The KY GOP supermajority is large and in charge. Why all the secrecy and shenanigans?
In some ways, the 2021 session of the Kentucky General Assembly was fairly typical of past years when power was more equally divided between political parties: The marathon last day stuffed with bills until right before midnight, artsy political maneuvering, and the sneaking in of one or two strange and wonderful treats for powerful donors, in this case a $100 million historic preservation tax credit aimed at a secret hotel whose parameters coincidentally will help the Seelbach renovation in Louisville.
But in this first go for a Republican “superdupermajority” in both houses, there was also a strange incoherence from the party that wants to strangle the government baby in the bathtub — that even in an off-budget year there were so many last-minute bills to do so many things, petty micro-managing, stopping that mean ole governor and revenge legislating. Really, Senate Floor Leader Damon Thayer summed it up best when he said in bemusement: “Our super majority is supposed to be about smaller government and we keep sponsoring more and more bills.”
But the bills kept coming. Nearly all Republican because the “Committee on Committees” blocked nearly all the Democratic ones. Not the big ones, like attempts to rein in no-knock warrants, which stalled in the end. At least 100 new bills approved on the last day alone in a session that also distinguished itself both in a lack of transparency and attempts to get even more. I’ve never seen so many bills get passed with less scrutiny, so many committee subs stuck in at the last minute, at a time when the public was still barred from watching in person and had to depend on the reliable but not always fast Legislative Research Commission website. A session that started with tears over kneeling ended with tears from open records advocates.
More bills with big and little changes filed at the last minute! So many pointless ideas! Three days of discussion on whether a non-voting student member of the Kentucky Department of Education had the mental wherewithal to be in such a post —“they are still developing their thought process” — according to Sen. Mike Wilson, who as a member of the General Assembly, knows something about thought process that has stopped developing. Thanks to some expert lobbying by said students, that part of the bill stopped developing too, and the improved version will have to be passed during the veto days on March 29 and 30.
The lack of transparency will only get worse, thanks to House Bill 312, which will shield legislators from whatever they don’t want to release. One sneaky move got stopped: John Blanton, R-Salyersville, tried to add his bill to literally make it a crime to publish any information that identifies police officers, judges, prosecutors and other public officials by name into a bill that merely prohibited publishing their addresses. Um, this makes no sense and violates the First Amendment, which apparently has a different definition in Magoffin County. Luckily, a sharp lawyer with the Kentucky Press Association stopped it in time.
Speaking of bills given some deep intellectual thought, there was Sen. Danny Carroll’s attempt to make it illegal to taunt any police officer, a brain wave he got in Paducah while watching coverage of the Louisville protests because he knows the difference between peaceful protests and riots. Potayto, potaato. Even though this would put a bullet through the First Amendment, it passed the Senate with room to spare but got hung up in the House.
The continuation budget was bare bones, removing several programs aimed at helping regular folks, but the last minute tax giveaways that no one had time to read totaled $650 million! Including $75 million to make movies, an an experiment that’s gone so badly that 13 other states have already suspended them and the Republican former Gov. Matt Bevin even thought it was a bad idea. Also that tax break on electric rates for cryptocurrency mining in hopes of luring outfits here? How many legislators can even explain what that is?
Who cares, it’s like Kentucky state government is now Oprah! You get a tax break, you get one and you get one! It’s also like we’re rich! It’s true that we’re richer, thanks to federal COVID-19 relief, but the superdupermajority is going to sit on it like their own golden egg. Who knows what will hatch out? Certainly not one-time spending for textbooks, eviction relief or state employee pay raises. Why would we do that? That mean old governor might get the credit. That includes money that’s supposed to flow directly to school districts for reopening.
It seems strange that a superdupermajority would need to be so sneaky and secretive given that THEY HAVE NO OPPOSITION. But University of Kentucky political science professor Stephen Voss told me that it’s becoming a thing all over the country.
“The sort of open budgeting process that observable by the public that used to take place has been abandoned all over the country,” he said. “Leaders have lost patience with deliberate process of considering changes in a deliberative way ... we’ve moved toward governance by well placed insiders in closed sessions.”
Some good stuff squeaked through. Sen. Whitney Westerfield’s Senate Bill 32 made it harder to try children in adult court; Rep. Ed Massey passed legislation to raise charges of felony theft from $500 to $1000, two important criminal justice reforms. A bill to control insulin costs will soon become law. That actually helps a lot of Kentuckians!
We can disagree over content. I personally feel that a state as poor as Kentucky that’s reeling from a pandemic should not lock up most of its COVID relief money in the rainy day fund just to make a point. I oppose school voucher bills that will hurt poor students. I think we should ban conversion therapy for LGBTQ youth. Obviously, the leaders of the majority party feel quite differently. Okay.
But we should agree that the legislative process should be open to the public and to fellow lawmakers. Committee substitutes should be posted well ahead of committee meetings so that journalists and the public can see them. The majority party should not bottle up minority party bills just because they can. Tax giveaways should not be presented like Secret Santa presents. Even if Republicans insist on all this bad policy, they could make good process. Who’s stopping them? Nobody at all.
This story was originally published March 19, 2021 at 9:49 AM.
