Housing, Medicaid and workforce development are top issues for Kentucky’s Republican legislative leaders heading into the 2027 session.
Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker David Osborne joined a conversation Wednesday led by the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. Both are Republicans; their party currently holds the majority in both the House and the Senate.
Healthcare and the workforce remain top priorities
Stivers said to address housing and infrastructure needs, the state needs to increase the number of people in the workforce.
“If you were to give us $100 billion [for housing] we wouldn’t know what to do with it,” Stivers said. “We don't have the workforce to build the houses.”
He added the state needs to support universities and colleges statewide, so more people graduate and join the workforce.
About health insurance, both legislators said they can only react to federal changes to programs like Medicaid and Medicare. Stivers, who is from rural Clay County, said the state needs to invest in technology improvements to provide virtual care to rural Kentuckians. He also said people need to “take some personal responsibility” to stay healthy and avoid needing healthcare.
Stivers said investing in AI is a way to increase tax revenue for communities. He supports building data centers — pointing to a data center project in Mason County that he said will bring in revenue for the local schools. He said it just matters where you build the centers.
“If you put it on brownfields in the middle of 500,000 gallon tanks of Marathon fuel, who cares?” he said. “Because that's going to increase the tax base.”
Osborne added that Kentucky needs to look past state lines and become a national economic hub to draw people from other states. He pointed to Texas, where Democrats recently won the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate race, and said Kentucky can use that to get ahead.
“We need to be gearing up planes at CVG right now and flying banners over top of Texas saying ‘Kentucky is open for business,’” Osborne said. “Because in Texas — they don't have the trifecta to do it — but what they're proposing in Texas will devastate the Texas economy, and you know that's just one state.”
The Kentucky legislative session starts in January and runs through March.
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