Legislative Update
Most of the activity this past week and a half has been at the committee level in the legislature, as House and Senate committees worked to clear their agendas of pending bills. Beginning next week the bills that made it out of committee will be debated and perhaps further amended on the floor of each chamber, and then most likely ending up in a conference committee where House and Senate differences will be worked out.
There were no big surprises or status changes last week in the legislation which we have reported on in previous updates. However, some non-controversial bills have been made more complicated by the addition of certain amendments. For example, the contents of SB 233, the “child mutilation prevention act” were amended into the non-controversial pharmacy technician vaccine administration bill, HB 2263, by the Senate Health Committee. Similarly, the same committee also added an abortion related bill, SB 219, to the non-controversial HB 2325, which related to liability insurance for maternity centers. The Committee also added the contents of SB 6, which restricts the authority of the KHDE Secretary and local health officers to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, into a relatively non-controversial bill (HB 2390) relating to the study of drug overdose deaths.
We should have a better sense of where these and all other issues are headed by the end of next week. Several of these bills will undoubtedly end up in a conference committee where they will either be further amended, or stalled for lack of consensus between House and Senate conferees. And, assuming the bills make it all the way through the conference committee process, there is no guarantee that the Governor would sign them if the controversial provisions are retained.
As always, if you have questions about any of the above, or the other issues we are following, please contact Rachelle Colombo at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
