Cuts to most state agencies will be 4 percent

FRANKFORT — Most state agencies can expect a four percent cut to their budgets to makeup a projected shortfall for the fiscal year that began July 1, a state official told a legislative committee on Thursday.

State Budget Director Mary Lassiter and Gov. Steve Beshear

Mary Lassiter, state budget director, told the Interim Joint Committee on Appropriations and Revenue that most state agencies will see a four percent cut with the exception of the main funding formula for K-12 education, universities, the Medicaid program, mental health services, the state police and other programs such as Kentucky Educational Television.

The cuts are still preliminary. But it is estimated that the four percent cut will save the state about $80 million.

“There will be no mass lay-offs,” Lassiter told the committee on Thursday. Over the past 20 months, the state has gone through five different budget reductions. Some state agencies have seen up to 20 and 30 percent cuts over that time.

“We’re beginning to see the cumulative effects of these cuts,” Lassiter said. “It gets increasingly difficult.”

The Cabinet for Health and Family Services, which oversees such programs as adult and child protection, food stamps and the inspection of nursing homes, will only see a one percent cut, Lassiter said Thursday. Other programs that will see no reduction in their budget include vocational and other adult educational programs and environmental protection, Lassiter said.

Agencies are still working out the details on what those cuts will mean to services.

The Justice and Public Safety Cabinet — which includes the Department of Corrections, juvenile justice and other public safety agencies — will need to cut $4 million. Jennifer Brislin, a spokeswoman for the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, said Thursday that one juvenile justice facility will likely have to close to absorb some of the $4 million cut.

The juvenile justice department has not yet decided which facility will have to be closed, Brislin said. The state is still trying to determine how much it will cost to replace buildings destroyed in a riot at Northpoint Training Center last weekend and how much insurance will pay for those costs, Brislin said.

Lassiter said Thursday that the Cabinet for Health and Family services will only see a slight reduction in funding because it has already seen cuts to services. Some of the federal stimulus dollars — such as increases for food stamps — flow through that agency. Vikki Franklin, a spokeswoman for the cabinet, said the 1 percent reduction will translate to about a $4.6 million cut. The agency is still trying to determine on how those cuts will be implemented, Franklin said.

Bart Baldwin, the director of the Children’s Alliance, a nonprofit that represents agencies that treat abused and neglected children, said he was relieved that the cuts to the cabinet were minimal. Some programs in the cabinet have seen devastating cuts to services.

“A lot of these programs keep people from entering expensive programs like Medicaid,” Baldwin said.

Many vocational and career education programs have seen drastic cuts to their programs in the past 20 months, Lassiter said. In one vocational program there was 1,600 students enrolled and not enough teachers to teach the program, she said. Environmental and Public Protection has a back log in permitting, primarily water permitting. The state decided not to cut that program because it would create an even larger back log, Lassiter said.

Gov. Steve Beshear had proposed a 2.6 percent cut to most state agencies in addition to using $741 million in federal stimulus dollars to plug a projected $1 billion shortfall. During a special legislative session this summer, the House and Senate passed a budget that included some of Beshear’s proposals but also added millions of dollars in new spending.

The state budget office has been trying to determine for the past two months how deep the cuts to state agencies would be. Lassiter said the office decided on a four percent cut in part because preliminary revenue forecasts for this fiscal year show an additional $82 million shortfall on top of the originally projected $1 billion shortfall.

Beshear, in a written release, said Thursday that he tried to spare cuts to programs “most directly tied to the future of our children, investment in our economy and the health and safety of our people. ”

Beshear said the state has already cut $579 million and has about 2,000 fewer employees than it does two years ago. By implementing the cuts at the beginning of the fiscal year, agencies will have more time to spread out those reductions, Beshear said.

– Beth Musgrave