Each week, LINK nky is publishing a profile of one of our local legislators so that Northern Kentuckians can get to know the people representing them at the state level.
Rep. Kim Banta is a professional educator. She has spent decades learning how students behave and express themselves. It’s insight that has come in handy in her work as chairperson of the House Budget Review Subcommittee on Primary and Secondary Education and Workforce Development in the General Assembly.
Still, Banta has been at occasional odds with members of her own party when it comes to some education-related bills.
Take 2023 Senate Bill 150, now in effect, that bans gender-affirming care for minors and changes rules on gender identity and sexual education in public schools. Banta was one of only a handful of Republicans in the state House who voted against it.
When it came back before the House on March 29, 2023 for an override of Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of the bill, she voted against it again.
The longtime public educator and former assistant superintendent of Kenton County Schools told LINK nky she doesn’t feel a student’s gender identity should factor into their school experience. Looking back at her years in public education, Banta said it “never dawned on me” to treat someone differently based on their sense of identity.
“I’m talking about (choices like) ‘I choose to wear a skirt and wear makeup but I present as a boy.’ It never even dawned on me to exclude them,” she said. “It’s that kind of thing that has been shocking to me.”
Banta said she plans to reach out to Kentuckians this legislative session by working to increase mental health access for those who need and want it. Mental health care is a focus that enabled her to pass a firefighters’ mental health bill (House Bill 44) back in 2021. That bill opened up mental health care for firefighters with PTSD or post-traumatic stress injury and promotes crisis intervention training for the first responders.
Changing Kentucky’s mental health landscape in 2024 and beyond, she said, will require input from providers who work in the field.
“We need to see what they think we need in order to get this out there for everybody who needs it, in an affordable capacity,” Banta said. “If you’re not mentally healthy there’s no way to proceed as a productive member of society.”
Then there’s Banta’s plan to file a bill in the 2024 session that she calls “kind of interesting”: a feminine hygiene protection bill that would remove the state sales tax on feminine hygiene products. Kentucky is one of 21 states that applies sales tax to menstrual products, according to Period Law. By its estimates, state tax revenue from the so-called “tampon tax” totals approximately $80.1 million nationally each year.
“I always tell the men ‘Feminine protection is not a gun.’ For you guys, that’s not what this is,” said the mother of three. “But it’s a necessity and it would be nice to give a little break to women.”
Rep. Kim Banta (R-Fort Mitchell) represents the 63rd House District which includes parts of northern Boone and Kenton counties. She chairs the House Budget Review Subcommittee on Primary and Secondary Education and Workforce Development. Banta is also a member of the House Families and Children Committee, House Licensing, Occupations, and Administrative Regulations Committee, and both the House Judiciary and House Appropriations and Revenue committees. Additionally, Banta is a member of both the statutory Education Assessment and Accountability Review Subcommittee and the 2024-2026 Budget Preparation and Submission Committee. She also serves on the Interim Joint Committees on Appropriations and Revenue, Judiciary, Family and Children, and the Licensing, Occupations, and Administrative Regulations committee as well as the Budget Review Subcommittee on Education, which she co-chairs. Banta is also a member of several caucuses.