Published: August 30, 2007 01:32 pm            

Legislative Review

By State Representative Robin Webb

August 29, 2007 — The General Assembly has been called back into special session to act on a comprehensive energy bill. I have forgone comment on the summer fiasco pending some positive news. I will try to give you a brief history of what got us here. During the 2007 regular session, Rep. Adkins, myself and others put forth HB 5, an energy bill that was a long time in the making. Our attempt was to give Kentucky a skeletal structure for a long overdue energy policy that included traditional and non-conventional forms of energy with an emphasis in research and development. The bill passed the House, and died a painful death on the last night of the session in the conference committee on which I served when the Senate walked out on the bill.

A few months later, there emerged a bill from the Senate, strikingly similar to HB 5 with provisions said to address incentives to entice an a coal to liquid plant in Western Kentucky. The executive branch declared the issue a priority and without receiving input or agreement from the House called the first "extraordinary" session.

Since there had been no dialogue between the House and the bill was fraught with some troubling policy issues on the fiscal side, the House felt it more fiscally responsible to the taxpayers of Kentucky to adjourn. There were legitimate questions as to the extent and magnitude of the project, what it would take to get it and whether or not it was truly an emergency that merited a special session. The House initiated a meeting with Peabody Energy and though what I would call fairly vague and non-commital assertions by the company, we felt there were other states vying for this plant and we needed to act to get in the game. Further, it would be an opportunity to pass an improved version of HB 5, which we had worked on in the interim.

After the Senate decided to adjourn a few weeks ago, myself and a handful of others stayed in Frankfort that week to improve the measure based on the meeting with Peabody and evaluate the fiscal and policy impacts of a potential measure. Those efforts were the basis for the bill's Work Group composed of a few House and Senate members. Namely, Rep. Adkins, the bill's primary sponsor, Budget Chair Rep. Moberly, Rep. Vincent, Pullin, Thompson, and on the Senate side, Senators Stivers, Williams, Kelly, Boswell and Rhodes, and myself as the second ranking member of the House budget committee and my energy background. The group spent many hours drafting, re-drafting, and finally negotiating between the chambers a concensus piece of legislation that does many good things that I will expound on after the final product is passed.

This has been a summer of legislative contention and confusion, however, I feel the bill we have is the kind of measure that shows what can happen when people communicate and negotiate in good faith for the good of the Commonwealth. I commented to Rep. Adkins at the end of the negotiations about midnight on Thursday that as painful and inconvenient as it was for all of us, this is the way the process should work and the kind of result as law and policy makers the people should get. I hope you all enjoyed your summer and after this week in Frankfort, I may get back to enjoying what is left of mine.

        

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