Tagged: Kentucky General Assembly

With more than a year before the next elections, new political action committee has formed to help Republicans gain control of the Kentucky state House.

The PAC—Pro-Jobs, Pro-Kentucky—was formed earlier this month by Scott Jennings, a longtime Kentucky  GOP political operative and Mike Adams, a former counsel for the Republican Governor's Association.

An overhaul of Kentucky’s outdated system for managing court cases can now get underway following the approval of $28 million in bonds. State lawmakers unanimously passed the measure, which was recently signed into law by Governor Beshear.

Chief Justice John Minton, Jr. says the Judicial Branch has been running the risk of a huge database failure for some time.    

Kentucky legislative leaders say they're proud of the 2013, with legislators having accomplished pension reforms, cleaned up other bills and passed others dealing with hemp, special taxing district and military voting.

Many of the legislature's top priorities were passed in the 30-day session, although most of them were hatched as last minutes deals in the waning days of the session.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo said the 2013 session may have been his proudest in more than a decade.

Kentucky lawmakers have achieved a compromise that would set up a regulatory framework should the federal government legalize industrial hemp.

The so-called hemp bill—Senate Bill 50—gives control of licensing of future hemp farmers to the Industrial Hemp Commission, but allow the Kentucky State Police to do background checks on the farmers.

The state Department of Agriculture would be given many administrative roles for licensing hemp farmers and the University of Kentucky would be charged with researching the issue.

Kentucky military personnel serving overseas will be able to get ballots electronically under legislation approved late Tuesday in the Kentucky General Assembly. How they send them back is still to be determined.

Working until the last minute of the 2013 session, legislators went back to the original Senate version of the military voting bill that allowed for electronic sending of ballots to overseas military, but snail mail return of the ballot.