Kentuckians have a right to expect the state budget is designed and changed in ways in which the public can participate.
This year, that did not happen.
The processes behind two main budget bills, House Bill 500 and House Bill 900, were compressed and passed with little to no public input.
HB 500, the critically important KY state budget bill, is the clearest example. The bill was introduced January 27 in the House, but did not receive a public committee hearing until February 25 in a called meeting. Further diminishing transparency, the original 152-page bill was replaced with a 227-page substitute that the public could not see. Therefore, no public testimony occurred. The House adopted the legislation less than 24 hours later. This process not only cut out the public, but conflicted with House Rules that require a 24-hour notice before voting on a budget bill.
The Senate’s handling of HB 500 was no model of transparency either. It was not heard until March 18, when a committee substitute was introduced and voted on by the full Senate that same day. That was only possible because the bill had already been read on the floor twice before it passed out of committee (a fast-track maneuver we have highlighted many times). As a result, the public had little real chance to review the changes before action was taken. Later, when the House and Senate could not agree on the bill’s wording, they revised the language behind closed doors during a Free Conference Committee meeting. The lengthy final bill passed both chambers that same day.
In both the House and Senate, neither legislators nor the public had a fair chance to review the bill’s changes before final passage.
The fast-tracking of HB 900 cut out the public even more dramatically than HB 500. It began as a one-page bill on March 4, with broad language and little detail about plans to spend $800 million. It moved quickly through committee and on the floor with few substantive changes. When the House and Senate could not resolve their differences, a conference committee replaced the bill with a 58-page version that called for spending $1.7 billion, a more than two-fold increase in taxpayer dollars. Specific projects to be funded were not detailed until the final, last-minute version, when meaningful review was not possible.
Lack of transparency is the heart of the problem. A representative democracy does not keep the public at arm’s length while billion-dollar decisions are rushed behind a fog of procedure. Legislators are elected to govern, but also to govern openly and accountably.
Kentuckians should not be expected to blindly trust laws being made without daylight. The public needs time to adequately read full-length versions of proposed language and to think critically about the implications of changes that are being proposed. Instead, the General Assembly is skirting opportunities for public input, then expecting people to accept final votes on bills that were effectively rewritten at the last minute.
Kentucky’s coffers belong to the people of the Commonwealth, yet the budget was prepared with too little daylight and in violation of what the League calls the Democracy Principle: “We, the people, have a right to participate in decisions that affect us.” We call on the Kentucky legislature to honor this principle.
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Jennifer Jackson is president of the League of Women Voters of Kentucky. She can be reached at [email protected].
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