Lawmakers are squarely focused on undoing Beshear's vetoes in what's largely become a tradition on the next-to-last day of the session. All were overrode, apart from a budget line item veto.
Friday afternoon the Senate reinstated bills creating a Nuclear Energy Authority and a controversial measure that will make it harder to shut down coal-fired power plants, among many others. Overrides are expected to continue throughout the day.
Friday included a lengthy tribute to outgoing Republican Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, an influential conservative voice who helped usher legislation through the chamber for more than two decades. Thayer said Kentuckians shouldn't be surprised to hear his name in political circles even after he exits his post at the end of the year.
"I will be active in primaries and I'll be happy to talk about that after we adjourn sine die because I think you'll find my activity to be noteworthy," The Georgetown Republican said.
As of 5 p.m. Friday, the House had ended its legislative day, meaning only one day remained for new legislation on Monday. Any bills passed in the final hours would be subject to a gubernatorial veto with no chance to override.
Eleventh Hour Pushes
Lawmakers made a rare bipartisan push for gun regulation as the hours clicked down on the 2024 legislative session. An outgoing Republican senator had hoped to pass or get discussion going on the bill, which would temporarily restrict access to firearms for people in crisis.
Sen. Whitney Westerfield expressed disappointment that the Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention Bill, or CARR, legislation was placed, in his words, in "an objectively more hostile committee" and failed to gain traction.
The senator did note, however, that he sees at least some progress when it comes to winning hearts and minds. He cited stats from a study of Kentucky voters.
"Just looking at Republican voters statewide in the sample that we had, in January of 2024, 76% supported this bill," Westerfield told WUKY. "It's a bill that's worth voting on for the policy alone, but for some of the members that I served with that aren't by policy but the politics can get them moving, we wanted to make sure they knew this is a safe vote for you to cast."
The bill was always going to face an uphill battle in a legislature inclined to loosen, not tighten, gun restrictions. The CARR measure was assigned to the the military affairs committee at the start of March, where it stalled.
Meanwhile, Louisville Democratic Sen. David Yates held a press conference to discuss filing what's known as a discharge petition, which could allow a senator to petition to bring legislation to the full floor for a vote.
Yates has said his bill — adding exceptions for rape and incest to the state's abortion law — was deliberately delayed, gathering dust as the General Assembly avoided acting on an issue that appeared to be in play early in the session.
"We know that as we delay we continue to accumulate victims without any recourse," he said, appearing alongside the bill's namesake, Hadley Duvall, a rape survivor who appeared in ads during the governor's race in 2023.
David Walls with the Family Foundation called the move a "last minute political stunt" by Democrats.
