Senate Budget Chair Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, capped off his tour of Northern Kentucky organizations benefiting from 2024 state budget allocations by visiting Holly Hill Family and Children Solutions. Holly Hill recently received a $6.5 million one-time allocation in fiscal year 2025 to support its infrastructure modernization program, allowing the organization to expand its essential services to vulnerable youth across northern Kentucky. (Kentucky Senate Majority Caucus)
In an op-ed released by Kentucky’s Senate Majority Caucus touting its achievements, Senate President Robert Stivers and state Sen. Chris McDaniel criticized Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear for attempting “to take credit for these improvements” when the legislature has done the work.
This is a consistent drumbeat. They are perturbed that the governor shows up in our communities and hands out checks to local officials with monies allocated by the legislative branch.
I have attended my fair share of these events in my small county. What I see are citizens across the political spectrum who are excited to see the governor. And when he is at the podium he praises our local leaders for their work — in Anderson County’s case Rep. James Tipton (a Republican), Sen. Adrienne Southworth (a Republican), Judge Executive Orbrey Gritton (a Republican), Lawrenceburg Mayor Troy Young (a Republican) etc… — and details the good the money will do.
Senate President Robert Stivers. (Kentucky Senate Majority Caucus)
At these local events, I have never once heard the governor take sole, personal credit for the check he is handing out. And therein lies the rub.
Republicans hold an overwhelming supermajority in Frankfort, which they run zero risk of losing in the Nov. 5 election. They control the budget; they can do virtually anything, unchecked; they can easily override gubernatorial vetoes. Why all the hand wringing about credit?
And why don’t they, if they want to stand out, be heroes, make news, get credit, take on something truly difficult. Something that would save tax dollars and save lives. Something that would require hard conversations and real work.
Something like the epidemic of gun violence.
On a Saturday night in early September — a little over one month ago — you may recall news alerts of a sniper shooting at cars on I-75 from a remote perch, in or around Laurel County. A man had purchased an AR-style weapon and 1,000 rounds of ammunition the same day. Traffic was at a standstill. People were injured. Fear spread.
The sniper remained at large for many days in a heavily wooded, expansive area. Several law enforcement agencies were deployed. The community was on high alert. Schools in the area were closed, which made it hard for parents to go to work.
When asked about the situation, House Speaker David Osborne told LEX18, “We have to do more to address the root cause of these issues, which is mental illness. We’ve done a lot, we’re doing a lot, but clearly, we’re not doing enough,” and “It’s always a conversation … we’re always looking for ways to close loopholes and things like that.”
Osborne’s contention that “It’s always a conversation … we’re always looking for ways to close loopholes and things like that” does not jibe with reality.
This year, during the 2024 General Assembly, the Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention bill (Senate Bill 13) was filed by state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, a Republican and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to prevent mentally unstable people from making such a purchase.
Was that not a way to have a conversation, to close a loophole?
And yet GOP leadership — Stivers and Osborne — buried SB 13 in the Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection Committee where it was never seen again.
A bill that could have saved lives.
A bill that would cost virtually nothing.
A bill that the legislature could have taken 100% credit for.
And safety was clearly on their minds. By far the most publicly debated bill of the 2024 General Assembly was House Bill 5, the Safer Kentucky Act, which by one estimate could cost Kentucky taxpayers more than $1 billion over the next decade.
The I-75 shooter situation pulled from multiple law enforcement resources and first responders who worked selflessly, 24/7, for several days. This is how we are spending our tax dollars, too.
On Sept. 10, I sent an email to Stivers and Osborne which read, in part, “You talk of your success in reducing taxes, yet do not consider the massive tax dollars Kentuckians expend in just one manhunt the size and duration of the one for the I-75 shooter. And all that focus on House Bill 5 was for … what, exactly? HB5 which did not, for its massive scope, address safe storage or access to guns for those with mental illness. Why? What would have been the harm?”
Neither Stivers nor Osborne responded.
As stated in the aforementioned op-ed, “Kentucky’s Constitution clarifies that the power to raise and expend revenue is exclusively that of your legislature, not the governor.”
Fact.
So why waste time complaining about the governor?
Is there really nothing our GOP legislative supermajority can do to keep a mentally disturbed man from the same-day-purchase of an automatic weapon and 1,000 rounds? To prevent chaos? To save tax dollars? To save lives, including our children’s lives, from senseless gun violence?
The Kentucky GOP could take all of the credit for that.
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