>> It's the last thing you want to see right now and increase in Kentucky's gas tax.

Find out why it won't happen.

I mean, it's 20.

They're years past time for us to do something to protect our kids.

While Senator Mitch McConnell was inside, protesters were outside on happy with him over guns.

When you're here, you're not thinking about like the other stuff you're going through or like what's happening at home.

>> It's just very in the moment.

My focus on the here and now.

>> And we'll introduce you to a program that is using horses to help those dealing with trauma.

>> Production of Kentucky Edition is made possible in part by the Kaye E T and Aument for Kentucky Productions.

Leonard Press Endowment for Public Affairs and the Kaye E Team Millennium Fund.

Welcome to Kentucky EDITION.

Today is Thursday, June.

The Secant.

>> I'm your host Renee Shaw.

Thank you so much for joining us this evening.

Let's get right to the Kentucky headlines at a time when the price of gas is setting records, Kentucky's gas tax was set to go up $0.2 on July.

1st from $0.26 a gallon to 28.

But now that won't happen.

>> I along with the Department of Revenue are issuing an emergency regulation freezing Kentucky's gas tax.

So that increase does not occur.

With today's action it will ensure a savings of Kentuckians, it least up to the first part of January, at which point the Legislature will be back in session and can take it up and can make a policy determination from there.

We believe that this will result in a savings to Kentucky families of about 35 0.4 million dollars through mid January 2023, but put simply it's the right thing to do.

>> Governor Beshear made the announcement this afternoon.

The gas tax is tied to the hole.

So price of gas.

When the price goes up, the tax goes up.

Governor Beshear says freezing the gas tax at its current rate will not hurt any current transportation projects in Kentucky.

The governor also asked for advice from Attorney General Daniel Cameron about whether to declare a state of emergency in order to activate Kentucky's price gouging laws.

And the governor says he's asked for the federal government to consider suspending the National gas tax in order to provide people some relief at the pump.

The governor also discussed guns and schools.

You'll hear more about that from him later on and this broadcast tonight.

Senator Mitch McConnell didn't have much to say about guns as he spoke to the Mount Sterling Chamber of Commerce today.

But some protesters outside the meeting dead KATC Casey Parker-bell was there.

>> And we want.

>> Protesters made their frustration clear about recent mass shootings like of action by Congress to change gun laws.

They're very inadequate.

They want Kentucky senior senator to support House resolution 8, 0, >> which would expand background checks on gun purchases.

>> It's really important to make it difficult for people who are intent on ending to to be able to obtain firearms, to do so.

>> Inside Senator Mitch McConnell described his instruction to Texas Senator John Cornyn to work on bipartisan gun legislation with Democrats.

>> You know, a little of it.

Schools like that.

Well, in a car.

>> The protesters outside the agree with the need to harden schools.

>> Even with that, the law enforcement there to protect him, as we've seen recently, they don't they're not really taking the kind of action that mothers like myself are willing to take.

>> But Senator Mitch McConnell would not divulge details what he would find acceptable and bipartisan legislation.

>> Okay.

Team.

I'm Casey Parker-bell.

>> A big change is headed to the Jefferson County Public School System.

The board voted yesterday to overhaul how students are assigned to schools.

According to the Courier Journal, students who are still Bost for desegregation.

What have the option to pick another school magnet schools would not be able to kick students out.

Some schools would lose their magnet programs.

Others would have existing programs expanded.

These changes will be phased in over a few years.

The state is giving 3 western Kentucky counties more than a million dollars to deal with continuing cleanup from the December tornadoes.

970,000 of that will go to Bowling Green to help with debris removal.

The Hopkins County Fiscal Court will get 58,500 also for debris removal.

More than 10,000 will go to Taylor County for utility recovery costs and tree planting.

As electric vehicle.

Battery plants head to Kentucky.

Ford's CEO predicts that the cost of electric vehicles is about to plummet.

Right now.

There are more expensive to build and gassed based vehicles.

Jim Farley says as costs fall and electric vehicles take last time to build.

The costs were dropped to around $25,000 per vehicle.

Bonnie says that will lead to a price war among makers of electric cars.

Ford is building 2 battery plants in Hardin County.

And the Japanese company is building one in Warren County.

A Kentucky lawmaker wants a Texas shooting victim's father to be released from a federal prison long enough for him to attend his daughter's funeral.

10 year-old la Torre us was one of 19 students killed in Uvalde Day her father.

46 year-old Eli tourists is at the U.S. penitentiary in Pine knot doing time for drug trafficking State Representative Attica Scott, a Louisville Democrat tweeted about this.

She's also written to President Biden and Governor Andy Beshear asking for, quote, compassionate release to enable tours to attend the funeral.

Governor Beshear talk today about the involved, a Texas shooting and the safety of Kentucky schools.

He hopes next January, the Kentucky General Assembly will consider actions that will make Kentucky schools safer.

>> I believe that there are things that I can do in the interim that fully comply with the Second Amendment and legislation that's been passed.

That does make our kids safer.

We can continue to work with our school systems on physical security.

Now, there's a lot of talk right now on whether doors were open and whether they were locked.

That's something that we can work to address and all of our schools right now, there should not be multiple entry and exit points that someone can walk through each and every day there should be in an ideal situation.

Multiple doors.

You have to be buzzed through every single person checked in.

>> In April, the governor signed a bill requiring every school to have at least one school resource officer on campus.

He says he believes it is a good idea to have at least one person in each school trained to deal with this kind of emergency.

A key congressional committee with the Kentucky member could act today on a gun control measure.

The House Judiciary Committee in Washington is expected to take action that would raise the age to buy some semi audit rifles to 21.

Police say the Uvalde Texas shooter was 18.

Another provision would subject ghost guns to the same regulations as traditional firearms.

A ghost gun is a gun, a symbol from a kit or 3 D printed.

The committee includes Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky is 4th Congressional District.

Massey spoke out against the legislation during today's hearing.

>> The biggest thing we could do here today is to repeal the 1990, gun freeze, go to school zone act.

So the default condition in this country is not to advertise.

Every student has a target.

>> The committee still has not voted on the bill.

We are continuing to monitor it.

The conversation around guns as a polarizing one.

Many advocate for tighter laws and more restrictions.

Others say the more people who safely carry a firearm, the quicker a threat can be eliminated.

We talked to Phil Campbell, a bowling green attorney in church elder who has been teaching concealed carry classes for 25 years.

Breaks my heart to see.

>> People that are harmed in the settings like we've seen in Buffalo, New York and in Uvalde, Texas, especially in Texas, were they were almost all 10 years old.

>> It's just tragic.

It is basically a semiautomatic rifles.

The AR 15 has come under just scrutiny in But we've also seen people use bombs in cars and knives and other weapons because of their desire to harm others.

banned them.

I don't think we'll get to that problem, which is.

The lack of respect for the lives of others.

There is not a direct connection.

Between limiting gun ownership and reduction in crime.

New York has very rigid gun laws.

We saw all the shooting in Buffalo where several lives were lost or a man went into a grocery store and killed several people.

I don't want to see my friends, the victims.

So I train others to legally carry.

Just totally Glenn know how they could use a weapon so they could defend themselves or defend others if need be.

Something has happened in our country.

2 were at least some people don't value the lives of others.

And that's something that fundamentally has to change.

>> You no longer need a permit to carry concealed firearms in Kentucky.

But many gun owners still take the classes and get a license to carry in the states that do require them.

The current conversation around gun violence is also putting a spotlight, as you know, on school safety earlier this week, I talked to John Acres, head of the Kentucky Center for School Safety and State School security marshal.

Then Wilcox about how Kentucky is trying to keep school safe.

And Mister Akers, I'll begin with you because we've made legislation laws that date back to maybe even before the Marshall County High School shooting.

That happened in 2018, 2019 legislation was passed.

Is that keeping Kentucky kids and students and teachers safe enough.

>> I think it's making some great strides.

We started as early as 1998 after the Heat high school shooting.

It happened in December of 1997. and the General establish the Kentucky Center for School Safety, which an agency that's designed to provide as much help to our public schools as possible in training resources and things like that.

Then after the shooting that occurred as Sandy Hook Senate Bill 8 past.

But the General Assembly in 2013 that added more legislation and more requirements for safety issues in our schools.

And then, of course, after the Marshall County shooting, the school safety resiliency acts, Senate bill, one Senate bill late that even gave us more and that is more walls to be able to try to keep our schools just a little safer than they have been in the past.

>> And it established the state School safety which is your position.

Tell us what you do.

>> Well, this gold school safety resilience yet create our position, too.

Do on site reviews and risk assessments on every local school district in the state of Kentucky.

We have 15 compliance officers.

3 of them are supervisors, 12 of them, our actual compliance officers that are located regionally throughout the state.

Each compliance officer has about 120 schools apiece and we walk in and do risk assessments on every school in the state of Kentucky, at least once a year, sometimes because we also provide training.

Our job is almost like a health inspector, a fire inspector, except we're going in and making sure the mandates that are set forth by the school safety was a TEA Act are being followed.

A lot of times we talked about the 2019 school Safety and Resiliency Act.

Mister Akers.

We often heard the term hardening the schools, but there's another.

>> I think another term that both of you prefer.

But what do we mean by that?

>> Well, there are 2 camps.

What I call the hardware and the hardware But there are some where the hardware, right, right?

The hardware side of it is basically or access control.

That's the term you're looking for how we're going to make sure that our schools are secure as possible.

Exterior doors locked and that the front door to be monitored electronically and have people come in to be sure that they are checking in to see what they're doing, making sure that they are there for legitimate reasons.

And then the other side of this equation is the mental health side of this issue.

And there are so many children that have issues long before COVID even came into play that need help.

Now schools are served as kind like triage units.

We identify some of these issues, but we're not trained to be able to handle it.

And so that's, you know, therefore, we get in contact with our mental health care providers in our communities.

And we try to send parents to them with their children safe.

We can't just get some of these issues resolved.

>> So do we know that schools are complying?

Mister Wilcox with making sure exterior doors are locked and that those are now mandates is not permissive language.

It's a requirement.

Absolutely.

>> From a report last we were in the high 90's with with a a 90 percentile of compliance.

And we also see with this year reported even going to be better.

But the high 90's is not good enough for school safety.

We have to be 100% all the time.

The end.

That's one of the reasons why we do on site reviews.

This isn't a phone call that says, hey, all your doors locked, our compliance officers going in and rattling each They're checking exterior doors.

If we get a call and complain on the school, this is where the doors are open will go look and see if you will, will combat that with not only putting in a report, an insane will have to be back for a reassessment to get this fixed.

We'll come back and talk to all your staff and explain to them why this is so important.

I get the messages that are sent to the home office, Homeland Security.

So I get to see what's been coming in.

I'll say probably 60% of those deal with mental health issues.

Kids considering suicide kids who are friends of friends that are cutting one things like this, that it's something >> we really need to reach out and get to these kids Would you call when a police officer goes into a House wellness?

Check.

We're at the wellness And to be sure that these kids are OK, cause a lot of the kids not being supervised in their And so we need to be able to have somebody to come out there and say, are you OK?

but so it's just not about school shooters.

It's about mental health issues as well.

>> You can see more of my interview with Acres, Wilcox and Kentucky Education Commissioner Jason Glass Sunday at 12 noon Eastern Time on my conversation program.

Connections.

Yesterday.

We told you about a controversial campaign video released by Kentucky's Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Charles Booker.

I caught up with Louisville based USA Today, political reporter Philip Bailey to tell us about the reaction he seen.

Philip Bailey with USA Today.

Thank you from joining us and from Louisville.

We appreciate your time.

Want to ask you off the bat about the response that you're hearing to the Charles Booker ad that was released yesterday.

What are you hearing from officials may be there and Louisville and across the state and the Democratic Party, maybe even nationally.

>> We'll certainly remade this bad is probably going to be considered the most controversial the entire 2022 cycle.

What ought to African-American voters in particular here in Louisville.

This seems to be a slight slip.

Think older African-Americans are bit taken aback by the ads.

Pretty shocking to see, you know, after reading candidate wearing the news, right, for some of them, that imagery goes too far.

Those to you live from the civil rights era, right?

That's the image.

Reid is never going to be acceptable under any circumstance whatsoever.

It was over after Megan Woman voter I talked to, she said, but not under no circumstance cannot come out like that.

Something like that.

She's a Charles Booker.

Voters still intends to vote for Booker.

But a point was who is actually for I think a younger actor, regulated officials, right 15 under there's a feeling of OK, get the point of the ad, but it could have done differently.

Maybe get it The tenor and in a direction.

But I think for Charles, because pretty obvious, look, he's trying to jump the line.

He needs to get Democratic donors across the country to pay attention to his campaign to 50, 50 U.S. Senate Democrats are more defensive posturing, the defending more seats they already have.

So for them to Kentucky is not on the map.

Really talking to officials at the DNC and national Democrats USA today.

I can tell you that when they talk about the U.S. Senate this year, Renee, they talk about Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire, as you seek to cease to defend.

What about pickups to talk about the Pennsylvania, maybe North Carolina, Wisconsin, maybe on the far in Florida and Ohio.

But Kentucky is not on that mask.

And Booker knows this.

He's giving certainly knows that social.

So this and tells me he's trying to jump the line to get donors attention across the country to get them to pay attention to this race.

>> And is it working so far?

Is that what he's getting?

And that to this ad is for.

So it's not necessarily is it to win the race?

D is the intent of this ad to gen up whoever he thinks the target audience is so that they will come out so that he can prove victorious and November and be the next junior senator for from Kentucky or what is his ultimate goal?

>> I don't think that the goal of this has to persuade in Kentucky voters one way or the other, right like this is in the kitchen table issue at right is not, you know, his first ad of the general election isn't about health care is about climate change.

He's going straight into the culture wars going straight at Rand Paul's record on civil rights.

The fact that I don't think you even maybe see this ad on TV, but to answer your question, yes, I think it is affected in terms of getting national attention.

We're asking publications from the Hill.

It's from those Shade Room.

Also the national publications and blogs posted about him.

He's just after reading County where the noose and the real issue, though, is that we'll get in.

Will it get him the dollars and the donors we haven't seen the campaign, for example, announce how much money it has raise since this be, you know, usually when the campaigns but ad like this, they say sometime in the near future, the first 72 hours or 48 hours, we've raised excellent about they're eager to see if the Booker campaign will do that.

But I do think, though, for Kentuckians the left-leaning Kentucky to particular, this is the ad that they probably happy about scene because they want someone to rent different member, Charles, because not try to run to the center here.

He's a progressive candidate.

He's owned those issues, right?

And he's staying true to his word.

I talk to want to act like the fish here.

Little is that this fits with how Charles has run his campaign thus far.

But I do think there are going to be more questions for the Booker campaign of what it's going to the holidays, nonprofit organization.

What is that?

Those farms registration with the network to happen is Rand Paul has raised millions of dollars.

If this ad is about raising money, what it actually get.

You certainly get the shot down, right?

We're all talking about it but didn't get to them the money that you or your home before, because I don't see a lot of voters who are in the middle of what the thinking about this race going on.

I'm going to charge Booker.

I think if people are supporting him was a debate in which the usefulness of this add some like it, some don't.

I think it's measured by the national donors.

I think the campaign eventually have to show its cards.

Yeah.

>> Philip Bailey with us today.

We appreciate a few minutes of your time, sir.

Thank you so much.

>> The problem and thank you.

>> Helping people heal after they've suffered a trauma and life is the goal of one Lexington, nonprofit, as you'll see.

And his answer is harnessing the power of horses to help accomplish that goal.

>> Growing up, I were says we're absolutely my therapy.

It is impossible to walk out into the barn and not just immediately feel that wave over you of of peace.

I was clerking in family court and saw this need that was there that we had not only children but adults as well.

Not have this resource of equine assisted learning and therapy.

And I just wanted to provide that to the community.

And we have so many people with different backgrounds that are all coming together to to hear what the worse us.

>> When I was 5, my dad died by suicide.

And then we moved back up here when I was about 12 and my grandmother passed away very suddenly my therapist recommended that I come to this summer and his answer program to help me find other kids who are going through similar things I can and I just fell in love with it.

I kept coming back.

>> We have had, you know, several Well, I don't even want to be here, but I And so I would come and say, okay, just try it today and no pressure to come back in.

You know, we've never had anybody not come back.

>> My brother and mother sued last.

We've been through foster care stuff in we go to therapy in.

They referred us to an easy answer.

At first.

I didn't want to go in the first day.

I was just feeling it a little bit.

I see the horses got to know the horses.

It may be happy.

>> When you're here, you're not thinking about like the other stuff you're going through or like what's happening at home.

It's just very in the moment like focused on the here and now.

>> It's hard for kids to articulate what's going on.

It's hard for adults to articulate a therapist.

You know, this was a game changer for them.

>> If you're not like up until like regular therapy, like finding programs like an easy answer is like a great alternative because it's not just like there are a few days like we're going to work through all your emotional trauma.

>> It was an army for 21 years.

I've been through a lot of different things to experience a lot of things, PTSD, anxiety, depression, and, you know, seeing psychologist, psychiatrist different things like that.

So being out here on the animals has helped me a lot felt that gotten so much more personally out of it.

>> The challenges we focus on.

Yes, self regulation, courage, communication, respect, trust all these words.

We focus on.

They don't require sitting on the couch with a therapist.

You work through these challenges and learn the skills without having to relive trauma.

We always say we can tailor a program to fit anything.

A lot of our students to ground work, which means they're on the ground.

Their feet are on the grounds that were that were says and during various types of horsemanship equine assisted learning or equine assisted therapy, depending on the student and the provider there and kind of you know what their needs are at that time learning how to bond again, learning how to bond with that.

Of course, we're not thinking about it.

You can build, you know, your leadership skills.

You can build your confidence.

You can build your trust skills, all these things so easily.

>> Once you have that kind of foundation of partnership and that's truly what it is with the horse.

Horses.

Don't judge.

>> You can get out here.

You can hug on them.

Going to talk to him.

Whatever you want to do.

You know, they don't judge it.

>> They only I react to how.

Feeling, you know?

You have to learn how to control yourself in order to control the horse.

>> Differently.

And we always say they know what we need when we did, they may really challenge you at every turn and make you work through something in.

You don't realize that's what you needed until you hop off at the end of that rain go.

Oh, my gosh.

I needed to win and my horse knew that when I did.

>> A lot of like of the kids going through this.

They just become like more confident.

>> Some cases you might have a child that 60 pounds and they're next to a 900 pound animal.

We can have a letter to see that 60 pound child walking that 900 pound animal by lead rope.

>> That's what makes this, you know, so unique and so magical and what makes it work.

>> They really do help you.

That's just who they are.

If you allow them to help you there, God, too.

>> It's a problem.

Young parents see during every trip to the store, not enough baby formula tomorrow on Kentucky EDITION will talk about the national shortage and get the health perspective from Kentucky's health Commissioner Doctor Steven Stack.

We hope you'll join us again tomorrow night at 6.30, Eastern 5.30, central for Kentucky edition where we inform connect and inspire subscribe to our weekly Kentucky addition, e-mail news letter and watch full episodes and clips at Aetn Dot Org.

You can also find Kentucky addition on the PBS video app on your mobile device and smart TV.

>> And follow KETK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay in the loop.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Take really good care.

And I'll see you tomorrow night.