we told you Monday about plans for a major Kentucky company to leave its office building in downtown Louisville.

Our Laura Rogers spoke with NPR's Ryland Barton about that.

Plus, legislation affecting young people and social media and a potential constitutional amendment.

Hello to you, Ryland, and thank you for joining us.

Hi, Laura.

We'll start with some big news in Louisville this week, since you're based in Louisville.

I'm sure you're hearing a lot of conversation about Humana announcing they'll be consolidating their office space, moving out of the Humana Tower and downtown Mobile.

So what's the chatter that you're hearing about that that's getting a lot of attention this week?

Yeah, this is huge news in Louisville.

It's really the latest in a lot of signs of questions about human presence and more.

Granted, they will be staying in Louisville and Louisville, the headquarters for the company, which is one of the largest companies in the nation.

It's number 42 on the Fortune 500 list.

And the only company in Louisville that's on the Fortune 500 part in Kentucky on the Fortune 500 list.

So they've announced that they will be clearing out their large downtown skyscraper and moving their employees to a building that they already own farther east in town, which is it really undercuts a lot of what's, you know, a lot of hopes for downtown, a rebuilding back after the pandemic.

The company is cited repeatedly since the pandemic, saying that folks that really haven't returned to work in person.

They've still been leaning into their hybrid work environment.

But also there's a few other parts going to this, like the top executives at Humana have been given the option to live either in Louisville or in D.C. in their campus in the D.C. area in recent years.

Their their incoming CEO is, you know, has also been given that option, which is the first time that that's happened.

They normally really just in trying to invest in and stay committed to to their to their tower and their presence here.

So a lot of questions about what that's going to look like going forward.

You know, who is going to occupy that tower, if anybody, the city leaders.

Louisville Mayor Greenburg says that, you know, they're still saying that he made is still committed to their presence here.

But there's still a lot of questions going forward about who's going to fill that space, if anybody.

So you know, a lot of hopes for, you know, what what could come.

But this isn't it's not really a great sign for for downtown Louisville building back at this point.

Yeah.

You think about the impact that could have on other downtown businesses like restaurants and retail that depend on that downtown work and business crowd.

And Louisville's tax base, too.

That represents about 7% of of office space in downtown Louisville that's going to be vacant.

And Wall has already been struggling with that.

Last year there was an estimate that was about 20% of of downtown office space is vacant and this is just adding on to that.

So some changes to come here.

Then in the next I think they said what 18 to 24 months will be that transition of moving out of the Humana Tower and then we will move to Frankfort and some legislation there.

There has been a bill filed that concerns miners and their social media use.

Tell us more about that.

Yeah, there's a lot of bills like this that have been advancing across the country and this has just been introduced in the Kentucky legislature, hasn't really moved farther than that, but it would require parents to sign off on on kids having social media accounts and also requires social media organizations to to verify the ages of their users.

There's a lot of questions on how social media companies would really even be able to pull this off using, you know, requiring everybody to authenticate their ages.

And there's been some legal troubles for bills that have passed like this previously.

Arkansas had a similar bill that passed last year and was struck down by a federal court.

But as I said before, there's a lot of different states that are pushing legislation like this.

Florida is another big one right now.

And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has said that, you know, they're looking to find some compromise version of that.

I'm wondering if some of that compromise language might end up in in Kentucky's bills, because a lot of conservative lawmakers are really trying to push for this.

But, you know, tech companies and others have been pushing back against it.

And also House Speaker David Osborne filing that constitutional amendment that could let the state legislature call itself and especially special session or give them a few more days, 12 days, I believe, session.

Now, this is going to be familiar to a lot of people because it was on the ballot in 2022.

It failed at that time.

So what's different this time?

Yeah, voters might remember it.

Was that really long a proposal that they had to weigh in on back in 2022 and a lot of people were confused what exactly this would do, and they ultimately rejected it during that referendum in 2022.

Speaker Osborne says that he wants to make sure that this version of it has a simplified ballot question that voters can understand a little bit better.

And what this would do is it would allow that it would give lawmakers some flexibility to assert when the end dates are for a legislative session.

So right now, sessions are either 30 days or 60 days.

If lawmakers vote to do away with the end date, they can then move those session days a little bit around throughout the year.

And then also with the agreement of the House speaker and Senate president could also call themselves in for a special legislative session at any point during the year, which is a power that's currently reserved just for the governor.

So this would give a lot more power to lawmakers to pass laws whenever they want, because right now that's something that's only allowed, you know, in these first months of the year.

But ultimately, if it passes the legislature, Kentuckians would once again get the chance to weigh in on this during a referendum on Election Day in November.

Brian, we appreciate it so much.

Thank you as always for the information and insight.

Thanks, Ana.