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Hi, I'm Brandon Volker and welcome to Beyond the Bar with Jack and Brandon. So good afternoon today on the Brandon and Jack shower. Jack and Brandon, I'm not sure which it is. We have State Representative Stephanie Dietz, who is also an attorney. So I want you to introduce yourself, but before you do, tell us the jurisdictions that you are a state Rep in, because with the latest redistricting, it has gotten very, very confusing. Now you don't have one of these districts that goes from like Covington to Paducah, but you have picked up some new areas, right? So the 65th district has Fort Wright, Park Hills, Crestview Hills, Edgewood, and the core of Covington, the majority of Covington. So 5 cities. So that is a fairly diverse area that you are state Rep for. Yes. And a state Rep is 40,000 people, roughly 4044 thousand and that's consistent throughout the whole states. So tell us also, you're a lawyer. Yeah. You can't serve a dual role. Dual role, Yeah. So the full time jobs, how does that work? Ohh. So for the past two years it's worked. OK. I've managed both. I think being a trained attorney and having some experience helps out when you're in Frankfurt because at least I think about how are we going to actually fulfill the legislation? How's that going to work? How's, how's, how's an attorney going to actually take this and, and, and follow it or, you know, what would the clerks do or what are, what's our County Attorney going to do? So I think I bring that perspective. From a time frame, we're getting ready to go into the short session for the next 26 days to finish that up. So I've worked really hard the past couple of weeks to get my practice in a place where I can leave and work, you know, extra on Mondays and extra on Fridays and on the weekends. So you say short session, and I know those of us who are familiar with it know that there's a long session in a short session. But just sort of for the folks who are watching this, why is it? These are a short session. Why is there a long session and? So that's a history question. So I think we always had the 60 day session which was budget session and we were we met every other year. And then several years ago and I believe it was a constitutional amendment to have us come back for a short 30 day session, which is. They say it's for cleanup. We're supposed to come back and we take care of simple issues, maybe reopen the budget if we need to on certain things. But really it's a clean up session and it's not supposed to be anything that's significant or any kind of drastic changes in practice. What happens? That was not at my experience, my first session now because I know as a cache casual follower, it seems like there are dozens and dozens. Of bills being filed daily. Yes, I mean, is there like a certain number at do you know where, where we're at in bills that have been filed for this session? I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to play stump the chump here. I'm just. I mean, well, I think 500 a thousand, 5000, I don't think we're in 1000 yet. We may have been close to 300. I, I should have looked at that beforehand. But now, I mean, there was a flurry on the first four days that we were there to file bills. I think there's still there's a gap between we, we, we dealt with House bill one which was to reduce the income tax. So that's just passed. That was passed out of the House. My understanding is the Senate going to vote on that our first day back and it'll get to the governor's desk and. Every everything that we've heard in from the governors State of the Commonwealth address is he's going to sign that. So I think that will be the first law that comes out is to drop our income tax for next year. But there's a gap between, you know, usually one in 15 for priority bills. So I don't know how many of those actually got filed as priority bills from 2 to 15. But yeah, there's a lot of bills. My understanding and what I've heard from the Senate side is they have a gentlemen's agreement that each senator. At least in the majority, we're only gonna file 5 bills apiece. I was listening to Max Wise talk the other night and so far that seems true that the Senate senators have all agreed they would not file more than 5 bills of these. So a lot of those bills will never see the floor. So if you could just briefly kind of walk through that process of filing a bill and, and, and how it goes from being filed to then ultimately being signed by the governor. Yeah. So I think, you know, going into my second session, I now understand what the interim is for. The interim is really our time and we're not in session. We still have committee meetings where you can work on a bill. You can draft a bill, you can have a committee chair hear it. You can hear the criticism. You can hear the support, you can bring in stakeholders and you can make it better. And then once we're in session, you can file that bill. So we have new legislators. I was one of those two years ago. When you come in and you file a bill and I think maybe you don't understanding isn't there a finessing it? And that way you don't have to have amendments and committee Subs. So you really want to work on that important legislation in the interim. But now we're at a point where we're in session, bills have been filed and our rules change this time on the House. Alright, so before our our bills were not automatically sent to a committee. You'd have to go talk to a committee chair, ask them to call your bill. Some would get assigned to the committee on committees, they'd be assigned somewhere else. But now each bill we've been told will be assigned to a committee. My understanding is you still have to go to the chair. You need to make an appointment, you need to talk to him about your bill, and you've got to get your bill called. Something share can just stop it at the chair. It can diet the chair. You can talk to leadership, which would lead to another conversation of having a good relationship with leadership. You can the floor leader, the speaker, the speaker Pro Tem, and you can have a meeting with them and explain why your bill is important. Why is it important not to just your district, but to all of the Kentuckians? So really it's trying to get that bill called and I don't know that people understand how hard that is just to get your bill called to committee. Once it's called to committee, then you you need to whip your bill. You need to already talk to your committee members, make sure they understand it and get ready for any potential questions that they'll have. I would not want to present a bill if I already had whipped it and knew that it was not going to pass. I have a bill that I would like to be called in Judiciary and I'm whipping that bill now, wanting to get support for it. So I know ahead of time is it going to come out of committee and I whip it with the Republicans and the Democrats. After you presented on the committee and the committee and there's a vote and then hopefully it comes out of committee, it goes to the floor, it needs to have its readings and then you are able to take a vote on the floor. As long as it passes on the floor, then it goes over to the Senate and you do the same thing again. You have to ask the the chairs, the committee chairs to hear your bill. So the House has to, you have to go, you know, let's say it goes to Senate Judiciary, you gotta then go just like you had to go lobby the House Judiciary chair, you gotta go to the Senate. So I'm guessing practically most bills that. Have a chance they're going to have to be Co sponsored by Senator Anna State state Rep or is that not I don't know that Co sponsored but it sure does help to have someone lined up on the other side that's willing to carry your bill. You know, last session I had a bill and I had worked on with Russell Coleman. It was to make anatomically. Correct. Child sex dolls illegal. And, and it came from a case out of Kenton County. I'd worked with Rob Sanders, our Commonwealth attorney on that. Russell Coleman reached out to me after he won the election. I worked with the Kentucky State Police because we added the AI portion to that bill and that came from a conversation with KSP. But I brought Chris McDaniel in on the Senate side. So Senator McDaniel carried that then on the Senate side because to your point, not only committee, but I got to get it called on the floor. And after that, then it goes to the governor. But those relationships are so important. And right now, we're in a place where I'm building new relationships in the Senate because our Senate leadership changed. So our chair of our judiciary changed with Whitney Westerfield retiring. We have a new floor leader on the Senate side. I mean, it was nice when Damon Thayer was there and you could text Damon and say, hey, Damon, my bill hasn't been called. What can you do to help? So those relationships are really important. On both sides so that you get that cooperation and just getting your bill called. So their bills that let's say something comes out of committee, you know, almost unanimous. There's still no guarantee. It doesn't automatically guarantee it's going to be heard on the floor, correct. And I'm still begging. Lobbying is a better word. But yeah, begging for your for your bill to be called. What do we need to do in Northern Kentucky? Because I, I think we always feel that we are the redheaded stepchildren of the state in Northern Kentucky. Right, wrong or indifferent. I think that in the last three or four years. Last maybe 10 years, we are getting more funding from the state and we are getting more things. But what do we need to do? I mean, if, if, if you're out there listening and you're a voter, what are steps that we need to take to make sure that we have a better chance of putting our people or getting people elected that will make it into leadership? Because it seems like leadership is very, very critical in Frankfurt. Ohh, great question. I mean, we're, we don't have anyone really in true leadership right now. Do we have we have some committee chairs. We have committee chairs And I, I would say that Senator McDaniel holds one of the most powerful seats that the budget chair, that chair on the Senate side and we've got Kim Mosier that's chair of Health services. But I think Chris McDaniel probably holds a really powerful seat. But as far as what we consider leadership in running and being in that inner circle. You don't have anyone from Northern Kentucky right now in that inner circle, not on the Senate side. Damon Thayer has left. He's retired and not on the House side. So. Have not traditionally held many of those seats in Northern Kentucky. No, we haven't I, no, we haven't I I think Damon was probably one of our last And what was he there for, 12? So I, I think, let's be honest, Damon was Southern Northern Kentucky. Yeah, that's right. And not up here. I mean, and I agree. I I. Northern Kentucky is all I've always felt like we just figure it out. We've got three really good judge executives, right? It it amazed me. There would be bills that would come across annexation. I'll give that as an example of the last about an issue with a lot of our clients. Yeah. And I would text Judge Knochelmann and our judge executives work so well with their mayors that it was not really an issue for us. So we could take, I could take the lead of leadership, but also knew that there would be a thoughtful. Quote where across the state that's not true with cities and counties working together. I do think people look at us in Northern Kentucky and we figure it out economic development, we work together. We've got Julie Kirkpatrick, we've just got some great people in Northern Kentucky that are doing amazing things. So we're we're figuring it out. I mean annexation because I'm like you because I have a place down in Corbin. I have people call me that was the sort of the. Right, Leading edge of the annexation legislation. I was texting Chris and Damon and while my mom makes my exit wet so I can buy beer quicker. But to your point, up here, we didn't really care because most of my peers, the counties encouraged the annexation because, you know, our counties aren't really set up to provide those kind of urban services. They'd rather have more incorporated cities. Whereas in the rural parts of the state, it's there. There's two. The battle between the more powerful. I don't think we have it up here just because I mean, there's. Well, here in Kenton County, and I do a lot of work in Kenton County, I mean, what do we have 23 cities? It's it's a different style of city. So like I represent Falmouth and that's a very small city, but they do water, sewer, electric. You know, a lot of these cities are the provider of utilities also, whereas in Northern Kentucky, cities and counties really just do governmental. I mean, are those utilities are generally biased, you know, regional utilities. So, and there's a lot of state representatives. They have 5 counties. I have 5 cities, I have 5 mayors I work with. There's there's a big difference when you're talking about working with the mayor groups. You know, once a month Kenton County mayors get together. I feel like we have a really good report with our, with our cities and the county. Back to my question, how is there any steps we can take as. Citizens of Northern Kentucky to try to get. A seat at the table of leadership or as the deck just stacked against us here in Northern Kentucky, I don't know that the stack is. I don't know that it's against us. I think we've had people that are have been interested in in other, but Kim Mosier, I think Kim's very, very good at health services and that's been her thing. She could easily have maybe run for one of those positions in a leadership role. But I think she's very good at what she does and happy with what she does. So I think we need to, I think the Northern Kentucky caucus needs to work together. You know, in our caucus is, is very diverse. Um, between Boone, Kenton and Campbell and hopefully within that caucus identify. People that can help build those relationships. With everyone, I mean, you've got to be able to deal with the Democrats and that's your Louisville Democrats. That's, you know, our Campbell County Democrat. We have one Matt Lehman and. Your your ******** right and, and you're moderate, so I don't think you can be in a leadership role if you're not able to bring all those people together.