State agencies asked to plan for deeper budget cuts
By Beth Musgrave and Jim Warren
Gov. Steve Beshear
FRANKFORT — State agencies have been asked to prepare worst-case-scenario budgets for the current fiscal year in order to close a projected $456 million General Fund shortfall.
Gov. Steve Beshear has asked lawmakers to solve the shortfall with a combination of cuts, furloughs and a 70-cent-per-pack cigarette tax increase, but lawmakers remain reticent to raise taxes.
House and Senate leaders now want to know how state agencies would absorb the entire $456 million shortfall if the state had no new revenue, Beshear said Monday.
By law, the state has to balance its budget. When the state’s revenues do not meet projections, the legislature must either cut funding or find additional money through taxes or fees.
“We are working with the legislature on looking at different scenarios to solve this budget crisis,” Beshear said.
Education Department spokeswoman Lisa Gross said Monday afternoon that the new reductions could translate to a 6.7 percent cut in her agency.
“Right now, we’re just trying to pull together some input from school superintendents and go back and look at the information we’ve gathered already,” Gross said.
Beshear proposed a 4 percent reduction in most state agency budgets in December, but recommended sparing the main funding formula for local school districts and cutting 2 percent from other education programs.
Acting State Budget Director John Hicks said state agencies are expected to turn in their revised budget plans by Tuesday.
Hicks stressed that the revised budget cuts are only one scenario that the legislature has asked to see.
“It will be reviewed by the governor, the House and the Senate,” Hicks said.
He said there was no set percentage that state agencies were told to cut. Medicaid, which already has a ballooning shortfall, was the one area exempt from additional cuts, Hicks said.
The cuts have already hampered some state agencies and have resulted in some lawsuits.
Monday, several juvenile justice employees filed grievances because they have been told that they must pay for their own uniforms because of state budget cuts. Many state workers are already struggling, said officials with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents juvenile justice employees.
Ben Burris, a juvenile justice employee in Columbia, said the state can’t cut any more from its already depleted budget. Burris is one of the juvenile justice workers who filed a grievance with the state. The additional charge for uniforms would affect 1,300 employees.
“Some employees have gotten second jobs due to our low pay and now we’re facing the furloughs and the uniform costs,” Burris said in a release. “When is enough going to be enough?”
For local school superintendents, it’s too early to say how deeper cuts, especially to the main funding formula, called Support Education Excellence in Kentucky (SEEK), would change what goes on in the classroom.
“It’s difficult for me to definitively say how any of these state budget scenarios would play out in Fayette County, because there are still so many unknowns,” said Stu Silberman, Fayette County Schools superintendent. “Based on the current information we have from the Kentucky Department of Education, we might be looking at a $5 million to $6 million adjustment to this year’s budget.
“We would likely cover that out of our contingency fund, but eventually, if mandated expenses continue to go up, revenues continue to go down, and these cuts continue to hit local school districts, the impact is going to be on our kids.”
Filed Under: Featured
About the Author: John Stamper is the accountability editor for the Lexington Herald-Leader. A native of Monticello, Ky., he has been with the Herald-Leader in a variety of roles since graduating from Western Kentucky University in 2000. Reach him at jstamper@herald-leader.com
While I understand the situation we are currently in, I have one large issue that has gone largely untouched during this budget crisis. Our state legislators and our governor are arguing back and forth about how to balance the budget, focusing solely on the shortsided solutions being proposed in this article and others. When are we going to hold our legislators and other elected officials accountable for developing an economic stimulus plan for our great Commonwealth? When will they stop looking for ways to cut our states budgets and instead look for incentives to invigorate our local economy? We need jobs, good paying jobs that will feed our economy! What are they doing to recruit the few companies who are expanding? This is the time in our national downturned economy to make significant gains for Kentucky…we should be actively recruiting companies to relocate in Kentucky, both foreign and domestic companies. I haven’t heard one elected official look at the big picture for the long run…they are all only concerned with the immediate…and trust, we will lose if we only focus on the now and ignore the future. We need stronger leadership now than a group of mostly good ole’ boys trying to put a band-aid on our ills. Would someone please step up?
Governor, clean out the corrupt holdovers from the previous administration. The Office of Mine Safety and Licensing is under control of individuals that are spending money and hiring like there is no end. Get these people under control before they sink you. Check it out.
Good, shut the government down. All of it.
I’m a single parent and work hard daily for the state – without a decent raise in years. I struggle. Now I may not make my mortgage over this fiscal crisis and be furloughed? (I LIVE CHECK TO CHECK! Its not poor planning either.) HELP LEGISLATORS!!! Why am I furloughed when the state retirees are untouchabled? How about the “double dippers” who already have a pension? Non-merits make way more than I do. Please don’t put my kids and I in more crisis, over the fiscal state crisis. Raise taxes or hike the cigarette tax. These are real people’s lives here.
To hell with raising taxes.
Get some Linux guys to replace the Microsoft software that is installed on 10′s of thousands of state computers. It would save millions each year in licensing fees. There is plenty of open source software that will do the same thing as M$ software for 0 dollars.
Strugglingstate worker,
We also didn’t hardly get any raises the last 8 years, usually your highest earning years. When we did they were of the $200 variety. That caused my expected monthly retirement to drop by hundreds of dollars per month. We worked our 30 years or more to earn our time in the sun
How do propose going after retirees? We paid into the system and it is NOT funded by general fund dollars, so whats the point?
They have already gone after us too. No longer do we get COLA (cost of living adjustments), it maxes out at 1.5%.
Double dippers do not earn a second retirement any more. What the state gains in experience, it also gains in not having to pay the employee portion of retirement costs.
Thunderstorm:
With all due respect, don’t even compare state employee raises to retiree raises. State employees have not received the annual cost of living for at least 5 years, but yet retirees have received this, which has averaged 3-4 percent each year. It should be the same for both state employees and retirees.
…again, NO mention of cuts to the $425 million PRISON budget! duh, hello? Until we value EDUCATION more than INCARCERATION, our PROBLEMS will never be solved…Wake-up SHEEPLE! COMMONSENSE isn’t COMMON!
Nice to see misinformation being spread.
Under the Fletcher administration workers making under $60,000 a year got bigger raises than those making above that amount.
Under Beshear, the exact opposite. Those with higher incomes got bigger raises than the lower income folks.
Somehow I don’t think we’d have had this budget “crisis” if Fletcher had been re-elected. It’s a smokescreen for casino gambling and higher taxes.
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