Beshear vetoes raises for legislators, himself in state budget
Included in the Republican-led legislature’s budget bill is a much-heralded 8% raise for all state employees.
Gov. Andy Beshear lauded that raise, which is steeper than what he first proposed in January. However, he vetoed a mirror 8% raise for legislators and executive branch officers like himself.
Beshear said that average overall compensation for legislators, as reported in a Herald-Leader story from last month, has grown in recent years to around $60,000. During the last 60-day budget session in 2020, that figure exceeded $65,000.
The governor pointed out that the total figure is around twice what the average Kentuckian makes.
The line-item veto in the Executive Branch budget presented under House Bill 1, as well as mirror language in the Legislative Branch budget, was just one of several unveiled at a Beshear press conference on Monday.
The governor went through the budget highlighting items he appreciated – infrastructure investments, state worker raises, economic development and more – while focusing his displeasure on one major item.
Education, Beshear said, was the greatest missed opportunity in the budget.
“The budget certainly doesn’t meet the moment when it comes to K-12 education,” Beshear said.
Among Beshear’s disappointments: $680 million fewer dollars to the state education allocation formula known as SEEK than his proposed budget, no mandated teacher raises, and no funding for universal pre-K.
“It fails to fund a no brainer, universal pre-K, that not only would make every Kentucky child kindergarten-ready, but is the single fastest thing we can do to put people back into the workforce,” Beshear said. “We can’t talk about putting people back into the workforce, we can’t make cuts into our safety net claiming it’s going to get people back to work, and then not do the simplest, most effective thing: universal pre-K.”
Education has been an animating force in Kentucky politics, with teachers successfully marching the Capitol en masse to protest budget cuts in 2018. A year later, education played a pivotal role in Beshear’s defeat of former Gov. Matt Bevin.
Senate Republican leadership has already indicated that they plan to override the vast majority of Beshear’s vetoes. With the exception of a few close House votes on notable bills – one that gives elected county leaders the authority to take control of their local libraries and another that creates a funding mechanism for public charter schools – both Republican-dominated chambers of the legislature have the numbers to easily override the governor’s vetoes.
Last week, Beshear vetoed priority GOP bills on abortion, cutting the state’s personal income tax, restricting public assistance, slashing unemployment benefits, and making it harder to get an abortion in the state.
During the press conference, Republican Party of Kentucky spokesperson Sean Southard released a statement characterizing the governor as unengaged in the budget drafting process and unwilling to work across the aisle with legislative leaders.
“The Governor spent the entire legislative session on the sidelines and refused to engage with the General Assembly in any meaningful way,” Southard wrote. “He never walked down the hall to speak with House or Senate leadership. Instead, he chided them from the briefing room.”
When asked about the statement on Monday, Beshear had a couple words in response: “not true.”
He pointed out that the House jumped the gun on the governor’s office in presenting a budget first, a privilege normally conferred to the governor.
“We had meetings on broadband, we had meetings on water and sewer,” Beshear said. “We met with Senate leadership for four or five sessions over things in our budget and why they needed to be there. I get politics, but it’s just not true.”
Beshear criticized two other omissions from the budget: funding 90 more positions in the beleagured Office of Unemployment Insurance, which he said will only get more overworked if his veto on a bill cutting those benefits gets overriden; and $400 million in “hero pay” for the state’s essential workers.
Beshear pointed to $200 million allocated for economic site development, which was not present in the House’s first version of the budget, as a provision that’s part of “a lot to like” in the budget. $10 million for the expansion of Louisville’s Waterfront Park in the predominantly Black West End was another item he praised.
This story was originally published April 11, 2022 at 6:21 PM.