Using both social distancing and never-done-before voting methods, the KY General Assembly passed a budget on Wednesday that is being described as both “bare bones” and “austere.”
The budget is for only one fiscal year, instead of for the biennium, as lawmakers did not want to attempt to budget that far out, given the unknown territory our state and our state’s economy are moving into.
The Senate budget chair, Sen. Chris McDaniel, made this stark comment to reporters: “It will be as pessimistic as we had numbers to be, and if we had more pessimistic numbers, we would be using those.”
Before the coronavirus crisis hit the state, the House had passed a budget with a number of new spending initiatives that Governor Beshear and the members thought were important. The Senate budget, on the other hand, came out during the early days of the crisis, and was much more pessimistic.
Today’s budget was the result of the conference committee of the two chambers, and while it is much less than the original House budget, it still contains some positive notes.
Gone from the budget are the funding increases for public education, the additional social workers, and the raises for school and state employees. There is no money for textbooks, and no additional funding to school transportation. There is no state funding for public libraries, and almost all other state funding is held to current levels.
However, the budget does completely fund the ARC (actuarially required contributions) for the pension systems, as well as fully funding teachers’ health insurance. It also continues the freeze on pension contribution rates for quasi-governmental agencies, and includes some funding to help those agencies with their pension payments.
Finally, the budget includes some language that allows for cuts to some of the above if state revenue drops significantly.
The budget now goes to Governor Beshear. Like most governors, he has line-item veto power, so he can reject parts of it and the legislature can try to override his veto. The legislature will reconvene on April 13 to deal with any vetoes by the governor, budget or otherwise.
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