Thanks to GOP lawmakers, Kentucky is now less safe, less healthy and less humane | Opinion
Watching veto days at the Kentucky General Assembly is an interesting experience — an exercise in futility played out with Roberts Rules of Order and an awful lot of patience.
On Thursday afternoon, Louisville Democrat Rep. Joshua Watkins, eloquently asking his fellow legislators to consider the lived experience of Black people — the racism they faced and still face — before overriding Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of House Bill 4, which eliminates diversity, equity and inclusion programs from public colleges and universities.
“My parents watched us pass House Bill 4,” Watkins said.
“In their lifetime, they saw a great achievement. It gave them a glimmer of hope that America was still moving towards a more perfect union, away from the time when my father couldn’t walk in the front door of a white family’s house ... only to have in 2025 this honorable body that happens to have their son in it, say, we’ve done enough.”
It’s a perfect image to describe the 2025 General Assembly: a Black man with two master’s degrees begging his white counterparts to listen — and perhaps actually hear — the stories of his people, and the reasons why DEI was first used as a way to work toward some standards of fairness in the face of a monstrous, historical injustice. While white people who consider themselves good Christians just sat there patiently waiting to vote to override.
What would it take to have the GOP majority of the General Assembly listen to the voices of people other than lobbyists, corporations and national right-wing think tanks? What would it take for them to hear?
Because what they gifted to Kentuckians this session is a state that is less safe, less healthy, less transparent and much less kind.
Our drinking water will be more polluted, fewer people will have health care, and workers will have fewer protections.
Most shameful of all is the veto override of House Bill 495, which will cut off Medicaid funds for transgender adults. Immediately.
It’s one thing to prevent transgender girls from playing on girls sports teams. It’s quite another to deny their existence altogether.
Republicans would like this tiny sliver of our population to disappear, and they may get their wish. As a group of doctors wrote in a Herald-Leader op-ed column Thursday, depression and suicide rates will rise for people who suffer from the fully recognized conditions known as gender dysphoria and gender incongruence.
It’s inhumane, un-Christian and cruel.
We know that personal experience can make a difference. In a funny note in a story by my colleagues Austin Horn and Alex Acquisto, one Republican, Sen. Rick Girdler voted against overriding the veto on HB 424, the bill that makes it easier for universities to terminate employees, adding one more threat to tenure.
The Somerset Republican explained that he voted no on House Bill 424 veto override, “because of his two daughters who are college professors.”
There you have it. We must extrapolate that House Bill 424 is indeed bad for university professors. If one of his daughters was transgender, would that have changed his mind on HB 495?
The process was frequently undemocratic, with big changes made to bills without a chance for the public, or even other lawmakers to review them. According to Louisville Public Media’s Joe Sonka, at least 90 bills were passed in the past two days before the veto period.
Many of the big ones, such as big changes to Medicaid and abortion laws, were added to existing laws without time for review or discussion.
As of July 1, police will get to decide which records the public should be allowed to see. House Bill 520 did not come during veto days because Gov. Beshear did not veto it, but instead sent it to the Secretary of State without his signature.
It’s disappointing that a rare instance of bipartisanship has to come at the expense of government transparency. But transparency has never been Beshear’s strong point.
We are indeed living through the death of expertise. Lawmakers ignored water scientists, doctors, university professors, people who have suffered racism, people who have lost family members in coal mines. Next year, the General Assembly will hear from even more people as the fallout from Elon Musk’s slash and burning of federal government. They will also be ignored.
But that’s not totally right. Sen. Girdler listened to some experts — college professors who happen to be his daughters. He listened, he heard, and he concluded the bill that affected them was a bad one.
Maybe next time, Girdler and the rest of his party could listen to — and hear — the rest of us.
This story was originally published March 28, 2025 at 10:46 AM.
