2016 Kentucky Budget Primer
The Budget of the Commonwealth is a financial plan, enacted every two years by Kentucky’s General Assembly, that maps out our...
Budget & Tax
Diversion of Lottery Funds Undermines College Affordability
According to law, 55 percent of lottery profits are supposed to pay for need-based scholarships (after $3 million is given to literacy programs). For years, though, millions of scholarship dollars...
Investing in Kentucky’s Future: A Preview of the 2016-2018 Kentucky State Budget
A comprehensive preview of the upcoming two-year Kentucky state budget confirms both a massive funding gap facing the state for the next two years and a need for reinvestment in...
Eastern Kentucky, Veterans Affairs Workers Benefiting From Raised Minimum Wage for State Workers
More than 800 Kentucky workers have benefited across the Commonwealth because of the executive order raising the minimum wage for state workers and contractors signed last summer by outgoing Gov....
Raising Minimum Wage Would Reduce Spending on Medicaid
Those advocating to scale back Kentucky’s highly-successful Medicaid expansion cite a concern about its cost to the state. One way to help buffer costs would be to raise the minimum...
Shutting Down Kynect Would Take Money From Other Important Priorities
According to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, it will cost at least $23 million to dismantle Kynect, the state's insurance marketplace. Using those funds to end the program...
New Report Shows Kentucky Child Care Assistance Continues to Fall Short
Kentucky’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) has one of the lowest income eligibility thresholds and has among the highest co-pays for parents among state child care subsidy programs, according to...
Even Big Cuts to New Teachers’ Pensions Would Do Little to Address System’s Funding Challenge
Even if the state were to massively cut pension benefits for new teachers, it wouldn’t result in meaningful savings to the teachers’ retirement system over the 30 year period needed...
Reinstating Kentucky’s Tax on Extreme Wealth a Part of Making State Taxes Fair and Adequate
To view this brief in PDF form, click here. Kentucky loses an estimated $25 million a year because state lawmakers haven’t yet taken steps to recoup lost revenue from federal...
The Low-Income Kentucky Workers Who Would be Harmed by a Federal Tax Credit Cut
The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and refundable Child Tax Credit (CTC) help hundreds of thousands of low-income working Kentuckians make ends meet. These tax credits have been shown...