Anti-trans bills take center stage in House as KY lawmakers work deep into the night

The moon hangs low over the Capitol in Frankfort as lawmakers worked until almost midnight Friday, the last day before the veto break begins. The General Assembly will return March 27-28. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd)

This story mentions suicide. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 988. 

FRANKFORT — House Republicans cut off debate Friday night as Democrats begged them to reject a Senate provision that would end Medicaid coverage of hormone treatments for transgender Kentuckians.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I went home knowing that I cast a vote that will lead to somebody’s child not getting lifesaving health care,” said Rep. Joshua Watkins, D-Louisville, who said he was thinking of a family in his district and their transgender son who depends on Medicaid. 

“I don’t have to agree with it,” Watkins said. “This is about what’s right.” 

Republicans also cut off debate as Democrats urged defeat of Senate Bill 2 which will end hormone treatments for 67 transgender inmates in Kentucky prisons. The bill, which was approved 73-12, also bans elective surgeries for inmates.

Democrats said ending Medicaid payments for gender affirming care, which the Senate attached to a House bill Wednesday, would put Medicaid patients at risk of suicide by abruptly ending their hormone therapy. The provision was added to a House bill canceling Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s restrictions on “conversion therapy” for minors. The House went along with the Senate changes and on a 67-19 vote approved the bill. 

Friday was the last day for Republicans to pass bills that can withstand Beshear vetoes. Leaders moved voluminous legislation, and both chambers were on the floor until almost midnight.  The session will resume March 27 and 28 when lawmakers will return to override gubernatorial vetoes and complete any unfinished business.

Barge bills

Earlier in the day, lawmakers swapped metaphors to describe one of two bills — House Bill 775 and Senate Bill 25 — that had metastasized into what Louisville Democrat Mary Lou Marzian suggested might be called a “Christmas tree.”

House Republican Floor Leader Steven Rudy, of Paducah, responded with an image from his district along the Ohio River.

 “I like to prefer to call these type of bills ‘barge bills’ — tugboats if you will, picking up several barges, pushing wonderful legislation through just because the clock is ticking. We’re running out of time.”

HB 775 and SB 25 began as “shell bills” or placeholders that lawmakers use as vehicles to quickly move significant legislation after the deadline for filing bills has passed. The use of “shell bills” is among the fast-track legislative maneuvers criticized by open-government advocates for excluding the public from the legislative process.

HB 775 — which grew from a four-page “shell bill” at the beginning of the week to 147 pages — had provisions ranging from taxes on hemp-derived beverages to tax incentives to spur plans for a private resort near the Red River Gorge. It also would make it easier for lawmakers to reduce the personal income tax in the future.   

In addition to establishing a Medicaid advisory board and ordering an audit of Kentucky Wired, SB 25 also included detailed instructions about where the governor should receive bills passed by the legislature, prompting House Democratic Floor Leader Pamela Stevenson of Louisville to call SB 25 a “garbage disposal of many bills stuffed in here” without allowing the public or lawmakers time to sort through it. 

Democrats also objected to a Senate rewrite that added a Medicaid work requirement to a House bill. Senate budget committee chair Chris McDaniel defended the requirement. “The intent is that if you are an ablebodied adult, that you have to demonstrate some kind of a work effort, be that school, be that child care, be that community involvement job, whatever the case is, right, the intent is that you have to execute some type of task like that.”

Most adults covered by Medicaid already work; opponents of work requirements say they increase bureaucratic costs and create paperwork burdens that cause people to lose coverage.

House Speaker David Osborne won approval for an amendment that will preempt ordinances in Lexington, Louisville and Covington aimed at limiting the proliferation of short-term rentals such as Airbnb and Vrbo in neighborhoods. Lawmakers from the three cities opposed the bill, saying short-term rentals are displacing permanent residents by driving housing prices beyond their means. Osborne said the measure was necessary to protect the rights of property owners and that cities could still regulate short-term rentals though not solely by limiting their density in an area.

What’s in big ‘shell bills’

Among the notable provisions in HB 775: 

• Easing the fiscal requirements to trigger decreases in the state’s personal income tax rate. The legislature would be allowed to lower the rate by either 0.25% or 0.5% for the next two fiscal years depending on by how much General Fund revenues exceed state expenditures. After those two years, the legislature could potentially lower the income tax rate anywhere between 0.1% to 0.5% each fiscal year. 

• Creating statewide tax breaks for data centers. (The tax incentives for data centers are currently available only in Jefferson County.) 

• Levying a tax on intoxicating hemp-derived beverages and requiring their manufacturers to get a permit from the Kentucky Department for Public Health and get licenses from the Kentucky Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, similar to distilled spirits. 

• Declaring that “alternative fuels” including ethanol, soybean-derived biodiesel and other fuels “are vitally important” because they “reduce pollution” and “improve energy security.” 

• Providing tax incentives potentially geared toward a proposed luxury resort in the Red River Gorge area and the Bourbon and Beyond music festival in Louisville, according to reports from the Lexington Herald-Leader and Louisville Public Media. 

Among provisions in the final version of SB 25:

• Would make the Commonwealth Office of the Ombudsman an office within the State Auditor’s Office — as opposed to an independent office. 

• Give the state auditor $750,000 to conduct a special audit of the Kentucky Communications Network Authority, the government agency overseeing the statewide Kentucky Wired broadband network. 

• $30 million to Elizabethtown for the “Valley Creek Treatment Expansion Project,” along with many other local water and building projects.

Bills headed to the governor’s desk

• House Bill 495 would undo Gov. Andy Beshear’s 2024 executive order limiting the use of conversion therapy on minors. After edits made by the Senate, the bill would prohibit the use of Medicaid dollars for gender-affirming hormone treatments for transgender Kentuckians. The House voted 67-19 to agree with the Senate’s changes around 11:30 p.m. The vote came despite unsuccessful pleas from Democrats to at least strike down the Medicaid portion of the bill added by the Senate. 

• Senators voted 37-0 to concur on House edits to Senate Bill 1 on Friday night. This high priority bill will establish the Kentucky Film Office with the goal of attracting film production to the state. 

• Senate Bill 2, a high-priority bill to ban the use of public funds for elective medical care for inmates, including ending hormone treatments for 67 transgender inmates, received House approval around 11:40 p.m. 

• House Bill 695, which Republicans have referred to as a “triage” bill to keep Medicaid from expanding. The bill would prohibit the Beshear administration from making changes to the Medicaid program without permission from the General Assembly, unless the federal government requires them to do so. During the roughly 30-minute debate, Democrats complained that Senate changes to the bill, which passed through a committee around 9 p.m., rushed the legislative process. They also argued it would hurt the people on Medicaid. Republicans argued the Medicaid portion of the state budget is too large not to have more oversight of the program. It passed the Senate 29-7 around 10:30 p.m. The House concurred just after 11 p.m. 

• The Senate voted 31-6 to approve House Bill 392, which says the Cabinet for Health and Family Services must provide emergency and outside medical care for patients at state-operated mental health facilities.The bill includes a floor amendment that inmates in prisons are to be housed by the gender assigned at birth, meaning transgender inmates would not be housed with inmates who have the gender they identify with. 

• The Senate voted 26-10 on House changes to Senate Bill 19, which not only mandates a moment of silence at the beginning of school days, but also allows public schools to give students leave for an hour a week for “moral instruction.” The latter stems from a House bill that never got a hearing before it was added to the Senate bill in a House committee Thursday morning. 

• With a vote of 35-0, the Senate passed House Bill 208, which would require boards of education to adopt a school district policy to prohibit students from using cell phones during schools, though some exceptions may be allowed, like if a teacher gives a student permission to use their phone for an educational purpose. 

When lawmakers return to Frankfort on March 27-28, they can continue to pass bills. Those bills, however, will no longer be veto-proof. 

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