Committee Approves Budget Bills

{Frankfort, Kentucky}...The House Appropriations and Revenue Committee approved the two-year, $19.5 billion executive branch budget plan on Tuesday by a 26-2 vote. The budget proposal would eliminate cost-of-living increases for state and local government retirees. Some 200,000 retirees had been slated to receive 1.5 percent increases. The committee largely accepted cuts originally proposed in January by Governor Steve Beshear: 8.4 percent to most state agencies and 6.4 percent to state universities. The committee also accepted Besher’s proposal to hold base funding for public schools at the current year level through each of the next two years. It eliminated requests by state universities to use their own revenues to finance about $450 million in bonds for projects, and it cut by half the $15 million increase Beshear had proposed for preschool in 2013-14. The House panel also passed a proposed legislative branch budget by a 28-1 vote and a judicial branch budget by 25-3. All three proposed budgets included spending cuts of more than 8 percent. They now go to the full House for consideration, possibly as early as Wednesday.