We’re down to the wire in Frankfort. Lawmakers will not be making up that snow day after all (boooooo), so they’re just meeting Tuesday and Wednesday this week.
Mission: Pass any and all potentially controversial legislation before 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, so they have a chance to override any vetoes from Gov. Andy Beshear during the final two days of session on April 14 and 15.
Rapid-fire, let’s run through what everyone needs to know real quick and get everyone back to planning their Veto Period Eve Eve and Veto Period Eve Frankfort ‘Fits, mmk?
The who, when, where
As per usual, the girlie pops of the General Assembly (and the guys, too, sure) will be gathering in their “temporary chambers” aka the large trailers off-limits to the public in their parking lot in Frankfort to pass a ton of bills.
The “when” is a lil fluid. Like I mentioned, they could’ve chosen to meet and pass stuff today, Monday, but they said, actually, we can do a 60 day session in 59 days. So, they’re just meeting Tuesday and Wednesday.
They’re scheduled to start at noon Tuesday — different from their normal 2 p.m. start time — and they’ll probably start around the same time, if not 9 a.m. on Wednesday.
Typically, the middle-of-the-week days have a ton of committee meetings scheduled — expect less of that for these two days and more just passing legislation, taking a break, passing more legislation, taking another break, etc.
Some committee meetings are still expected, so keep an eye on the LRC’s social media channels or the KET livestream for any of note that pop up!
Generally, though: Expect some long days and longer nights.
What to watch for/expect
So, I guess the good news is that a lot of the controversial legislation we’ve talked about in The Gallery Pass is dead.
The main two things to monitor are (1) Um, what is the next state budget going to look like?? They should be sharing some details this afternoon in a free conference committee meeting, so if you have a second and want to tune in to KET at 3 p.m., that could be fun.
(And 1.5. Remember that one-time spending bill that wants to allocate nearly $1 billion in rainy day funds over the next few years, but never specifically said what they want to spend that on? That, too, is still TBD. May the odds be in everyone’s favor.)
Also, 2. We have a few JCPS-focused bills that are either close to passing or are being sorted out in a conference committee. So, the whole map of new school board seats that would literally accidentally disenfranchise more than half of Louisville voters? They are actively figuring that out RN.
On top of that: I’ve spent a lot of energy over the last few days talking about Sen. Gex Williams’ Hail Mary attempt to keep trans people from teaching in Kentucky, so that’s still on my to-watch list even though it is — for so many reasons — expected to fail.
He withdrew his initial bill on the topic last week, but filed it as a floor amendment to a different bill the same day. Oops! So, fun fact about that: “Piggybacking” isn’t just a signal your bill was unpopular and couldn’t stand on its own, but it is also against the Senate’s rules.
The bill he attached his amendment to is HB 759, which was initially on the consent calendar, and the fact a floor amendment got filed to a consent item confused a national reporter, who then misreported the situation and scared a ton of people and I had to spend a chunk of my weekend doing damage control, so if you want a complete explainer of why this thing won’t go anywhere, please check my TikTok.
Basically, this thing is fully expected to be DOA and withdrawn tomorrow.
But outside of those things, I mean, what other excitement could the next few days hold? Truly. We have a lot of bills that just need the House or Senate to concur with changes, like the House’s big anti-grooming bill and some other stuff around teacher misconduct.
But, truly, so many of the 1,300 bills that got filed this session are dead and the budget seems to be sucking a lot of time and attention so ~we’ll see!~
How to stay on top of things
Of course, you can watch all of this go down live via KET or the LRC’s YouTube page. They’ll both have livestreams of the House and Senate, plus any committee meetings that pop up.
As for me, the change of pace is likely going to cause a change of how I cover things for the next few days.
I’ll be running Queer Kentucky’s live blog (wooo!) on their site, so be sure to keep an eye on that for any interesting tidbits or key developments over the next two days. This was fun to run last session, so I’m excited to bring it back for year two.
My main social platform to watch will likely be my TikTok. Please check in there to see what’s up, chat about bills with others and share/like my videos so I can get paid.
I’m still not 100% sure how often I’ll be writing Gallery Passes. There’s a chance we’ll have enough to discuss for a new post each day this week, but we may also just stick to my normal twice-weekly posting schedule.
Mmmk, I feel like that might be it? I, for one, will be leaving my desk for the day because it appears my street just got a new stray cat and it appears to have heard me through the window so I will be going to meet it.
May everyone have a restful Veto Period Eve Eve Eve!
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Follow Olivia Krauth at The Gallery Pass.
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