Several Kenton County leaders have expressed their opposition to two election bills introduced in the Kentucky General Assembly.
Called House and Senate bills 50, the laws would require local candidates — namely mayors, local legislators, city wards, school board members and soil and water conservation officers — to publicly declare party membership and undertake primary elections, which is a similar process to federal positions.
Republican legislators introduced the bills in January. The Senate bill is sponsored by Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer of Georgetown, whose district includes a portion of Kenton County. The House bill is sponsored by Rep. Matt Lockett of Nicholasville.
“We know it’s challenging enough to find good people to run for office,” said Independence Mayor Chris Reinersman at a city council meeting on Feb. 7. “Why would we add another layer, another hurdle to get over for something that has really no obvious benefit?”
Mayors in Kenton County, many of whom are Republicans like the legislators who introduced the bill, have taken measures to oppose the bills.
At a meeting of the Kenton County mayor’s group — an unofficial group comprised of the mayors from Kenton County’s 19 cities — on Jan. 21, a resolution was introduced to oppose the passage of both bills.
The resolution passed nearly unanimously with one holdout, Mayor David Hatter of Fort Wright, who opposed the resolution due to his general stance against mayors meeting resolutions.
Yet, even in spite of his nay vote at the meeting, Hatter later took the news to Fort Wright’s City Council, which unanimously passed a resolution to oppose the bills during a meeting on Feb. 1.
Other cities have followed suit, including Independence, which passed a resolution on Feb. 6.
Ludlow recently passed a resolution that granted its mayor the right to oppose both bills.
In addition, Walton’s city council unanimously passed a resolution opposing the bills on Feb. 14. Sources from within the city office claim that council members simply didn’t find the costs associated with an additional round of elections to be worth the trouble.
Erlanger, meanwhile, will consider a similar resolution at its meeting on Feb. 21. Erlanger Mayor Jessica Fette said that government of Erlanger was “strongly opposed” to the bills, adding that introducing partisan politics into local elections didn’t make sense.
Mayor Joe Meyer of Covington has not given his stance on the bills one way or another beyond his yes vote at the mayors meeting. At least one member of the Covington Commission, however, has expressed worry about the bill’s potential passage.
Covington Commissioner Nolan Nicaise brought the issue to the commission’s attention at the legislative meeting on Feb. 14. No action relating to the bills was taken at the meeting.
“We and the other Commissioners and Mayor ran as nonpartisan members,” he said.
Later, he added, “I don’t think it’s good for local politics.”
At least two Kenton County commissioners agreed.
Commissioner Joe Nienaber, in a conversation with LINK nky after a Kenton County Fiscal Court meeting on Feb. 14, said that most of the issues that come up in local politics simply don’t map onto ideological issues that tend to occupy candidates’ attention at the national level.
He also brought up the issue of cost.
“I think it would cost a lot of money,” Nienaber said, especially if primary elections became mandated. “And I think it would require a lot on behalf of people who are really getting paid $2,000, $1500 a year.”
Commissioner Beth Sewell after the same meeting said, “Some of the cities couldn’t get enough people to run [for office]” in recent elections. She added that if a particular city wanted to make its elections partisan, it should be allowed to decide on its own.
Senate Bill 50 has been delivered to the committee on local and state governments, where committee members can potentially discard the bill or revise it before it goes to a vote. House Bill 50 has been introduced to the committee on committees and might be assigned to a different committee sometime during the regular session, which ends March 30.