Kentucky Must Do More to Increase Flood Resilience
The catastrophic flooding that recently hit southeastern Kentucky resulted in the death of 39 people, devastated communities and destroyed many...
Research
Most Kentucky Teachers and School Staff Start Year Without Meaningful Raises
Stagnant salaries are contributing to a growing teacher shortage in Kentucky and across the nation, as the school year begins in many areas of the state. An inadequate number of...
What the New Climate and Health Legislation Will Mean for Kentucky
President Biden on Tuesday signed new legislation that takes critical steps toward addressing the climate crisis, improves access to affordable health care, creates jobs in clean energy and puts downward...
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 defenders, social workers and all other public service positions mean...
Temporary Surplus Should Not Trigger Permanent Tax Cuts that Threaten Future Budgets
Driven by a strong economic recovery and by high inflation, the state ended the year with a General Fund surplus of $1.034 billion more than projected. These extra dollars are...
The Economic Implications of an Abortion Ban in Kentucky
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and ended federal protections for abortion access. The “trigger law” passed by the Kentucky legislature in 2019 makes nearly all abortion...
What Kentuckians Say About Student Loan Cancellation
Nearly one in five Kentucky adults has federal student loan debt. For these 616,000 Kentuckians and our state as a whole, debt cancellation, as is currently being considered by the...
Kentucky Will Start Providing 10,000 More New Mothers with a Year of Postpartum Medicaid Coverage
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) just approved a plan to allow Kentuckians who have recently given birth and are covered by Medicaid to keep their coverage for...
Lost SNAP Benefits Due to SJR 150 Likely Growing to at Least $350 Million
Recent news that the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) will extend the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) past July means Kentuckians with Medicaid will continue to have...
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...