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Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘The good, the bad, the ugly': Legislative leaders from Louisville critique 2025 session
Democratic Sen. David Yates, left, and Republican Rep. Jason Nemes shared their views on the 2025 legislative session with the Louisville Forum Wednesday. (LRC Public Information photos) LOUISVILLE — Two Kentucky legislative leaders — one Republican, the other a Democrat — offered sharply divergent views of the 2025 legislative session that ended March 28. 'It's the good, the bad and the ugly and that's the truth,' said Sen. David Yates, D-Louisville, the Senate minority whip, speaking at Wednesday's monthly meeting of the Louisville Forum, a nonpartisan public interest group. Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Middletown and House majority whip, had a different take on accomplishments of the Kentucky General Assembly, where Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers. 'I think this was the second-best session in the history of Kentucky,' Nemes said, adding it was surpassed only by legislative accomplishments of last year, when lawmakers enacted a new, two-year budget. Nemes was elected to leadership in November 2022. The one-hour session moderated by WHAS11 reporter Isaiah Kim-Martinez at times grew animated as the lawmakers discussed legislation affecting taxes, Medicaid, abortion, transgender medical care, the environment and the need for more transparency in legislative proceedings where bills sometimes are subject to last-minute revisions. The Kentucky League of Women Voters and other outside groups have criticized Kentucky lawmakers for routine 'fast-track' maneuvers that provide little to no time for public scrutiny. 'We need to do better,' Nemes acknowledged. 'I'm not making excuses. We could do better.' Yates agreed, saying changes to bills came through so fast on the final days of the legislative session that copies were still hot from the copying machine. Lawmakers should do better, possibly by making changes available immediately on the legislative website, he said. 'The technology is there,' Yates said, adding that as a member of leadership, he found himself trying to explain last-minute changes to Senate Democrats even while the vote was underway. 'I think we could definitely do better.' Yates also criticized the 2025 session for focusing too much on cultural issues including banning Medicaid coverage for transgender health services; limiting such care for inmates; and cancelling Gov. Andy Beshear's restriction on 'conversion therapy,' a controversial practice aimed at gay youth that Yates called 'barbaric.' Lawmakers also enacted, over Beshear's veto, House Bill 4 banning diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, measures at public colleges and universities. Yates called them 'distraction bills,' adding, 'We should focus on legislation that moves Kentucky forward.' Critics have referred to such measures as 'hate bills.' Nemes disputed the critics' characterization. 'There were no hate bills this session,' he said. Limits on public funds for transgender services were simply meant to ensure no 'taxpayer dollars' would be used for such care — not as an attack on the small fraction of Kentuckians who identify as transgender, he said. 'If you're a transgender person, I want happiness for you,' Nemes said. 'I love you and I want you to be very successful.' As for conversion therapy, licensing boards for professionals such as psychologists and social workers can establish standards to prevent conversion therapy if they choose, Nemes said. KY doctors say GOP lawmakers' attempt to clarify abortion ban confuses instead Other issues the two touched on include a last-minute addition to a bill to attempt to define when physicians can perform emergency abortions. Abortion is banned by state law except to save the life or prevent disabling injury to a pregnant person. Nemes defended changes he made to House Bill 90, his bill that also allows free-standing birth centers. It adds to state law a list of certain conditions under which doctors can legally end a pregnancy, such as hemorrhage or ectopic pregnancies, but critics have said it still leaves pregnant patients at risk and doctors at risk of prosecution. Nemes disagreed with criticism of the changes to state abortion law he acknowledged were rushed through. 'We got it done and I'm proud of it,' he said. 'I'm not proud of the process but we got it done.' Yates, a lawyer who handles personal injury cases, said he's still not sure the changes would protect physicians or pregnant women. 'Everyone hopes that is the case,' he said. 'We'll see.' As for other accomplishments, Nemes cited House Bill 775, a sweeping measure changed late in the session to include changes to Kentucky's tax law and make it easier to lower Kentucky's income tax, an ongoing effort by Republican lawmakers. It also includes economic incentives for Louisville aimed at downtown development, Nemes said. 'We're putting our money where our mouth is,' Nemes said. 'I am very bullish on the General Assembly and how it's treating Louisville.' Yates said the legislature needs to proceed with caution as it works to cut the state income tax. 'In the event it goes down to zero,' he said, 'I promise there will be other taxes.'
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Beshear vetoes legislature's last-minute aid to put police in private schools, draws GOP rebuke
Senate GOP Floor Leader Max Wise, right, is criticizing Gov. Andy Beshear for vetoing a provision that would have helped private schools hire police. The proposal surfaced in the Senate on March 14, the last day before the veto break. Conferring with Wise on the Senate floor March 14 are Senate President Robert Stivers, left, and Sen. Chris McDaniel. (LRC Public Information) Months after Kentucky voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed public funds to support nonpublic schools, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear applied the same logic in a line-item veto. Beshear's veto spurred Senate Republicans to issue a news release Friday and again Monday headlined 'Senator Max Wise rips governor's veto of school safety provision,' asserting that the proposed public funding would have gone to law enforcement agencies not the private schools that could have used it to employ police as school resource officers. The provision, which surfaced on the 28th day of the 30-day session and received little attention, directed the Kentucky Department of Education to provide up to $20,000 to help nonpublic schools employ a law enforcement officer on their campuses. The Senate added the provision to House Bill 622 which modified state contract and invoicing procedures. Public schools also were eligible for the assistance in hiring security personnel known as school resource officers. The Senate authorized spending $5 million a year over the current biennium. When the legislature reconvened after the 10-day veto period, the House rejected the Senate version and the legislation went to a free conference committee, which also recommended the aid to put officers in private as well as public schools. Both chambers approved the conference committee's proposal on March 28. That was the day the legislature adjourned meaning the Republican-controlled legislature had no chance to override a Beshear veto. Beshear issued a line-item veto last week, striking the aid to private schools as well as some of the original bill's contracting requirements. In response, Wise, the Senate Republican floor leader, accused Beshear of politicizing school safety. Kentuckians say 'no' to public funding for private, charter schools 'Governor Beshear's line-item veto sends an unmistakable and deeply disturbing message to families across the commonwealth: If your child attends a private school, their safety matters less,' Wise said. 'As the primary sponsor of the 2019 School Safety and Resiliency Act, I've spent years working so that every Kentucky student, teacher, and staff member—regardless of ZIP code, income level, or school type—is protected from the threats facing our world today. The Governor's decision doesn't just fly in the face of a bipartisan mission — it politicizes it.' Wise, of Campbellsville, sponsored a 2019 school safety law in the aftermath of a shooting at Marshall County High School. Beshear signed that law. A 2022 update to the law, also signed by Beshear, requires a school resource officer (SRO), a type of sworn law enforcement officer, on each campus in Kentucky, although the legislature has never fully funded that mandate. Last year Wise successfully sponsored legislation allowing volunteer 'guardians' to fill vacant law enforcement positions at schools. In his recent veto message, Beshear pushed back on using public funds in nonpublic schools and cited a proposed constitutional amendment that voters rejected last fall that would have allowed the General Assembly to fund nonpublic schools, such as private or charter schools. 'All Kentucky children deserve to be safe in their schools, but the Kentucky Constitution requires public funds be used for only public schools,' Beshear wrote. He added the Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled against supporting nonpublic schools with public funds. In 2022, the state's high court struck down a 2021 Kentucky law creating a generous tax credit to help families pay for tuition at private schools. The next year Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd struck down a charter school law passed in 2022. Wise accused Beshear of 'appeasing special interests and institutions' and pointed out that parents who send their children to private schools pay taxes to support public schools and other local services such as law enforcement. Wise also argued that Beshear 'has chosen to punish Kentucky families for making a decision that was right for them,' as parents of nonpublic school students pay taxes for local services. The senator vowed that the Republican-controlled state legislature 'will not be silent in the face of this reckless decision' and that student safety 'is not negotiable.' The final version of HB 622 that passed on the legislature's last day also included $30 million to expand a sewage treatment plant in Elizabethtown; $20 million to help communities experiencing economic growth presumably from the electric-vehicle battery plant being built in Glendale, and $10 million for infrastructure in Grayson County. Beshear allowed those provisions to become law. The legislature overrode Beshear's vetoes of bills that were passed in time for the Republican majority to overturn them. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
KY doctors say GOP lawmakers' attempt to clarify abortion ban confuses instead
House Majority Whip Jason Nemes, R-Middletown, presents House Bill 90, which was amended to make changes in Kentucky's abortion law, March 13, 2025. (LRC Public Information) Kentucky doctors say the legislature's effort to clarify the abortion ban is 'junk language' that, overall, confuses them even more than current law. With a few days left in the 2025 session, Republican lawmakers pushed through legislation they said should reassure doctors they can rely on their medical judgement when treating pregnancy complications despite the state's abortion ban. According to House Bill 90, 'there is a need to clarify the distinction between an elective abortion and illegal termination of the life of an unborn child protected under Kentucky law and medically necessary interventions.' But obstetricians and other medical providers have slammed the move as more restrictive than the law under which they currently work. Dozens of health care providers signed onto a letter from Planned Parenthood asking Gov. Andy Beshear to veto it. Doctors can sometimes see complications coming and work to avoid them, but Kentucky's abortion law — and the proposed clarification to it — require them to wait until their patient's life is in jeopardy before intervening to end a pregnancy, explained Dr. Janet Wygal, a retired Louisville OB-GYN. 'We have cared for enough patients over the years that we know what the likely outcome will be in certain situations,' she told the Lantern. Without the abortion ban, Wygal said, 'we would intervene well before we thought her life was at risk.' 'We would not wait — absolutely not wait — until the mother was in any kind of threat of permanent illness, permanent destruction of her gynecologic capabilities, obstetrical capabilities,' Wygal said. But Kentucky's near-total ban on abortion raises barriers to timely care, Wygal said, forcing doctors to delay treatment to first consult with lawyers and colleagues. The clarification move followed reports from across the country, including in Kentucky, of women who did not receive medical care and medications to treat miscarriages and other dangerous complications because of state abortion bans, leading in some cases to preventable deaths. Kentucky OB-GYNs have said the state's abortion ban is forcing them to violate their oath as physicians and causing 'devastating consequences' for patients. 'Patients who have hemorrhage from a spontaneous abortion, or who have ectopic pregnancies, it's a matter of time,' Wygal explained. 'They can bleed out and die quickly if appropriate intervention is not taken. So … it's important to move quickly and not have to rely on legal counsel.' Dr. Caitlin Thomas, a Louisville OB-GYN, agreed. She also worries the vagueness in the law and subsequent 'clarification' language will result in delays and deferred care for patients. 'These things can evolve very quickly, especially in the case of sepsis or hemorrhage,' Thomas told the Lantern. 'Sometimes when people start getting sick, they can get sick and decompensate very quickly.' The addition, meant to offer clarity, does nothing to speed up the process or comfort providers, Wygal said, calling it 'junk language.' 'It absolutely does not provide clarity,' she said. 'The wording is totally … inappropriate. It's not scientific. There's a clear intention to create personhood for the fetus,' which 'makes the practitioner and the patient have more angst.' Two House Republicans brought forth the language, which was supported largely along party lines. A spokesperson for House Republicans did not respond to a Lantern inquiry about the allegations of vagueness in the language. Speaking to a legislative committee, Dr. Jeffrey M. Goldberg, the legislative advocacy chair for the Kentucky chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), said the language isn't perfect and will need more work. But, he said, physicians in Kentucky are working under such uncertainty that something has to be done. 'We already work within statutory restrictions that are, from a medical perspective, very ambiguous.' 'There's a great deal of work to be done. This is not perfect. I don't want to give anybody the illusion that we all think this is great,' he said. 'We think it's an acceptable short-term solution for dealing with a really serious problem that's in front of us.' Thomas, who signed Planned Parenthood's veto request letter, said she appreciated the bill saying, specifically, that doctors can treat molar and ectopic pregnancies. But she said the 'clarification' has muddied the legal picture. 'When dealing with miscarriage treatment and … medically indicated abortions, it does not make it clear,' Thomas said. 'And, I think, in some ways, makes it less clear for me.' It's also 'impossible to definitively identify all situations that would be life threatening,' Thomas said. The legislation's new details for when a provider can intervene to end a pregnancy follow this statement: 'No action that requires separating a pregnant woman from her unborn child shall be performed, except the following when performed by a physician based upon his or her reasonable medical judgment.' Dr. Nicole King, a Kentucky-licensed and Cincinnati-based anesthesiologist with experience in high-risk obstetrics, said the use of 'reasonable medical judgement' still doesn't protect providers from legal action. Physicians accused of violating Kentucky's abortion ban can be charged with a Class D felony and imprisoned if convicted. 'You're opening up the opportunity for them to be judged by somebody who wasn't in the situation at that time,' King said. 'The problem here is that if you are found not to have used best medical judgment to provide a termination, you still are at risk of criminal suit, not civil suit, and that's the concern. Nothing there has changed.' Wygal also found it 'sad' that the new language was introduced and passed so quickly, which she said eliminated the chance for open review. 'There was no transparency,' she said. Dr. April Halleron, a family medicine physician in Louisville, is among those who signed Planned Parenthood's letter. She called the bill 'an insult to the medical community and a direct threat to the health of pregnant Kentuckians.' It also, she said, 'adds to the confusion, the fear, and the chilling effect that is already forcing physicians to hesitate when every second matters.' 'As a physician, I have dedicated years of my life — years of rigorous education, training, and real-world experience — to providing the best possible care for my patients,' Halleron said in a statement. 'Yet with HB 90, politicians who have never stepped foot in a medical school classroom are once again inserting themselves into the exam room, overriding science, medical ethics and common sense.' Louisville anesthesiologist Dr. Dana Settles echoed those concerns and also signed the Planned Parenthood letter. 'Freedom of religion is a fundamental right in this country, and with it comes the responsibility to uphold the separation of church and state,' Settles said. 'When politicians invent terms such as 'fetal maternal separation' in pursuit of personal beliefs that have no basis in medicine, the problem of gender disparity in health care is exacerbated, reinforced and redefined in many ways, but the most evident is that no other area of health is as politicized as when it pertains to women.' Rep. Nancy Tate, R-Brandenburg, who helped introduce the new abortion language, said previously that 'under no circumstances is this language expected or intended to be prescriptive.' 'Within this language, it says that 'reasonable medical judgment' means the range of conclusions or recommendations that licensed medical practitioners with similar sufficient training and experience may communicate to a patient based upon current and available medical evidence,' Tate said. 'There's also a clause within this language that says that in cases of emergencies, that the reasonable medical judgment can be used.' That change, Tate said, will 'save lives.' King, the Cincinnati doctor, doesn't agree with Tate's interpretation. 'You can't say 'it's not prescriptive,' but then it's written in black and white in a bill that can be used to then criminally prosecute somebody,' King said. Doctors also take issue with the categorization of some abortions as 'separating a pregnant woman from her unborn child,' which they said is not medical terminology. 'The whole 'my abortion was an okay abortion;' 'my abortion was the good abortion, the reasonable one, the one that made sense, versus someone else's was done for the wrong reasons.' I think that that language has been here for a really long time,' Thomas said. 'And when you have situations where it's only legal to have an abortion in a life threatening situation, it kind of further stigmatizes and 'others' abortion care, because at the end of the day, all of this is abortion care.' King agreed, saying these differentiations don't exist. 'The problem with subcategorizing it is that you are determining some abortions as good and some abortions as bad. You're clarifying some abortions as medical procedures and some as a crime,' she said. 'And the problem with that is none of those differentiations exist in the medical terminology, because none of those differentiations exist in medical education or in medical reality. It is an abortion.' Doctors are also concerned about the abortion ban's lack of consideration for future fertility, which can be jeopardized with some pregnancy complications and treatments, such as when a pregnant patient's condition is allowed to deteriorate to the point of requiring a hysterectomy. The law's supporters, Thomas said, are 'granularly focused on this … one situation with this one fetus, and don't take into account the patient's previous history or future desires.' 'That's where a lot of nuance in plan of care really arises. If somebody is to get septic … they may have to have their uterus removed, which would prevent the ability to have future children,' she explained. 'Their medical conditions — if they have pre-existing conditions — pregnancy could cause them to worsen to where any future pregnancies would not be recommended. And so there is little thought about the future in these bills.' Kentucky legislature approves late-breaking 'clarification' of state abortion law While many doctors and health care providers publicly denounced HB 90's new abortion language, 15 who signed the Planned Parenthood letter did so anonymously 'for fear of retribution' or because they did not have employer approval. The doctors who spoke out publicly said they felt it was the right thing to do. 'I'm a born and raised Kentuckian,' Thomas said. 'I'm from Louisville, and I feel very strongly about continuing to advocate for Kentuckians in this situation, and helping them to know that there is somebody here who wants to advocate for their reproductive rights.' Wygal is motivated by her belief that 'women's decisions about their health, their fertility, their pregnancy, should be between the doctor and the patient.' 'I know it's going to be very difficult to overturn the current laws,' she said. 'But I want to do everything I can to make as many people as I can aware of what this does.' King, a Navy veteran, said she felt more supported in treating women in the military than she's felt as a civilian provider. 'Because I've always been vocal, I've been very clear with my employers, all of them, that I'm not out there representing them,' King said. 'But I am representing me, and I will not be silent.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Bill that KY hospitals said they need fell victim to dizzying last-minute changes in House
Sen. Stephen Meredith, R-Leitchfield, told his Senate colleagues, 'I'm not just asking you for help on this, I'm begging you" as his bill protecting a program that he said pumps $250 million into Kentucky hospitals died Friday. (LRC Public Information) A bill Kentucky hospitals say was essential to preserving funds for charity care appears dead after lawmakers in the House late Friday rolled Senate Bill 14 — plus several other health measures — into a single bill, effectively killing it. In announcing the demise of his SB 14 — meant to strengthen access to a federal program that raises money from pharmaceutical companies — an angry Sen. Stephen Meredith, R-Leitchfield, compared it to the Kenny Rogers' song 'Lucille.' 'I've seen some good times and I've seen some bad times, but this time the hurting won't heal,' Meredith said in a Friday night speech on the Senate floor. 'It's crushing to me,' he added, saying it puts funding from the 340B Drug Pricing Program for health care at risk throughout Kentucky. 'This is not just a luxury, this is a lifeline, a financial lifeline for many of our communities. The House action Friday also killed an unrelated bill sought by the state's largest treatment program, Addiction Recovery Care, or ARC, to protect Medicaid payments for treatment services. Senate Bill 153, sponsored by Sen. Craig Richardson, R-Hopkinsville, would have placed limits on how insurance companies that handle most of Kentucky's Medicaid claims can restrict payments to providers they consider 'outliers.' But in a dizzying series of changes, the House deleted contents of SB 153, replacing it with Meredith's SB 14, as well as several other measures, effectively killing them all. With only two days left in the session, it's too late to revive them, sponsors say. By turning SB 153 into Meredith's SB 14 — among other changes —'in that moment, the bill was dead,' Richardson said in an email. 'It will be a fight for next session,' Richardson said. Meredith said Richardson, a freshman lawmaker, afterwards expressed surprise at the outcome. 'I told him, 'Welcome to the General Assembly,'' Meredith said. Also included in the now-defunct bill was a measure by Rep. Kimberly Poore Moser, R-Taylor Mill, to create new, detailed reporting requirements for nonprofit hospitals and clinics on funds they receive through the 340B program. Moser had argued at a committee hearing that such measures were needed to improve 'transparency.' Meredith said the reporting requirements were excessive and 'just ridiculous.' And the Kentucky Hospital Association, which had lobbied heavily for Meredith's SB 14, said it could not support the newly-created version, describing the reporting requirements as 'counterproductive.' The changes 'make the program unworkable, and Kentucky's hospitals cannot embrace such legislation,' said a statement from a spokesperson. Not everyone was disappointed. Kentucky hospitals testify they need drug discount program under attack by pro-Trump group The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, along with several other industry and employer groups, had opposed SB 14, arguing the 340B program has expanded too rapidly with little oversight and must be better managed. They argue 340B must be reformed by Congress, which created it in 1992 and has done little to check its growth. It has devolved into a program in which hospitals and clinics get prescription drugs at steep discounts, and then, for insured patients, bill Medicaid and private insurance companies for the market price and pocket the difference, they said. Calling it a 'hospital markup program,' PhRMA spokesman Reid Porter said the discussion in Kentucky underscores the need for federal action. 'It must shift from a loophole benefiting tax-exempt hospitals at the expense of Kentuckians to a system that truly supports vulnerable patients and communities,' he said. 'We appreciate the legislators who prioritized transparency and took steps to bring greater accountability to how 340B is used and we continue to support these changes at the federal level.' As for the original version of SB 153, it had drawn opposition from the Kentucky Association of Health Plans, or KAHP, which represents insurers and pointed out that ARC, one of the bill's chief backers, is under investigation by the FBI for possible health care fraud. SB 153 — meant to limit how private insurers known as managed care organizations, or MCOs, can withhold Medicaid payments they find questionable — would make it harder to act in such cases, it said in a March 12 news release prior to changes to SB 153 that killed it. 'The federal government is cracking down on waste, fraud and abuse,' Tom Stephens, KAHP CEO, said in the news release. 'What kind of message does it send that Kentucky is doing the exact opposite.' This week, Stephens welcomed the end of SB 153. 'We appreciate voices in the General Assembly arguing for real accountability,' Stephens said. 'We have witnessed that a lack of guardrails has been a boon for disreputable providers and resulted in significant abuse of taxpayer dollars. The FBI has not brought any charges in the investigation of ARC that it announced in August. ARC has said it provides quality treatment services and is cooperating with the FBI. Meredith, a former hospital CEO who was pushing his 340B bill for the second year, vowed he's not giving up on legislation he said is needed to preserve health services, especially in rural areas where hospitals are struggling. With potential Medicaid cuts looming at the federal level, Meredith said action is urgently needed. 'I guess I've got to wave the white flag on this one for this session but it will be back in 2026,' he said in Friday's speech to fellow lawmakers. 'I'm not just asking you for help on this, I'm begging you.' In an interview, Meredith said the 340B program brings in about $250 million a year that hospitals and clinics, rural and urban, use to shore up charity care services. It doesn't all have to go for direct care for patients who can't pay, he said. For example, one rural hospital uses proceeds to enhance nurses' salaries to avoid losing them to larger hospital systems that pay more. Others use proceeds to enhance cancer care or other treatment they couldn't otherwise afford. 'The program was never meant to provide charity care as much as it was to provide access to care,' he said. Without his bill's protection, pharmaceutical companies will continue to try to limit discounts and the type of drugs shipped to Kentucky, which will erode 340B funds, he said adding, 'It just boggles my mind we're willing to walk away from $250 million a year.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Legislation would make it easier for police to withhold records, say open government advocates
Rep. Chris Fugate, R-Chavies, said a committee substitute for the original bill would protect police officers and agencies from providing records that could compromise an active investigation. (LRC Public Information) FRANKFORT — Open government advocates warn a late-changing bill could make it easier for law enforcement agencies to withhold records via an exemption that they say agencies have misused in the past. Under the Kentucky Open Records Act, police agencies or those involved in 'administrative adjudication' can withhold records if 'premature release of information' would harm an investigation or informants. A Kentucky Supreme Court decision last year found that the Shively police department in Jefferson County had erroneously used the exemption to withhold from the Louisville Courier-Journal investigatory records involving a fatal car crash. The police department, the state's highest court found, made no effort to explain in its records denial letter how the public inspection of investigatory records related to the crash 'would harm the agency's investigative or prosecutorial efforts.' 'This provision has been misused for decades,' said Michael Abate, a media law and First Amendment expert who serves as general counsel for the Kentucky Press Association. Abate said law enforcement agencies had regularly exploited that exemption to wrongfully withhold law enforcement records. The Supreme Court decision, he said, made clear that agencies had to specifically articulate how the open records exemption applies to a case. 'No one is saying you can't withhold sensitive investigative material. You just have to explain why, in generic terms, why it would harm an investigation,' Abate told the Lantern. But a Kentucky bill that has been changed through a legislative maneuver late in this year's session has Abate and another open government advocates deeply concerned it could create a 'categorical exemption for investigative records' just months after the court ruling. House Bill 520, sponsored by Rep. Chris Fugate R-Chavies, was changed Thursday morning through a committee substitute in the Senate State and Local Government Committee and advanced only after a Republican senator changed his 'no' vote to 'continue the conversation' on the bill. Fugate, a former Kentucky State Police trooper, told lawmakers his bill, by changing the language of the open records exemption, would protect police officers and agencies from providing records that could compromise an active investigation. 'It protects the investigation, it protects witnesses, it protects confidential informants, and it also protects the life of the police officers when investigations are compromised,' Fugate said. Fugate, speaking alongside the executive directors for the Kentucky League of Cities and the Kentucky Association of Chiefs of Police, said he cared about transparency but that witnesses needed to be protected in investigations involving murder, sexual abuse and drugs. Instead of requiring agencies to certify that records disclosure 'would harm' an agency, the amended version of HB 520 allows agencies to withhold records if disclosure 'could pose a risk of harm to the agency or its investigation.' Amye Bensenhaver, the co-director of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition and a former deputy attorney general specializing in open government laws, said that language change — from 'would harm' to 'could pose a risk of harm' — would make it much easier for law enforcement to justify withholding records. In the past, before the Supreme Court decision, agencies routinely withheld records by saying that investigations were perpetually 'pending' and 'open.' 'The main thing this does is essentially establish a very diluted standard for establishing harm to withhold public records in an ongoing investigation,' Bensenhaver said. 'It's gone from a really pretty rigorous standard — which was the ability to articulate a concrete risk of actual harm, that's a pretty high standard — to this very nebulous standard.' The bill also adds a reference to the open records exception in another part of state statutes related to the disclosure of 'intelligence and investigative reports' once an investigation is completed. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported when the Shively Police Department tried to argue in court that those state statutes also allowed them to withhold records, the Supreme Court ruled those statutes, KRS 17.150(2), had 'no bearing on whether public records can be disclosed before a criminal prosecution is completed or a determination not to prosecute has been made.' Abate said the reference in HB 520 to KRS 17.150(2) is 'seemingly an attempt to create a backdoor way to withhold entire investigation files.' He said it's not entirely clear what the purpose of the reference is in the bill because 'they sprung this on us' through a committee substitute. 'It would be a really terrible change that would harm transparency in a meaningful way,' Abate said. Senators on the State and Local Government committee on both sides of the aisle were skeptical of the revamped bill, and HB 520 nearly failed to advance out of the committee. A few Republican senators expressed hesitation about the proposed rewording of the open records law, grappling with the stated desire by proponents to protect police investigations but also maintain government transparency. 'I do understand the need to protect your investigation…I still struggle with the word 'could,' in that that seems too broad to me,' said Sen. Greg Elkins, R-Winchester. Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, D-Louisville, a University of Louisville law professor, echoed a concern Abate has about the bill — that it could shift the power of who gets to ultimately decide whether an open records exemption applies in a case to law enforcement agencies, not the courts. Generally, if records are denied under the Open Records Act, those denials can be appealed to a local circuit court or the Kentucky Attorney General. 'If someone makes a request for records related to an investigation and law enforcement says this would harm our investigation, there are processes for a court to review those records,' Armstrong said. 'Help me understand how this doesn't let law enforcement or agencies enforce the Open Records Act.' J.D. Chaney, the executive director for the Kentucky League of Cities, responded to Armstrong by saying there would still be an appellate process available to those who feel they've been erroneously denied records. The bill had initially failed to pass the committee after Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield and Sen. Steve Rawlings, R-Burlington joined two Democrats on the committee in opposing the bill. Elkins initially voted against but changed his vote to 'continue the conversation' about the bill. Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, voted in favor of the bill, citing the difficult investigations and circumstances law enforcement can deal with during sensitive investigations. 'Sometimes the people that you deal with are far more of a danger to the overall administration of justice in our society than is the delay in the release of the records,' McDaniel said. 'We're talking about a space that gets very dangerous very quickly for victims, for law enforcement officers.' Fugate on Thursday declined to comment to the Lantern about the changes made to HB 520, saying the bill could potentially change again. The bill could be voted on by the Senate on Friday and sent to the House of Representatives to either concur or reject changes made in the Senate committee. Senate President Pro Tem David Givens, R-Greensburg, told reporters Thursday afternoon senators would be discussing HB 520 among other bills still needing final passage. 'I'm aware that the vote in that committee was rather close on the legislation, but House Bill 520 did make it out,' Givens said.
