General Assembly “Part II” Starts Feb. 7
Bills to Take Action On Now
KCC List of House Bills to date can be found here
KCC List of Senate Bills to date can be found here
If you haven't already done so, now if a great time to take action on the bills from "Part I" of the legislative session before we move into "Part II." To contact your lawmaker on any of these bills, use the Legislative Message Line at 1-800-372-7181. You may also email your lawmakers at firstname.lastname@lrc.ky.gov
We would like to draw particular attention to the following bills:
House Bill 66- (KCC Strong Support) A good bill with bipartisan co-sponsors that will make it more difficult for utilities to disconnect service during extreme winter and summer temperatures. (See more about this bill on our full House Bill list)
ACT: Ask your House member to support this bill and ask that they also sign on as a co-sponsor.
And then we would also like for you to contact your House and Senate members to OPPOSE this pair of bills:
House Bill 50 and Senate Bill 50- (KCC Strong Oppose). This pair of bills requires the office of county commissioner, city mayors and legislative body members, all city offices, and soil and water conservation officers to have a partisan primary or partisan election, and requires school board candidates to have emblems of political party affiliation presented on the ballot.
ACT: We have found no one who thinks more partisanship is a good idea. The fact that the House and Senate have filed matching versions means that this is likely to move. Please contact your House and Senate members to oppose these bills.
We encourage you to review our other bill summaries linked at the top of this email and take the opportunity to contact your legislators on the bills of interest to you. This is also a great time to encourage additional lawmakers to co-sponsor the bills of your choice that need support.
Part II of the 2023 General Assembly Begins Feb. 7
While things have been somewhat quiet during the legislative break, KCC has been quite active. First, we would like to thank all of you who came to our Legislative Conference in late January. There was a lot to cover, so you can find conference materials and presentations on our Legislative Summit 2023 page and our Legislative Resources page.
It hasn't all been all quiet though. This past week was a good example, when the Public Pension Oversight Board continued the discussion over "ESG" investing (Environment/ Social/ Governance). We've been discussing this issue for at least a year now, when SB205 was passed during the 2022 session. We featured this topic during our recent Legislative Summit on how this seemingly non-controversial issue has started to take up a lot of lawmaker's attention. You may find those presentation slides here. And you may also find a brief on the issue on our Legislative Resources page. We expect Senator Robby Mills to file more legislation to restrict ESG investing when lawmakers return on Feb. 7th.
We also had a full afternoon of action this past Thursday with a joint House and Senate Natural Resources meeting to discuss the failures that caused the rolling power blackouts that threatened many customers during late December 2022. The sparks were flying as lawmakers peppered representatives from the Tennessee Valley Authority, Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, and Louisville Gas & Electric/Ky Utilities.
While many lawmakers focused on blaming the problem on decommissioned coal-fired power plants (many of which were near the end of their productive life), and adding renewables, the utilities actually laid much of the blame on a key gas valve that froze at a critical time during the weather event, which caused a domino effect.
You may find a full video of the meeting on KET here.
When the General Assembly resumes, there will only be a few weeks to act on legislation, so we encourage you to sign up for our "rapid response" text alerts should a bill require your fast action.
Upcoming Events-
The Story of Cherokee State Park
An important free screening. February is Black History month. So we are proud to be one of the underwriters of the upcoming screening of "A Legacy Lost and Found: Segregation in Recreation" which will be shown on February 24th at the Kentucky African American Heritage Center in Louisville.
This free screening is being organized by Friends of Cherokee Park and you may find the full information on their website HERE. We hope to see you there!
Looking for Volunteers for the morning of Feb. 9th and/or 15th: If you live in Frankfort and have some spare time, we could use your help. We are working with our friends at the Evolve Electric Vehicle Group to stage some "demonstration drives" for lawmakers who would like to learn more about electric vehicles. We'll need a few folks to help us encourage lawmakers to come outside in-between their meetings and take a spin in an electric car. If you think you can help, email Lane Boldman at director@kyconservation.org.
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