On the Governor’s Desk: GA Week 7
Contact the Governor to VETO bills: Email Link, or call 502-564-2611
KCC Updated List of House Bills to date here
KCC Updated List of Senate Bills to date here
Lawmakers ended this week in a frenzy to get as many bills as possible on the Governor’s desk before the Veto period, which started on March 17th and runs through March 28th (however on bills received before March 17th would need to be acted on earlier). The Governor has 10 days (excluding Sundays) to act on a bill after it is received.
A bill may be passed over the Governor's veto by a majority of the members of both houses when they return. Lawmakers return for two final days of the General Assembly on March 28th and 29th to override any vetoes, when they will “adjourn sine die.”
Week 7 Recap- Urge the Governor to VETO These Bills:
Not unexpectedly, during this final week, some of the worst bills were passed. We want to thank all of you who made repeated calls and emails to try to stop the worst of these bills.
We were very alarmed at the passage this week of Senate Bill 226 (KCC Strong Oppose) which will impact the state’s permits under the Clean Water Act for discharges into outstanding state resource waters. This was filed by Senator Johnnie Turner to speed up permitting related to surface mining. This bill raises significant concerns over our waterways, such as taking away the authority of the Governor to deny a certification if the certification will not be in the best interests of the environment and the people of the Commonwealth. We urge you to contact the Governor immediately to VETO this legislation.
And then, this week we also saw the final passage of Senate Bill 4 (KCC Strong Oppose), a bill to limit the retirement of fossil fuel generation. An aggressive campaign facilitated by the utilities, under the name Kentuckians for Affordable & Reliable Energy, came out strongly against the bill as well as the Kentucky Association of Manufacturers and others (including ourselves). Unfortunately, the final bill included a particularly disturbing floor amendment that would predicate that the decision to retire the fossil fuel-fired electric generating unit would NOT be the result of any financial incentives offered by a federal agency. (See Kentucky Lantern story on this bill). Despite this massive pushback, the bill passed on largely partisan lines and is now on the Governor’s desk. We urge you to contact the Governor immediately to VETO this legislation.
Finally, we were disappointed this week to see the final passage of House Bill 4 (Modify) to address “merchant” electric generating facilities, such as large-scale solar farms. We had initially supported the concept of finally getting better statutes in place for the development of these operations, in order to lessen the conflicts between developers, local governments and landowners. While the current body reviewing these projects, the Electric Generation and Transmission Siting Board (consisting of the Public Service Commissioners and local representation) has done an excellent job in reviewing these projects to date, it was our hope that this bill would be modified to provide protections that were as good or better to level the playing field between landowners and developers. While lawmakers did attempt to address several concerns with a committee substitute and floor amendment filed this week, we still felt the bill gave more power to that of the developers. Therefore, we urge you to contact the Governor immediately to VETO this legislation.
As for other “oppose” bills that went to final passage this week- (please urge the Governor to Veto) those included a truly horrible bill that we considered an “education and justice” issue, Senate Bill 150. While this was not strictly an environmental bill, we had grave concerns around the intrusion of state government into our education system and its students. This bill was debated for hours on the last day of the session, with extreme and passionate testimony, and while changed, it is still a notably awful bill.
We also saw the final passage of one of the three bills impacting socially responsible investing or “Environment/Social/Governance” investing (“ESG”), House Bill 236 that was focused on pushing back against fossil fuel divestment campaigns. Our concern now is that one of the other bills filed (which did not pass) had an even broader “anti-boycott” agenda, going after even more “politically sensitive” boycott issues such as “any agricultural commodities associated companies, firearms goods or services associated companies, petrochemical commodities associated companies, and social media information companies.” Now with the passage of House Bill 236, we may see this expanded effort in a future legislative session.
And finally, we saw final passage of House Bill 264 (Oppose) the Regulatory ‘Sandbox.’ bill that creates an “Office of Regulatory Relief” tasked with identifying state laws and regulations, including environmental regs, that could be waived for certain "innovative" businesses for a one-year period. While the bill puts certain safeguards in place, we are concerned with the effort to waive environmental regulations even for a limited period of time.
See our full summary of House and Senate bills remaining and their status.
Final Passage of Bills We Supported:
On the bright side, we appreciate the calls you made last week to increase the amount of funds released to our state parks through House Joint Resolution 76. The bill was further amended this week to release an addition $20 million in allocated funds for state park utility improvements, on top of the $46 million of funs already released in the bill for much needed campground upgrades and broadband improvements. Unfortunately the bill still held back $84 million of already authorized funds. However lawmakers passed the bill to allow Parks to move forward with the funds that were released.
We also saw some positive bills go through a final passage for land conservation such as Senate Bill 144 that helps to preserve battlefield lands and underground railroad sites and the massive Senate Bill 241 which would speed up the process for the Department of Fish and Wildlife to work with third parties to complete due diligence for the Kentucky properties involved in the Cumberland Forest Project, a multi-state project that includes 54,000 acres in Knox, Bell and Leslie Counties conveyed in partnership with The Nature Conservancy. While we were NOT happy with several provisions within the bill including some that removes certain powers of the Governor and Finance and Administration Cabinet (see details on our House bill list) we hope this legislation will help this significant land conservation project move forward.