I'm Laura Rogers, catching up on the political news of the week with NPR's Ryland Barton and riling Governor Andy Beshear recently issuing a couple of executive orders.

One gives us a new state holiday, another protecting state employees when it comes to wearing natural hair.

Can you tell us more about these orders?

Yeah.

So that first one, it makes Juneteenth an official state holiday.

This is something that has come up in the state legislature time and time again.

And lawmakers for some reason have not been able to get across the finish line.

This is a holiday that celebrates the point in which many black Americans recently who had been enslaved throughout the first years of American history were finally got word that the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued.

This was long after the end of the Civil War, and it's become a holiday to celebrate black history and also just at the end of slavery in the United States.

This is something that a lot of folks are excited is happening in the state and will be an official state holiday for state employees.

The other one, the Crown Act, which is an acronym for creating a respectful and open world for natural hair.

That is a it's a bill that's designed to prevent discrimination against folks for having natural hairstyles, so say dreadlocks, braids, twists, and which is something that some employers will discriminate against would be employees or employees saying that they have to change their hairstyle for one reason or another.

This executive order is designed to try to stop that because these are well-recognized styles of hair that have nothing to do with, you know, how an employee performs and it's really just trying to seek to prevent that sort of discrimination in the workplace.

And I think it's nice to with the Juneteenth holiday, when you think about the fact that Kentucky is the birthplace of President Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

So some big news there recently.

And then also, let's talk about the state income tax, because I know this was a popular talking point during the primary election when we were interviewing incumbents who were running, especially on the Republican ticket.

I know I asked, you know, at least one of them, why are you running for reelection?

And one of the answers was, well, we want to get the income tax down to zero.

I want to go back to Frankfort to make that happen.

But now we're hearing some of the Republican leaders say, you know, that may not be something we're able to do on the fiscal level right now.

You yeah, this is a big been a big political rallying cry for Republicans, as you said earlier this year during legislative races, but also last year.

This was a big push for Republican nominee for governor, Daniel Cameron.

He said he wanted to eliminate the state's income tax, going back to the former governor, Matt Bevin.

That was one of his big things.

A lot of Republicans say this is something that would encourage investment in the state, make Kentucky more attractive to people moving here.

But when you're reducing the amount that you're taxing people's incomes at the mean, so it's less money coming into state coffers, which we use to fund any number of social services and things just like building roads.

So on the other side of things, this is a so anyway, Republican leaders of the legislature say it's not going to be possible to to do this.

It's unlikely that you're really going to be able to get down to zero, even though they did pass a bill a couple of years ago that does slowly allow the state to start reducing the income tax by about a half a percentage point every year, depending on certain conditions, whether the state has enough money in the rainy day fund, whether it's bringing in enough revenue.

But Republican leaders say it doesn't look like the state's really going to be able to make those marks going forward unless it does something else, like raising the sales tax, which would be, you know, that'd be a real political third rail for folks, too.

And that's what a lot of states that have to that depend on having that do have eliminated their income tax depend on they depend on having a higher sales tax.

And that's something that I think that even Republican political leaders can sense.

There's not a lot of appetite for among voters.

So there's probably a little bit more of a reduction coming in the next coming years.

But again, getting down to zero, they're saying, is unlikely to happen any time soon.

And along those lines as well, Governor Bashir, line item, vetoed some provisions, I believe, in House Bill eight, which had to do with state revenue.

And Attorney General Russell Coleman agreeing with the GOP that that was unconstitutional because of it being an appropriations bill.

Am I saying that correctly?

That's right.

Yeah.

And this is this is a bit of a complicated story, but it does it just kind of gets at the heart of some of the the battles over power between between Governor Andy Beshear and the legislature and Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman.

So it's a little bit of a niche issue.

But within this bill, House Bill eight and include two sections that exempted gold and silver from the state's 6% sales tax, Andy Beshear line item veto.

That's those provisions.

The legislature came back and said, well, you're not allowed to do that because you're actually not allowed to line item veto.

That's like, you know, just kind of taking part of the bill and excising it from the bill.

You're not allowed to do that because it's not an appropriations bill.

An appropriations bill is genera Beshear says it is.

Russell Coleman just came in, says it is not.

There's a bit of a battle here.

We could see if this could end up going to court.

But I think at the root of this is really a fight over power and what the what the governor's power is here and what the legislature's power is.

And it's something that could ultimately get settled in the court system.

Because ultimately the Republican supermajority could have just overridden that veto.

Correct.

They could have overridden it and they decided not to.

They decided to go this way saying that, whoa, this isn't even legal in the first place to be able to do this sort of veto.

All right.

RYLAN Well, it's always an interesting catch up with you.

We appreciate it so much.

And thank you for your time.

Good to see you, Laura.