Personnel Cabinet Recommends Improving Compensation to Stave off State Workforce Crisis
Kentucky faces a crisis-level shortage of workers in state government. Past legislative actions resulting in poor job quality for public...
Public Resources Should Stay in Public Schools
All Kentucky children should receive a high-quality education that helps them thrive. Because such an education requires skilled teachers, up-to-date instructional materials, non-academic supports, safe learning environments, strong administrators and...
The 2022 General Assembly Passed More Bills Increasing Incarceration Than Decreasing It, and Failed to Make Other Badly Needed Justice Changes
Kentucky has one of the worst rates of incarceration in the country. Two years after a sharp decline in the Kentucky jail population due to COVID-19 policy-driven releases, the state’s...
Corporate Tax Break Watch: 2022 General Assembly
Last year, the Kentucky General Assembly passed new business subsidies and tax breaks at a cost of well over $1 billion. Especially because the state has large revenue surpluses thanks...
Bill Provides Huge Subsidy to Investment Companies with No Requirement of Rural Investments, Jobs or Return to Communities
House Bill 308, which passed the Kentucky House and may be acted on in the Senate in the session's final days, is a giveaway to out-of-state venture capital funds with...
Pretrial Bills in the Kentucky General Assembly Are a Mixed Bag
Kentucky’s pretrial system — which determines whether a person charged with a crime waits for their day in court behind bars or at home — is arbitrary, unfair and rife...
Charter School Funding Proposal Is Inefficient, Costly and Will Harm Public Education
Legislation introduced in the Kentucky House would create a duplicative, wasteful and unaccountable system for authorizing and funding charter schools that runs counter to the characteristics of an efficient system...
State Funding for Education Has Been Stagnant for Many Years, But the 2022-2024 Budget Presents a Unique Opportunity to Begin Reinvesting
In 1991, following a Kentucky Supreme Court decision finding that Kentucky’s system of funding education was unconstitutional, the Kentucky General Assembly responded by increasing taxes to begin reinvesting in Kentucky’s...
3 Ways New Legislation Would Make Kentucky’s Unconstitutional Voucher Program Even Worse
During the 2021 Kentucky General Assembly — as public school advocates were prevented from being in the Capitol by the COVID pandemic — lawmakers passed legislation to fund private schools...
A Decade Without Raises and Weakened Benefits Have Created a State Workforce Crisis. Addressing it Adequately Should Be a Top Priority in the New Budget
Updated on Feb. 2, 2022 Fundamental to providing services like P-12 education, legal defense and child welfare is the state workforce that delivers them. Despite these workers’ critical roles, Kentucky’s...