The final week of the 2016 General Assembly was marked by the passage of a $21 billion spending plan for the two-year period which began July 1, and it is being hailed as the most conservative budget the Commonwealth has seen in a generation.
Governor Matt Bevin set the parameters for the state budget debate when he announced his proposed budget in January. He proposed major funding increases to Kentucky’s struggling pension systems and asked other areas of state government to participate in funding reductions.
The compromise budget appropriates $973 million to the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System (KTRS), an additional $186 million to the Kentucky Employees’ Retirement Systems (KERS), and $125 million in the form of a contribution to the “Permanent Fund,” which will be used accordingly after a mandated external audit of KTRS and KERS.
We invested in the following areas as priorities in the budget:
- Allocating $175 million for the budget reserve trust fund,
- fully funding public schools through 12th grade,
- fully funding anti-heroin legislation from 2015,
- providing raises for Kentucky State Police,
- fully funding Kentucky Educational Television (KET),
- restoring funding to the Brain Injury Alliance of Kentucky,
- preserving the Kentucky One Stop Business Portal, and
- allocating an $18 million bond pool for improvements to Kentucky’s state parks.
We also passed a two-year road plan which funds the Transportation Cabinet. It includes $127 million for Appalachian development, $280 million for bridge repair and replacement, nearly $300 million for interstate maintenance, $680 million for national highways, and $421 million for surface transportation. It also includes $2.3 billion in federal funds to cover projects across the state.
While the budget agreement grabbed the headlines, we continued to work on other important legislation during the 60-day session that started in January. As of July 13, a total of 66 Senate bills are now laws.
Some of the Senate’s priority bills that have become law include:
Senate Bill 4, a bill I co-sponsored, known as the Informed Consent Bill, was the first piece of legislation passed out of the General Assembly this year and signed by Governor Bevin. It requires a woman seeking an abortion to receive medical consultation at least 24 hours in advance of the procedure. The bill also requires that the consultation be conducted either during an in-person, face-to-face meeting or via a real-time videoconference. When SB 4 goes into effect this summer, recorded telephone messages currently used will not suffice for delivering the required medical information.
Senate Bill 56, a bill I co-sponsored, targets habitual drunken drivers. It changes what is known in legal circles as the “look-back period” to ten years from five years. In other words, if someone is convicted of drunken driving multiple times in a ten-year period, the penalties for the crimes may be increased. This bill will save lives in Kentucky.
Senate Bill 63, a bill I co-sponsored, seeks to eliminate a backlog of more than 3,000 sexual assault examination kits dating back to the 1970s. It requires Kentucky’s more than 300 police departments and 120 sheriff’s departments to pick up sexual assault kits from hospitals within five days’ notice from a hospital that the evidence is available, submit the kits to the state crime lab within 30 days, prohibit the destruction of any kits, and notify victims of the progress and results of the tests. It also requires the average completion date for kits tested not to exceed 90 days by July 2018 and not to exceed 60 days by July 2020. It currently takes about eight months for a kit to be tested once it has been submitted to the lab.
Senate Bill 216 removes county clerks’ signatures from marriage licenses and allows for only one marriage license form. The new single-form marriage license for Kentucky is aimed at resolving objections on religious grounds to the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples by county clerks.
Senate Bill 11 is an omnibus alcohol bill that serves to accommodate our thriving bourbon industry by increasing the amount of bourbon that can be sampled and sold on distillery tours. Another section of the bill allows Kentucky microbreweries to double their production levels to 50,000 barrels and small farm wineries to double their production to 50,000 gallons.
House Bill 40 allows convicted felons to clear some offenses off their records after serving their sentences. Five years after that sentence ends, they could then pay a fee and have the courts consider removing the offenses from their records. Without a felony record, they could also seek to restore their voting rights. It does not apply to perpetrators of violent or sex crimes. I did not vote in support of this bill because I felt there needed to be a longer waiting period and that it should apply only to crimes committed before the age of 25. However, I am hopeful that it will have the desired results without negative consequences.
House Bill 428 amends Kentucky’s dog fighting ban to also make it illegal to promote the practice. HB 428 makes the owning, possessing, keeping, breeding, training, selling, or transferring of dogs intended for use in fighting a felony punishable by one year to five years in prison. In legal parlance, it makes it the “furtherance” of the act of dog fighting illegal in Kentucky, which is the 50th state to do so. However, it distinguishes farmers who use animals to protect their livestock from people who fight dogs for a sport. The measure would not apply to hunting dogs, dogs that guard livestock, service dogs, or companion dogs.
Other bills I sponsored, co-sponsored, or carried in the Senate which have become law include:
House Bill 585, a bill I carried in the Senate, provides a new revenue stream for the funding of 911 centers throughout the state by applying charges on prepaid cell phones equitable to postpaid cell phones. The bill also builds in accountability for expenditures made by the 911 centers. Over the past year, I worked closely with Rep. Martha Jane King and representatives from the Kentucky League of Cities (KLC) and the Kentucky Association of Counties (KACO) on this bill, along with various wireless providers. This bill will help our 911 centers provide better quality services.
Senate Bill 179, the “ABLE Act,” is a bill I co-sponsored which allows a person with a disability to save money for qualified expenses, without affecting the person’s benefits. This law will benefit thousands of disabled people in our state.
Senate Bill 199, a bill I sponsored, increases the supplemental payments to police officers and firefighters from the Kentucky Law Enforcement Foundation Program and the Firefighters Foundation Program. The language in this bill was passed as part of the 2016-18 Budget Bill.
Senate Bill 206, a bill I sponsored, allows cities to re-employ retired police officers if certain criteria are met. These officers will assist understaffed police departments, supplement police department staff with experienced officers, and help to train new recruits. The rehires will be on an annual contract with their municipalities.
Senate Bill 228, a bill I sponsored, defines “bullying” in law and requires a school board’s code of acceptable behavior to prohibit bullying. It also requires the code to include procedures for investigating and responding to reports of bullying and a method to protect a person reporting a bullying incident.
House Bill 52 contains a section that restored organizations like Lourdes Hospital to a non-profit status that was taken away as a result of an oversight in a bill that was passed last session. I worked with Rep. Gerald Watkins to get this language included in HB 52 during the final days of the session. This bill should save Lourdes Hospital hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Senate Bill 141, a bill I sponsored, allows one board member of a municipal electrical board to reside outside city limits, giving more representation to those who receive municipal service but live outside the city limits.
House Bill 473, a bill I carried in the Senate, updates basic training requirements and standards in statute for peace officers.
Some issues not taken up this session by House Democratic leadership included right-to-work, the repealing of prevailing wage on school projects, medical review panels, judicial redistricting, the moving of constitutional elections to even-numbered years, the implementation of charter schools, and a reform to allow teachers to set their own educational standards. I will continue to fight for these important issues in the future, but — when all was said and done — I was pleased with what we accomplished in 2016. I sincerely appreciate your taking the time to make your voice heard in the legislative process, and I also deeply value the opportunity to serve as your State Senator in Frankfort.
While this legislative session is over, the work in Frankfort continues. To provide a continuity of study and action between sessions, interim joint committees are formed. Besides discussing and studying issues in-depth, the interim committees also draft and approve bills for pre-filing for the 2017 Regular Session.