Senate Approves Ammended State Budget

• {Frankfort, Kentucky}...The Senate approved the two-year, $19.5 billion state budget late Thursday on a 32-4 vote. The proposal would eliminate the lieutenant governor's housing allowance, take away proposed scholarships for Appalachian college students, and scrap cost-of-living increases in the monthly pension benefits of some 200,000 government retirees. The proposal would eliminate a $30,000-a-year appropriation to provide a housing allowance to Lt. Governor Jerry Abramson. He receives that in lieu of living in the mansion provided for him and his wife. The Senate plan also strips a proposal to create the Kentucky Appalachian College Completion Program, which would provide grants of up to $6,000 a year to students attending a handful of private colleges in the mountain region. The cost would have been about $6.5 million over the next two years. The Senate proposal also cuts the amount of new debt in the budget to $391 million. That's $161 million less than the House had authorized and $577 million less than Governor Steve Beshear  authorized.