Published: April 16, 2008 07:19 am            

Time runs out on House with several bills unpassed

Counties get no relief with jail costs

FRANKFORT — It all came crashing down just short of midnight Tuesday – no pension reform bill, no help for county jails, no money for bridges in Jefferson County, no roads in legislative leaders’ home districts.

After 59 days and 10 hours, the Kentucky General Assembly decided about 8:45 Tuesday night to get down to serious work on all those pieces of legislation. But there was a problem. They ran out of time – even pulling the plug on the clock in the House – an act called illegal by some of its members – didn’t prevent the collapse.

Rep. Harry Moberly, D-Richmond, the House budget chairman, called the maneuver by the Senate to push legislation authorizing road projects in key districts at the last moment and House leaders’ effort to continue working beyond the constitutional deadline of midnight on the final day of the session “outrageous” and a “travesty.”

Speaking while the clock at the rear of the room stood still at 11:55, Moberly said, “Now it’s illegal because it’s now 10 minutes after 12.”

House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, blamed the Senate for sending legislation at the last minute. Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, blamed the House. But earlier Tuesday evening, Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly, R-Springfield, acknowledged it would be difficult for the House to complete work on the major bills, most of which were in the Senate when the frenetic activity began.

The breakdown began when the House took up a compromise on the pension reform bill. Despite Richards’ comments earlier in the evening that the two chambers had agreed on a compromise, the House balked and Rep. Mike Cherry, D-Princeton, offered a floor amendment which would have substituted the original House measure. But confused House members voted for either the wrong floor amendment or the correct amendment named by the wrong title. There were multiple votes and leadership, House members, staff and reporters all scurried trying to determine if the bill passed – while the clock ticked toward 10 minutes to midnight.

Then suddenly, the clock stopped – somebody apparently pulled the fuse which at the same time appeared to turn out the lights on the capitol dome.

Vote tallies recorded on the bill clearly showed in the upper corner the vote occurred at 12 minutes and 42 seconds past midnight.

Just before the vote, Minority Leader Jeff Hoover, R-Jamestown, stood and said the House leaders shook hands with Senate leaders and agreed to the pension reform compromise and he urged colleagues to vote for it. Richards shot back that “no hands were shaken.”

A grim-faced and angry Hoover subsequently walked to the Speaker’s podium and the two exchanged words, each shaking a finger in the other’s face. Forty minutes later when the House finally gave up on passing any of the legislation still before them, Hoover was still angry.

“He basically called me a liar on the floor and I don’t appreciate that,” Hoover said. “I never said he shook hands, but there were people who did and there was an agreement.”

Richards said he told Senate leaders he wouldn’t promise to vote for the bill until he saw it – “And I still haven’t seen it.”

House members were also angry about the bill to fund 17 road projects which they received from the Senate just before midnight. The money was freed up by using federal highway funds to pay off $231 million in bonds for the two Ohio River bridges – which was also lost in the last-minute train wreck. The 17 funded projects were earmarked, several in key leaders’ districts like those of Richards and Williams.

The bill also establishes priorities for additional projects should money become available in the road fund. And the first priority is a project in Williams’ district, one that was the subject of a controversial change order approved by Ernie Fletcher’s Transportation Cabinet at Williams’ request and later revoked by Beshear’s Secretary of Transportation Joe Prather.

That infuriated Moberly and Rep. Jimmie Lee, D-Elizabethtown. Moberly called it outrageous and Lee said it was a deliberate tactic of the Senate.

“This was brought to us after midnight when we never had a chance to look at it,” Lee said. The bill actually arrived before midnight.

In the end several key pieces of legislation died: a bill to have the state begin paying for state prisoners in county jails 15 days after pleading guilty or being convicted by a jury rather than after final sentencing; the measure authorizing the $231 million in bonds for the Louisville bridges; the bill authorizing the other road projects; campaign finance reforms; and the pension reform bill.

But the measure to add $75 million more in water and sewer projects funded by bonds financed with coal severance and tobacco settlement money cruised to passage. And House Bill 2, sponsored by Majority Leader Rocky Adkins, D-Sandy Hook, to provide tax incentives for residential and commercial business owners to conserve energy or utilize renewable energy passed.

A cyber stalking bill sponsored by Rep. Johnny Bell, D-Glasgow, never got out of the Senate. Bell said the bill “was held hostage by Dan Kelly” who wanted the House to pass his bill to provide residential treatment for substance abusers charged with non-violent crimes.

Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort, Ky. He may be contacted by email at rellis@cnhi.com.



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