The next session of the Kentucky General Assembly officially gets underway Tuesday, January 2 and local legislators are ready to get back to Frankfort and hit the ground running.
That goes doubly so for State Senator Whitney Westerfield of Crofton, who made the decision to not seek re-election and is therefore entering his last legislative session—and it will be a big one, with a two-year budget set to be crafted before they adjourn in April.
Westerfield has plenty he wants to see make it into that spending plan, one of those things being funding to help support mothers and children. He intends to file a bill that would provide support and resources to pregnant women, to help them make a decision regarding that pregnancy that isn’t based on stress or guilt or finances.
At the top of the senator’s priority list is his Consumer Privacy Bill, which he has tried to get passed before. He says we should have a right to know what our consumer data is being used for, to see what is being collected and more.
A measure that would temporarily remove firearms from an individual having a mental health crisis has been a source of discussion recently, and Senator Westerfield says he wanted to bring a very tough discussion to the table in Frankfort. He says CARR, or Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention, is designed purely to keep those going through a crisis and those around them safe.
He says he’s very much against permanently removing someone’s firearms from them and remains a supporter of the second-amendment, saying responsible gun-ownership is very important to him.
The senator has a slew of bills he would like to see make it through the legislature before he departs from Frankfort for a final time, from pay raises from state employees to updates to the business code in the state.