Andy Beshear

Governor Andy Beshear has signed a bill into law requiring all Kentucky school resource officers, or SROs, to carry a gun.

“The threats to our children in our schools is very real,” Beshear said, citing incidents where guns were found on school campuses, a thwarted school shooting plot in Shelby County, and the 2018 shooting in Marshall County.

“I simply cannot ask a school resource officer to stop an armed gunman entering a school without them having the ability to not only achieve this mission, but also to protect themselves,” he said.

Gov. Andy Beshear announced Friday that he has reinstated the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board, which former Governor Matt Bevin abolished in July 2018.

“This is just one step that we are going to take to make sure that when our Kentuckians leave their family in the morning and head to work, it’s in the safest environment possible and that they know that they’ve got a state government that is looking out for their safety,” Beshear told KyCIR.

Kentucky abortion rights advocates hope that their lives will be easier with a Democratic governor in office, but they will still have to contend with a strongly anti-abortion legislature.

Tamarri Wieder is the public affairs and policy director for Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky. She says that Gov. Andy Beshear’s defeat of Gov. Matt Bevin last year shows that voters didn’t rally around anti-abortion causes.

“He tried to really use Andy Beshear’s pro-choice stances against him and it failed,” Wieder said.

“While the makeup of the General Assembly hasn’t changed, I think the voices and the votes in Kentucky are standing up and realizing the hypocrisy of these bills and how damaging they are to the commonwealth.”

State lawmakers return to Frankfort on Jan. 7 for the next legislative session when lawmakers have to write a new state budget. 

A lawmaker from Hardin County is hoping Kentucky follows the example of Tennessee and other states that don’t impose an income tax on its residents.

Supporters say transitioning away from an income tax and increasing the state’s sales tax would make Kentucky more attractive to businesses.

Opponents say it would be a boon to the wealthy, while hurting low-income and vulnerable residents.

The effort to move Kentucky away from relying on income tax gained steam in 2018. That’s when Republican Governor Matt Bevin signed into law a massive overhaul of the state’s tax code.

Governor Andy Beshear will not move forward with former Governor Matt Bevin’s controversial changes to Kentucky’s Medicaid program. Beshear made the announcement Monday, within his first week in office.

Beshear said he’s sending a letter to federal officials to rescind the 1115 waiver that Bevin first submitted back in 2016. He also signed an executive order repealing Bevin’s signature health policy.

“Let me be clear, this Medicaid waiver would have cost Kentucky money, lives and jobs: I believe it would have saved us nothing,” Beshear said. “By every measure, Kentucky’s decision to expand Medicaid in 2014 has been a huge success.”

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear fulfilled another of his “week one” campaign promises on Thursday by signing an executive order to automatically restore voting rights to people with nonviolent felonies who have completed their sentences. He estimated the move would allow more than 140,000 people to vote.

At the start of President Trump's term, Republicans had solidified control in Washington and their hold on state governments across the country, with 33 GOP governors in power. Democrats were at their lowest numbers in nearly a century — down to just 16 Democratic governors and having control of only 13 state legislatures.

With a little more than a week until his inauguration, on Monday Gov.-elect Andy Beshear appointed five more officials to help run his incoming administration.

Calling it “a time for all Kentuckians to come together on one team,” Gov.-elect Andy Beshear announced details of his December 10 inauguration.

Attorney General Andy Beshear is turning his attention towards setting up a new administration after vote totals showed him winning yesterday’s race for governor by more than 5,000 votes.

Incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin still hasn’t conceded the race. Last night he claimed, without evidence, that there were “irregularities” in the election that needed to be looked into.

Beshear has claimed victory and on Wednesday said that he is moving forward with the process of hiring officials for his administration and writing a budget proposal.

Gov. Matt Bevin and Attorney General Andy Beshear squared off in another gubernatorial debate Monday night, one of the last opportunities for voters to see the candidates make their cases before Election Day.

Bevin and Beshear bickered their way through the debate on KET, while moderator Renee Shaw repeatedly brought them back to substantive policy issues like how to raise more money for the state, how to address the state’s pension debt and whether to keep the state’s Medicaid expansion.