House amends informed consent legislation, adding video consultation in 92-3 vote
01/29/2016 12:02 AM
FRANKFORT — After about a week of procedural maneuvering, the state’s House of Representatives passed a bill twice amended Thursday requiring women seeking an abortion to consult with a physician 24 hours before the procedure. The House added an option for real-time video conferencing to Senate Bill 4 in a 92-3 vote, meaning women would either use that or meet with medical staff before having an abortion. The legislation cleared some last-minute hoops — a special Health and Welfare Committee meeting after... Read more 
Bill to raise the state minimum wage moves to House floor
01/28/2016 10:08 PM
FRANKFORT — The state’s minimum hourly wage would raise to $10.10 in less than two and a half years under a bill that passed out of a House committee on Thursday. House Bill 278, sponsored by House Speaker Greg Stumbo, would increase Kentucky’s current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to $8.20 this July, $9.15 in July 2017 and $10.10 in July 2018. The increase would not apply to businesses that have a recent average annual gross volume of sales of... Read more
Student expression bill heads to Senate floor after passing committee 12-1
01/28/2016 05:09 PM
FRANKFORT — Legislation that would codify protections for religious and political speech in public schools was sent to the Senate floor on Thursday. The Senate Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection Committee approved Senate Bill 15 on a 12-1 vote. SB 15 would prevent school districts from barring the expression of religious and political views on school property, at functions and in classwork at public schools and universities. Teachers also would be allowed to use the Bible and other scriptures in secular... Read more
“To fully recount all the injustices that have taken place in this case would nearly be overwhelming.” — from the 2011 state Court of Appeals opinion in Denver L. Stewart III v. Commonwealth of Kentucky Denver Stewart has no trouble reciting those injustices. They date all the way back to October 1997, when court officials in Pike County illegally banished him from the state for two years for possessing marijuana. Just 21 years old, with a wife and a young son, he was given barely 48 hours to pack up and get out of town, to go “west of the Mississippi River.” When [...]
Fri, Jan 29, 2016 12:55:00 PM, Continue reading at the source
Jerome Perry doesn’t have many white neighbors. There are so few, in fact, that Perry can list the houses around him where white families live. Even the homes that are blocks away from his tidy yellow brick home on 45th Street in Louisville’s Westover neighborhood. Perry, like most of his neighbors, is black. And his situation is not unique to the Westover neighborhood. Stark racial segregation in Louisville means many residents live in neighborhoods with high concentrations of a single race. For Perry and others in the western portions of the city, white neighbors are few and far between. In eastern portions of the city, it’s the [...]
Fri, Jan 29, 2016 12:04:00 PM, Continue reading at the source
Hours after Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky announced its Louisville clinic had begun providing abortions, the state House approved a bill requiring women seeking an abortion to meet — in person or via video conference — with a doctor at least 24 hours before the procedure. The bill, which passed 92-3, is a victory for Republicans who have failed to pass so-called “informed consent” bills through the Democratic-led House for more than a decade. House Minority Leader Jeff Hoover, a Republican from Jamestown, called it a “historic day.” “The informed consent law was something that many of us have long fought for, many members of our caucus, and [...]
Fri, Jan 29, 2016 12:09:00 AM, Continue reading at the source
