A Northern Kentucky lawmaker wants the state to fund teacher recruitment awards and student teacher stipends to help address the state’s public school teacher shortage. Retired educator Rep. Kim Banta (R-Fort Mitchell) is the lead sponsor of House Bill 377 – a proposal to establish a teacher recruitment student loan forgiveness pilot program and student […]
Tag: Kentucky General Assembly
Posted inHealth
Senate OKs Medicaid pay for midwife home births in KY
Giving birth at home with help from a trained midwife would be an option for more Kentuckians under a bill that has passed the Kentucky Senate. Sen. Shelley Funke Frommeyer (R-Alexandria) sponsors Senate Bill 89, passed 34-3 on Thursday. The bill would make home birth available to more women by allowing Medicaid reimbursement for licensed, […]
Posted inPolitics
NKY medical examiner’s office renovation: 18-24 months, funding needed
State justice cabinet officials say it could take 18 to 24 months for another Northern Kentucky Medical Examiner’s Office to reopen in NKY if funding for the project is included in the next state budget. Based on recent estimates from project designers, Justice and Public Safety Cabinet budget director Rebecca Norton told the Senate Appropriations […]
Posted inPolitics
Advocates rally for end to felon disenfranchisement
Kentuckian Chris Applegate doesn’t take his right to vote for granted. Applegate, who lives in Corinth, lost the right to vote in Kentucky some years ago. He restored that right in 2019 when Gov. Andy Beshear signed an order automatically restoring voting rights to nonviolent felons who have finished their sentence or terms of release. […]
Posted inPolitics
Anti-DEI bill passes Kentucky Senate
A bill that threatens action by the state’s Attorney General against Kentucky public colleges and universities that promote “discriminatory concepts” linked to race and gender has passed the Kentucky Senate. Senators voted 26-7 along party lines Tuesday to approve Senate Bill 6, sometimes referred to as an anti-DEI bill, for its proposed curbing of diversity, […]
Posted inFrankfort
Homestead exemption expansion could save Kentucky seniors on property taxes
Older Kentuckians who own their home could see future property tax savings under a constitutional amendment proposed Monday in the Kentucky Senate. The savings would come from expanding the state’s homestead exemption, a statutory tax break for Kentuckians 65 and older that exempts a set amount of a home’s value from the property tax rolls. […]
Posted inPolitics
After scathing audit, Beshear says juvenile detention centers need ‘a lot of improvement’
Three weeks after Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was reelected in 2023, big changes were rolled out at the Campbell Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Newport. Starting Nov. 29, state officials announced, only males would be housed at the Newport facility, at least until further notice. It was the third major change announced for the Campbell […]
Posted inPolitics
How Kentucky’s Republican-led legislature is changing the face of state law
Senate President Robert Stivers sat with reporters over coffee early one recent Tuesday and reminisced about the last time Democrats controlled the Kentucky Senate. It was January 1997 and Stivers, then a 30-something lawyer from Clay County, had just been elected in 1996 for the first time to what was then a Republican Senate minority. […]
Posted inPolitics
‘Seth’s Law’ health care decision bill gets committee approval
A bill that would add “adult friend” to the list of individuals allowed by law to make health care decisions for another person was approved in a House committee Wednesday. House Bill 385 passed the House Judiciary Committee on an 18-0 vote. Rep. Kimberly Poore Moser (R-Taylor Mill) is the bill’s sponsor. She introduced the […]
Posted inPolitics
Kentucky panel OKs bill to ban most cell phone use in classrooms
The use of smartphones and other cell phone technology, in most instances, would be banned from public school classrooms under a bill the House Education Committee approved Tuesday. Only cell phone use during emergencies or “if directed … by a teacher for an instructional purpose” would be allowed under the legislation proposed in House Bill […]