The 2024 regular session of the Kentucky General Assembly wrapped up a month ago and lawmakers will soon begin their preparations for the 2025 session, which will get underway on Jan. 7.
House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, says there will be a lot going on between now and January. “The interim starts in June, and as you can imagine, there is no limit to the number of ideas that manage to circulate. We will do what we always do. We use the interim committees to ferret out topics that catch everyone’s attention.”
When asked if there is anything hot that the House will want to address, Osborne replied, “I’m sure there will be, but nothing that is pressing at this moment.”
Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said implementing the budget is a priority. “From our perspective, we are going to be looking at how the governor executes the document we sent him. This is not meant as criticism, it is just the massiveness of what we were able to do because of our fiscal responsibility to have this amount of dollars to go out the door.”
Stivers said there is if there is the capacity to make the plan for new projects come to fruition. “Capacity here in Frankfort monitoring that to make the Department for Local Government and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, the respective governmental entities, are they getting the documents out. In the private and public sectors, is there the capacity to build these buildings, to build these water and sewer systems, the engineering capacity, the manpower capacity. That is one of the things that we will be watching.”
While most of the legislation enacted during this year’s session will take effect on July 15, the two-year budget begins July 1, and some other bills have later dates.
There will also be two proposed amendments to Kentucky’s Constitution that appear on the November ballot. One would allow public money to go to private schools, a practice that is currently banned. The other would prevent non-citizens from voting.
By Tom Latek, Kentucky Today
