The 2009-10 fiscal year budget for the state of Kentucky will not take effect until July 1, but already Gov. Steve Beshear is sounding the alarm: If you think the $456 million revenue shortfall for the current fiscal year’s budget was bad, just wait until next year.
Based on current revenue projections, the budget shortfall for the next fiscal year will range between $818 million and $1.1 billion, the governor warned. That would require deep cuts in state spending, increased taxes, or a combination of the two.
The projected shortfall is not official. The independent, nonpartisan group of experts that make revenue predictions has yet to meet. Until it does, state leaders will not know exactly how much spending will need to be cut and revenue increased to eliminate the shortfall.
And state leaders have no choice but to erase any revenue shortfall. The Kentucky Constitution prohibits the state from deficit spending. So do the constitutions of most states. That’s why Kentucky is hardly alone in it money woes.
The group of experts predicted that $456 million shortfall for this fiscal year soon after the year began. Beshear ordered an immediate reduction in spending for most state agencies, developed a plan for eliminating the shortfall and conducted a series of town meetings throughout the state to gain support for his proposals.
The 2009 General Assembly adopted a modified version of the governor’s plan, doubled the tax on cigarettes and added the sales tax to packaged beer and alcohol sales to eliminate the shortfall.
But as they did so, legislative leaders and the governor emphasized that the “fix” was only temporary. Sure enough, the shortfall for the coming fiscal year could be double what it was for this fiscal year — and that’s with the added revenue from higher cigarette and alcohol taxes. The legislature’s plan to eliminate the shortfall also eliminated another option used to eliminate deficits. It took so much from the state’s “rainy day fund” that to make further raids on the fund designed to meet unexpected emergencies would be irresponsible and extremely risky.
Beshear already has said he likely will call a special session of the General Assembly later this year to deal with the shortfall, but Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, said the legislature should give Beshear the authority to manage the shortfall before seeking legislative help.
What a legislative cop out that would be. If the General Assembly were to give the governor the authority to balance the budget, it would force Beshear — and Beshear alone — to make the unpopular cuts to balance spending with revenue. Legislators then could blame the governor for the cuts, saying they had nothing to do with them.
However, the budget for the coming fiscal year was approved by the 2008 General Assembly as part of the state’s two-year budget. That budget was based on revenue projections made by legislators. Mostly because of the worldwide recession, revenues are falling far short of projections.
The members of the General Assembly helped create the problem. It is their responsibility to be part of the solution. If legislators do not want to increase taxes, they must approve the cuts in the budget they approved necessary to balance it. Shifting that responsibility to the governor would be to shirk their duties.
Editorials
Another shortfall — 05/07/09
Legislators should not assign Beshear task of erasing deficit
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Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.
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Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.
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'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.
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Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.
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Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.
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Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.
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Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.
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Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.
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Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.
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Charles Chattin
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