House Bill 1 Proposes Costly and Unworkable Barriers to Well-Being
House Bill 1 (HB 1) would make sweeping changes to the way we provide medical, food and income assistance to...
Budget & Tax
Understanding the Quasi Pension Funding Issue
Over the last few days, attention has turned to whether Governor Beshear's budget underfunds the main state worker pension system, the Kentucky Employees Retirement System (KERS) non-hazardous plan, in the...
Governor’s Budget Makes Modest Increases to Education Funding and Selected Other Areas, Raises Small Amount of New Revenue
Governor Beshear’s budget proposal to the General Assembly contains small increases in spending for P-12 education and provides funding for other targeted areas including relief for quasi-governmental organizations facing spiking...
Tax Cuts Causing the Worst Revenue Projections Since Consensus Forecasting Began
Next week, Governor Beshear will present his state budget proposal to the General Assembly and the legislature will begin crafting a new budget for the next two years. Due in...
Child Care Assistance Is a Great Investment for Kentucky, but Remains Inadequate
The most active and critical years for children’s physical, cognitive and social development are ages zero to three, so high-quality early child care settings are central to preparing the commonwealth’s...
Our Commonwealth: A Primer on the Kentucky State Budget
Click here for: A Primer on the Kentucky State Budget (PDF). Every two years, the Kentucky General Assembly passes a budget in the form of four separate bills for the...
Harsh Measure Threatens Kentucky’s Families and Finances
A new harmful and costly immigration proposal – Senate Bill 1 (SB 1) – would create an impractical mandate for most public agencies in Kentucky to participate in federal immigration...
What Does Kentucky Value? A Preview of the 2020-2022 Budget of the Commonwealth
PDF of the full report. Kentucky’s state budget is the primary policy document of the commonwealth, establishing how the state lives out shared values. Through investments ranging from schools to...
What the Finally-Released Actuarial Analysis Tells Us About So-Called Pension Reform
Today Governor Beshear released the actuarial analysis of the 2017 "Keeping the Promise" pension proposal that had been suppressed for the last two years. As expected and as we noted...
Less to Sweep from Health Fund in Next Budget
A fund for employees' health insurance that Kentucky has drained of increasingly large amounts of money in order to balance the state budget is very unlikely to be able to...