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.
State Rep. Steve Rawlings ran for state office as a constitutional conservative in 2022. He considers keeping government growth in check to be part of his job. And he wasted no time getting to work during his first session in Frankfort.
Shortly after taking office in January 2023, the Burlington Republican cosponsored a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed Kentucky voters to authorize the General Assembly to provide public funding for non-public school education. The bill – 2023 House Bill 174 – was filed in response to a 2022 Kentucky Supreme Court decision that declared a 2021 school choice law unconstitutional.
That proposal never made it to the House floor for a vote, but last fall Rawlings told LINK nky he expected a different result in 2024.
Indeed, a school choice amendment will be on the statewide ballot this November after passing the Senate and House in March.
Rawlings’ reasons for backing school choice vary, from concerns with curriculum to the public school environment. Last session Rawlings cosponsored House Bill 538, now law, which set new disciplinary standards for students in public schools. The bill was in response to the enrollment of a Conner High School student who was expelled and charged with making deadly threats against fellow students while he was enrolled at Conner Middle School in 2021.
“It was a great first step, and transformational in what it accomplished,” said Rawlings.
Any proposed constitutional amendment for school choice considered in the 2024 annual session must have “the strongest language we can,” he said.
He says it’s what his constituents want. According to Rawlings, his Boone County district expects him to focus on what he calls the “constitutional issues of liberty, freedom, and we the people.” Smaller government is part of that focus, he told LINK – including government spending.
One of his targets for state spending cuts in the next two-year state budget, he said, is diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, which Rawlings said distracts from “straight academics.”
Then there is the separate issue of consumer health care spending, which some Northern Kentucky lawmakers have tried to address in part by reforming the state’s certificate of need law. A recommendation for further study of the issue was made by a state legislative task force in 2023.
At the center of the NKY certificate of need debate for some lawmakers is whether there is a health care monopoly in the region. Rawlings is among a group of state lawmakers who say certificate of need favors monopolies.
“We’re against monopolies and we’ve got a monopolistic system here in our region. So we are working toward more of a free market-based system,” he told LINK.
Besides his legislative work in Frankfort, Rawlings is busy campaigning for a state Senate run: the 66th House District freshman filed to run in December for the 11th District seat of retiring Sen. John Schickel (R-Union). That could put Rawlings in a new seat down the hall of the Capitol when the 2025 legislative session rolls around.
Rep. Steve Rawlings (R-Burlington) represents District 66 in northern Boone County. He is a member of the House State Government, Judiciary, and Education committees. Additionally, he is a member of the Interim Joint Committees on Education, Judiciary, and State Government and the Lottery Trust Fund Task Force. Rawlings is also a member of several legislative caucuses.