“The legislature has reached agreement on a budget that rightly increases funding for pension liabilities and has a few bright spots like funding for scholarship programs. But taken as a whole the budget makes harmful cuts to many of the investments that create thriving communities. Because lawmakers again chose frozen funding levels and cuts over closing holes in our eroding revenue stream, the result is another budget that will weaken systems we need to prosper,” Jason Bailey, executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, said. “We’ll face the same or worse budget challenges two years from now unless we put cleaning up the tax code on the agenda moving forward. That’s the way we will again see budgets that can help Kentucky fulfill its promise, rather than ones that hinder our progress.”
