WDRB’s Jason Riley reports on Senate Bill 148. Filed on February 15 and assigned to the State and Local Government Committee on February 17,  the bill is apt to evoke strong opinions. 

https://www.wdrb.com/in-depth/kentucky-bill-would-ban-remote-work-for-s…

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/23rs/sb148.html

If enacted, Senate Bill 148 will "prohibit employees of public agencies and the Administrative Office of the Courts from engaging in telework unless the Governor declares an emergency."

What recent bill has not generated controversy with the exception, perhaps, of SB 133 -- designating the Treeing Walker Coonhound the official state dog of Kentucky? Although the bill ignores the fact that owners of those delightful little cotton balls of charm known as Bichon Frises universally agree that Bichons should hold the title, SB 133 is not otherwise a lightning rod of public opinion. 

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/recorddocuments/bill/23RS/sb133/orig_bi…

SB 148’s sponsors -- Senators Johnny Turner, Phillip Wheeler, and Lindsey Tichenor -- may have been inspired by a bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. James Comer, and enacted on February 1, to which Comer casually referred as the "Stopping Home Office Work's Unproductive Problems Act of 2023," or the "SHOW UP Act.”

I can personally attest that the Attorney General issued a record number of open records and open meetings decisions — more’s the pity — in 2022. It is my understanding that employees of that office have teleworked. Productivity does not, in that context, appear to be a problem. 

Riley’s report focuses, in part, on the challenges to public access that may flow from SB 148’s enactment: 

“The measure could limit the general public's ability to watch and participate in meetings that now are accessible by Zoom and other virtual technology, as well as threaten the ability of those bodies to reach quorum when members aren't able to attend in person because of illness or other reasons.

"A number of public agencies – including the Louisville Metro Council and its committees, the Louisville Arena Authority, the General Assembly-created West End Opportunity Partnership and the Kentucky Office of Agricultural Policy, to name just a few – continue to meet via videoconference or have remote options for members to join.

"An arena authority committee in recent months, for example, had a member to join remotely while he said he was positive for COVID-19.

"The pandemic drastically changed the way employees approached their jobs, with the number of people working from home tripling between 2019 and 2021, according to a 2021 survey released by the U.S. Census Bureau."

While a return to the public workplace bill has a broad array of associated problem, I spoke with Jason about the threat to public access and video teleconferenced meetings. 

We agreed that the quorum issue could arise if one or more public employees — who are also members of a

public agency governed by the open meetings law — tested positive for Covid but were foreclosed from attending the public agency meeting because they could not responsibly "show up" at their workplace without creating a health risk for others. SB 148 does not, however, address KRS 61.826 (the statute enacted in 2022 to permanently establish public agency discretion to conduct public meetings by video teleconference).

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=52571

KRS 61.826 -- however ill-conceived and lacking in necessary safeguards -- is likely here to stay. If a public agency elects to conduct its meetings exclusively by video teleconference, it must make a link available to the public to ensure public access. Failure to do so violates the open meetings law. SB 148 does not change that. 

But this does not address the broader policy question: Will SB 148 be the final straw for an already strained and overworked public workforce? Is this, perhaps, not the bill's ultimate unspoken agenda?