FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — With time running short, lawmakers still haven't come to terms on a six-year, $10.6 billion proposal to fund road and bridge projects across Kentucky.
State Rep. Sannie Overly, D-Paris, said Monday that House and Senate lawmakers have been working to try to mesh competing Road Fund budget proposals.
"We're still pretty far apart," she said Monday. "Overall, the plan has to balance, and right now it's not balanced. If you try to accommodate the House priorities and the Senate priorities, it's just simply out of balance, and so something has to give, something has to be cut someplace. And I don't know, as we sit here right now, where that will be."
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Lawmakers are scheduled to reconvene Thursday for the final day of this year's legislative session. That means negotiators have only two more days to work out differences in the competing proposals offered by the Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-led Senate.
Overly, the leading negotiator for the Democrats, said Monday that lawmakers also haven't reached accord on $3.5 billion worth of road construction projects for the next two years.
The House and Senate have agreed on funding for the state's single largest project, $2.6 billion for two bridges across the Ohio River in Louisville. Yet to be decided are the hundreds of relatively small road and bridge projects that lawmakers are pushing for in their local communities.
Budgeting has been one of the more time-consuming chores this year for Kentucky lawmakers, who last month passed a $19 billion state government operating budget.
A slow economic rebound led to a lean state budget that forces sharp cuts on most government agencies, leaves employees without pay raises again, and erases a planned cost-of-living increase from the monthly pension checks of retirees.
The measure calls for 8.4 percent cuts to most government agencies and programs because of lingering financial woes brought on by the recession. Those cuts will account for nearly $300 million in savings.
Under the budget, more than 30,000 government workers will go without pay raises and some 200,000 retirees won't get cost-of-living increases in their monthly pension checks.
The latest budget will be especially difficult for agencies that have already cut spending by more than 30 percent over the past four years.
Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear has line-item veto power, but he hasn't said whether there are provisions he intends to strike.
Lawmakers scraped up funding for some high priority projects, including $2.5 million to begin design work on a proposed renovation of Rupp Arena, home of the University of Kentucky basketball team. They also agreed to pony up $3.5 million for improvements at the Kentucky Horse Park north of Lexington.
Lawmakers also passed Beshear's tax amnesty plan that he believes could collect a badly needed $55 million over the next two years. It would be the state's first offer of tax amnesty in a decade, and would forgive some penalties if people come forward and pay their taxes.
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