For the past three weeks, stories have appeared in the News Journal offering a preview of what Kentuckians might expect to see transpire during this year’s meeting of the General Assembly in Frankfort. Thanks to our local state representatives, Nick Wilson and Tom O’Dell Smith, for taking the time to speak with us and shed some light on important discussions that they plan on being a part of in the weeks ahead.
Last year’s legislative session was largely budget-driven. With that task already handled, 2025 promises to focus on policy, with existing laws getting revisited and re-evaluated, and new bills getting introduced in hopes of becoming law.
As anyone, who pays close attention to the General Assembly, knows things tend to develop rapidly during the course of a legislative session. Staying on top of these developments can be easier said than done, but we will try our best to keep you, our readers, up-to-date on the most important happenings between the House and Senate until the 2025 session wraps up in late-March.
With that being said, I have a few items on my personal wish list that I would like to see some action taken on over the course of the next 11-12 weeks…
The report that appeared in our Jan. 1 edition that included comments from 86th District Rep. Tom O’Dell Smith addressed a few important topics. Specifically, Smith shed some light on how the House Committee on Licensing, Occupations, and Administrative Regulations, of which he is vice chair, might approach such issues as medical cannabis, expanding upon offerings that are legally allowed in convenience stores, and licensure requirements for certain occupations.
When it comes to medicinal cannabis, I hope that discussions will be had on how to make Kentucky’s newest industry a lot friendlier to actual Kentuckians moving forward. Much has been said about how out-of-state applicants dominated the recent lotteries for cultivator, processor and dispensary licenses, and while one must take into consideration the unexpected overall amount of applications that were received, I think that we can probably take what we’ve seen and learned so far and come up with some ways that in-state entities and individuals can have a better shot at obtaining operating licenses when the next round are given out. Just to be clear, nothing has been said yet about when (or if) more licenses will be awarded, but I think that will eventually be the case.
At the very least, I hope that our elected officials will decide that previous applicants will not be required to pay another non-refundable fee should another application process be announced. At $5,000 per application for dispensaries, I am also hoping that we will get some clear answers as to where all of the money from the initial application process has gone. Clearly, with around 5,000 applicants, the state ended up taking in more money than it anticipated. I understand that a good chunk of that money had to go towards opening and staffing another division of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, as well as to covering various other operational costs, but one would think that there was also a decent amount of excess funds left over that could be put to good use. Perhaps, as Rep. Smith suggested, a certain percentage could be refunded to those initial applicants to encourage them to continue developing potential business plans.
I am also very much in favor of what Smith had to say regarding the amending of certain licensing requirements for folks wishing to get trained in a specific field. I have often thought that one of the main reasons behind why more people don’t pursue licenses to do certain types of jobs is simply because it requires too much money and/or the time commitment is too great. I think that taking a long, hard look at how some of these requirements can be eased in order to open up more opportunities for people to get licensed will, in the long run, pay some pretty big dividends when it comes to further developing our trained workforce.
With that being said, there is a balance that you have to strike between making professional licenses more accessible, and making the licensing process too lax. We need more working professionals in a variety of fields, true, but we also want to make sure those professionals are adequately equipped to do the job. Of course, this will all have to be hammered out during the upcoming session, but I do hope to see some meaningful developments on this front.
82nd District Rep. Nick Wilson will be serving as the vice chair of the House Committee on Children and Family Services in the coming weeks. He said recently that he is hoping to revisit provisions in a bill that was signed into law last spring (HB 271) that would increase the amount of investigations into accusations involving child abuse across the state. Despite the bill being signed into law, he said that it has not actually been implemented due to the governor’s claims of inadequate funding.
Wilson says that funding does exist for this effort, and I hope that he will be successful in his quest to finally get this particular piece of legislation fully up and going. Child abuse is an ugly and tragic reality, and it is perpetrated in many different forms every single day. I am in favor of anything that we can do to help get more eyes on this problem, and to hopefully help save more innocent lives.
In addition to these efforts, I am also very, very eager to see what conversations will be had during the 2025 legislative session when it comes to the ongoing, and ever-worsening, housing crisis that is taking place across the state. These issues have been well documented over the course of the past couple of years, and I feel that the situation is reaching a critical point where something is going to have to be done to address it.
If you followed along with our series of articles back during the summer that looked into housing insecurity and homelessness issues in our local area, then you know the types of life-threatening situations that folks are finding themselves in every day. It is a very real problem that is going to require some serious focus and attention if it is going to see any sort of improvement. My fingers are crossed that we will be able to report on some positive developments in this area by the time the General Assembly adjourns in March.
I would like to hear from you! What issues are you hoping to see addressed in the 2025 legislative session? What would you like to see legislators focused on in the coming days and weeks? If you have some thoughts that you’d like to share, feel free to submit them to me in an e-mail sent to tsherman@corbinnewsjournal.com. I may take your comments into account in an upcoming column or article. If you’d like to share your thoughts in the form of the letter to the editor, send that to news@corbinnewsjournal.com.
