Ahead of the 2024 legislative session and the state’s next two-year budget, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear laid out his plan with budget priorities on Monday night.
Beshear again proposed a raise for school teachers and personnel. His budget includes an 11% raise for those individuals which would cost $1.1 billion over two years. Additionally, he proposes a 6% across-the-board raise for state workers effective July 1, 2024, and another 4% increase effective July 1, 2025.
Education is the main focus of his budget, which includes early childhood education. He proposed $170 million each year of the budget for universal pre-K for all four-year-olds so they are kindergarten ready as well as $68 million in 2024 and $73 million in 2025 for the Kentucky Child Care Assistance Program.
His proposal would provide full funding for school transportation following recent headlines, an 8% increase to the base funding for higher education institutions, full funding for the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System (as well as the Kentucky Retirement System for state workers), loan forgiveness, and more.
In addition, the proposed budget includes more another $500 million in grants to county and local governments to provide underserved families access to cleaner water and wastewater systems, investments in broadband, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and additional funding to work on large road projects like the work on the Mountain Parkway and I-69 as well as smaller projects like repairing city and county bridges, a one-year tax credit for Kentuckians for tolls they pay driving over the Louisville/Jefferson County bridges in 2024, and $50 million to support the state’s 58 general aviation airports for development, rehabilitation and maintenance.
To support job growth, the governor proposes $200 million over the biennium for more build ready sites: $100 million to prepare mega-development projects and another $100 million for county and regional site development. In addition, he is seeking to fund a talent recruitment marketing campaign with a $15 million investment.
Public safety is also a focus with the governor seeking an additional $2,500 raise for all Kentucky State Police troopers and officers and enough funding to add 150 more troopers over the next two years, more money for body armor as well as investment in law enforcement training, and $10.5 million over two years to increase reentry services and calls for building a reentry skills training facility on the grounds of the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex that will help provide job-skills training. He also mentioned building a new police training facility in West Kentucky.
Following the address, a panel on KET Kentucky Tonight featuring Kentucky Chamber Center for Policy and Research Executive Director Dr. Charles Aull, Amy Wickliffe and Sherman Brown of McCarthy Strategic Solutions, and Kentucky Center for Economic Policy Jason Bailey discussed the proposal.
Dr. Aull noted that pro-growth tax reform passed by the General Assembly in recent years has led to important individual income tax reductions, and enabling further reductions in income tax should be an important consideration in the upcoming budgeting process to ensure Kentucky remains competitive with other states.
Watch the full discussion from KET Kentucky Tonight with Renee Shaw and Gov. Beshear’s full budget address here.
