Public health officials question higher fiscal estimate tied to bill on private-pool rentals

At a Senate Appropriations and Revenue subcommittee hearing in Frankfort, representatives from the Kentucky Department for Public Health (DPH) discussed cost estimates linked to Senate Bill 61, which addresses rental or commercial use of private swimming pools.

Julie Brooks, policy specialist with the Department for Public Health, told the committee DPH uses an "about $85,000" figure as a base estimate for a large-scale waterborne outbreak investigation. "That includes the staff time, the staff cost for doing things that are kind of over and above their normal scope of work and the laboratory cost involved collecting samples and analyzing those samples," Brooks said.

Brooks said the $85,000 estimate traces to a large outbreak in February 2014 and that DPH uses it as a working base. She also described the department's concern that private pools offered for rent could increase the number of investigations. DPH characterized a projected "50 to 100 potential outbreak investigations" as a ballpark estimate reflecting a possible increase if private-rental activity expands.

The department provided case figures to the committee. "We had about 822 overall waterborne cases reported in 2024," Brooks said. Later in the hearing DPH staff acknowledged an earlier counting error and clarified that 14 investigations over the last five years were tied to private swimming pools; the department apologized for the miscount and corrected the figure on the record.

Committee members pressed the department on why the DPH estimate differed from a fiscal figure circulated by the governor's office and from an internal fiscal note produced by another agency. Senator Craig Richardson raised the discrepancy between the governor's published estimate of a larger fiscal impact and the Legislative Research Commission's internal fiscal note that showed a limited or zero fiscal impact. "Where do 50 and a hundred incidents of waterborne illness outbreak come from?" Richardson asked. Brooks said the 50100 figure is a rough estimate tied to possible increases as private pools rented to the public become more common.

Committee members also sought clarity on regulatory scope. DPH staff said private pools are excluded from routine regulation by definition, but a change in activity ' specifically, renting a private pool ' can cause a pool to meet the statutory or regulatory definition of a public pool, which would subject it to oversight. "If it is being held out for rent currently, it falls under that definition of a public pool," the department said, adding that the agency generally does not actively regulate private pools absent rental activity that triggers the public-pool definition.

Senators recommended greater coordination across the executive branch after committee members received differing fiscal numbers from multiple sources during the session. The subcommittee did not take final action on Senate Bill 61 during the meeting.

Ending: DPH officials said they would continue to provide clarifications to the subcommittee and that executive-branch agencies should strive for more uniform fiscal communications; no vote was recorded on the bill during the session.