Andy Beshear didn’t give lawmakers his budget ahead of time. They weren’t happy.
Republican leaders in the House and Senate had a common refrain when they were asked about Gov. Andy Beshear’s proposed budget Tuesday night — we don’t know.
They didn’t know how they felt about Beshear’s desire to raise the tax on cigarettes and tobacco products or his suggested tax on vaping products. They didn’t know how they felt about his proposal to freeze the pension contribution rate for quasi-governmental agencies at 67.41 percent, undercutting a bill they passed this summer in the process.
They just didn’t have the information, they said.
“Not a single legislator in the body, majority or minority, was briefed on this budget prior to it hitting the floor just a little while ago,” House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, told reporters. “So I find that to be just a little disconcerting.”
Brian Wilkerson, the spokesman for the House Democratic Caucus, confirmed that no House Democrats were briefed before the budget address. Morgan McGarvey, the Senate Minority Floor Leader, said his caucus did not receive a briefing because the governor’s office was still putting the finishing touches on the budget Monday night.
“All 138 of us got a full budget briefing last night with power point slides,” McGarvey said, referring to the budget address.
Beshear said the lack of a briefing “wasn’t intending to slight anyone” but that his office didn’t have enough time to brief the legislators.
“We knew these legislators, they’ve worked on dozens of budgets,” Beshear said. “They know generally what’s coming and they’ve got the analysts to do the work to look at them. So we know that we’re going to have a lot of discussions going forward and we look forward to having those in-depth conversations.”
The lack of a budget briefing appears to fly in the face of a message Beshear championed on the campaign trail — that unlike former Gov. Matt Bevin, he would work to foster a relationship with the legislature in order to find common ground and pass legislation. In one of his early hires for his new administration, Beshear brought in Rocky Adkins, a longtime Democratic lawmaker widely respected by both parties in the legislature, as his senior adviser.
Adkins did not respond to a request for comment.
“I don’t recall any time that the press has been briefed and we haven’t,” Senate President Robert Stivers said Tuesday night. “The first time we had any knowledge of the subject matter was an hour ago. And in a day and age in which the governor says he wants to change the tone in Frankfort, this is probably the least tone-changing incident that I’ve seen so far.
Stivers and Osborne’s inability to comment on the specifics of the bill did, however, allow the governor to control the reaction to his speech.
While Osborne was able to quickly raise issues over Beshear’s proposal to increase a tax on limited liability entities (he called it a tax on job creators) and Beshear’s decision not to provide full funding for the legislature’s school safety bill (“to present a budget that does not fully fund keeping our most precious assets safe is pretty disconcerting to me”), they were left largely unable to raise the most difficult question of the budget — how Beshear is paying for it.
Stivers was left criticizing fund transfers, the trick countless governors have used to balance the budget, saying that one time funds make for a “structurally imbalanced” budget. He did not know specifically which funds were raided.
McGarvey dismissed the idea that Beshear was trying to control the narrative by not releasing the details of the budget to anyone but the press ahead of his speech.
“The Governor of Kentucky is the most powerful elected official in the state,” McGarvey said. “He was going to control the narrative around the budget no matter what.”
Beshear’s budget is merely a suggestion for the legislators, who will craft and pass a budget of their own using the gubernatorial budget as a model. Rep. Steven Rudy, R-Paducah, and Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Taylor Mill, will each get to take a crack at a version of the budget and then they’ll meet to come up with a final product to send to Beshear.
Stivers said Tuesday the legislature intends to pass the budget before April 1, giving the legislature the ability to override any line-item vetos Beshear may make to their budget.
“Ultimately it will be our product,” Osborne said.
“Per the constitution,” Stivers added.
Herald-Leader reporter Jack Brammer contributed reporting.
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 1:39 PM.
