FRANKFORT, Ky. — Lawmakers gathered in Frankfort for day one of their 60-day legislative session Tuesday. One of the biggest priorities this session is approving the state’s budget, and one group made sure from the first day what it believes are issues most important to Kentuckians in need of funding.

What You Need To Know

  • Kentucky Together is a coalition of education, labor and health organizations that hopes to see the rainy-day fund tapped into

  • The rainy-day fund sits at $3.7 billion and will reach nearly $5 billion by the end of the budget

  • Kentucky Together wants to see rainy day funds diverted to affordable housing, education and food insecurity issues 

Kentucky Together calls itself a non-partisan coalition of public service organizations who say they want a budget that delivers for Kentuckians.

"Years of inadequate budgets that fail to prioritize the people of Kentucky have left the Commonwealth with many unmet needs," said Natalie Cunningham, outreach director at KY Policy.

Some of those needs, according to the coalition, are teacher raises, food access and affordable housing.

“Even before tornadoes and floods, Kentucky suffered a shortage of almost 79,000 affordable housing units, and I know that is an underestimation because those calculations don’t take into account tenants who have debt or complex needs they need to pay for," Cunningham said.

Andrea Zang of Kentucky Tenants in Lexington said she wants to see money from the rainy-day fund used to fund the state’s rural housing trust fund or affordable housing trust fund.

“The rent is too damn high; rent is being raised on units that have mold and where there’s no AC," Zang said.

The state currently has $3.7 billion set aside in the rainy-day fund. Over the next two years, that number will only grow.

“More experts agree that a rainy-day fund should be around 15% of a state’s budget," Cunningham said. "Kentucky’s rainy-day fund is expected to be 32% before the next two-year budget begins." 

Kentucky Together argues legislators refuse to tap into the rainy-day fund to reduce and eventually cut the state income tax. But some Republicans have said the surplus should be on hand for one-time costs only while being open to increased funding of education, housing and health care.

“You don’t want to use one-time dollars; you want to use recurring dollars to fund reoccurring expenses," said Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester. "When you say is there support to do something like that ... but not from one-time dollars, that’s a terrible policy."

Kentucky Together said it knows not all its demands can be met immediately, but it hopes to see progress when the state has funds on hand.

Speaker of the House David Osborne, R-Prospect, told reporters he expects to present the House’s version of the budget sometime next week.

Related Stories