The Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission releases information on who lobbied during the legislative session on the 15th of each month.
Over the past week, KLEC released records that showed that the Northern Kentucky University Foundation lobbied House Bill 9, the controversial charter school bill, during the last month of the session. But, the reports show that NKU spent money lobbying the bill after they learned they were involved with the bill.
The reports show that from March 1 to March 31, the NKU Foundation spent $5,000 lobbying several bills during this time frame. They include Senate Bills: 6, 10, 83, 129, 138. And, House Bills 1, 9, 14, 18, 23, 51, 57, 124, 130, 290, 452. House Bill 9 was filed at the beginning of March.
Lobbying can also include having a lawyer or lobbyist keep an eye on a bill or, in this case, working with a bill’s sponsor to alter language.
“Once we learned of NKU’s inclusion in HB9, we had conversations with the bill sponsor and other legislators to discuss our role as a charter school authorizer in Northern Kentucky,” said Carmen Hickerson, the assistant vice president of economic and government relations at NKU.”These conversations resulted in the bill language being amended to ‘may’ from ‘shall’, giving us greater flexibility in NKU’s role.”
When the bill came out in March, NKU said they didn’t know anything about their inclusion. Under the bill, NKU would be an authorizer. But, the university didn’t know it would be an authorizer until reports of the bill became public.
“NKU was not consulted about being included as a potential charter school authorizer prior to our inclusion in HB9,” a statement from NKU said in March. “Furthermore, we have not had the opportunity to fully understand what is in the bill. However, the language in the legislation does provide us the ability to study the implications before making any decisions. Should HB9 become law, we will have conversations with the multiple stakeholders in our community about what impact charter schools would have on K-12 education in northern Kentucky.”
But, now that NKU knows of its role in the process, it has begun to look at understanding its role in being a charter school authorizer in Northern Kentucky.
“NKU’s history as a teaching school reflects our strong commitment to quality public education and to educator preparation,” a statement reads. “Over the next several months, NKU will engage with stakeholders and subject matter experts to gain insight into how we can collectively support high-quality P-12 education in our region.”