Gerth: Good riddance to the Kentucky legislature and its shameless Republican power grab

FRANKFORT, Ky. — The good news is, the 2024 session of the Kentucky General Assembly is just about over.

The legislature will return to Frankfort next week to override any vetoes Gov. Andy Beshear issues between now and then. It could pass some more bills, but there’s unlikely to be any controversial measures passed that would draw Beshear’s opposition since the legislature wouldn’t have time to override a veto.

In other good news, the legislature didn’t pass bills that would outlaw diversity programs that help state colleges and universities recruit and retain Black scholars, nor did it pass a mean-spirited bill that would make it harder to receive SNAP benefits, commonly called food stamps.

But what the Republicans in the legislature did do is spend the session weakening the governor’s office and the people of Louisville while at the same time increasing the GOP-controlled legislature’s power and making it more likely their party will be able to win offices in Louisville, which has been voting more and more Democratic over the last two decades.

Ah yes, a good old fashioned power grab by the Republicans — led by state Rep. Jason Nemes, who may be the most power-hungry of all the state House members.

If you can’t win the governor's office or practically any office in Louisville, simply change the rules and rob the people of their voices. That seems to be his — and their — mantra.

Republicans took their shots at Beshear by stripping him of the power to appoint a successor if Mitch McConnell dies or retires while still in office, and they weakened his state Public Service Commission by requiring it to listen to a new body dominated by the fossil fuel industry if a power company seeks to close a power plant.

They limited Beshear’s spending to respond to natural disasters, and they stripped his state Historic Properties Commission of the right to remove or install statues in the state Capitol — likely so they can put up a bronze of Mitch McConnell where Jefferson Davis used to be in the rotunda.

But the most damage they did was in Louisville, as a bunch of rural legislators and Nemes are forcing their will on the people here.

In Nemes’ House Bill 388, the General Assembly hamstrung Louisville with a bill that, among other things, makes it harder to discipline rogue police officers — this less than a year after the Department of Justice issued a scathing report on the Louisville Metro Police Department.

The bill also freezes an ongoing effort to change the land-development code to allow more townhomes and duplexes on land that had been set aside for single family homes. This is at best classist and at worst racist.

It requires the city to pay suburban fire departments for any runs they make into Louisville’s urban services district, where property owners pay more in taxes for greater services, but it doesn’t allow the city to charge the suburban fire districts when city firefighters are dispatched to homes that are supposed to be serviced by the suburban fire department.

But the biggest change — and perhaps the most indefensible — does away with the system of government that Jefferson County residents approved when they voted for merger in 2000.

Going forward, Louisville will elect its mayor and metro council members in non-partisan elections.

There’s really no reason to do this other than Republicans’ desire to get elected in Louisville and their realization that’s not going to happen as long as they're tainted by their party.

In a non-partisan election, voters who haven’t been paying real close attention to the election won’t be able to walk into the voting booth and look for the words “Republican Party” below a candidate’s name and think, “Gee, he probably opposes abortion rights for women, doesn’t want equity for African Americans and wants to shove his Christian religion down my throat. I think I’ll vote for the other candidate.”

You won’t be able to look at a ballot and with a pretty good degree of certainty be able to predict which candidates supported Donald Trump and which ones supported our Constitution during the 2020 election.

None of this is really how government was meant to be.

When people elected Beshear as governor — twice — it was with the understanding that he would have all the powers that traditionally have gone with that office.

And when people voted for merger, they didn’t intend for the state legislature to usurp the local governments’ power and force its right-wing fanaticism on them, which is what Nemes and the GOP are doing here.

Thankfully, legislators can’t pass any other bills this year without the risk of a veto they can’t override.

The bad thing is, as soon as it ends, they’ll go back to wherever they go after the General Assembly recesses and start cooking whatever fresh hell they’ll feed us next year.

Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Good riddance to the Kentucky legislature and its shameless power grab