Funding dispute could hold up new law to help Kentucky kinship families

FRANKFORT, Ky. ( FOX 56 ) — Kentucky will have dozens of new laws take effect next month, but some lawmakers are raising concerns around one bill the Cabinet for Health and Family Services believes it can’t afford to implement.

“I don’t think that this is a negotiable. I think that when the legislature passes a law and the governor signed it into law, then we have to do it,” Sen. Julie Raque Adams (R-Louisville) said during an interim committee discussion on implementing Senate Bill 151 on June 19.

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Senate Bill 151 was passed unanimously this year by Kentucky lawmakers and signed into law shortly after by Gov. Andy Beshear, free of political drama. But Cabinet officials told lawmakers at that June 19 meeting that the money might not be there to implement the law and said they’d need about $20 million to do so to pay for additional staffing and cost of care.

“Without that support, the Cabinet will have difficulty moving forward with the implementation,” Department for Community Based Services Commissioner Lesa Dennis said.

The new law is meant to open up money to relatives or close family friends who take temporary custody of a child removed from a troubled home. Letters obtained by FOX 56 show as early as February Cabinet Secretary Eric Friedlander had reached out to Adams about the financial impact of the bill, which Adams said she believed had been worked out.

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“There was no conversation or request specifically from the cabinet as to adding funds to the budget. I was told it could be absorbed in your current budget,” Adams said.

Several other lawmakers echoed they were told the same. In a statement, the governor’s spokesperson, Crystal Staley, placed the funding fault on the General Assembly.

“While the Governor signed and supports the bill that would help our children and families, about $20 million would be needed to provide the services, and, on multiple occasions, the administration relayed this information to the bill sponsor, LRC staff and members of the General Assembly. Lawmakers had the opportunity to deliver the funding during the session but chose not to. It is simple: The state cannot implement programs and policies if we don’t have the funding needed to do so – and the Kentucky Supreme Court agrees.”

A 2005 state supreme court ruling, Fletcher v. Commonwealth, said there are limitations to implementing policy if the General Assembly didn’t fund it. In another letter on April 10, Beshear wrote to lawmakers referencing that case and listing this bill among more than 20 others he said lacked funding.

“These holdings are simple: if the legislature creates a policy or program but does not provide funding, it does not intend for the executive branch to perform those services over the biennium,” Beshear wrote. “It was after the governor signed the bill that he sent a letter saying, ‘oh, by the way, it’s going to cost $20 million, and I don’t think we can afford it.’ So there’s a sequence of events that’s inconsistent with, I think, how we need to proceed going forward on implementing Senate Bill 151,” Adams said.

The new law is supposed to take effect on July 15 but it’s currently unclear how that will happen. Lawmakers will be meeting with cabinet officials again on July 30th to talk about what happens next.

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