State lawmakers heard from the vacation rental company Airbnb today.

The company is asking the General Assembly to ban some ways cities regulate short term rentals in neighborhoods.

Our Jeanne LaFleur has more in this report.

Frankfort, Covington, Lexington and Louisville, all regulate who exactly can host guests for money.

A lobbyist for Airbnb wants the state to step in and get rid of some of that red tape.

If we do short term rental reform.

Localities can still regulate if parking issues, noise complaints, any violations like that.

So this is not trying to give a free ticket to short term rentals to do whatever they want.

But we don't want to use zoning to infringe upon the property rights of legal homeowners in Kentucky.

A Democrat from Louisville pushes back.

The reason I think that we had those regulations just to give the committee some perspective is when folks aren't on site.

We actually saw increased calls for service from L.A.P.D.

Noise complaints, things like that.

And we heat mapped out sort of the resources they were draining.

And these are, again, income generating businesses with nobody on site.

We didn't see that whenever we had owners at the property, because then folks sort of have this incentive to make sure that it's not becoming a public nuisance or becoming a problem and that folks are taking good care of the property again in residential areas.

And so I appreciate your perspective.

I have a lot of concerns about what you're proposing.

Lawmakers from rural districts are concerned with something else.

They say Airbnb is not paying its fair share of taxes to small local government.

I've had a few of the local tax districts call me expressing difficulty to get Airbnb on board with taking care of the local taxes and collecting them, which I think we've got to statute right now that requires.

That there is you know, there's no doubt that Airbnb wants to pay all the taxes and and are paying them the vast, vast majority of it because we have these agreements with most of the population centers in Kentucky.

It's just the smaller towns that unfortunately, yes, we have not been able to come to an agreement.

The Kentucky League of Cities and the Kentucky Travel Industry Association said the company last year for just that for Kentucky edition of June.

LEFFLER Thank you, June.

State lawmakers have struck down local rental ordinances before this year.

State lawmakers barred cities from forcing landlords to accept federal housing vouchers, something Louisville had on its books.