Kentucky lawmakers are ready to disapprove two state contracts with California companies because of that state’s ban on taxpayer-funded travel to Kentucky due to a Kentucky law that California leaders view as discriminatory against gay and transgender people.
“I think our committee will not approve those two contracts with California businesses. We hope they are changed to businesses elsewhere or canceled,” said Republican state Sen. Stephen Meredith of Leitchfield, chairman of the Kentucky legislature’s Government Contract Review Committee.
“We don’t want California trying to replace our values with theirs,” Meredith said.
At issue are two contracts University of Louisville officials took to the review committee on May 11. They were told the panel would not vote immediately on them to give the university time to look for other vendors. The contracts were deferred until the committee’s June 10 meeting.
One of the one-year contracts is worth $373,600 with Korn Ferry International of Los Angeles, Calif., to provide consulting services to assist a search committee in identifying and recruiting qualified top-level candidates for top U of L jobs on an as-needed basis.
The other is a search committee contract worth $252,800 with SP&A Executive Search in Whittier, Calif.
The contract review committee approved six other search-committee contracts for U of L but those businesses were in Washington, D.C., and other states besides California.
U of L officials have not yet determined if they will try to proceed with the two California contracts, said John Raymond Karman III, the university’s executive director of communications.
Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization based in Louisville, said, “This is unfortunate that our General Assembly cannot take its own medicine. There are consequences to passing legislation negative to the LGBTQ community.”
“California is not the offending entity here,” he said.
In 2017, then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who now is President Joe Biden’s health and human services secretary, blocked state-funded travel to Kentucky and several other states in response to what he considered anti-LGBTQ rights laws.
In Kentucky, the ban was due to Senate Bill 17, which sponsors said was designed to reinforce students’ constitutional right to express religious and political views in public schools and universities.
The bill, which Gov. Matt Bevin signed into law, also banned discrimination against religious and political student organizations based on how they conducted their internal affairs or how they select their leaders and members.
Hartman said at the time that the measure, sponsored by former state Sen. Albert Robinson, R-London, could be used to let student groups keep out LGBTQ students.
The California ban is still in place and will remain so until the states repeal the offending laws, said the press office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
The travel prohibition applies to state agencies, departments, boards, authorities, and commissions, including any agency, department, board, authority, or commission of the University of California, the Board of Regents of the University of California, and California State University.
Other states on the ban besides Kentucky are Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas.
California has exceptions for the ban for “required” travel, such as litigation, participation in meetings necessary to maintain grant funding and for the protection of public health.
The California ban also blocks public colleges from participating in events held in states on the no-travel list, but that has not been enforced.
Bonta’s office said there has been no successful legal challenge to the ban. The U.S. Supreme Court last month decided not to hear a challenge to the ban from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
At Kentucky’s Government Contract Review Committee this month, Meredith grilled Michael Wade Smith, U of L’s vice president for external affairs and chief of staff, about the two California contracts in question.
Meredith said he has a “bias against” the contracts.
Smith said he hoped the committee would approve the contracts with the California companies.
Also upset with the two contracts was Rep. Mark Hart, R-Falmouth, who made a motion to disapprove them.
Hart took back his motion to allow the committee to defer action on the contracts until next month.
“If the state of California doesn’t want to do business with the state of Kentucky, Kentucky shouldn’t do business with the state of California,” said Hart.
If the Republican-controlled committee disapproves the contracts, they would go to the state finance secretary’s office for consideration, where they might find a friendlier reception and allow U of L to continue with them.
A new Kentucky law enacted this year — Senate Bill 165 — gives the state treasurer authority to void state contracts disapproved by the Government Contract Review Committee. That law takes effect June 29, but Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear is challenging it in Franklin Circuit Court, claiming it is unconstitutional.
Kentucky Treasurer Allison Ball, a Republican, said this about the California ban:
“It is a shame California will go to such lengths to hurt Kentucky, especially as our economy has suffered in the pandemic. I am deeply disappointed that coastal elites in a wealthy state like California are trying to mandate legislation in Frankfort through threats and economic sanctions against hard-working Kentucky families and businesses.”
She pledged to “give every contract brought to my attention a thorough and unbiased review to make sure that we are following the law.”
By Jack Brammer, Lexington Herald-Leader
