WAVE 3 TV Louisville, KY | Governor warns of $1B+ budget shortfall in upcoming years

Governor warns of $1B+ budget shortfall in upcoming years

By Janelle MacDonald - bio | email
Posted by Charles Gazaway - email

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) – Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear is continuing his tour of the state warning of continued hard times to come.

Beshear laid out some tough choices ahead for local leaders around the state who were in Louisville for the Kentucky Association of Counties annual conference.

The men and women of KACo are used to dealing with budget headaches like the one Beshear has on his hands - a $161 million shortfall in the state's budget for the current fiscal year.

Beshear said as he begins to prepare his budget proposal for the next two years, things are looking worse and worse. According to Beshear, if we stay at current spending levels, it looks like Kentucky would be about $1.3 billion short each of the next two years.

“We're going to continue to work hard to try to maintain those priorities, education, healthcare, economic development, public safety but folks, these next two years, it's going to be extremely difficult to do so,” said Beshear.

Beshear is not going into specifics yet, saying he needs final projections from the Consensus Forecasting Group to do that. Those projections won't come until December. He does say, however, no matter what the shortfall, he does not anticipate and wouldn't support a broad based increase in taxes.

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