by Tom Loftus –
(Photo: The Courier-Journal)
FRANKFORT, Ky. – Buried within Gov. Matt Bevin’s budget bill are provisions that would repeal Kentucky’s prevailing wage law and cut public funding to Kentucky’s Planned Parenthood clinics.
Bevin outlined the major aspects of his proposed 2016-18 budget in an hourlong speech to the General Assembly Tuesday night, but he did not mention these two items, each of which is addressed in separate bills filed earlier during the legislative session.
The budget bill, House Bill 303, was not filed until late Wednesday.
Jessica Ditto, communications director in the Governor’s Office, said Thursday that Bevin campaigned for governor on both issues so his adding them to the budget bill should come as no surprise.
“The governor believes the General Assembly should act on restricting public funds to abortion providers and repealing the prevailing wage to save taxpayer dollars,” Ditto said. “By putting them in the budget, both houses of the General Assembly will be required to address them this session.”
A paragraph on page 116 of the 133-page budget bill mandates that public funds, including money received from the federal government, shall not directly or indirectly be paid to any entity “that provides abortions or abortion services, or that is any affiliate of an entity that provides abortion services.”
The wording is nearly identical to Senate Bill 7, which passed out of the Senate Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection Committee last week. Both would mandate a three-tiered process for distributing funding for family planning, with the first priority being public health departments, the second non-public clinics that provide comprehensive primary and preventive health services, and the third clinics like Planned Parenthood that provide family planning but not comprehensive primary care and preventive services.
On Thursday, Planned Parenthood announced it has begun offering abortions for the first time in Kentucky at a health center it opened last month on South Seventh Street in downtown Louisville.
Derek Selznick, the director of the Kentucky ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project who testified against Senate Bill 7 last week, said he was unaware of the provision added to Bevin’s budget bill. “Ironically, anytime you are restricting who can offer cost-effective family planning services, any time you take away the number of places and the number of choices, it’s a pretty poor decision because it actually leads to more abortions,” Selznick said.
Meanwhile, a paragraph on page 117 of the budget bill says in part that “no public authority shall make the prevailing wage … a part of the bidding specifications for any public works or a part of any contract for the construction of public works.”
The Kentucky prevailing wage law requires that a regionally established wage rate be paid to construction workers on public projects. Contractors, many business interests and many public school officials have said it needlessly inflates the cost of public buildings. But labor groups say it sets a fair wage and results in higher quality buildings.
Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, noted the budget provision is more sweeping than a bill that passed the Senate two weeks ago that would only repeal prevailing wage for public school and university buildings.
“This seems to be a blanket repeal of prevailing wage and we’re of course totally opposed to it,” Londrigan said. “… Doing it in the budget, we think, is a sneaky way to try to get something accomplished because it doesn’t really give this issue a proper opportunity for debate.”
For many years bills passed by Kentucky’s Republican-led Senate repealing prevailing wage and restricting women’s access to abortion have been blocked in the House, where Democrats hold the majority.
By law the budget bill must start in the House. By tradition, the bill is sponsored by the House budget committee chairman – in this case Democrat Rick Rand.
Rand said Thursday morning that following that tradition, he agreed to sponsor the bill as a courtesy – not as an endorsement of all parts of the bill.
As to Bevin’s adding the prevailing wage and Planned Parenthood bills to the budget, Rand said, “There are always some surprises in a budget bill, and we will certainly be taking a very close look at those provisions.”
Reporter Tom Loftus can be reached at (502) 875-5136 or [email protected].
