New Bills, New Actions
This last Tuesday, February 2nd, lawmakers resumed their work during “Part II” of the General Assembly, which resulted in a wave of new bills. The last day for new Senate bills will be this coming Wednesday (Feb. 10) and the last day for new House bills will be this coming Thursday (Feb. 11th). KCC has added 21 new House bills and 15 new Senate bills this week to our list.
Legislative Message Line: 1-800-372-7181
New bill highlights this week include:
SB124 (KCC Strong Support) (Meredith) Would establish ranked choice voting for certain candidates for office. Legislators, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Auditor, Commissioner of Agriculture, and Treasurer offices would be required to be elected by ranked-choice voting and establish the process to do so. Also requires voting machines to allow for ranked-choice voting. Learn more about Ranked Choice Voting HERE.
HB282 (KCC Strong Support) (Tackett Laferty) which would reverse the legislation passed several sessions ago that only allows board certified pulmonary specialists to diagnose black lung patients. This would allow the commissioner to select a physician or medical facility for referral in occupational disease claims for black lung.
As for bills of concern, new water legislation filed this past week, HB386 (KCC Strong Oppose) by Representative Chris Freeland would require that mixing zones for bio-accumulative chemicals of concern established on or before September 8, 2004, remain in effect until explicitly extinguished by the Energy and Environment Cabinet through the promulgation of administrative regulations. We believe this action would weaken water quality standards and create additional hurdles for the Cabinet. The bill has not yet been assigned to committee, so watch for future alerts on this legislation.
As for more positive actions, we saw a resolution filed this past week, SCR64, (KCC Support) which re-establishes the Public Water and Wastewater System Infrastructure Task Force to continue to evaluate policy options on how to address Kentucky's troubled public water and wastewater systems. While we support the re-establishment of this task force to continue more work to support troubled water systems, we believe it should have more representation from citizens directly impacted by these system failures. We ask you to thank Senators Webb and Wheeler for filing this resolution and then ask for the inclusion of more directly-impacted citizen representation on the task force.
On other water-related legislation filed earlier, we told you last week about HB272 (KCC Oppose) (Bray) that allows 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.
This week, the Lexington Herald-Leader ran a detailed story about the bill. Rep. Bray’s history is as a city administrator in Mount Vernon. While Rep. Bray was quoted in the article as believing that a late payment fee would be an incentive for customers paying their bills, several of our constituent allies, including the Eastern Kentucky Water Network and the Appalachian Citizens Law Center question that conclusion. Please refer to this link for additional background about the bill, provided by EKWN and ACLC.
The bill has been posted in Local Government and could possibly be heard during their regular meeting this week, so we urge you to please contact members of the House Committee on Local Government 1-800-372-7181 and express your opposition.