By: Keith Kappes
Columnist
Carter County Times
Medical marijuana is becoming legal and folks in chronic pain finally may get relief. Sports gambling is coming out of the shadows and will add to our state tax revenue instead of six surrounding states.
Thoroughbred racetracks will maintain their monopoly on in-person gambling and get the franchise for online wagering. Unemployment benefits are going back to a minimum of 16 weeks from the current 12.
The state income tax is being reduced again but no one is sure we can afford it in the future. Suspicious spouses won’t be able to legally plant secret tracking devices on their mates’ vehicles.
Many public employees will lose the right to have their union dues automatically deducted from paychecks. All legal challenges to new laws and regulations must no longer be filed in Franklin Circuit Court.
High school graduates can use a KEES scholarship to go to a for-profit, non-accredited school to learn a new skill. Local governments will be able to allow motor vehicle racing on public streets and highways.
Kentucky will permit driverless vehicles on its streets and highways. They may seem less dangerous if we call them “autonomous” vehicles. State and local law enforcement officers can be arrested if they help enforce changes in federal firearms laws.
I could add more complaints about the “big brother” intrusions voted into state law in gender identity, public education, local tax revenue on stored whiskey, future operation of coal-fired generating plants, and who has authority to hire the state education commissioner.
The list goes on and on as examples of good legislation for all or most of us and sometimes legislation of questionable value, perhaps dangerous, like the anti-trans bill and the book banning bill which surely will be challenged in court.
Holding a supermajority, a veto-proof numerical advantage over the other party, should not become a license to impose ultra-conservative changes on how we Kentuckians live our daily lives.
Doesn’t the principle of consent of the governed – as clearly affirmed in the Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution – also apply to those of us who choose not to be Republicans?
(Contact Keith at keithkappes@gmail.com).