Kentucky

Kentucky has a plural executive of statewide elected officials. Voters elect the Governor and Lieutenant Governor (who, since the 1990s, run together as a single ticket and so share a party), plus the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the State Auditor, the State Treasurer, and the Commissioner of Agriculture — each elected independently.

Because those officers run on their own, they answer to voters rather than the Governor and can come from a different party. The Governor appoints the heads of the executive cabinet agencies that aren’t separately elected and leads the rest of the bureaucracy, but shares the executive branch with a half-dozen independently elected colleagues.

The Kentucky General Assembly is bicameral: a 38-seat State Senate (four-year terms) and a 100-seat House of Representatives (two-year terms). It is a hybrid legislature — members put in well over half their time on legislative work, but most hold outside jobs — with no annual salary: members are paid a daily rate (currently $203.28 per calendar day in session) plus a $195.80-per-day per-diem expense allowance, and there are no term limits.

The calendar runs on a long-year/short-year cycle that is the reverse of many states’ pattern: the longer roughly 60-day session falls in even-numbered years, when the General Assembly writes the two-year budget, and a shorter roughly 30-day session falls in odd years. For most of its history the General Assembly was dominated by the governor; a series of reforms beginning in the 1970s made it a genuinely independent, co-equal branch.

A bill is introduced, referred to committee, and — if it advances — voted on the floor of each chamber, with differences reconciled before final passage. The Governor can sign a bill, veto it, or let it become law, and holds a line-item veto over appropriations. But Kentucky’s veto is weak: the General Assembly can override it with a simple majority of each chamber — the same margin that passed the bill — so when the Legislature is determined, a veto is little more than a delay. The short sessions add a further wrinkle: lawmakers sometimes pass bills early and reserve the final days to override any vetoes the governor issues.

Kentucky has no citizen initiative or referendum for statutes — voters cannot place laws on the ballot themselves. Constitutional amendments are referred to the voters only by the General Assembly.

The Governor appoints the heads of the non-elected cabinet agencies, proposes the budget, can call special sessions, holds emergency powers, wields a line-item veto, and holds a notably broad clemency power. But the office is checked more easily than in many states: the simple-majority veto override means the Governor cannot reliably block a determined Legislature, and a plural executive of independently elected officers — who may be from the opposing party — runs major pieces of state government.

Kentucky’s odd-year election calendar also shapes the office: because the governor and other state officials are chosen in years with no federal races on the ballot, state issues take center stage in those campaigns.

Kentucky elects its judges in nonpartisan elections at every level. The Supreme Court of Kentucky — a relatively young court, created when voters modernized the judicial article in 1975 — sits at the top, above the Court of Appeals and the trial-level Circuit and District courts. The Governor fills mid-term vacancies by appointment from a judicial nominating commission’s list, after which the appointee must stand in the next nonpartisan election.