Representative government is almost always a messy business, frequently frustrating and rarely a hundred-percent satisfactory.

A contentious 2012 Kentucky General Assembly came to a close this month. Scott Payton, assistant public relations officer with the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission, provided a great, nonpartisan press release chronicling some of the dramatic issues this year. You can read the full release here.

He touches on Senate Bill 1, an effort to curb Kentucky's "pill mills":

A key and much-debated provision of the bill involved transferring oversight of the Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting program...to the Attorney General's office. Proponents of that move hoped monitoring and enforcement of questionable prescribing trends would be more aggressive there than is currently the case in the Cabinet for Health and Family Services...But persistent concern was expressed that the bill (especially more-aggressive AG enforcement) might unduly hamstring legitimate practitioners, who are simply prescribing pain meds, in good faith, for real medical need. Late and at length, that concern prevailed, and KASPER will stay put.

and the "Road Plan"

Time ran out on the 2012 regular session (constitutionally limited to 60 days) as the Road Plan itself -- which had passed both chambers earlier in the session’s last day – went unsigned by a governor who said he needed time to review it.

In all, this piece provides a nonpartisan overview of what the session ultimately looked like. The author is correct in that representative government is messy and not 100 percent  satisfactory. I think we are all okay with that, as long is the messiness is constitutional.