Weekly Legislative Update 2-26-24

Greetings KRTA Family:

The last day to file new bills for the Kentucky House of Representatives is today, February 26th, while the deadline in the Kentucky Senate is this Thursday, February 28th.   We anticipate this week will be extremely chaotic as members seek to get their bills submitted before the deadlines.

As mentioned in previous updates, the House has already submitted a budget and it addresses two of our main priorities:

(1) The House Budget provides for full funding of the Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS).

(2) The House Budget provides for full funding of the TRS Medical Insurance Fund.

We expect the Senate Budget to be presented this week.  We anticipate that both of our funding priorities will be present in the Senate Budget.

Another legislative priority was to maintain our prescription drug benefits and oppose any legislation that would result in higher costs.  Sen. Max Wise worked with the KRTA legislative team and exempted KRTA prescription drug benefits from a new Senate Bill (SB 188) that regulates pharmacy benefit managers and administrators.  Our KRTA prescription drug benefits will remain the same as prior years.

Other bills that are not priorities, but we have been watching:

HB50 (Rep. Rawlings) – Allows for the transfer of deeds for both real estate and vehicles upon death to beneficiaries without the need for probate.  This bill will allow the home or vehicle owner to name the the beneficiary of the property within the deed itself so it can transfer without probate upon death.

SB4 (Sen. Higdon) – While SB 4 revises the use of teacher sick days upon retirement, this bill probably won’t result in the heated protests of the past. Proponents of SB 4 are correct in stating that there is no uniform policy statewide on how and under what circumstances personal leave days can be converted to sick days at the time of retirement. However, proponents are quick to cite isolated instances where administrators have been able to write additional days into their contracts, resulting—in some cases—in more than 500 sick/leave days at retirement.

The Senate Education Committee identified many issues with SB 4 during its committee hearing. One member voted no, citing that House Members in his Senate District were proposing HB 387 to combat the shortage of substitute teachers, and SB 4 would only exacerbate the issue. Other members voted yes but made it clear that we cannot continue to reduce benefits, provide little or no raises, and expect better school outcomes.

Given the cost of substitutes and the learning loss due to the absence of teachers, most districts would be better off incurring the increased retirement costs if they were to allow personal leave days to be converted to sick days at retirement.

SB 4 will likely be before the full Senate this week and will likely move to the House Education Committee if approved by the Senate.

HB190 (Rep. Sharp) This bill prohibits insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, and other pharmacy benefit administrators from requiring or incentivizing the use of a mail-order pharmaceutical distributor in limited health service benefit plans including limited health service contracts, limited health service organizations, the state employee health plan, and post secondary educational self-insured group health plans.

HB 134  (Rep. Tackett Lafferty, Brown Jr., Gentry, hale, Hart, Stevenson) – Amend KRS 141.019 to increase the retirement distribution exclusion from $31,110 to $41,110 for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2025.

HB 138 Amend KRS 161.500 to allow members of the Teachers’ Retirement System to recover up to 10 unpaid days that were missed to observe religious holidays; include the recovered days in count of days worked for service credit; EMERGENCY. Several bills have been filed related to education and are detailed in a report shared by the Kentucky Association of School Administrators.

The following bills deal with the Homestead Act and would require a constitutional amendment. 

SB23 (Sen. Nemes, Girdler, Meredith, Tichenor) Propose to amend Section 170 of the Constitution of Kentucky to include in the homestead exemption for owners who are 65 years of age or older any increase in the valuation of the real property that is assessed after the later of the year the owner turned 65 or the year the owner purchased the property.

Kind regards,

Tim Abrams,

Executive Director