Ahead of the two most hectic days of the Kentucky General Assembly’s legislative session, GOP leadership brought a bill to the House floor with substituted language that lawmakers had less than 24 hours to review.
“I just don't think it's right the way we're starting to ram through pieces of legislation this quick,” said Democratic Rep. Chad Aull, from Lexington. “I don't know what the point is of rules if we're not going to even attempt to try to pretend like we're going to follow them.”
Aull was criticizing the dizzying speed at which bills were being pushed through — sometimes in a form entirely different from what lawmakers had previously seen.
Concerns like that are common among the Democratic minority — and also routinely dismissed by the Republican supermajority leadership, including GOP Majority Floor Leader Steven Rudy of Paducah.
“Oftentimes in this body I hear people complain about the process. Oh, it's being rushed. Oh, it's being rushed,” Rudy said. “That's usually, though, just when they don't like the results of what it is that we're doing.”
With two days left to pass bills that would be essentially immune to the veto of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, Rudy had a message for lawmakers and anyone else objecting to how they were quickly steering through late-amended bills.
“Everybody complains about the process until the process delivers them something that they want,” Rudy said. “It is Day 26 of a 30-day session. If you think this process is rough, buckle up and get ready for Day 27 and Day 28.”
‘Very few people are watching as to the process’
In those last two days before the veto period, more than 90 bills and joint resolutions completed their journey through the House and Senate to land on the governor’s desk.
Many of those bills went through the standard process in both chambers: a bill is introduced, goes through a committee, receives constitutionally-required readings on the floor over three days — allowing time for the public to read it and weigh in — and then comes to the floor for a vote.
But GOP lawmakers have found plenty of ways to make that process nearly impossible to follow.
Bills are stuffed into other bills at the last minute just before a vote. Committee substitutes go from a couple pages on one topic to more than a hundred pages on new topics. Bills get rushed to a vote on a chamber floor before the new language is even posted online for the public to read.
GOP Senate President Robert Stivers of Manchester has served in the Senate since 1997, two years before Republicans took the majority in the chamber. He says this is just the way things have always been done.
“It's funny how the shoe changes when it's on a different foot, and so many of the rules that are being complained about, and processes are no different than they were 30 years ago,” Stivers said.
Asked if he objected to Democratic rules that limited public input when he was in the minority party, Stivers replied “Oh, yeah,” cracking a smile.
With Republicans in the supermajority in both chambers since 2017, Stivers says Democrats are just complaining about not having power. Asked about the people who do watch and may want to participate in the lawmaking process, he said “very few people are watching as to the process. They want to know what the end product is.”
And what was the end product? Oftentimes in the final days and hours ahead of the veto period, it meant large bills smushed together or altered significantly in ways that could create drastic changes for Kentuckians.
A late and important change to Medicaid
At 9 p.m. on the Friday ahead of the veto period, House Bill 695 still hadn’t passed the Senate. It contained some changes to Medicaid that had been discussed during the session, but, with little to no warning, Senate leadership called a surprise committee hearing for the bill.
The committee passed it after just five minutes, with 10 new pages. It was the first time Democrats or journalists got to see the bill. If you weren’t in the Capitol that night, there was no way to read it before it passed both chambers.
On the Senate floor, Democratic Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong of Louisville said she was still struggling to understand the implications of the newly-amended HB 695.
“I have been looking at this legislation for maybe 15 minutes. It's a big bill,” Chambers Armstrong said. “It's life or death. I'm doing the best I can to understand it.”
She was right about one major change — the new version of the bill would require the administration to mandate work requirements for Medicaid. Former Gov. Matt Bevin previously attempted such requirements — with his own administration estimating it would cause 100,000 Kentuckians to lose Medicaid coverage — before it was tossed out by a judge.
Louisville Democratic Sen. David Yates said he’d be willing to work across the aisle on the bill. But with so little time, bipartisan cooperation goes out the window.
“But when we hand a hot bill — I mean, a really warm feel from the printer to us — at the last second, and we're supposed to digest this and run through it at the last second?” Yates asked. “I think that we owe it to the people we represent to get it right.”
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When journalists bring these concerns to Republican leadership, they are generally dismissed. The day before, Senate President Pro Tempore David Givens of Greensburg said the minority caucus always has something to say.
“I think if I were in the minority, I would complain as well, because being in the minority, you've got to have some reason to stand up and talk,” Givens said.
The five-term senator pushed back against the idea that the process isn't transparent and that committee substitutes are a surprise.
“I have not in my 16-plus years here seen a committee sub that was so far out of range of something that hadn't been talked about in some form or fashion,” he said.
Givens was serving in the General Assembly in 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled lawmakers violated the state’s constitution by slipping in a last-minute committee substitute to a sewer bill that instead dramatically changed the teacher pension system — spurring raucous protests.
A late change to abortion ban
In the 24 hours before Givens’ comments, lawmakers took a bipartisan bill and added new unrelated language. House Bill 90 was originally about allowing freestanding birthing centers, but was completely changed in a late-night committee substitute.
Kentucky has a near-total ban on abortion, but the newly inserted language of HB 90 attempted to remove ambiguity on when doctors can legally provide abortions to protect a pregnant woman’s life.
Democrats objected to provisions that had not been discussed with them or the general public previous to that day, arguing it could have the opposite of the intended effect. Nevertheless, Republicans passed it out of committee that night and it swiftly cleared both chambers the following morning.
On the Senate floor, President Stivers called complaints about the process “misinformation.”
“It's 10 pages,” Stivers said. “Now, I know I'm from Clay County, but I can read 10 pages pretty fast. So all the things that are being said out here are misinformation.”
Chambers Armstrong, a University of Louisville law professor and author, pushed back.
“Yes, I'm capable of reading a 10-page bill as quickly as anyone else in this body,” she said. “However, we are talking about medical terms that people go to school for decades to understand. I never assume that me reading the words is sufficient to fully grasp the impact that this is going to have on patients' lives.”
It’s a debate that exemplifies the push and pull of how much transparency and opportunity for input legislative leaders believe is owed to Kentuckians on bills that could have far-reaching consequences. On a bill designed to provide clarity on the state’s abortion laws, Democrats seemed to have little before being asked to vote.
More bills receive last-minute changes
And there were more bills in the final days before the veto period that used a similar process of late amendments, before speeding to a final vote on the chamber floor.
On Tuesday morning, House Bill 775 changed from a four-page bill on one specific tax incentive into a 107-page bill with numerous different tax incentives and a new method to increase the odds of hitting budget triggers for tax cuts each year. It cleared the full chamber later that day. The same process happened with the bill Friday in the Senate — now a 147-page committee sub with more tax changes, clearing that chamber hours later.
House Bill 495 was originally a bill to undo the governor’s executive order to limit conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ youth, but was changed in a Senate committee Wednesday to prohibit Medicaid coverage of hormone therapy for transgender patients.
Chris Hartman, the executive director of LGBTQ+ rights group the Fairness Campaign, loudly protested the change in committee, as he was gaveled down and admonished by the GOP chairman.
“What you have allowed, Mr. chairman, is a sneak attack on our transgender community,” Hartman said. “Without public input. It’s a clever trick.”
House Bill 495 passed the Senate the following morning, then cleared the House just before midnight on Friday.
On the very rare occasion, even Republican lawmakers stood up to oppose the process — with some success.
House Bill 369 was originally an uncontroversial piece of legislation about accrued leave time for local police, but changed in a Senate committee sub Thursday to a bill allowing the Kentucky State Police troopers to use their uniform and equipment for off-duty, private employment.
By the time the bill hit the House floor late Friday night, the KSP commissioner expressed his opposition to the bill over concerns about potential liability with such employment. GOP Rep. Chris Fugate of Chavies — a KSP veteran — shared those concerns on the floor, leading to a narrow vote to not concur with the Senate changes, killing the bill.
Lawmakers return to Frankfort Thursday for the final two days of the 2025 session, and are expected to mostly override the governor’s vetoes.
State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
