FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear proposed spending increases for public education from kindergarten through college and for health care in a state budget plan that avoids cuts and counts on limited new revenues from taxes on cigarettes and sports betting.
In a speech Tuesday evening before the Republican-led legislature, the Democratic governor proposed a $2,000 pay raise for every public school teacher, fulfilling a campaign pledge.
Beshear called for a 1% increase in the state’s school funding formula, known as SEEK, for public K-12 schools. That would inject about $87 million more into schools in the next two years. Base per-pupil funding would rise by $40 to $4,040 per year. Beshear’s plan seeks to restore $22 million for textbook costs over two years.
For public universities, which have absorbed repeated cuts for more than a decade, the governor’s budget calls for a 1% spending increase for all post-secondary education institutions.
Beshear, who floated an ambitious wish-list for the state during last year’s campaign, unveiled more modest proposals to reflect the state’s many pressing needs and projections for tepid revenue growth in the next two years. Overall General Fund spending would increase by 1.5% in the first year and another 2.4% in the second year under his budget blueprint.
Beshear said his budget contains no General Fund spending cuts for the first time in 14 years.
His plan leaves the state’s sales and income tax rates unchanged, and he didn’t factor in any money from legalizing casino gambling, a proposal he championed as a candidate but which has been declared a nonstarter by some top Republican lawmakers.
Instead, Beshear’s budget plan assumes new revenues from a 10-cent increase in the cigarette tax, a tax on e-cigarettes and legalization of sports betting, a proposal awaiting a House vote.
Beshear’s spending plan fully funds the state’s Medicaid program, including the Medicaid expansion started when his father, Steve Beshear, was governor. The expansion added hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians to the Medicaid rolls. Kentucky’s portion of covering its expanded Medicaid population will increase from 8.5% to 10%.
The governor’s budget includes an additional $38.9 million from the state’s General Fund in the next year and $199 million the following year to fully fund Medicaid and the expansion.
Beshear proposed a 1% pay raise for state employees in each year of the two-year budget cycle. He committed to paying the full contribution required on state employees’ pensions, which were long underfunded.
Continuing his focus on combating abuse and neglect during his tenure as attorney general, Beshear proposed adding 350 social workers in child protective services. The nearly 30% staffing boost would help ease bloated case loads for social workers.
To help implement the state’s 2019 school safety law, Beshear proposed $18.2 million in bond funding to finance school building upgrades. It reflects his belief that funding will have to occur in phases to carry out the safety law that called for new resource officers and counselors.
His plan calls for about $109 million more in General Fund spending on corrections. Beshear has urged lawmakers to tackle criminal-justice reforms to reduce costly incarceration rates.
The governor also proposed adding $10 million to the state’s “rainy day fund.”
Now that Beshear has presented his spending plan, the work shifts to the Republican-dominated legislature to pass a budget during this year’s session, which ends in mid-April.