Senate GOP Floor Leader Max Wise, right, is criticizing Gov. Andy Beshear for vetoing a provision that would have helped private schools hire police. The proposal surfaced in the Senate on March 14, the last day before the veto break. Conferring with Wise on the Senate floor March 14 are Senate President Robert Stivers, left, and Sen. Chris McDaniel. (LRC Public Information)
Months after Kentucky voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed public funds to support nonpublic schools, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear applied the same logic in a line-item veto.
Beshear’s veto spurred Senate Republicans to issue a news release Friday and again Monday headlined “Senator Max Wise rips governor’s veto of school safety provision,” asserting that the proposed public funding would have gone to law enforcement agencies not the private schools that could have used it to employ police as school resource officers.
The provision, which surfaced on the 28th day of the 30-day session and received little attention, directed the Kentucky Department of Education to provide up to $20,000 to help nonpublic schools employ a law enforcement officer on their campuses.
The Senate added the provision to House Bill 622 which modified state contract and invoicing procedures. Public schools also were eligible for the assistance in hiring security personnel known as school resource officers. The Senate authorized spending $5 million a year over the current biennium.
When the legislature reconvened after the 10-day veto period, the House rejected the Senate version and the legislation went to a free conference committee, which also recommended the aid to put officers in private as well as public schools. Both chambers approved the conference committee’s proposal on March 28. That was the day the legislature adjourned meaning the Republican-controlled legislature had no chance to override a Beshear veto.
Beshear issued a line-item veto last week, striking the aid to private schools as well as some of the original bill’s contracting requirements.
In response, Wise, the Senate Republican floor leader, accused Beshear of politicizing school safety.
“Governor Beshear’s line-item veto sends an unmistakable and deeply disturbing message to families across the commonwealth: If your child attends a private school, their safety matters less,” Wise said. “As the primary sponsor of the 2019 School Safety and Resiliency Act, I’ve spent years working so that every Kentucky student, teacher, and staff member—regardless of ZIP code, income level, or school type—is protected from the threats facing our world today. The Governor’s decision doesn’t just fly in the face of a bipartisan mission — it politicizes it.”
Wise, of Campbellsville, sponsored a 2019 school safety law in the aftermath of a shooting at Marshall County High School. Beshear signed that law. A 2022 update to the law, also signed by Beshear, requires a school resource officer (SRO), a type of sworn law enforcement officer, on each campus in Kentucky, although the legislature has never fully funded that mandate. Last year Wise successfully sponsored legislation allowing volunteer “guardians” to fill vacant law enforcement positions at schools.
In his recent veto message, Beshear pushed back on using public funds in nonpublic schools and cited a proposed constitutional amendment that voters rejected last fall that would have allowed the General Assembly to fund nonpublic schools, such as private or charter schools.
“All Kentucky children deserve to be safe in their schools, but the Kentucky Constitution requires public funds be used for only public schools,” Beshear wrote. He added the Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled against supporting nonpublic schools with public funds.
In 2022, the state’s high court struck down a 2021 Kentucky law creating a generous tax credit to help families pay for tuition at private schools. The next year Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd struck down a charter school law passed in 2022.
Wise accused Beshear of “appeasing special interests and institutions” and pointed out that parents who send their children to private schools pay taxes to support public schools and other local services such as law enforcement.
Wise also argued that Beshear “has chosen to punish Kentucky families for making a decision that was right for them,” as parents of nonpublic school students pay taxes for local services. The senator vowed that the Republican-controlled state legislature “will not be silent in the face of this reckless decision” and that student safety “is not negotiable.”
The final version of HB 622 that passed on the legislature’s last day also included $30 million to expand a sewage treatment plant in Elizabethtown; $20 million to help communities experiencing economic growth presumably from the electric-vehicle battery plant being built in Glendale, and $10 million for infrastructure in Grayson County. Beshear allowed those provisions to become law.
The legislature overrode Beshear’s vetoes of bills that were passed in time for the Republican majority to overturn them.