This week, the Kentucky General Assembly reconvened for the second part of the 30-day session.
After taking a one-month break after the first week of the session in early January, the Republican-dominated legislature wasted no time getting back to business in the state’s capital.
While odd years are shorter sessions and don’t include setting the state budget, there’s still plenty of legislation that moved through both chambers this week.
Here are the top stories.
The Senate passed legislation to further reduce the state income tax from 4.5 to 4%, and the bill will now head back to the House for concurrence before heading to the governor’s desk.
House Bill 1 codifies the cut in House Bill 8 — a bill passed during the 2022 legislative session that seeks to eliminate the income tax over ten years by half percent increments.
The first cut occurred on Jan. 1, 2023, when the income tax decreased from 5 to 4.5%. The second cut — from 4.5 to 4% — will take place on Jan. 1, 2024, if the governor signs the bill into law or the legislature overrides his potential veto.
If he vetoes the bill, the legislature has more than enough votes to override the governor’s veto — the House’s supermajority is 80 Republicans to 20 Democrats, and the Senate’s is 31-7.
Last week, Gov. Andy Beshear wouldn’t say if he would veto the bill if it hits his desk this week. Instead, he said he would “carefully consider” it if it helps families in the short term.
“While it may hurt our fiscal stability in the long run, I’m gonna have to look at how it can help our families now, so we’ll carefully consider it,” Beshear said.
Kentucky legislators wage war on ‘wokeness’
Giving an impassioned speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Sen. Max Wise (R-Campbellsville) said that “wokeness” is real and is happening in Kentucky schools.
“The woke agenda that is not clickbait for cable TV is real,” Wise said. “It is happening in schools across the Commonwealth.”
Wise railed against the Kentucky Department of Education and its Commissioner Jason Glass for launching a website in 2022 that he said: “posted resources normalizing and promoting a variety of lifestyles more than creating a positive school culture.”
Specifically, Wise said that the KDE listed on their website information referring to pronouns and preferred pronouns that if a student chooses to go by one name, the teacher doesn’t have to notify the parent.
In response, Wise filed Senate Bill 150 — a bill that gives more broad authority to parents over their student’s education, according to Wise. Parental rights are something that he said shouldn’t be in the hands of the Kentucky Department of Education or the Kentucky Board of Education.
House committee addresses teacher shortage
Kentucky education leaders presented information Tuesday on the teacher shortage to the House Education Committee.
The findings showed that fewer teachers are entering the workforce than are leaving the profession.
The issue, though, is complex, according to Kentucky Department of Education Commissioner Jason Glass.
“The pressures on the educator labor market are layered,” Glass said. “However, one way to think about it is in terms of how many educators are coming in, how many are leaving and when, and what steps schools are taking to solve what is a growing shortfall between the two.”
Glass detailed that over the past 10-15 years, there’s been a 33% decline in teachers entering the profession, according to data from the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education.
“But we also know that the teacher workforce is highly state-specific – meaning that most teachers in Kentucky come from Kentucky,” Glass said. “While there are some state line crossers (both coming in and going out) that are part of the educator workforce, the vast majority of Kentucky’s pipeline for educators come from within the state.”
