LOUISVILLE, KY. (WDRB) -- A contentious bill in Kentucky's legislature that would have randomly drug tested welfare recipients died in committee on Thursday.
But the controversy now centers around how it happened.
Republican Representative Lonnie Napier spoke in favor of his bill: "This bill that I have drafted is all about protecting the children, and also trying to get people off drugs. As you all know, we have an epidemic in this state."
Napier sat in the lions den Thursday, bringing his bill to randomly drug test people on public assistance before the House Health and Welfare Committee for the second year in a row: "I changed the bill considerably to make the bill constitutional and also to address the concerns the committee gave me a year ago."
The problem, according to Democratic Rep. Jim Glenn, District 13: "Does it include the superintendents of our public schools who also receive public assistance or small businessman who receive state incentives or general managers who the government just bailed out? Do we test all these people because they're all receiving public assistance because I don't just want to test the poor. I don't want it to be said that we beat up on those people who don't have the resources to fight back."
Democratic Representative Mary Lou Marzian, District 34, also responded: "I think this bill sort kind of reeks of discrimination."
Not one of the 60 co-sponsors attended the hearing. In fact, no one else in Napier's party was there. Republicans boycotted because the committee chair made it quite clear that the bill would not come to a vote.
All this, as proponents of a statewide smoking ban bill waited for their turn to talk, which never came. That hearing will be rescheduled.
