On its website, The Fairness Campaign states that 83% of Kentuckians support fairness.

Senator Harper Angel is one of 14 candidates to receive the Campaign’s endorsement for the 2012 Primary Election. Click here to read more.

Metropolitan College was established as a Louisville, Kentucky-based partnership among Jefferson Community and Technical College, the University of Louisville and charter business partner UPS.  Its purpose is to provide postsecondary educational opportunities to employees of the qualified taxpayer as part of a combined work and postsecondary education program.

“This is an outstanding program,” said Senator Harper Angel. “A nationally recognized partnership, the Metropolitan College provides Kentucky residents with access to a tuition-free post-secondary education as well as outstanding employment opportunities.”

“UPS is grateful to Sen. Harper Angel and the state legislature for extending Metropolitan College funding,” said UPS Airlines Public Relations Manager Mike Mangeot. “This program is a great example of how public-private partnership can create wins for the entire commonwealth.”

Chartered and funded in 1998 by the state, the Metropolitan College Program resulted because of a planned expansion of UPS at the Louisville hub and a need for part-time workers to meet labor demands. If enough recruits were not available, state and local governments and educational officials knew that UPS would build elsewhere. A summit of these officials lead by Governor Paul Patton resulted in the partnership under which UPS provides part-time jobs, pays half the tuition, and reimburses a portion of the cost of textbooks for participants who successfully complete their coursework at either participating institution.

“Metropolitan College solved a labor force problem in Louisville,” said Senator Harper Angel. “This successful program allowed Louisville’s largest employer to keep employees at its international hub while providing post-secondary educational opportunities at UofL and JCTC.”

The legislation extending the deadline from 2013 to 2017 was delivered to Governor Beshear last Thursday for his signature.

Senator Harper Angel, who has served in the Senate since 2005, represents the 35^th Senate District seat.

FRANKFORT – Last night, the 2012 60-day Regular Session of the Kentucky General Assembly came to a close. In the evening hours before sine die, we put a final stamp of approval on a six-year road plan that includes the Louisville bridges project and many other projects across the State. A separate bill actually funding those projects, however, was not passed before our midnight deadline.

The Governor has called an extraordinary session for Monday, April 16 to address that issue, as well as another priority still unfinished at the close of the regular session’s 60^th day: Prescription drug abuse.

Thousands of Kentuckians and their families are devastated by the scourge of pain pill addiction each year. So-called ‘pill mills,’ the shady pain-management ‘clinics’ known for providing a seemingly endless supply of potent narcotics to virtually anyone who asks as long as they will pay, are fueling the devastation. It is obvious that legislation to regulate those facilities and monitor the prescription and distribution of narcotics is needed. The question is, what is the best way to do that?

I will continue to keep you updated as our work continues.  You can follow the work of the legislature by visiting our website at www.lrc.ky.gov, updated daily.  Whether in session or not, I am always interested in your opinions and concerns about legislation affecting you.  Call or e-mail anytime. You can contact me personally atdenise.harperangel@lrc.ky.gov.

Senator Harper Angel represents the 35^th Senate District in Jefferson County.

• The Norton Neuroscience Institute will host a free seminar entitled “Remembering and Forgetting: Is My Forgetfulness Normal – or Something More?” Tuesday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Norton Brownsboro Hospital, 4960 Norton Healthcare Blvd. For additional information, call 502-629-1234.
• There will be a free seminar on dementia and how it affects people from 6-7 p.m. Tuesday at Arden Courts of Louisville, 10451 Linn Station Road. Registration begins at 5:30 p.m. Seating is limited. For reservations, call 502-423-8776.

To learn more about Alzheimer’s Disease and for support, go to the National Institute on Aging at www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers or to the Alzheimer’s Association at www.alz.org.

Senator Harper Angel’s 2008 legislation (Senate Bill 125) establishing the Golden Alert has been hailed as a success. Her current legislation builds on that success to encompass additional missing impaired persons in the alert by including individuals with developmental disabilities, autism and traumatic brain injuries. It also removes the age requirement of 18 and creates a new alert classification.

In order to get her legislation through the process, the language of SB 93 was added as an amendment to Rep. Leslie Combs’ House Bill 467, an act relating to stroke response and treatment. The amendment directs that any search for an individual with a developmental disabilities, autism or traumatic brain injury shall be immediately reported to the Kentucky State Police and reported as a Golden Alert “D.”  A search for individuals with physical, mental, cognitive impairment or organic brain disorder, such as Alzheimer’s disease, shall continue to be reported as a Golden Alert.

“I am delighted I was able to find a way to get this legislation passed because it is significant to those needing to be rescued,” said Senator Harper Angel, D-Louisville, who serves on the Senate Health and Welfare Committee. “This legislation broadens the safety net in finding missing children and adults with impairments. By building on the success of the Golden Alert, we will make available this emergency response alert to assist in the location of more of our most vulnerable citizens when they are missing.”

Senator Harper Angel said the need to broaden the law was apparent last September when a Washington County autistic boy was missing and did not meet the current Golden Alert criteria. Fortunately, the child was found unharmed, but it raised the awareness that an expanded Golden Alert would have been an asset in that situation.

“We must have as many tools as possible available to find missing impaired persons – regardless of their age or disability,” she explained.

The legislation also establishes specific training for search and rescue personnel. It directs that courses offered by the Division of Emergency Management shall include at least 30 minutes of instruction in the behavioral characteristics of lost persons with developmental disabilities, autism or a traumatic brain injuries and the proper care of these impaired persons. Each search and rescue management course under the authority of the Emergency Management shall contain not less than one hour of instruction in the same.

It also requires the Division of Emergency Management to seek recommendations regarding the curricula from organizations with a proven history of service and advocacy on behalf of individuals with developmental disabilities, autism or traumatic brain injury.

“The brain injury community is extremely pleased with the passage of this legislation especially with the immediate notification which would have possibly saved the life of the 32-year-old brain injury man, Larry Lee, who went missing from a personal care home in fall of last year but was found dead two weeks later. The first 24-48 hours are critical in finding a missing individual,” said Mary Hass, advocacy director of the Brain Injury Alliance of Kentucky.

Senator Harper Angel worked with her colleagues in both chambers to gain their support and to get her legislation through both chambers. Initially, she compromised with the House to amend her bill, in a move that, she said, made the legislation even stronger. In light of the time remaining in the legislative session, she then worked with Rep. Combs, D-Pikeville, to add her legislation as an amendment to HB 467 to ensure that it passed this session. The amended bill passed the Senate on Wednesday and the House Thursday.

Senator Harper Angel, who has served in the Senate since 2005, represents the 35^th Senate District seat.

While those discussions dominated much of our time, we considered and approved many other important measures, as well.

This week, the Senate took steps to create a system to help catch persons suspected of injuring or killing a police officer.  More than 50,000 law enforcement officers are assaulted or killed while on duty each year.  Senate Bill 32 would establish an emergency alert system that is modeled after the successful Amber Alert.  The ‘Blue Alert’ would be administered by the Kentucky State Police and use law enforcement communication systems, electronic highway signs and media across the state to spread information after an officer has been reported wounded or missing.

The Kentucky Blue Alert will allow law enforcement to facilitate a speedy capture of violent criminals before they endanger other citizens.  The bill is named in honor of Kentucky State Police Trooper Jonathan K. Leonard who died on December 19, 2006 while responding to a call in Pike County.

We also passed bills this week to address obesity and obesity-related illnesses. The Trust for America’s Health ranks Kentucky third in the nation – a bad third, not a good one — for childhood obesity, a precursor to Type II diabetes. We need to do something to change those numbers.

Senate Bill 198 ensures that diabetes educators have the proper instruction and credentials. It is important for our citizens to receive correct and appropriate information about the disease. We want to make sure the people teaching them about one of our most serious public-health issues are qualified to do so.

A recommendation from the Taskforce on Childhood Obesity, Senate Bill 110 would give school districts the option to allow citizens access to school sports and physical fitness facilities during non-school hours.  The measure allows schools to charge a fee for community use, and protects districts from liability if anyone is hurt. It also allows artistic, civic, literary and other activities in addition to the recreational and sports usage originally envisioned by the taskforce.

Another bill that gained our approval this week was Senate Bill 8 that would require that any administrative bodies appointed by the Governor be dissolved within 180 days after the end of his or her term. They could, however, be reappointed by the Legislature if deemed necessary. Supporters say this would reduce the number of appointed bodies that remain in place, costing taxpayers money years after they are no longer relevant.

These measures now go to the House for their consideration.

We passed House Bill 293 this week, a bill that pertains only to those rare instances in which there is only one candidate running in an election. The measure allows districts to open only one polling booth in such elections. Supporters say this would save precincts a lot of money in elections that usually have extremely low voter turnout because they are often viewed as a formality.  The bill now awaits the Governor’s signature.

The following is a list of legislation that I have filed as the primary sponsor and the status of those bills: 

• SB 36 — Relating to missing children.  Assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chair is Senator Tom Jensen.
• SB 37 – Relating to fingerprint background checks of long-term care employees.  Assigned to the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, Chair is Senator Julie Denton.
• SB 39 – Relating to school collection of data on body mass index, height, and weight.  Assigned to the Senate Education Committee, Chair is Senator Ken Winters.
• SB 44 – Relating to dating violence.  Assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chair is Senator Tom Jensen.  A mirror image of SB 44 – House Bill 498 – passed the House Judiciary Committee and is posted for passage in the House Consent Orders of the Day for Monday, March 19, 2012.  I urge you to contact Chairman Jensen and ask him to hear HB 498 when it is received in the Senate. 
• SB 93 – Relating to brain impaired missing persons.  This bill was removed from the consent calendar and sent back to the Veterans, Military Affairs, and Public Protection Committee.  Please contact Chairman Jack Westwood and all members of the committee and ask that this bill be released for further consideration in the House.  The Senate members serving on the committee are Joe Bowen, Perry B. Clark, Carroll Gibson, Vernie McGaha, Dennis Parrett, Joey Pendleton, Dan Seum, Tim Shaughnessy, Kathy W. Stein, Mike Wilson and Ken Winters. 
• SB 104 – Relating to the protection of adults – an adult abuse registry. Assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chair is Senator Tom Jenson.
• SB 128 – Relating to the imposition of tolls or fees on existing federal interstate highways. Assigned to the Senate Transportation Committee, Chair is Senator Ernie Harris.
• SB 156 – Relating to collective bargaining rights for police and firefighters in second class cities. Assigned to the Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee, Chair is Senator Bob Leeper.

The sponsor of the bill, Senator Paul Hornback, and AT&T lobbyist sat in the Senate committee and said that they met with those who were opposed to the bill and included our changes and we were all satisfied.  That was not true.  We met with AT&T and the sponsor, offered our changes but we never heard back from them.  They did not negotiate in good faith.  It was quite disappointing to hear them tell the committee members we were all on board.  It was also quite disappointing to see everyone on the committee besides Senator Denise Harper Angel vote for the bill.  She deserves a thank you.

However, Speaker Greg Stumbo came to the rescue!  He always believed it was a bad bill and AARP and Tom Fitzgerald with the Kentucky Resources Council met with Speaker Stumbo and other members of House Leadership to discuss our concerns.  They listened.  We owe them a great big thank you!

To read more, click here.

FRANKFORT – Someone once called writing a budget ‘a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.’ That Kentucky state government faces continued hard times is a good bit more than a suspicion.

But March, with a budget actually emerging from mainly talk to real numbers in a real bill, brings us the real math of the Commonwealth’s two-year fiscal future — at least the math as it now stands at this coalescing stage of the budget process.

The House put pen to paper last week and passed its spending plan Wednesday. That was 50 calendar days after the Governor handed off his own proposal to the Legislature, in a near-grisly Budget Address Jan. 17. There are, at this writing Friday, 16 working days left for the Senate to put its own stamp on the bill and leave time for the two chambers to come together in conference committee for a final reckoning.

The House version of the budget pretty closely reflects the proposal the Governor sent up in January, a budget he called ‘inadequate for the needs of our people,’ reflecting a fiscal situation he described, memorably, as ‘wretched.’

House leaders conceded early on that there was not much wiggle room for improvement, considering the money bind Kentucky finds itself in. That is in contrast with previous years, even difficult ones, when the Legislature could see at least some daylight in the budget picture. Just two years ago, after the Governor proposed a dead-on-arrival budget that assumed revenues from an expanded-gaming proposal with no realistic prospects that session, the House basically tossed that budget and started from scratch.

No such running room was apparent to House budget writers this year. One indicator of 2012’s fiscal straitjacket was the limited and even subdued debate the bill got on the House floor before it passed 78-17.

State agencies and programs have undergone 10 rounds of spending cuts totaling 25-30 percent since the Great Recession settled over Kentucky and the nation like a gray mist in 2007. This year, with a budget said to start $742 million in the hole, they face more. (Just an aside: State revenues have shown encouraging signs of turnaround recently; but not enough to offset the loss of one-time revenues like federal stimulus dollars used to stanch the bleeding the last three years).

Even after dipping into the Rainy Day Fund, scrambling to find other fund transfers, and counting on an amnesty program to recover millions in unpaid taxes, House budget drafters were looking at a shortfall that they say (agreeing with the Governor) requires 8.4 percent cuts to most agencies, a 6.4 percent cut to higher education, and a 4.5 percent cut to many areas of education – although SEEK, the basic funding formula for Kentucky schools, is spared an actual cut. But even SEEK will not fully keep pace because of projected growth in student population, and will as a practical matter fall back to 2008 levels.

Corrections is spared. So is Medicaid. But separate budgets for the legislative and judicial branches take the full 8.4-percent whack.

The tax amnesty program, also passed by the House Wednesday in a separate bill, would remove penalties for tens of thousands of delinquent taxpayers, and also forgive half the interest on what they owe if they come forward and pony up. Proponents say it could raise $55 million or more. There is historical justification for thinking so. Statewide amnesty was last offered 10 years ago, and raked in $40 million. An earlier and even more successful program in 1988 netted over $60 million.

The House did make several relatively modest changes to the Administration’s overall budget proposal, including dropping about $450 million in university bonds. It also put state retirees in the same boat with state employees, with neither getting cost-of-living raises the next two years. The Governor had left the retiree COLA in.

The House did restore funding for some key education initiatives, including after-school programs, social-service programs and gifted and talented programs. And there is actually some new spending, including money to reduce social-worker caseloads, allow more people with severe disabilities to live in non-institutional settings, and cover more burial services for Kentucky’s veterans. Additionally, the House plan authorizes the planned construction of a fourth state veterans’ nursing home.

As a practical matter, and in horsy terms Kentuckians understand, House passage of a budget is racing in the backstretch, important but not decisive. The Senate must still act, and will surely have its own ideas.

But even Senate passage will just mark the turn for home. Then there is a long, wearying stretch run, where things are settled with finality.

A conference committee of House and Senate leaders will, line-by-line, work their way through chamber differences, try to arrive at a bottom-line compromise, and ship the bill and its hundreds of pages downstairs to the Governor. He may then sign it, veto it, or veto specific parts of it in what is called a ‘line-item’ veto. Even then, the General Assembly retains a Constitutional right to override any or all of his objections.

To finish the metaphor, we are still some distance from the finish line. But the end is now in sight. And odds are the ‘suspicion’ that Kentucky has lean days ahead will be confirmed in a budget that, given hard unyielding reality, is simply the best good people can do.

Stay in Touch

To learn more about the Kentucky General Assembly and the work of the 2012 Regular Session, visit our home page, www.lrc.ky.gov.  You can also call 1-800-633-9650 for a taped message containing information on legislative committee meetings.  To check the status of a bill, you may call the toll-free Bill Status Line at 1-866-840-2835.  To leave a message for me, or any legislator, call the General Assembly’s toll-free Message Line at 1-800-372-7181.  If you prefer to give your feedback in Spanish, call the General Assembly’s Spanish Line at 1-866-840-6574. You may also e-mail me directly at denise.harperangel@lrc.ky.gov.

Senator Harper Angel represents the 35^th Senate District in Jefferson County.

(FRANKFORT, Ky.) – Kentucky and five other states are participating in a federal demonstration project that automatically will make students eligible for free school meals if their households receive Medicaid benefits.

Kentucky joins Alaska, Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania in the pilot phase of the project, which will begin on July 1 for school year 2012-13. The project is under the authority of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which manages the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs.

The project is designed to connect eligible low-income children in all of the state’s 174 school districts with free school meals automatically based on information received from Kentucky Medicaid. Including Medicaid beneficiary data is an expansion of the scope of the existing direct certification process. Currently, Kentucky school districts use an automated process to include Kentucky Transitional Assistance Program (K-TAP) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries on their lists of students who qualify for free school meals.

Including Medicaid data will allow for administrative efficiencies, reduce improper payments and streamline efforts to provide access to critical nutrition for children across the nation.

The Kentucky Department of Education’s Division of School and Community Nutrition will provide technical assistance to school districts as they implement this new model. Currently, 56 percent of students in Kentucky’s public school system qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, and that percentage is likely to increase slightly as a result of this project.

The passage of the federal Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 marks the first time that states have been allowed to determine the effect of using Medicaid information with the direct certification process. USDA selected the demonstration states through a competitive application process. Under the legislation, the areas selected to participate will be expanded in future years, which will allow additional states to participate.

USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service will conduct a formal study to evaluate the effectiveness of the projects. The study – with the results published in reports to Congress in 2014 and 2015 – will estimate the following impacts:

the extent to which direct certification for each demonstration category reaches children who are eligible for free school meals but are not certified to receive them

the extent to which the projects directly certify eligible children who are enrolled for free school meals based on a household application

the effect direct certification with the Medicaid program has on federal and state costs and on participation in the school lunch and breakfast programs

More information on the demonstration project is available here.