While all 25 right-to-work states have taken the traditional top-down approach, Kentucky’s right-to-work movement continues to gain momentum at the local level.

Boone County on Monday became the 11th county in Kentucky to pass a local right-to-work law based on KRS 67.0073, which the General Assembly passed in 1978 in order to clarify county’s legislative authority. (See the updated list of counties that have passed right-to-work ordinances here.)

With a unanimous vote, Boone County – which is the commonwealth’s fourth-largest county – becomes the most-populated county to pass a right-to-work ordinance, which allows individuals to choose not to join a union and pay dues without being penalized or losing their jobs.

Bluegrass Institute president Jim Waters took to the Greater Cincinnati airwaves Tuesday morning on 55KRC’s The Brian Thomas Show to explain the benefits of right-to-work policies and to discuss the competitive advantage that local right-to-work policies would give northern Kentucky counties when competing for economic-development projects with non-right-to-work Ohio communities.

Boone County Judge-Executive Gary Moore stated at the meeting that being the only right-to-work county in the Regional Economic Development Initiative (REDI) for Greater Cincinnati “will be a huge advantage.”

Attorney Brent Yessin told magistrates that his organization, Protect My Check, would pay legal fees of any county passing a local right-to-work ordinance before the end of the month.

Yessin stressed the bipartisan nature of the votes on the ordinances, noting that 96 percent of Republicans and 94 percent of Democrats have voted in favor of right-to-work ordinances.

“Once you get outside of Washington or Frankfort, it starts being about what's best for my neighbors, and what do you hear in the checkout line – not what do my big donors expect,” he said.

Meanwhile, right-to-work is gaining traction around the nation.

In Wisconsin, supporters did not allow a right-to-work bill to linger in the legislature once it began to move. Wisconsin’s Senate passed right-to-work legislation on Feb. 25; the state Assembly passed it on March 6; and Gov. Scott Walker signed it into law three days later – making his the 25th right-to-work state in America.