By: Keith Kappes
Columnist
Carter County Times
The 2024 session of the Kentucky General Assembly ended its 60-day session last week and the 138 lawmakers finally went home, thank goodness!
Much has been said and written — and cussed and discussed — about what did and didn’t happen as we taxpayers again experienced thrills and chills while surviving another scary example of one-party government in the legislature.
The Republican supermajority in the House and Senate is continuing to claim full responsibility for Kentucky’s strong economy and huge budget surplus but they were careful not to spend too much of it on sick folks, poor folks, hungry folks, homeless folks, uneducated folks, big city folks, and real young folks.
Gov. Andy Beshear offered great ideas for our future in his executive budget proposal but he’s the Democrat who twice whipped the GOP in statewide elections and showed the world that state government can be compassionate to the victims of disasters, regardless of where they live and how they vote.
Fortunately, through a combination of factors, several incredibly stupid legislative bills were defeated or ignored to death during the session.
High on that Idiocy Scale were efforts to remove fluoride from public water supplies, to allow politicians to hide public business on private cellphones or make government less transparent at all levels, or to eliminate people and programs which help people overcome racism, sexism and other discrimination evils, or to loosen child labor laws and bring back sweat shops, or to do away with lunch and rest breaks for workers, and to reduce the number of required mine safety technicians.
Other silliness bills were stopped because they sought to fix things that are not broken, such as when we elect statewide officials or who appoints the fish and wildlife commission or where that agency is supervised in state government.
On a personal basis, I was disappointed again that our lawmakers failed again to legalize abortion for victims of rape or incest or to take away the authority of governors to grant last-minute pardons to the worst criminals.
But the dumbest move of all was putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot to allow already inadequate public school funds to be used for private schools. But they couldn’t find any money for teacher pay raises or transportation costs of the schools we have now.Contact Keith at keithkappes@gmail.com.
