Lawmakers moving family-related bills
Recent changes in legislative leadership in Frankfort have opened up the process. But not all bills are experiencing smooth sailing.
From Kentucky Citizen Digest, March, 1998

Proponents of conservative family-related legislation thought they would face fewer obstacles in trying to get legislation passed in the 1998 Kentucky General Assembly Session, but they had no idea they would see the kind of activity on family bills this session has produced.

In their wildest dreams, conservative groups would not have imagined that there would be nine pro-life bills, a same-sex marriage bill, and a bill to gut the much maligned KIRIS state testing system — all either moving or with good prospects of passage.

In previous sessions, abortion foes were lucky to get even a single bill out of committee. Now they are watching a gaggle of bills trooping through both the House and the Senate with little standing in their way. New laws banning partial birth abortion, requiring informed consent, imposing health and safety regulations on abortion clinics and setting forth definitions of fetal personhood are, for the most part, leaving the opposition in the dust.

The same-sex marriage bill (HB 13) is also about to be unleashed and, unless opposition develops among Democratic leaders in the House, appears headed for passage by that chamber.

Lawmakers are also dealing with the state’s education testing system, an issue they have avoided in earlier sessions for fear of major changes. This session, the fear has subsided, and has been replaced by enthusiasm, at least in the Senate, which passed a bill to totally recreate the testing system by a 35-to-1 margin.

The difference this session appears to be new leadership in the Senate, the result of 1997’s political coup in which Republicans and a handful of mostly conservative Democrats wrested power from on older guard of liberal Democratic leaders. Installed as President in the course of the coup was Sen. Larry Saunders, who promised that if a bill had the support of 20 senators, it would come for a vote on the floor.

The greater apparent freedom has even allowed legislators who in previous years were forced to vote against Republican attempts to budge conservative bills from committees to sponsor some of the legislation that is now moving. Sen. David Boswell, an Owensboro Democrat who had voted with his party in 1996 to keep certain bills bottled up, had his bill outlawing partial birth abortion approved by a committee and passed by the full Senate.

Although there appears to be solid support for much of this legislation, strong criticism from the state’s two major newspapers has a definite impact in the state capitol, and could yet take its toll. But for now, the movement of conservative family legislation is still surprising advocates of both sides of the issues.
 

Key Family Foundation Contacts: Kent Ostrander, Executive Director Martin Cothran, Senior Associate Policy Analyst