Kentucky lawmakers expect longer days in Frankfort as they enter the final leg of their three-and-a-half-month budget session this week. Bills to elevate maternal health, nuclear energy and research at public universities are among those expected to come to a vote the week of Feb. 25.
Here are five bills to watch:
One to watch this week is the Save Kentucky Moms Act, or House Bill 10. Supporters say the bill would reduce Kentucky’s maternal mortality rate by requiring Medicaid and private Kentucky health insurers to create a special enrollment period for pregnant women and expand services for them.
The sponsor of HB 10 is Northern Kentucky state lawmaker and House Health Services committee chair Rep. Kimberly Poore Moser (R-Taylor Mill). The bill is expected to come to a House floor vote this week.
Should the bill become law, all new mothers and their children could soon have coverage for all aspects of maternity care, including labor, delivery and breastfeeding services. Addiction treatment and postpartum issues – which Moser in January said factor into increased maternal mortality in Kentucky – would also be covered.
Kentucky has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control, which reported 38.9 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in Kentucky in 2018-2021. That rate is 65% higher than the national rate of 23.5% for the same period, according to the agency. Deaths reported included women who died during pregnancy through 42 days after childbirth.
Senate Bill 1
Kentucky universities would work together, instead of competing against each other, for up to five major research projects under another bill expected to come to a Senate floor vote this week.
Senate Bill 1 would encourage two (or more) Kentucky public universities to work together on consortium projects endowed with seed funding from the state. Up to five projects would be funded, including the Kentucky Spinal Cord and Head Injury Research Trust. Remaining projects would be selected by the Council on Postsecondary Education, each selected eligible for seed funding for up to five years.
Currently, the state’s top research universities are the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville, each receiving hundreds of millions of dollars of research funding each year. That funding topped $201.5 million in fiscal year 2021 at UofL and $479.3 million in fiscal year 2023 at UK. Opportunities for more state universities – including potentially NKU – to get more involved in competitive research could develop under SB 1.
Senate President Robert Stivers (R-Manchester) is the sponsor of SB 1. Sen. Shelley Funke Frommeyer (R-Alexandria) is a cosponsor. In a statement last week, Stivers said the purpose of the bill is to ensure universities work together for Kentucky’s future “and are collaborating with each other rather than competing for finite resources.”
Senate Bill 198
Seven years after filing a bill that ended the state’s decades-long moratorium on nuclear power, a west Kentucky senator hopes to create a state nuclear energy “ecosystem” with Senate Bill 198, which is expected to come to a Senate floor vote this week.
The bill sponsor is Sen. Danny Carroll (R-Benton), who successfully passed legislation in 2017 that lifted a 1984 state moratorium on nuclear energy. Western Kentucky – where Benton is located – has a history of nuclear energy dating back to decades of uranium enrichment in Paducah.
Unlike 28 other states, however, Kentucky has no nuclear power plants or nuclear reactors.
SB 198, filed two weeks ago, would create a Kentucky Nuclear Energy Development Authority as a “nonregulatory, trusted state government agency on nuclear energy issues and to support and facilitate the development of the nuclear energy ecosystem” in Kentucky. One of its duties would be to advance nuclear energy development in the state by working with the federal government and private companies on nuclear technologies.
Last year, state lawmakers passed Senate Joint Resolution 79 (also sponsored by Carroll) that created a Nuclear Energy Development Working Group to explore barriers to nuclear energy and recommend options by Dec. 1, 2023. SB 148 is a result of that study.
House Bill 141
Kentucky ranks near the top when it comes to access to fluoridated water – or public tap water that contains enough of the mineral fluoride to fight tooth decay. This week lawmakers could pass a bill that could change that.
NKY state lawmaker Rep. Mark Hart (R-Falmouth) is the sponsor of HB 141. Should it become law, the addition of fluoride to community water systems would be up to local governments and not a state mandate. Programs in place today would stay in place “until action is taken by its governing body to end its participation,” the bill says.
The state first mandated fluoridated water in 1954, according to the Kentucky Lantern. Nearly 100% of Kentuckians had fluoride in their public water system in 2020 (according to the Centers for Disease Control) compared to a national rate of 72.7%. Statistics from the CDC show fluoridated water can reduce cavities by up to 25% in both children and adults.
At the same time, an increasing number of communities – more than 240 in North America, according to the anti-fluoridation Fluoride Action Network – have banned fluoridation of their water systems. Opponents of fluoridated water say it causes lower IQ in babies born to mothers who drink the water when pregnant and has links to acne, and possibly Alzheimer’s.
House Bill 513
It has been four years since a statue was removed from the state capitol rotunda. A bill up for a vote in the House this week would leave it up to the Kentucky General Assembly if others are removed in the future.
The bill is HB 513, and Rep. David Hale (R-Wellington) is the sponsor.
Right now, the decision to remove statues from the capitol belongs to the Historic Properties Advisory Commission. It was that group that voted to remove the marble statue of Confederate president (and native Kentuckian) Jefferson Davis from the rotunda back in 2020.
Statues of four men remain: President Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Vice President Alben Barkley, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Clay, and surgeon Ephriam McDowell. Should HB 513 become law, the commission’s removal of any of them would leave its members “jointly and severally liable for any and all costs to remove or reinstall the applicable statue, monument, or object of art.”
The 2024 Kentucky General Assembly will conclude its annual legislative session on or before April 15. Keep up with all the latest on LINK nky.
Rebecca Hanchett is LINK nky’s Frankfort correspondent. You can reach her at RHanchett@linknky.com