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FRANKFORT, Ky. — Another year, another push by state Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, to pass legislation adding limitations to a Kentucky governor’s pardon powers.
McDaniel’s Senate Bill 10, with four cosponsors, passed out of the chamber’s State and Local Government Committee on Jan. 14 with unanimous approval. The four-term senator from Northern Kentucky said he’s “fairly optimistic” this is the year his legislation is approved in the House and Senate and put on the ballot as a proposed constitutional amendment.
“I think that just as people have seen pardons, both at the state and federal level, kind of flow through the process, they really for various reasons ultimately end up at the same place — which is an unchecked pardon power is simply not a good thing,” he said.
This isn’t McDaniel’s first attempt at passing the bill, which he crafted ahead of the 2020 session in the aftermath of former Gov. Matt Bevin’s flurry of controversial pardons in his final weeks in office the previous year. It’s passed in the full Senate in at least five separate legislative sessions but has never advanced in the House.
This year, though, McDaniel is confident his proposal has more support. It’s been designated “priority legislation” by Republican leaders in the Senate and was taken up in committee at its first meeting of the session, where it passed without issue after about five minutes of discussion.
The bill would prevent Kentucky governors from issuing pardons for a time period beginning in the final 60 days before a gubernatorial election and ending on the fifth Tuesday after an election, at which point the governor’s current term would end. Kentucky voters would have to approve the measure at the ballot box.
Bevin, a Republican, made waves in 2019 during the final two months of his term when he issued more than 400 pardons. While many were noncontroversial pardons for low-level drug offenders, some drew strong criticism, including one for a man convicted of homicide in 2017 whose family later hosted a political fundraiser for the governor and another for a man convicted of raping a 9-year-old child.
McDaniel, who is also a Republican, at the time said the “stunning” pardons exposed “an unbelievable weakness in our system which is the ability of a governor to override the entire justice system in the dark of night with no recourse.” He echoed those comments this week at the Capitol Annex after his bill was approved in the committee.
“This is just a straight-up weakness in the constitution,” he said. “I think I’ll have a lot of miles on my car in the fall trying to drum up support.”
Pardons should not be a partisan issue, he added. A number of pardons issued by former President Joe Biden in the final days of his term have drawn intense scrutiny over the past year as well, and current President Donald Trump drew criticism last year when he pardoned nearly every person convicted of a crime in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
SB 10 will now head to the full Senate and would need to be approved in the House. The legislature is in its second week and will remain in session into April.
“I’m optimistic that the House will see it my way this year and that the people of Kentucky will see it that way in the fall,” McDaniel said.
The proposal has never had an issue in McDaniel’s chamber, but the House has been a different story. The bill has never made it to the floor for a vote.
House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, said McDaniel’s bill has “never quite met the threshold of being able to pass it over here.” But there could be more enthusiasm this year, he added after his chamber gaveled out on Jan. 14.
“He worked really hard in the interim talking to a lot of our members about it. I think he won some support for it,” Osborne said. “We will continue to have that conversation once it comes over here.”
Learn more about filed bills and follow their process at legislature.ky.gov.
Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.
