Bills Moving Quickly
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When lawmakers returned this past Monday, following a week’s delay from the weather emergency, they began making up for lost time quickly. Final bills were filed, and we have now added 11 new House bills and 9 new Senate bills to our list this week. The upcoming week will be equally hectic, so we ask that you check KCC’s Facebook page daily for the latest actions to take.
Bills On the Move:
SB255 (KCC Strong Oppose) (Smith) A bill relating to the commercial “mining” of cryptocurrency. According to the bill, Senator Smith wants Kentucky to "become a national leader in emerging industries which use substantial amounts of energy" by including cryptocurrency facilities with a minimum capital investment of one million dollars in Kentucky's energy-related business incentives program. We oppose this bill based on the intense energy usage required for these operations. See related article on cryptocurrency and energy/carbon impacts.
This new bill is moving quickly, moving from initial filing, committee approval, and now in the Orders of the Day for passage in the Senate when lawmakers return this coming Monday, March 1. This bill is part of a package of bills to provide the framework for these kinds of energy-intensive data operations and are moving quickly
Other bills this session involving cryptocurrency/blockchain technology:
HB230 (KCC Oppose) (Rudy) Taxation of cryptocurrency. Learn more about Rep. Rudy’s bill in this article.
SB178 (Smith) Legislation chartering special purpose depository institutions.
SB177 (Smith) Legislation Defining Digital Assets.
Next, we were sorry to see the advancement this week of HB207 (KCC Strong Oppose) (Gooch), that has now moved from the House to the Senate. This bill was targeting local governments from taking any legislative or executive action that would impair a consumer's ability to use a gas service. This is in response to states who are passing laws that prevent home hook-ups to fossil gas infrastructure in order to transition to move to more sustainable fuels. (Learn more about “beneficial electrification” here).
The bill passed on the House floor after being amended to make it friendlier to local governments— but maintains the obligation to offer fossil fuel utility services. We consider this bill to be a barrier for climate goals to decarbonize buildings. The bill is now in Senate Natural Resources. We urge you to immediately contact members of this committee to oppose this bill.
Another bill that advanced this week, HB386 (KCC Strong Oppose) (Freeland) on mixing zones for bioaccumulative chemicals. As stated by our friends at the Kentucky Resources Council, this bill would interfere with the Cabinet's authority to exercise its best professional judgment on a permit-by-permit basis to prevent pollutants from accumulating rather than dispersing in Kentucky waterbodies. The bill passed on the House floor this week and is also now in Senate Natural Resources. Please call members of the Senate Natural Resources committee to oppose.
We were also disappointed to see the movement of SB75 (KCC Oppose) (Wheeler) relating to Off Highway Vehicles (OHVs), which provides the ability for local governments to petition the Transportation Cabinet to designate certain state-managed roads for OHV use (so that off-roaders can connect from trail to trail). The bill passed out of the Senate with a committee substitute that improved the bill by adding more safety requirements and allowing the initiative to start as a pilot project. It also establishes a $250 penalty for operating OHVs in violation. So while we appreciate the improvements, we have received concerns from communities near OHV parks about compliance and noise that may become worse for residential areas near access roads. The bill will now be moving to the House, where we assume it will be assigned to the House Transportation Committee.
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Continuing Bills:
Please Continue to call or email on the following bills:
We appreciate your calls to oppose HB272 (KCC Strong Oppose) (Bray) allowing water districts and water associations to charge a late payment charge of 10% of the amount billed and prohibits the Public Service Commission from modifying, rejecting, or suspending late payment charges established by tariff. The bill is on the Regular Orders of the Day but has not yet moved to a final vote in the House. Your calls are working!! See additional information at this link. Please continue to call or email “all members of the House” to oppose this bill.
HJR60 (KCC Strong Support) (Bowling) This forestry resolution directs the Department of Revenue and the U.K’s Forestry and Natural Resources Department to submit a report to the Legislative Research Commission on recommendations for establishing property tax assessment procedures and equitable taxation for well-managed forests and encourage sound forest management practices. This resolution is strongly supported by our allies at the Kentucky Woodland Owners Association. ACT: Please contact your Representative and ask for them to co-sponsor this resolution. And please thank Rep. Bowling for filing this resolution.
Other New Bills to Highlight This week:
HB559 (KCC Strong Support) (Kulkarni) relating to perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals (also known as “PFAS”). This bill requires the Energy and Environment Cabinet to promulgate administrative regulations establishing maximum PFAS chemical limits and monitoring requirements for drinking water provided by public water systems. These are synthetic chemicals that can be found in common items such as nonstick cookware, waterproof clothing, firefighter foam, and other common products, and are problematic because they do not easily break down in the environment. Learn more about PFAS chemicals here. And please ask your Representative to co-sponsor this bill.
Electric Cars: HB508 (DuPlessis) and HB561 (Santoro) are two bills that attempt to address, among other transportation issues, road fees for electric vehicles. Read our House list for detailed analysis of these two bills. KCC supports appropriately funded road development and maintenance. We appreciate that the DuPlessis bill integrated considerations that KCC has been lobbying for, such as consideration of vehicle weight and the elimination of hybrid cars from the definition of ‘electric cars.’ Santoro’s bill reduces the brackets for a proposed “highway preservation fee”. However while the bills are improved from previous proposals, KCC feels that the proposals in these bills still do not yet address electric motor vehicle fees equitably when compared to gas cars, which is especially concerning considering that Kentucky is behind neighboring states on EV adoption. Therefore we will continue to oppose these proposals for now. We suggest you CONTACT THE SPONSORS OF BOTH BILLS (Duplessis and Santoro) and let them know specifics on what you support and do not support in this pair of bills. Since the components of these bills can make their way into the House Budget discussions, we advise you to also share your comments with the Chair of the House Appropriations Committee Jason Petrie and Chair of the House Transportation Committee Ken Upchurch and ask that your comments be considered by the House Budget Conference Committee. We suggest that you comments include that these bills are better, but still not equitable, to fees for gas cars, that Kentucky still lags behind surrounding states in EV adoption, and that road fees should include support for EV charging infrastructure.
Learn more about excessive EV fees from Consumer Reports, here.
Finally, one of our new bills of concern is SB266 (KCC Strong Oppose) (West). This bill will effectively prevent the development of any solar, (with a small exception in the statutes related to the PACE program, but would still include rooftop solar in its definition of photovoltaic power station) including rooftop solar, on any property that is taxed as agricultural in Kentucky. It will also eliminate certain agricultural tax credits for land with solar, would prevent PDR on property with solar, prevent the siting board from approving merchant plants on agricultural land, and prevent any solar in Agricultural Districts.
We believe this bill is a reaction to early merchant solar projects that did not take adequate time to build relationships in the communities where projects were being proposed. KCC has been working with both farming and solar interests and encourages both good solar development AND protecting the interests of farming communities where projects may be sited. You can find KCC’s recent webinar on Solar and Agriculture, along with helpful resources, at this link, along with other resources from our 2021 Legislative Summit. (And if you are a farmer who supports solar, we encourage you to contact your Senator to let them know!)