Elkins outlines Family Foundation policy priorities

It was a 1980 Kentucky court case, Stone v. Graham, that led the U.S. Supreme Court to decide it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al for states to require schools to post the Ten Commandments in class­rooms because it vio­lates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

This year, the Family Foundation, a Christian pub­lic pol­i­cy min­istry, sup­port­ed HB 670, which would have returned the com­mand­ments to pub­lic K‑12 schools and uni­ver­si­ties, but the bill died when state House lead­ers refused to allow it to be heard in committee.

Conservative advo­cates, how­ev­er, suc­ceed­ed in pass­ing a House res­o­lu­tion that allowed a Ten Commandments mon­u­ment to be returned to the grounds of the Kentucky Capitol.

“Senator Elkins car­ried that bill when it went over to the Senate and did a fab­u­lous job,” David Walls, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Family Foundation, said while intro­duc­ing Sen. Greg Elkins, R‑Winchester, dur­ing a lun­cheon last Thursday at Golden Corral.

Elkins, who has rep­re­sent­ed Clark County in the 28^th District since 2023, has often been an ally of the foun­da­tion and was one of the speak­ers at the gathering.

Although a House bill to exempt church­es and reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions from sales and use tax­es also failed in that cham­ber when lead­ers refused to act on it, Elkins got the lan­guage includ­ed in the rev­enue bill that passed.

“A lot of church­es here in Clark County were glad that we were able to get that fixed,” Elkins said. “It was impor­tant that we get that done.”

Churches had pre­vi­ous­ly been exempt for sales and use tax­es, but a change in state law applied those tax­es to church youth recre­ation­al activ­i­ties and out­reach ministries.

The leg­is­la­ture defeat­ed HB 476, a bill that would have allowed vot­ers to amend the state con­sti­tu­tion to guar­an­tee a right to an abor­tion after the leg­is­la­ture recent­ly made it ille­gal in most circumstances.

But House lead­ers refused to allow a hear­ing on a bill to end the inter­state sale of abor­tion pills that Walls said were result­ing in the deaths of women and girls who take them too late dur­ing pregnancy.

Elkins com­ment­ed on that measure.

“I want to see that done, but it real­ly needs to be done at the local lev­el, because what­ev­er we do is going to be dif­fi­cult to enforce,” he said. “It real­ly needs to be stopped. It’s a ter­ri­ble thing that’s happening.”

Walls crit­i­cized President Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion for not chang­ing reg­u­la­tions to end the pro­lif­er­a­tion of the pills, which he said have prob­a­bly increased the num­ber of abor­tions in Kentucky.

Use of the pills has increased because women can no longer get sur­gi­cal abortions.

Probably the group’s biggest leg­isla­tive win was HB 1, which opt­ed Kentucky into a new fed­er­al school choice tax cred­it pro­gram. The deci­sion fol­lows vot­ers’ over­whelm­ing rejec­tion of a school choice con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment in 2024. The state con­sti­tu­tion pro­hibits pub­lic dol­lars from being used to fund pri­vate schools or home school pro­grams. However, the fed­er­al pro­gram offers a dol­lar-for-dol­lar tax break of up to $1,700 per year for par­ents who give to any school of their choice. The opt in was enact­ed after Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed the bill.

During his talk, Elkins gave an overview of the legislature’s accom­plish­ments dur­ing the 2026 session.

He said the state bud­get increased SEEK fund­ing for pub­lic edu­ca­tion by about 2 per­cent to keep pace with inflation.

“That puts us at almost $5,000 per stu­dent,” he said.

The infla­tion rate, how­ev­er, is cur­rent­ly near­ly 4 percent.

The sen­a­tor regret­ted that the leg­is­la­ture was not able to decrease the income tax fur­ther this year because it “missed one of the trig­gers” that would have allowed them to do so.

Elkins said law­mak­ers have put about $5 bil­lion into the state’s bud­get reserve trust fund, and out of that reserve, they had allo­cat­ed about $2 bil­lion for one-time fund­ing, includ­ing $8 mil­lion for Clark County.

“We put about $9 mil­lion into the bypass to start pur­chas­ing right of way,” he said. “It should start in July of this year.”

Over the next few years, the state has allo­cat­ed $80 mil­lion to extend the bypass, known as Veterans Memorial Parkway, from its inter­sec­tion with Irvine Road (Ky. 89) to a new devel­op­ment on Boonesboro Road (Ky. 627).

“It’s going to be a four-lane road,” he added.

State Rep. Ryan Dotson, R‑Winchester, had been invit­ed to speak, but was cam­paign­ing for Congress in anoth­er county.

Other speak­ers includ­ed John Raizor, church out­reach coör­di­na­tor, and Jesse Green, legal coun­sel for the foundation.