Kentucky

Bill numbers are reported but this information is buried in a file that is hard to read, use, or understand. For example, the only way to find all lobbyists who lobbied on HB 52, a bill providing free screenings for prostate cancer, is to slog through all 295 appearances of the number 52, many of which are for other bills. In 2024, HB 52 and a bill covering screenings for breast cancer, HB 115, were lobbied on by a number of firms who also represent fossil fuel clients whose activities are exposing people to carcinogens.

The Saint Joseph Health System provides cancer screenings, treatments, and palliative care. And yet, Saint Joseph shares the lobbying firm of McCarthy Strategic Solutions with the Kentucky Coal Association (KCA).  Exposure to pollution from coal-fired power plants and other air pollution are also risk factors for getting cancer. In 2024, McCarthy helped the KCA pass a bill (SB 349) that will make it harder to close coal-fired power plants. And on behalf of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, McCarthy helped pass a bill (HB 136) that limits the power of the Louisville Air Pollution Control District.

The Dinsmore lobbying firm worked on both of these cancer screening bills for its client CareSource Management Services, and on both of these environmental bills for the American Petroleum Institute and chemical company Chemours. The firm of MML&K weighed in on HB 52 on behalf of Amgen, on SB 349 on behalf of Duke Energy, and on HB 136 on behalf of Diversified Energy.

Kentucky makes it hard to know what, exactly, these coal-and-health-care lobbyists are doing because it does not require them to disclose the positions they take on bills, does not provide written transcripts of legislative hearings, and only provides videos recordings of some hearings on a YouTube Channel.

Best feature: employer expenses are searchable by industry.

Worst feature: lobbyist activity reports from 2022 and earlier are not available.

Additional Findings

A handsome homepage leads to a small, cramped, and old search page that’s “Copyright © 2005″ and makes it hard to arrive at some of the good things KY tracks, like monthly disclosures of compensation and bills lobbied upon. Downloadable lists of lobbyists and their clients, expenditures, and bills lobbied upon are available in PDF, RTF, and sometimes TXT format.