Representative Kim Banta Contact information

Kim Banta (born January 17, 1964) is an American politician from Kentucky. She is a member of the Republican party and represents District 63 in the State House. Banta was first elected in 2019, after she defeated Democratic opponent Josh Blair in a special election.

Kim Banta is a professional educator. She has spent decades learning how students behave and express themselves. This insight has come in handy in her work as chairperson of the House Budget Review Subcommittee on Primary and Secondary Education and Workforce Development in the General Assembly.

Despite being a Republican, Banta has been at occasional odds with members of her own party when it comes to some education-related bills. For instance, she was one of only a handful of Republicans in the state House who voted against the 2023 Senate Bill 150, which bans gender-affirming care for minors and changes rules on gender identity and sexual education in public schools. When it came back before the House for an override of Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of the bill, she voted against it again.

Banta, a longtime public educator and former assistant superintendent of Kenton County Schools, believes that a student’s gender identity should not factor into their school experience. She plans to reach out to Kentuckians this legislative session by working to increase mental health access for those who need and want it.

In 2021, she passed a firefighters’ mental health bill (House Bill 44) that opened up mental health care for firefighters with PTSD or post-traumatic stress injury and promotes crisis intervention training for the first responders.

Banta also plans to file a bill in the 2024 session that she calls “kind of interesting”: a feminine hygiene protection bill that would remove the state sales tax on feminine hygiene products. Kentucky is one of 21 states that applies sales tax to menstrual products.