Hart Provides Legislative Update
Rep. Mark Hart (District 78) provides an update on selected bills filed as of January 16. Among them, Hart sponsored HB 106 to strengthen Kentucky’s EMS workforce by providing incentives to follow that career path and cosponsored HB 162 to return issuance of driver’s licenses, REAL IDs and state IDs to county clerks’ offices.
Kentucky House members have filed more than 400 bills and resolutions for consideration as of January 16, when we broke for the three-day weekend. Among them are measures aimed at protecting children, recruiting teachers, making health care more accessible, updating outdated childcare regulations, and providing a framework for a disaster-response volunteer network.
Based on past sessions, I expect several hundred more bills to be filed before the March 4 filing deadline for House bills. However, only a fraction will make their way through the entire legislative process – which includes committee consideration and passage in both the House and Senate. This is by design, as our system recognizes that good laws provide solutions, but more laws tend to create more problems.
Among the bills filed so far this session is one I’m sponsoring that would strengthen our EMS workforce. HB 106 would provide incentives to individuals interested in pursuing an emergency medical services (EMS) career path. Other bills include:
HB 3 would ensure pharmacists are paid for providing routine, preventative, and chronic-care services they are already delivering every day in communities across Kentucky, particularly in rural and underserved areas.
HB 4 would criminalize grooming behavior, the manipulative and deceptive process by which a predator builds a relationship with a vulnerable person, such as a child, to gain their trust and access for abuse or exploitation.
HB 61 would establish the Kentucky Emergency Volunteer (KEV) Corps, an all-volunteer, unarmed adjunct to the Kentucky National Guard that reports to the local emergency management coordinators in emergency situations such as floods, tornados, storms, and earthquakes.
HB 190 would eliminate an unnecessary regulatory burden for childcare centers by modernizing the square-footage calculation used to determine capacity.
HB 213 would provide city and county governments the ability to reemploy retired police officers without incurring employer retirement contributions.
HB 249 would close a loophole in state law that allows individuals accused of unlawful sexual conduct to be released from custody if they are mentally incompetent to stand trial.
HB 360 is aimed at protecting children from sexually explicit performances by banning them from places children are likely to be present.
HB 416 would shift entry requirements for teacher preparation programs away from summative assessments such as the ACT or SAT and toward formative assessments that better identify students’ strengths and areas for growth.
In addition, two bills pertaining to driver’s licensing have been filed in the House:
HB 162, which I cosponsored, would eliminate the state’s regional driver licensing offices and return the responsibility for issuing driver’s licenses, REAL IDs, and identification cards to local circuit court clerk offices in every county.
HB 332 would increase access and convenience to driver’s licenses and state-issued identification cards by allowing local governments or local officials to provide these services — rather than requiring all applicants to travel to regional driver licensing offices.