The spending blueprint could be voted on in the full Senate later Wednesday, hours after it cleared a Senate committee. The ultimate version of the spending plan — the state's main policy document — will be hashed out in coming days by House and Senate conferees. The GOP holds supermajorities in both chambers.
A separate spending bill headed to the full Senate would tap into the Bluegrass State’s massive budget reserves to make a number of one-time investments. Senators made several additions to the House version, including a $75 million appropriation to deliver a one-time additional pension payment for retirees in the Kentucky Employee Retirement System to help cushion them from the impact of high inflation.
Those one-time funding priorities also include $50 million for an economic development fund to assist business recruitment in areas plagued by high unemployment and a combined $37 million for cancer centers in Middlesboro in eastern Kentucky and in Bullitt County, south of Louisville.
“I think that the discipline we’ve shown over the last decade has given us the opportunities to make the investments we’re making now for the next decade,” Republican Sen. Chris McDaniel, chairman of the Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee, told reporters afterward.
The Senate's version of the state's main budget bill, like the House version, left out two of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's biggest priorities — guaranteed pay raises for teachers and access to preschool for every Kentucky 4-year-old. Republican lawmakers in both chambers want to direct additional money to K-12 schools, but leave it up to local school districts to decide whether to award pay raises to teachers.
The Senate plan would increase funding for SEEK — the state’s main funding formula for K-12 schools — by nearly $100 million. Per-pupil funding would rise to $4,368 — a $117 million increase — in the first fiscal year and $4,455 in the second year — a $154 million increase. Those amounts match the same increases proposed in the House budget. The current amount is $4,200 per student.
Under the Senate version, the state would cover 80% of the costs to transport K-12 students to and from school in the first year of the budget cycle and 90% in the second year. The House proposed covering 100% of those costs in the second year of the biennium.
Senators proposed more than doubling the the amount of state funding sent to public universities through performance-based funding, raising the amount to about $200 million per year.
The Senate plan supports each university's top priority project through bond fund authorization, except for Kentucky State University. For KSU, the Senate version would double the amount of asset preservation funding for campus revitalization projects, McDaniel said.
State employees would receive a 2.6% pay raise in each of the two years under the Senate proposal.
The Senate budget includes extra funding over the two years to enable state police to increase the number of cadets who go through training to become troopers.
Juror compensation would increase from $5 to $25 per day under the Senate plan.
The state's next two-year budget cycle begins July 1.
Beshear Reaction
Asked about the latest version of Kentucky’s two-year spending plan, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear began with what he said were improvements.
"The Senate improved the House's budget. I want to thank them for including a number of additional projects that are necessary. They restored the funding in Medicaid," he told reporters Thursday.
Still nowhere to be seen, however, are several of the governor’s key priorities – including guaranteed raises for teachers, teacher loan forgiveness, and universal pre-K.
"All those things are absolutely critical to moving forward and all the Republican legislatures are passing them," he said.
Beshear also worried aloud about provisions he said his office believes are a first in the country – limitations on how the state can respond to emergencies. He used as an example a $4 million limit on fighting wildfires, which he said would force lawmakers to return for a special session to decide whether or not to continue to fight fires requiring more funds.
A compromise budget will ultimately be hashed out by a conference committee consisting of House and Senate members.
