The long-awaited two-year budget bill of the Kentucky House Republican supermajority was filed on Tuesday, with its sponsor indicating the legislation and budget process will be significantly different than years past.
Rep. Jason Petrie, the GOP chair of the House budget committee from Elkton, described his bill as a “bare bones budget,” with no line items, that would evolve in the coming weeks of the session as people make their case for appropriations in budget subcommittee meetings.
“This will be a time period during this session for agencies, for legislators, for other interested parties to come talk to their representatives and put their best case forward on any request that's been made inside the operational budgets for the commonwealth,” Petrie said.
The timeline of all that is unclear. The budget dropped on day 15 of the 60-day session and must make its way through a committee and floor vote in both the House and Senate, before heading to the governor’s desk. Budget bills also always go through conference committees when the House and Senate versions differ.
The current budget bill includes across-the-board cuts to many state agencies, including groups like the Economic Development Cabinet, which would face a $4.5 million cut on average over the biennium, to the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority, with an average $2.9 million cut.
Wednesday morning in the Senate budget committee, State Budget Director John Hicks gave a more detailed version of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s budget proposal, which spends significantly more than the current GOP budget bill. The difference in spending is largest in two areas: education and Medicaid.
Beshear wants to appropriate $1.4 billion over the budget period to launch universal public pre-K, with another $400 million for K-12 employee raises and a 2.5% increase to the per-pupil SEEK funding formula for K-12 spending in each fiscal year.
Meanwhile, the Republican proposed budget would keep SEEK funding steady, with no increase for inflation, over the course of two years, at $4,586 per student. The budget would also decrease transportation funding by $40 million from their 2026 levels. According to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, that would mean school buses would be funded at 74% of the required level. School transportation funding came under scrutiny after the 2023 bussing fiasco in Jefferson County.
Read the rest at LPM News.
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