A week before the end of this regular session, the Senate Committee on Veterans, Military Affairs, and Public Protection — commonly known as VMAPP and chaired by Sen. Rick Girdler — met for 21 minutes. I attended this meeting.
After the prayer, pledge of allegiance and roll call, Sen. Gex Williams kindly introduced a little girl, his page for the day, and the meeting began.
When Rep. Killian Timoney brought his bill to the table, he was flanked by law enforcement officers. Afterward, chair Girdler joked, “When you bring the police with you, we’ll agree to anything …”
After bills presented by Rep. Matthew Koch and Rep. Chris Freeland, both of whom had the same retired general at the table with them, Girdler said, “General, have you noticed that when you’re talking, we don’t interrupt you with anything like a motion … as long as you’re talking, we’re listening,” to which the General responded that he’s been in the role for 32 years and said it’s “a joke that all I need to do is throw on my uniform or throw out the military flag and you all will give me your first born son. It’s a very nice advantage.” Rep. Killian Timmoney flanked by police officers.
When Girdler called Rep. Mary Beth Imes to the table, he said, “Finally got a pretty lady up here instead of all of these old, ugly men.” Chuckles leaked through the room. After the vote on her bill, he added, “You didn’t even have to bring a cop or a general with you.
Throughout these exchanges, I kept glancing at the little girl accompanying Sen. Williams, wondering what she was thinking as she witnessed what powerful men value: that when policemen or military men are at the table, lawmaking is a good-old-boy slap on the back; that even a female elected official, supposedly their equal, holds primary value as a “pretty lady.”
There will be those who read this and roll their eyes, dismissing my observations as partisan nitpicking. But imagine a panel of female legislators goofing off and giggling like this in an official, public meeting about issues that affect law enforcement, the military, or public safety.
You can’t imagine it, so I’ll move on. Rep. Mary Beth Imes presents her bill to the committee.
I have been re-reading Peggy Noonan’s 1990 memoir, “What I Saw at the Revolution,” about her years working as a speechwriter in the Reagan White House. “Everyone is happy, but not everyone is good,” she writes on page 46. “There is a split, a difference, between how people act and the dreadful things they are doing …”
Preach, Peggy. And while we’re here, let’s take a look at our white, male-dominated, Kentucky GOP supermajority, and see what they’ve done these last few months.
In the beginning, there was rousing support for the Momnibus bill, created in the interim by a bipartisan group of women legislators. There were cheers all around to eliminate the diaper tax. Near the session’s end, we got Sen. Danny Carroll’s ambitious and thoughtful Horizons Act child care bill.
And they all lost steam. They lost steam because helping women/mothers is not popular with GOP voters — nothing is free, ladies; buck up, pay your own way — and this is an election year.
There was House Bill 513 which removed authority from the governor and gave it to the legislature to decide what gets displayed in our Capitol Rotunda. It appears Gov. Andy Beshear’s removal of the Jefferson Davis statue, a powerful symbol of the Confederacy and the defense of slavery, still has many of our Republican legislators rankled.
And though it did not receive a vote before the veto period — will it come back in April? — lawmakers and lobbyists spent an exorbitant amount of time and resources trying to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from our public universities. And hey, who needs diversity? Or equality? Or inclusiveness? Apparently, not our GOP supermajority.
There was the common sense Crown Act, Senate Bill 231, which would have allowed Black people to wear their natural hair and cultural hairstyles in the workplace and got absolutely no traction. Imagine voting against “allowing” your neighbor to “wear” their natural hair at work and still walking proudly into church on Sunday, Bible in hand, claiming to love your neighbors.
House Bill 5 — the sprawling, tough-on-crime, let’s just lock everyone up bill — passed as we all knew it would, even as it carried a truckload of controversy, including over where primary sponsor, Rep. Jared Bauman, got the data to support claims. These questions remained unanswered, leading to rising irritation at continued demands for data, culminating in the shocking photo of Senate President Robert Stivers and Floor Leader Damon Thayer losing their tempers at Sen. Karen Berg for daring to demand answers.
Imagine Stivers and Thayer shaking fingers and openly chastising a male senator on the floor in this manner. But by God, they taught her a lesson.
HB 5 has the distinction of addressing a kitchen-sink list of crimes, much of which includes gun violence but never directly addresses access to guns.
Senate Bill 56 called for safe storage of firearms — keeping guns out of the hands of children, locking guns in cars so they cannot be easily stolen and used in crimes, etc. — and was assigned to VMAPP on Jan. 3. It disappeared from radar.
Senate Bill 13, commonly known as the CARR bill and filed by a Republican, allowing for temporary removal of firearms from someone experiencing a mental health crisis, was also assigned to VMAPP and never seen again.
Meanwhile, according to statistics from Everytown for Gun Safety, “By 2021, 72 percent of veteran suicides involved firearms—the highest proportion in over 20 years.” But what interest would VMAPP, a committee on veterans affairs, have in this.
As we rest during the veto period, look at where our lawmakers invested their time and energy these last few months, on what they fought hardest for and ignored, on where they shut down debate, and the priorities of Kentucky’s white, male-dominated, GOP supermajority become blindingly clear.
Hint: It’s not women and children, education, equal rights, or taking care of the most vulnerable. These are the same folks, after all, who rebranded homelessness in HB 5 as “street camping,” as if the homeless are happily outdoors all night, sleeping on concrete by choice, grilling hotdogs and singing campfire songs.
Maybe if the sponsors of bills for safe gun storage, crisis aversion, child care, the Crown Act and others promised to bring uniformed police officers, a general, or enough pretty ladies to the table, good bills could get a fair shake.
Remember the little girl — dark-skinned, with naturally curly black hair — who attended the Senate VMAPP meeting as Sen. Williams’ page and witnessed nothing but a good old boy, misogynistic, frat-house-like romp masquerading as serious lawmaking.
To paraphrase Peggy Noonan, not everyone is good and they are doing some dreadful things. Set your expectations accordingly.
This article is republished under a Creative Commons license from Kentucky Lantern, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter.
