Time now for a midweek check in of some major political news so far this week with our good friend Rylan Barton, who has a new title, a new role.

He's a senior editor at NPR for the states team, and he'll tell us all about that after we get through some of the week's news.

Good to see you and congratulations.

Good to see you, too, Renee.

Thank you.

So let's talk first about the audit.

Let's talk about the audit first, the West Kentucky Relief Fund.

Some interesting news came out this week about that just today.

I think, as we're speaking, that inappropriate amounts of spending there weren't really found.

Yeah.

This is an audit launched by a state auditor, Mike Berman.

And as one of his departing moves in office, he released this this report just because there were some allegations saying that some of that money in that relief fund had gone, had been distributed improperly.

And while there was a little bit it was a really small amount of the $42.3 million account, about $240,000 worth of like thousand dollar checks, around 200 people.

There just wasn't proof to show that those were appropriate payments.

So, you know, less than a percentage point of that that amount of money.

Certainly, it's it's always important to keep track of where taxpayer money is going.

But I think it is it's it was not as big a deal as as some were worrying that it might be.

There's still an ongoing review for the relief fund for eastern Kentucky's of the Flood Relief Fund.

It has plenty to as well.

But at least for this western Kentucky tornado related one for 2021 doesn't look like it was there is as much inappropriate spending as some were worried about.

So we had heard a lot about how the fact that some people were getting checks who weren't storm victims.

So does that make up for the amount that is in question?

Yeah, apparently the majority of it was those thousand dollar checks which folks were able to.

It was it was people who got FEMA assistance.

And I believe they were able to show that those were not related to that.

And so that the majority of the money really, which a lot of it was going back to like infrastructure fixes, just kind of rebuilding communities and the basic needs for folks.

A lot of it, too, went towards you.

Yeah, rebuilding, providing public services after the disaster.

But those are the that small portion that was related to those 200 or so folks.

Yeah.

So now let's talk about some news that we've been talking about.

A League of Women Voters report about fast tracking bills.

And their report found that there are just some political procedural maneuvers that fast track bills where perhaps people, voters, constituents are cut out of the process and lawmakers may not fully understand or know what they're voting on.

Talk to us about that and the response from some key legislative leaders in reaction.

Yeah, so we've been talking about this a little bit, this game.

This report came out last week and there's been a lot of response to it.

I think it's very I'm very encouraged that people are, you know, paying a little bit more attention to this legislative process, which can become very inscrutable, opaque at times.

And the league pointed out a few instances of this.

They were recommending, you know, requiring these bills readings on separate days.

Those are like the public announcements that a bill is moving through the process.

A lot of times lawmakers are able to rush that or at least stack them up before a bill is really changed and move through along in the legislative process.

Another way in which this happens is these bills that come up in a committee hearing, there's like a last minute change.

And oftentimes lawmakers in the minority party and definitely members of the public have no idea what's in those change changes before that bill, then advances through the process.

So some of their recommendations were adding on time to allow the public to digest this information.

Democrats are really hopping on board because they're in the minority party there of those people who often don't get access to those changes.

They're polling on some some guarantees within the legislative rules that build in some of this review.

Republicans, or at least Republican Senate leader David Thayer, said, or four leaders, David Thayer said that, you know, what they do is legal and they've no plan on really changing business at this point.

You know, it's important to point out that this has actually led to legal problems in the past in 2018 that that a pension bill that was rushed through quickly, that the state Supreme Court found problems with that process and ended up overturning that law.

So this is not without precedence of problems here.

I do think that overall, it's just good for folks to be paying attention to how the process works and for hopefully lawmakers to be listening on how they can make it better so that people can see what's going on in the legislative process.

I thought it was interesting out of Kentucky tonight.

You hosted on Monday, one of the lawmakers talked about how about what this would look like in a courtroom and how, you know, the courtrooms really don't allow for surprises.

And that's I think that's a spirit that should be continued into the into the legislature.

You know, a lot of these things really wouldn't pass muster in other segments of of government.

And we need to it's important for both the public and the taxpayers who anchor for this work to be done, to be to be aware of this, and legislators who might not be in the majority party to be afforded that extra review as well.

And the Stephanie Deets representative, she's a Republican who made that comment.

Right.

And there are other Republicans are saying there problems with the rules and there are also disenchanted with that.

Felicia Rayburn is one of them.

Yeah, the Lexington Herald-Leader had a story this morning about Felicia Rayburn sitting a letter to House leadership asking for some some rules to really to require some extra levels of transparency.

You know, she's part of the so-called Liberty wing of the Republican Party.

And some of those of those lawmakers were were kind of dinged towards the end of the legislative session because of their opposition to what the, you know, the leadership was, how the leadership was moving bills through the legislature.

And so they're asking for, you know, one for lawmakers to all get, you know, basically have one big priority, bill that they can would automatically get a hearing and would then get a vote if it ever passed out of committee.

Also to require full committee votes to to remove people from from the legislative committee.

And that's something that happened at the end of last session that Representative Rayburn and a couple other Republican members were removed from committees is kind of what this is seen as a punishment for going against the majority leadership.

Yeah.

So real quickly, in about 20 seconds, we want to acknowledge the new job that you have with the Big Foot NPR.

Congratulations on that.

And tell us real quickly about what you'll be doing.

Yeah, it's a great gig.

I still get to work with folks covering state governments, but it's people covering state governments around the country lifting up those local reporters, getting them on to the national airwaves, including folks in Kentucky as well.

I still get to be a live and work out of Kentucky, which is really important to me.

But I this just kind of goes into a passion of mine, which is that I really think more people need to pay attention to what's going on in state governments, especially in this era when a lot of stuff doesn't really pass through Congress.

The political activity, the government activity really happens at the state legislative level, and we all need to be paying attention more to it.

So really looking forward to being able to continue this work.

Yeah.

And we still get to keep you week every mid-week, which is also good.

We don't want to lose you.

So congratulations and thanks for being with us.

Thanks a lot, Renee.