What’s Driving the General Assembly After Week 3?

Written By Lane Boldman

Bills You Can Take Action On Now:

KCC Updated List of House Bills to date can be found here
KCC Updated List of Senate Bills to date can be found here

To act on bills: You may call the Legislative Message Line (1-800-372-7181) from 7AM-9PM M-TH and 9AM-6PM on Fridays, or email your lawmakers anytime. The Legislative Message Line will be open this Monday on President’s Day.

This past Friday marked day 12 of the 30 day General Assembly. Due to the upcoming President’s Day holiday, lawmakers will not meet on the 20th. (That could be a great time to email your lawmakers on the bills most important to you!). When they come back on the 21st, it will mark the last day that Senate bills can be filed (you may find the full legislative calendar here). The deadline for filing House bills will be on Feb. 22nd. As a result of the approaching bill deadlines, we are now starting to see an uptick of “mule” bills, which are bills that are filed with only minor language changes as placeholders, to be updated later by committee substitutes. This is the period where we will be watching these kinds of bills closely for substitutions.

Meanwhile, KCC has continued to push on issues that are important to our members and allies. This week we held a successful series of “Electric Vehicle Drive Days” for lawmakers this week, along with our allies at Evolve KY, which is a statewide all-volunteer electric vehicle group (and KCC supporting partner). Our goal was to bring attention to the changing face of transportation, and highlight the issues related to fees that were added in last year’s revenue bill, House Bill 8, but will not take effect until 2024. KCC and Evolve members are advocating for the removal of a $.03 cent tax that was added on electricity per dispensed kilowatt for EV chargers, including the public “slow” chargers that Evolve KY helps to install. These kinds of public community chargers are part of Evolve KY’s nonprofit work to provide charging access in small and rural communities, where businesses help to sponsor the public chargers to promote economic development. To date, Evolve KY has installed over 130 chargers in 59 counties. However the threat of these new charger fees have drastically slowed their public charger program—a program that will help advance the swift buildout of charging infrastructure at all levels and in all regions. We will continue to work on this issue to ensure that the transition to cleaner vehicles is also equitable and does not penalize consumers who choose to prioritize cleaner and more efficient transportation options.

New Bill Highlight of the Week

House Bill 264 (KCC Strong Oppose): “Regulatory Sandbox” bill. This is a bill we have seen before, and has been popping up in several states (Ohio’s new version of this law will go into effect in March). This year’s Kentucky bill has been filed by Rep. Pratt. “Regulatory Sandboxes” enable in a real-life environment for the testing of innovative technologies, products, services or approaches, which are not fully compliant with the existing legal and regulatory framework. While some may see this as a tool for fostering innovation, it can also be seen as a way to avoid environmental regulations. The Kentucky bill creates an “Office of Regulatory Relief” within the Economic Development Cabinet tasked with identifying state laws and regulations that could be waived for certain "innovative" businesses for a one-year period, including environmental regulations. The bill has already been assigned to the House Small Business & Information Technology committee.


Bill Updates of the Week:

House Bill 4 Update: (Merchant Solar). One of the last bills added to our list the previous week was legislation to regulate large-scale “merchant” solar electric generating facilities. In less than three years, Kentucky has seen nearly 40 applications for large-scale “merchant” solar farms, with nearly half of those applications receiving full or conditional approval from the state’s Electric Generation Siting Board. While we feel that the Siting Board has done a good job in guiding these projects, we provided details last week on the content of this newest legislation (House Bill 4) designed to provide clearer guidance for developers and landowners for these projects.

While we feel that this year’s bill by Rep. Branscum was not nearly as strong as a bill filed in 2022 by Senator Hornback, we still marked this as a bill to support. However this week we have added further guidance on House Bill 4’s shortcomings, and we will be advocating for improvements. See our full description and recommendations on our House Bill List.


Senate Bill 150 (KCC Strong Oppose). While this bill focusing on schools and parental notification for students was a bit “off-topic” for KCC (see full description on our Senate Bill List), we recognize the impact such a bill will have on our education system, including environmental education, and were so offended by the bill’s content and process that we included this legislation in our strong oppose list, as well as another education bill, House Bill 173 (See KCC’s House Bill list for details on that bill). We will share with you a few of the comments on this from Senator Karen Berg, who spoke passionately about Senate Bill 150’s process:

“…I am frustrated with the rushed and hasty process of SB 150. The legislation was recommitted to the Senate Education Committee on Thursday with the addition of a committee substitute being used to circumvent the rules of the legislative process without proper scrutiny or debate. In this case, the committee sub was used to waive the amendments filed on the original bill, effectively bypassing the standard 24-hour waiting period for amendments before voting. This flawed process does not allow for adequate time for legislators to review, analyze, and debate the changes made to the bill. Furthermore, SB 150 was considered by the full Senate only hours after the Senate Education Committee meeting, which raises concerns about transparency and accountability in the legislative process…”

Adding More Bills to the “Anti-ESG” list: One of the late bills that came up on Friday was Senate Bill 166 (Mills) which is another bill attacking “socially responsible investing” also known as “Environment/Social/Governance” investing or “ESG”. This bill came late on Friday and therefore we will provide a full analysis in our next report. However we have been strongly opposing other legislation already filed this session that attacks “ESG” programs, such as House Bill 236. That bill is currently assigned to the House Natural Resources Committee. You can learn more about the state’s history of anti-ESG efforts here.

Continue to Support- More Co-Sponsors Needed:

House Bill 66 (Willner) KCC Strong Support. Makes it more difficult for utilities to disconnect service during extreme winter and summer temperatures. Contact your Representative and ask them to co-sponsor.

Continue to Oppose/Updates:

Senate Bill 4 (R. Mills) KCC Strong Oppose This bill is designed to slow the retirement of fossil fuel electric generating units.

House Bill 169 Off Highway Vehicles (P.Flannery) Strong Oppose.  Allows the operation of off-highway vehicles on certain roadways in the Commonwealth. While this bill does address safety in some parts, we oppose based on the safety consideration of expansion of operation of OHVs on local roads and the noise and safety impact to local communities. The bill has now been assigned to House Transportation.

  • ACT: Contact the members of House Transportation to oppose. Legislative message line: (1-800-372-7181).

House Bill 236, Attack on Socially Responsible Investments (S. Sharp) Strong Oppose. This is listed as an act relating to the fiduciary duties owed to the state-administered retirement systems, and has now been assigned to the House Natural Resources Committee. A report by ESI Consultants shows that such legislation could cost Kentucky an additional $26-$70 million in investments.

House Bill 50 and Senate Bill 50- KCC Strong Oppose. These bills require 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: The Senate bill has been assigned to State & Local Government. The House bill has not yet been assigned to a committee, however you may contact House Leadership to oppose. Legislative message line: (1-800-372-7181).







Lane Boldman
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