FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A petition seeking the impeachment of Kentucky’s attorney general was filed Friday by three grand jurors who criticized his handling of an investigation into Breonna Taylor’s shooting death by police.

The petition’s allegations against Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron include breach of public trust and failure to comply with his duties as the state’s chief law enforcement official. They do not accuse him of any crimes, but impeachment is not considered a criminal proceeding.

The petition is the latest in a flurry of tit-for-tat efforts to impeach Kentucky elected officials. Four Kentucky citizens recently petitioned the state House of Representatives to impeach Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear for executive actions he took in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and the matter was assigned to a House committee for review.

Beshear’s actions had been upheld by the state Supreme Court, and the governor says there are “zero grounds” for his removal.

Kentucky law requires impeachment petitions to be referred to a House committee but does not require any further action. Under the state’s constitution, the House possesses the sole power of impeachment. An impeachment trial is held in the state Senate, with a conviction requiring the support of two-thirds of the senators present.

The petition against Cameron, signed by a handful of Kentuckians, was submitted to the overwhelmingly Republican Kentucky House. Cameron is a close ally of U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and is seen as a rising GOP star.

Cameron’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The petition’s signers include an attorney who did so on behalf of three grand jurors who have accused Cameron of misleading the public when describing the grand jury proceedings.

Cameron was the special prosecutor who investigated the actions of the Louisville police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Taylor during a warrant search last year. The investigation culminated in a grand jury ruling that did not charge any of the officers in the Black woman’s death. The shooting sparked protests in Louisville alongside national protests over racial injustice and police misconduct.

The petition is the latest seeking the ouster of prominent Kentucky officeholders. Another petition is seeking the ouster of Republican state Rep. Robert Goforth for an incident in which he allegedly tried to strangle a woman. Goforth, a former gubernatorial candidate, pleaded not guilty after his indictment on charges of strangulation and assault. The case is pending.

The petition against Cameron revives allegations raised anonymously by the three grand jurors. It accuses him of deceiving the public regarding his handling of the investigation into Taylor’s death.

Cameron had said in a widely viewed news conference that the grand jury had agreed that the officers who shot Taylor were justified because they were fired at by Taylor’s boyfriend. Officers fired 32 rounds into the home, five of which struck Taylor.

The three grand jurors said they did not agree and wanted to explore criminal charges, but said they were denied because Cameron’s prosecutors believed none of those charges would stick.

The impeachment petition was signed on their behalf by their Louisville attorney, Kevin Glogower.

“The grand jurors did not choose this battle,” Glogower said in a statement Friday. “This battle chose them. These are randomly selected citizens who were compelled to sit on a grand jury and were terribly misused by the most powerful law enforcement official in Kentucky.”

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Lovan reported from Louisville, Kentucky.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — The Kentucky House on Friday wrapped up its quick work on legislation that would make early voting a permanent feature in the state’s elections.

The bill, introduced this week, passed the House on a 93-4 vote, sending it to the Senate. It would allow three days of no-excuse, early in-person voting — including a Saturday — ahead of Election Day.

Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams said he hopes the strong bipartisan support in the House will add to the bill’s momentum when it reaches the Senate. Adams describes it as the state’s most significant election-reform legislation in nearly three decades.

Another key part of the bill would allow counties to establish vote centers, where any voter in the county may vote regardless of precinct.

The measure continues some special features allowed in last year’s election because of the COVID-19 pandemic — most notably the early in-person voting.

Last year, pandemic-related rules for Kentucky’s general election included multiple weeks of early in-person voting to prevent a crush of Election Day voting.

Without new legislation, Kentucky’s election laws will revert to the pre-pandemic rules.

But the House-passed bill wouldn’t continue a temporary, pandemic-related accommodation that allowed widespread mail-in absentee balloting in the 2020 election.

The legislation is House Bill 574.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A bill that would make it a crime to taunt a police officer in Kentucky has stalled in the state’s House of Representatives and appears unlikely to pass, but the fate of a proposal to ban no-knock warrants statewide is less certain more than a year after the police killing of Breonna Taylor.

Lawmakers failed to bring the anti-taunting legislation up for a vote by Tuesday night. With less than two weeks left in the legislative session, under the legislature’s own rules, the General Assembly would not have the opportunity to override a veto by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, despite Republicans supermajorities in both the House and Senate.

A partial ban on no-knock warrants passed the Kentucky Senate last month, but two representatives, both retired Kentucky State police officers, have proposed amendments that some warn would nullify the bill. GOP Senate President Robert Stivers, who sponsored the bill, has said there is a chance the governor would sign it into law if a bipartisan consensus is met.

The separate anti-taunting legislation would have made it a misdemeanor for anyone who “accosts, insults, taunts, or challenges a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words, or by gestures or other physical contact, that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response.” Offenders would have faced up to 90 days in jail and fines, and the proposal also would have increased penalties for rioting.

State Sen. Danny Carroll, a Republican and former police officer, has said he filed the measure in response to months of demonstrations in Louisville, where large protests occurred last year in the wake of Breonna Taylor’s death.

Taylor, a Black woman, was shot in her Louisville home multiple times by police during a botched drug raid. A grand jury indicted one officer on wanton endangerment charges in September for shooting into a neighbor’s apartment, but no officers were charged in connection with her death. That was based in part on the presentation of Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who recommended no charges against the officers who shot into Taylor’s apartment.

Police had a no-knock warrant but said they knocked and announced their presence before entering Taylor’s apartment, a claim some witnesses have disputed. No drugs were found in Taylor’s apartment.

Under the proposed no-knock warrant bill, the warrants would only be issued if there was “clear and convincing evidence” that the “crime alleged is a crime that would qualify a person, if convicted, as a violent offender.” The warrants would also have to be executed between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

One House floor amendment would lengthen the execution time to midnight and permit officers to consult with the attorney general’s office before a raid, nixing a requirement that they only consult a local prosecutor. Another change would authorize no-knock warrants for suspected drug crimes. It would also permit the use of audio recorders instead of body cameras.

“These amendments undermine the intent of the bill to such a degree that, if included, the status quo will be maintained and we will still be stuck with the same harmful laws and practices that led to the tragic death of Breonna Taylor,” said Carmen Mitchell, an analyst for the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

Democratic lawmakers and demonstrators have railed against the anti-taunting legislation, warning that it could be used to suppress peaceful protests, particularly Black demonstrators who have been at the center of the Louisville protests.

At a March 13 rally in Louisville marking the one-year anniversary of Taylor’s death, Sadiqa Reynolds, president of the Louisville Urban League, derided the measure as a “shut-up-and-take-it bill.”

Jecorey Arthur, Louisville city council member from Louisville’s predominantly Black West End neighborhood, also joined State. Rep. Attica Scott in criticizing the bill on a locally televised panel Monday night.

Arthur and others say the proposal violates First Amendment rights to free speech.

“It’s silly because it’s outright unconstitutional, and it’s serious because it really sends a strong message, sends a statement that some of our law enforcement, some of the people across this Commonwealth care more about white feelings than Black killings,” Arthur said.

Lawmakers in Indiana, Alabama, Utah, and other GOP-led states have also proposed legislation that would increase penalties for rioting. Under a Tennessee law passed last year, protesters could lose their right to vote for breaking certain laws during demonstrations.

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Hudspeth Blackburn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.