Louisville Metro Council members have their committee assignments for the year. That’s where they vet legislation before it comes up for a final vote and call city officials in to testify about specific issues.
Republican Dan Seum, Jr., who represents the Fairdale area in the South End, will lead the council’s Public Safety Committee for 2026. Seum is also running for reelection to the District 13 seat, where he has one challenger, Ernie Brummitt.
In a recent interview with LPM News, Seum said he wants to shift the committee’s focus to supporting police officers and helping them do their jobs.
“The agenda or the narrative that’s been out here, that’s gotta change,” he said. “We’re going to do everything we can to bridge the gap [between officers and the community], but we also have officers’ backs.”
Seum said he expects members of his caucus to propose legislation this year that addresses some of the issues Republicans highlighted in their Safer Louisville Agenda. That includes unpermitted donation bins, “aggressive panhandling” and the illegal use of ATVs and dirt bikes in public parks and on major roadways, he said.
In addition to debating legislation, Seum said he plans to call city officials to discuss a range of issues, everything from the Louisville Metro Police Department’s use of license plate reader cameras to the city’s crossing guards program. He said he also expects the committee will have a hearing to discuss a recent report, produced by a third-party contractor, that recommended the city build a new jail to the tune of up to half a billion dollars.
An excerpt of Seum’s interview with LPM’s Roberto Roldan, edited for length and clarity, is below.
RR: The Public Safety Committee is obviously one of the most important committees in local government. As the chair, what are your priorities going to be this year?
DS: We've got several priorities and we've got a list of them in our Safer Louisville proposal. We're going to be working a lot on retail theft. Aggressive panhandling is going to be a big thing, the use of ATVs, so many topics that we're dealing with.
We are creating our agenda now that's going to run us all the way through December. Our meetings are every other week. In some of the meetings, we're going to be talking about our staffing studies [for LMPD], the Office of Violence Prevention and the youth detention center is going to be one of the big things we work on.
RR: You mentioned the Safer Louisville Plan. You're part of the Republican caucus and that's a list of proposals that you all have put together. There's one in there that's aimed at stopping unlicensed donation bins. What is that about?
DS: Well, we're seeing a lot of these bins are popping up. We've got over 100 of them so far, predominantly in the South End. Come to find out that these are used for many things, not only clothing, which they're supposed to be for, but we've found animals in there.
It's not just about clothes, and since it's been in the media a lot of them have been disappearing.
RR: And in many cases, they're putting them on businesses property without the business owner's permission, right?
DS: No permission. There's no [phone] numbers. Some of the lettering, the words are misspelled and they're dropping them off in the middle of the night.
RR: Another one of the proposals that you all have is addressing the illegal use of ATVs and dirt bikes on public lands, particularly in your neck of the woods in the South End. How is the Republican caucus going to address that?
DS: Well, we're going to do what we can to get them off the road. The problem is these kids, they're riding through cemeteries. They're riding through school yards. We've got one in my district, they have a soccer field in back of an elementary school. Now, they can't play soccer because of the ruts and everything. They're running on the [flood]wall and terrorizing people. The bad actors are getting bolder and we're going to put a stop to it.
RR: It looks like maybe one of the ordinances is going to be tougher penalties for people who are caught doing this?
DS: We're gonna have tougher penalties, and if we have to crush some of them to get their attention, we're going to do that, too.
RR: One of Metro Council's biggest responsibilities is oversight, ensuring that the mayor's administration is doing its job the right way and in the interest of residents. What kind of oversight do you see your Public Safety Committee doing this year?
DS: Well, we do have Ed Harness with the [Office of Inspector General] and we trust them to bring us the right data.
I trust our chief with decisions. I trust the mayor's staff. We know that we need to build the trust [between the police and the community], but we also know we need the officers to know that we have their backs.
We'll tend to any problems that we have, but one of the things that I keep reminding others is there's no profession that doesn't have somebody that's a bad actor. They're human beings. They have families. Some of the things that they have to put up with, I don't know that I could. We're going to do everything we can to lift them up.
