General Assembly update: All 2024 legislation is now officially state law
NC GAZETTE / WBRT RADIO
STAFF REPORT
July 15, 2024 — Lawmakers successfully passed more than 200 bills during the 2024 Legislative Session, including budget-related measures providing for the two-year operation of state government (HB 6) and transformative one-time investments utilizing $2.7 billion from the state’s Budget Reserve Trust Fund (HB 1 and SB 91). Budget-related measures took effect on July 1 with the start of the new fiscal year, and bills that carried an emergency designation took effect immediately upon filing with the Kentucky Secretary of State’s Office. Today, all other legislation has officially become statutory law.
Per the Kentucky Constitution, Section 55 mandates that legislation become effective 90 days after the legislative session’s adjournment, excluding emergency and appropriation measures. The Attorney General’s Office confirmed this interpretation in an official opinion released on April 18 indicating that July 15 marks the effective date for the remaining 2024 legislation.
The 2024 Legislative Session focused on critical areas of public policy, including child welfare, school safety, crime, education, energy reliability, health, and more. Legislation included the following, championed by Senate Leadership and majority caucus members:
Senate Bill 1, sponsored by Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, creates an endowment fund to support collaborative research consortiums among public universities in Kentucky. Administered by the Council on Postsecondary Education, the program will focus on research projects that seek to improve the quality of life through medicine, health, and economic development.
SB 2, sponsored by Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, establishes a guardians program to enhance school safety by allowing some veterans and former police officers to serve in schools. It also calls on school districts to assemble trauma-informed teams to improve mental health interventions. This legislation builds on Kentucky’s nationally recognized school safety model, which was championed by Wise in 2019.
SB 11, sponsored by Sen. John Schickel, R-Union, seeks, in certain cases, to speed up school notifications when a student has been charged with a crime. This is another school safety measure.
SB 20, sponsored by Sen. Matt Deneen, R-Elizabethtown, addresses the surge in violent crimes among youth. It mandates that individuals aged 15-18 charged with violent offenses involving the use of a firearm be tried as adults. The bill allows for transferring a case back to the district court from the circuit court under certain conditions and after consultations between the county and commonwealth’s attorneys.
SB 46, sponsored by Sen. Greg Elkins, R-Winchester, brings relief to Kentucky drivers and employees such as truckers and others required to spend long hours in a vehicle by allowing for the application of tinting material to front windshields as long the light transmittance is not less than 70 percent. Currently, side view and back windows and the top portion of windshields may be tinted, but state law does not permit it for a windshield’s entirety. The measure follows federal motor vehicle safety standards and would not allow using red or yellow tinting material.
SB 58, sponsored by Sen. Gary Boswell, R-Owensboro, provides Kentucky residents with greater ease of petitioning taxes imposed on them by allowing any three registered voters in the district to file a petition to protest the passage of the tax. The bill would remove the requirement that the petition signees put their Social Security number or the name and number of their designated voting precinct on the petition and require that the petition signees put their birth year on the petition. Additionally, it would allow each petition sheet to contain voters’ names from more than one voting precinct.
SB 71, sponsored by Sen. Phillip Wheeler, R-Pikeville, is a public safety measure providing transportation services for individuals who wish to voluntarily leave a chemical dependency treatment program. The bill establishes safety provisions such as notifying the family, court, county attorney, and local law enforcement that a resident has left the treatment facility and ensuring the individual is only transported to their home residence, a public transportation location, or a ride-sharing service.
SB 74, sponsored by Sen. Shelley Funke Frommeyer and including provisions from Rep. Kim Moser’s House Bill 10, aims to support maternal and infant health and reduce the high mortality rate for mothers in Kentucky. Several sections of the bill are set to take effect on July 15, including one that will provide more information about breastfeeding and safe sleep to at-risk parents. Other sections will establish a state maternal fatality review team and require state Medicaid services to cover lactation consulting, breastfeeding equipment, and in-home and telehealth services. The bill also calls on state health officials to compile an annual report about the number and types of delivery procedures performed at each hospital. Other sections of the bill will not take effect until 2025.
SB 107, sponsored by Sen. Jimmy Higdon, R-Lebanon, is a transportation measure providing numerous reforms. It establishes a Kentucky State Police pilot program to provide operator’s license skills testing in five counties where the state police does not offer permanent, full-time driver licensing testing. The bill expands the state’s ‘move over’ law to include any vehicle occupying the emergency lane. SB 107 extends work zone safety measures to utility and other traffic-altering work zones. The measure also prohibits a person operating a semi-truck or trailer from driving in the leftmost lane on a 3-lane or more highway but provides an exemption if traffic or road conditions require the use of the lane.
SB 128, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem David Givens, R-Greensburg, allows nonprofit organizations to employ 12—and 13-year-olds to teach them life and employment skills. Organizations would need to first receive approval from the state Department of Workplace Standards to participate, and the work can be at most 18 hours a week.
SB 145, sponsored by Senate Majority Caucus Chair Julie Raque Adams, allows Kentucky health facilities and Medicaid-enrolled healthcare providers to submit their current and prospective employees to child abuse and neglect or adult abuse background checks. The checks would utilize the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Human Services existing child abuse and neglect and adult caregiver misconduct registries.
SB 151, also sponsored by Adams, allows family members who take temporary custody of a relative’s child to apply to become a relative or fictive kin foster parent. The reform helps them access more state resources and support.
SB 167, sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, calls for elementary schools to teach cursive handwriting and ensure that students are proficient in cursive by the end of the fifth grade.
SB 188, sponsored by Wise, addresses the closure of 64 Kentucky community pharmacies in the last two years because of unfair pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) practices. PBMs act as middlemen between drug and insurance companies. They determine what drugs may be offered, how much a customer pays, and the payments to pharmacists. Modeled after successful legislation in Tennessee and West Virginia, the bill seeks to grant Kentuckians the right to choose where they purchase medication and prevent further closures of community pharmacies by implementing standards on the commercial market. The legislation prohibits predatory PBM practices, such as mandating mail prescriptions, favoring PBMs’ own pharmacies, and steering customers to specific pharmacies. It also mandates fair reimbursement rates and dispensing fees for community pharmacies, ensuring they are not disadvantaged compared to PBM-owned counterparts.
SB 198, sponsored by Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Benton, establishes the Kentucky Nuclear Energy Development Authority to support, facilitate, and raise public awareness about developing a nuclear energy ecosystem across the bluegrass.
SB 215, sponsored by Sen. Jared Carpenter, R-Berea, prohibits state government agencies or political subdivisions from mandating the purchase or sale of electric vehicles by preventing air emissions standards like that of California from being enforced in Kentucky. In 2020, the California Air Resource Board required 35 percent of all vehicles sold in the state to be electric by 2026 and all vehicles sold in California in total to be electric by 2035.
SB 249, sponsored by Tichenor, requires sex offenders who have been convicted of abusing a minor to use their legal name on social media platforms.
The Beshear administration has announced it will not fulfill its constitutional obligation to execute several bills, leaning on a flawed interpretation and application of a Supreme Court case dating back to Governor Fletcher’s administration. The list of Senate bills includes SBs 2, 71, 128, 151, and 198—all previously listed—along with SBs 199, 240, 319, 349, and Senate Joint Resolutions 140 and 149. SB 199 relates to motor vehicles. SB 240 relates to child care. SB 319 refers to victims of crime. SB 340 relates to energy policy. Additional bills on the list include HB 271, related to child abuse, HB 453, related to child protection, HB 561, related to child care, and HB 611, related to student truancy, among others.
-30-
