considered in determining whether someone is an employee.
The “employee” designation is what grants a person certain labor rights, including workers’ compensation coverage, unemployment insurance, access to family and medical leave, employer contributions to Social Security and Medicare and more.
Gordon said employees would still have access to those benefits, but there was still hesitation from Democrats and one of the state’s progressive think tanks that analyzes economic trends.
In an analysis of the bill before it passed March 24, the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy said “misclassification” of workers hurts Kentuckians and the state’s economy.
“If the bill becomes law, it will create an incentive for employers to shift more employees to this new tier, meaning cost savings for corporations and lower-paid, riskier jobs for workers,” the analysis said.
-Reported by Piper Hansen
Nuclear bill goes to governor
Lawmakers put a bill on Gov. Andy Beshear’s desk last week to establish the Nuclear Reactor Site Readiness Pilot Program.
The Kentucky House on Thursday voted 82-11 to give final passage to Senate Bill 57, which would fuel investment in small, prefabricated nuclear reactors in Kentucky that power data centers and other private-sector projects.
The latest version of the next two-year state budget provides access to up to $25 million per project to support the siting and development of nuclear energy projects, the bill’s supporters said. Taxpayers would be protected from losses on the projects by surety bonds and repayment over the course of the projects, supporters said.
Several Democrats raised concerns about the program on the House floor. They said they worry utility ratepayers could end up carrying the additional cost for nuclear reactors, not industrial customers, and cited past nuclear energy environmental disasters in places including Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima.
-Reported by John Cheves
More headlines from Week 12 of the 2026 General Assembly
- Impeachment continues to be one of the issues dominating the final stretch of the legislative session. The House’s review of a petition to impeach Supreme Court Justice Pamela Goodwine and remove from office Fayette school board chair Tyler Murphy have ended. Meanwhile, Fayette Circuit Court Judge Julie Goodman has asked the state Supreme Court to intervene in her proceedings. The House impeached Goodman on March 20, clearing the way for the Senate to decide if she should be convicted and removed for alleged misdemeanors in office. Judicial impeachments and removals are incredibly rare in America at the state and federal levels.
- Kentucky’s judicial branch warns it may be forced to close its drug, mental health and veterans treatment courts statewide if the General Assembly passes a budget bill it says would underfund the entire court system over the next two years.
- Could there be a Mitch McConnell statue in the State Capitol rotunda?
- The Senate made significant changes to a previously bipartisan House bill on election law, adding provisions to restrict accepted voter IDs and allow private voter information to be shared with the federal government.
- A policy that would align Kentucky with the majority of U.S. states preventing utility shutoffs during dangerous weather conditions likely won’t get a hearing in the final days of the General Assembly.
- The Republican lawmaker who inserted new rules around religious teaching into an education bill has now said he’ll take them out.
- A Kentucky bill to criminalize harassing or obstructing the work of a first responder, including police, EMTs, federal immigration agents and firefighters, took another step toward becoming law Wednesday.
What we’re looking for in Week 13 of the 2026 General Assembly
As of writing this Friday, the updated calendar for the legislative session shows lawmakers not making up the snow day from earlier this year, with sine die April 15 falling on Day 59.
We do know there’s a good possibility the Senate could have to hang around longer though, given the impeachment trial for Goodman may not get started until the first full week of April.
Legislators don’t meet March 30, but get down to business March 31 and April 1 for concurrence — AKA working out their differences on the bills they’ve passed and changed along the way. The 10-day (excluding Sundays) veto period begins Thursday and wraps up April 13, and April 14 and 15 are dedicated to overriding vetoes and passing any other last-minute bills.
Remember: if there’s anything lawmakers don’t want to give the governor unchecked veto power over, they need to get it to his desk by Wednesday. This includes the budget, for which the governor can issue line-item vetoes.
Some long days await us, my friends.
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