In lawmakers mad dash to make last night's deadline.

Several bills barely beat the buzzer while others were sidelined.

Rene Shaw takes us inside Kentucky politics for a quick review of what's past, what's dead, and what can be resurrected when lawmakers return in two weeks.

Thanks, Casey.

It's time for our end of week check in on what's been happening in Frankfurt.

We know that there are now in a veto, a recess period.

And they had day 58 on Thursday night.

A lot of bills passed and some didn't.

And we're going to break down some major pieces of legislation with our good friends, Abby Pyper and Jared Smith of Piper Smith, a government relations boutique.

And they do all things well, so let's hit it.

Budget passed the House bill one, end House Bill six.

These are important things constitutionally for them to do.

Yes, very important.

And you saw you know, they took away the rainy day fund in the House Bill one.

And so you saw a lot of big ticket items in House Bill one.

And House Bill six was kind of the, you know, the general budget that's usually always there.

You saw a record increase in public education funding.

You saw transportation covered for the first time in the second year.

And you saw a lot of a lot of infrastructure needs were met.

And, you know, I was really impressed with the rural water.

They did a lot of water stuff.

This the session, which is frankly has been needed for a while.

And we've been reading a lot about some of the woes across the state, particularly in western Kentucky and eastern Kentucky.

So big wins for the budget.

Still no K through still no pre-K, Right.

Teachers didn't get their mandated state raises, but we heard from Robert Stivers saying, you know what he's hearing from school superintendents is we didn't fare so badly and that there could be a potential nine point something percent raise that they're able to give.

So that's that's going to depend on the district and the school district, depending on how they fall out into the seek formula, which is the state's primary funding formula for public education by far.

I mean, this is probably the first time in a decade I've seen full funding for transportation.

And there's some scuttlebutt out there of whether it's truly for funding because it's based on last year's numbers.

But the truth is that's how we found all budgets, last year's numbers.

So I do want to kind of refute that.

And the other sticky wicket here is that honestly, teacher salaries are the authority for setting teacher salaries are at the local level with your locally elected school board.

And so I think that's why you've seen the legislature really stick to that model.

I do want to also say in the budget really some interesting and significant health care investments, particularly in those Mitchell waivers, those SLC waivers.

So support for community living.

Those are waivers that have very, very long wait lists in the Medicaid department.

And they're for people supporting people at home who have, you know, significant impairments that really don't want to be or need to be institutionalized but can have those supports.

And those were pretty significant investments as well.

Yeah.

Higher ed had some big wins to Murray State and Moorhead and UK Chase Law School except for Kentucky State University.

And we heard some of those who represent that institution or where that institution resides have a beef about that.

Yeah, I think look, the minority leader there, Graham and of course, the budget chair, Chris McDaniel, had a little back and forth in the conference committee over it.

And I think Majority Leader Thayer stepped in and said, we need to see some plus stuff first, some good stuff before we're ready to fully recommit to investing.

They say.

Yeah.

So we'll see.

But that's done.

That's done.

So there's other things that are done, exclamation point, and that is school safety, which happened like I think the vote was like 1140 something.

Yeah, late, late.

And so there were some things that were removed that some of us didn't know about till the day actually this bill fell out.

How?

So Senate Bill two is this is the school safety bill of the year.

And it's important that, you know, the Senate bill to any number that's a low number for the Senate or the House is a priority piece of legislation.

So it is rather unusual for them to have waited until 11 something the last hour that is of the bill, essentially the last day.

That would be veto proof to do so.

There was a last minute committee amendment added earlier in the week that would have added pastoral counselors to the trauma informed care team.

A lot of questions about constitutionality on that.

And obviously just the First Amendment and separation of church and state.

And so the establishment clause clearly made that a little bit difficult.

And I don't think anyone wanted that bill to go to court.

So that was stripped out at the very last minute, thankfully.

And so now we have a school safety bill that is really aimed at trying to help schools continue to catch up with all of the mandates that were in the Schools Safety and Resiliency Act in 2019.

It's a long road.

We're still not there.

But Senate Bill two will help them get that right.

So it had mandated 2019 to have school resource officers our sorrows.

A lot of schools couldn't afford to do that.

So now these armed guardians who could volunteer, I mean, you could hire them, but they could volunteer who were former military, retired military and police personnel.

So I guess everybody feels good about where this bill landed At the end of the day.

One can hope.

Yeah, but, you know, it's also in the budget that that was put together.

There's another $20,000 per SRO, per preschool that's going to help districts tremendously, especially districts who have already done the hard work of making sure that their schools comply with state law without having the funding.

I think the next step on this is making sure we have that funding for mental health counselors, right?

Yeah, I was going to say that's probably where it still is still lagging even since 2019.

Do I believe that would have targeted Kentucky's colleges and universities seems to be dead, or at least if they do pass it, the governor will have total power to veto and they have forfeited their right to override it.

That's right.

And this is really saw a lot of a lot of conflict between the Senate and the House on the bills.

The Senate version was tolerable for some for public ed.

And, you know, the eyes and every Fortune 100 company, every Fortune 100 company has a D section.

So I understand tax dollars are behind public universities.

I get that.

However, the House version was so draconian that it looked at.

The question is, could you give scholarships to black students only or to Catholic students only or to Episcopalians only?

You know, and it just said the House version was very, very over the top.

A lot of people thought and the Senate was like, we're not going to deal with this.

You know, we're not going to we're not going to cut a deal or something that they didn't like at all.

So what could we see?

Just one bill name or two, One or two that we could see when we go back April 12th, that would be resurrected?

I would hope to see the omnibus bill, which is House Bill ten, a lot of important steps for pregnant mothers and early, you know, our earliest learners and livers, our babies.

And so hopefully that possibly paid leave.

But I don't know if that has the legs to make it the final mile, but hopefully the omnibus at the very, very least.

And what that would do is it's a pretty sweeping reform.

But one of the biggest things it would do would be to allow pregnant mothers to have a special enrollment period for health insurance and cover those lactation services by insurance from a new mom.

So we know that those are two things that will definitely help the health of the mom and health of the babies and things we would definitely want to see.

We're going to give the lady the last word, of course, and of course and wish her well.

So you're on the wide shots.

You see, she has a friend on her foot there.

And the next time you see her, hopefully she'll be just a two footed.

I can only put it.

Yes.

Thank you all.

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

Thank you.