Do you want more of the Kentucky legislature? Voters can choose on Nov. 8 ballot

Would you like more of the Kentucky legislature? If so, the Nov. 8 statewide ballot has a question just for you.

Overshadowed by the far better-known ballot question on abortion access in Kentucky, which is Constitutional Amendment No. 2, voters first will see Constitutional Amendment No. 1.

That question will ask voters — in a dense wad of 158 words — if they want to scrap the constitutional rules that end legislative sessions in early spring, after 60 days in even-numbered years and 30 days in odd-numbered years, and that only allow the governor to call lawmakers back to Frankfort for special sessions on specific topics.

A “yes” vote on Amendment 1 would free lawmakers to set aside the adjournment dates of their usual sessions and bring themselves back for up to 12 additional business days later in the year, regardless of the governor’s wishes.

Members of the General Assembly’s Republican super-majorities say it’s unreasonable for them to go up to nine months between sessions while Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear gets to call all the shots.

Specifically, they point to Beshear’s controversial executive orders in 2020 when he required Kentuckians to wear masks in public and temporarily closed many public spaces, including businesses, to curb the spread of COVID-19. Legislative leaders were angry at that time because they had no input into Beshear’s orders.

“In the summer of 2020, the people of this commonwealth lost their minds over the fact that we had a dictatorial governor who was acting unilaterally without listening to the elected people’s branch of government,” Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, said in January, while arguing for a bill related to Amendment 1.

“Businesses were being closed,” Thayer said. “The governor (was) making decisions on winners and losers. You could go to the big box store and buy flowers during the shutdown but you couldn’t go to the local flower shop owned by your friend or your neighbor.”

If Amendment 1 passes, lawmakers could choose to return to Frankfort to overrule a governor’s executive orders. They also could revive bills that appeared to have died during the winter session but only needed a little more arm-twisting by sponsors. Or they could take up new business that occurred to them after they went home.

House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, who sponsored the amendment in 2021, told his colleagues at the time that he never understood “why we cram everything into a very short period of time, why we spend a significant period of time every session either trying to figure out or react to what’s happened over the last nine months or trying to predict what’s going to happen over the next nine months.”

The Kentucky legislature long has wanted more power over state government. It used to meet only for 60 days in even-numbered years until lawmakers narrowly convinced voters in 2000 to revise the state constitution and allow annual sessions. That, too, was an Amendment 1 on the statewide ballot.

Still, most states give their lawmakers more authority over their meeting dates. Kentucky is one of just 14 states where only the governor can call a special session, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Having gotten their question on the ballot, it’s not clear what lawmakers are doing to promote it.

As of late September, the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance said nobody had reported raising any money to support or oppose Amendment 1, as compared to the abortion question, Amendment 2, for which more than $1 million had been collected by different advocacy groups.

Without money to spend on advertising, the only attention given to Amendment 1 has been a few opinion pieces written by outside groups over the past year.

Typically, conservatives who support the GOP-majority legislature say the amendment would “help balance power in Frankfort” (that’s from the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions), while liberals who back the Democratic governor call the effort “a power grab” (that’s from the Kentucky State AFL-CIO).

Given that hardly anyone in Kentucky outside of the state Capitol seems aware of Amendment 1, it’s hard to predict how voters will feel about it, said University of Kentucky political scientist Stephen Voss.

“The question is, what do people do when they’re looking at a poorly publicized amendment?” Voss asked. “And political science does speak to that question. It indicates that people tend to vote no. The theory is, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Don’t change the system in order to fix a problem that you’re not aware of.”

Also working against Amendment 1 is rising opposition to Amendment 2, which would definitively remove the right to abortion as a state constitutional protection, Voss said. If enough voters angrily mark “no” to one ballot question, then they might go ahead and vote “no” to the other question, too, even if they’re not sure what it asks, he said.

Finally, if voters distrust politicians — and many do — there could be a knee-jerk response against any question that asks if we should give them more time to conduct business, Voss said.

“Some people might say, ‘No, if they’re in session, they’re just going to cost us more money. They don’t do anything useful for us, anyway,’” he said.