After Republican legislators voted overwhelmingly for rules changes on the first day of the 2025 General Assembly to make it easier for their supermajority to end floor debates and rush to a final vote on controversial bills, Senate President Robert Stivers pronounced with aplomb that reporters in the chamber would focus on the debate happening in front of them instead of instances when Republicans and Democrats work together.
“They want to write about division,” Stivers said of the press corps. “They want to write about dissension. … Every day, I want to look at the people who write the stories, who speak the language, who go on the TVs and the radio to talk about all the positives that this body leans on, not the negatives that they want to sell advertising and get advertising dollars for.”
There is nothing quite like listening to the most powerful lawmaker in the Kentucky legislature whine about the documentation of obvious division that observers are witnessing in real time with their own eyes and ears.
I don’t gamble, but if I were a betting woman I’d say Stivers’ remarks are simply a ploy to distract from the reason for the dissension, which is House and Senate leaders shoving through rule changes to stifle robust discussion on the floor, in view of the public, and give themselves the ability to move immediately to a final vote on controversial bills.
Nice try.
What all of this means for Kentucky voters who sent our representatives to Frankfort is this: If your representative has questions they would like answered in a public forum (the House floor, the Senate floor) before a bill is passed, too bad.
Remember that these are the same lawmakers who voted themselves a raise in 2022, with Floor Leader Damon Thayer asking, yet again in 2024 via SB 350, for another raise.
For the record, I am not against potential raises because lawmakers now spend more time year-round on state business, and better pay would potentially attract better candidates who are not independently wealthy and/or fancy lawyers who can afford to give up or abandon their day jobs to work for us.
But why would we pay them more to have less public debate on consequential legislation?
In fact, why are we paying their salaries and weeks upon weeks of travel expenses — Stivers and Osborne included — to be in Frankfort if the supermajority refuses basic debate?
Bills big and small already remain a mystery to lawmakers across the aisle and to the general public because bills are not pre-filed. Bills can already hit the House and Senate floor for a vote at warp speed. And since there is such a huge GOP supermajority, Republicans can easily pass their bills when it comes time for a vote.
The issue is not reporters reporting what they witness in the chamber. The issue is that the new rules significantly stifle public debate, and Stivers knows the public will be livid.
Let us not follow his red bouncing ball of distraction.
- Why is leadership so fearful of public debate and scrutiny? That’s the main question Stivers needs to answer.
- Does he not believe his bill sponsors are capable of answering basic questions about the laws they are proposing?
- Why is GOP supermajority leadership seemingly afraid to manage floor debates and allow questions from lawmakers WE THE VOTERS sent there to ask?
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