Time now for a midweek check in on some major political news so far this week on this.

We're taping this on Tuesday.

Full disclosure with our good friend Roland Martin, who's the managing editor of Kentucky Public Radio.

Good to see you.

Good to see you today.

So we do want to just make it known that we taped this a little earlier than usual because of the holiday.

And we hope everyone has a great holiday.

Let's talk about the Department of Juvenile Justice.

We still continue to read about kids and and mistreatment and the troubles that the juvenile detention centers are having.

And now there are looking at being without a commissioner as the commissioner of DOJ is stepping down.

Tell us about this.

You know, last week, during Governor Bush years weekly Kentucky update, he kind of slipped in that Vicki Reid, the Department of Justice juvenile Justice commissioner, would be resigning at the end of the year.

There were calls for her to resign earlier this year from some Republican legislators because there's been a series of crises going on in the Department of Juvenile Justice, some really high profile issues like assaults, just staffing issues, riots, even a temporary escape happen over the last year or two.

But some of these issues go go farther than that.

The legislature implemented some reforms this year, administrations implemented some reforms.

But these some of these issues continue to start happening.

They have said that they're doing a little bit better on staffing, but there's always room to do more.

So this this was a, I think, a moment that everybody's been waiting for.

Now, it's important to point out that at the beginning of a new term, it's a common time for state officials to kind of reshuffle the deck between gubernatorial administrations.

So I think that's what the this you're saying this is an issue that he really thanked her for her time.

Well, it's important to point out that this is the she's the sixth commissioner of the of this department since 2018.

So there's just been a lot of turnover in this department for a long time.

And and while I think everybody still waiting on on somebody who's really going to be able to get a handle on these issues and implement some changes that are going to make things better, not only for the youth who are incarcerated in you know, in facilities across the state, but also, you know, the workers and just trying to make a safer and healthier institution.

Yeah, it could be a pretty tough job to fill considering all that waits that person when they arrive.

And as you said, we don't know about other positions, department heads, even commissioners and even cabinet secretaries.

Who's going to stay around and who will leave.

Another perennial problem is with Kentucky State University.

Their financial woes continue to mount.

And we got some news this week about their financial aid services and the staff there.

What's going on?

Yeah, supposedly what happened is sometime within the first six weeks of this year's school year, the entire financial aid staff had moved on to different positions, leaving the entire university without a financial aid team.

Since then, since some alarms sounded on this, the the the the university has had to partner with an outside consultant to kind of fill in some of these jobs.

They had found one full time employee so far.

But this is a long haul, just one in a long line of problems with ASU in recent years.

There is an audit.

There's been a few different audits in recent years showing the financial mismanagement of some university leaders leadership.

There has been a reshuffling and new leadership just within this last year, the Department of Justice kind of singled out KSU and the state for underfunding KSU over the last over the last decades.

Really.

So this is there's there's a lot of thinking, a lot of worry about the health of this of this state university.

And and I think that, you know, lawmakers and officials have expressed that they want to keep this also healthy.

But again, there seems to be more that needs to change here.

80 university officials, post-secondary education officials have said that they they do still feel like the university is going in the right direction here.

But this is just a whole another little blemish of it.

Just what's what exactly is going on in the administration of KC right now?

And they do have a new president, too, we should note, and that the Kentucky General Assembly did allocate $23 million to help them kind of get out of some of those financial troubles.

It is a land grant University, and it's the only publicly funded HBCU historically black College university.

Last item for discussion.

As we get to the session, we're hearing more and more about what could be considered when lawmakers convene on January 2nd, a bill that Senator Whitney Westerfield, who was the current chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been working with a mass shooting survivor in Louisville, Whitney Austin, who was very familiar to people who watched Kentucky tonight.

Kentucky addition.

What are they wanting to push when it comes to gun safety?

And The Courier-Journal did a story on this.

It's been a periodic issue that's been raised in the legislature, but hasn't really gotten a lot of traction in recent years.

But every tragic shooting that happens, whether it's in Kentucky or around the around the country, brings this discussion back up.

And it's important to remember the old national bank shooting earlier this year.

So this one policy, a so-called red flag law, although supporters of this are not calling it that anymore, they are trying to use Crisis Diversion and Rights Retention Act, which I think is just a little bit more palatable to some people who would otherwise oppose this kind of policy.

But what it's intended for is to allow family or friends or other people in the community to petition to a law enforcement officer saying that somebody is going through something and should have their issues as a threat to themselves or others and should have their firearms temporarily taken away from them.

So it would go through a law enforcement officer who would then petition to a court to have this done.

And they're really what they're trying to do through this bill is create a pretty straightforward due process system for that person who, you know, is is allegedly going through a crisis to to to be able to petition themselves and be able to get their firearms back or their rights to return to do that again.

And this comes out over and over again after these types of mass shootings.

And earlier this year, the that shooting at an old national bank in Louisville is just another example of somebody who is that is, as reporting has shown there was going through some pretty obvious crises and was able to very easily buy a firearm shortly before this terrible incident took place.

So there's been a lot of thinking, a lot of advocates who've been pushing for creating some way, some other way in which people who are seeing these problems to intervene and try and prevent such a terrible tragedy from taking place.

Right.

And we should say that Whitney Austin, who was working with Senator Westerfield, she survived a mass shooting a few years ago of a bank in Cincinnati, for which she was the vice president at the time.

So she has been really, really pushing for this for a long time.

Even when Senator Morgan McGarvie was a state senator before he went to Congress and also.

Senator to.

Paul, back of Shelby County.

So this has been around for a while.

Different versions, of course, but we'll see where it gets this time around in 24.

Thank you, as always, Roland Barton, for joining us.

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

You, too.

Thanks, Renee.