Nuclear energy, economic development, veterinarian education, data privacy and the state’s two-year spending plan are among the priorities listed by western Kentucky lawmakers during a Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce event Tuesday.
Republican Rep. Steven Rudy, of Paducah, is the Majority Floor Leader in the Kentucky House. He said the focus of the upcoming General Assembly will be on the state’s biennial state budget.
“This session should be and will be budget, budget, budget, budget, budget, budget and then a few other things,” Rudy said. “We will [also] budget to hit the next trigger to be able to, systematically over the next decade, hopefully, eliminate the personal income tax here in Kentucky.”
Rudy said he hopes Kentucky taxpayers will see a reduction in their state income taxes by as soon as 2026. The Majority Floor Leader also said that he expects “one-time money” to be the theme of this year’s budget appropriations.
“Because we have about $2 billion above what we would normally anticipate for a year, you will see a continuation budget that comes out of the House with necessary modifications that will spend some of that one-time money on some targeted one-time expenses, not recurring expenses,” Rudy said. “Two billion dollars extra, we got about $28 billion worth of ask for that $2 billion. We will try to prioritize and make a good return on investment for the taxpayers of Kentucky.”
Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear unveiled his proposed budget plan Monday in a video aired on KET, hitting on appropriations he pitched during his successful campaign for reelection earlier this year in areas like education, public safety and infrastructure. The dominant Republican supermajority in both chambers of the state legislature will have the final say on what’s included in the final budget passed into law in the 2024 session.
Rudy also said he hopes legislation addressing data privacy – similar to laws passed in Virginia, Tennessee and Indiana in recent years – can be passed in Kentucky.
The House Majority Floor Leader expects upwards of 2,000 bills to come before the legislature in some capacity this session, and his goal is to “pass as few of those as possible.”
“The ones that we do pass should be meaningful and impactful and change the trajectory of Kentucky,” he said.
State Sen. Danny Carroll, a Republican from Benton, detailed his work on the Kentucky Nuclear Development Working Group this year, its recently published report and his desire for Kentucky to “be at the front of the nuclear industry.”
“We're drafting legislation now to establish the nuclear authority within the Commonwealth. They will be responsible for first educating the state [and] being a clearinghouse for energy and research in the nuclear industry,” Carroll said. “We're not just looking to bring nuclear reactors to our Commonwealth, it's industry related to that.”
Carroll has particularly high hopes for his home district – which contains the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in West Paducah. The facility was constructed in 1952 to enrich uranium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program and later for nuclear fuel for commercial power plants until it closed in 2013.
The Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce is exploring opportunities for the site’s reindustrialization through the use of a $2 million grant acquired earlier this year.
“The whole idea at this point in Kentucky is just to be ready when the opportunities do come. They are going to come and they're going to come faster than you think they are,” Carroll said. “Our area’s gonna be at the front of that in our Commonwealth. I really hope that, when things do start happening, we're gonna get opportunities here, because this community is ready for those opportunities.”
Republican State Rep. Chris Freeland, of Benton, and Rep. Richard Heath, a Republican from Mayfield, both highlighted the potential upside to a law passed last year making it easier for the state to provide a match on federal funding for projects. The law provides for projects with 80% of their cost funded by the federal government to receive a 20% match from the state. The legislature must now decide how much money goes in the pot for the state’s matches.
“We want to pull down as many federal dollars as we can and conserve our state dollars because there are so many needs,” Heath said.
Heath said his top priority this year is to aid in the establishment of a veterinary medicine school at Murray State University.
The Louisville Courier-Journal reports that there were just under 1,200 veterinarians employed and working in Kentucky in May 2022. As of November 2022, less than 60 of those vets offered full-time service to large animals like cattle, sheep, goats and pigs.
The Republican chair of the State House Agriculture committee said that the institution could help alleviate that shortage.
“I think it's way past due,” Heath said. “I think now's the time. And we need to strike while the iron is hot.”
If established, Murray State’s would be the first veterinary school in Kentucky. MSU’s board of regents created a task force to explore the issue earlier this year and heard updates during a December meeting.
Heath also highlighted the potential revisitation of a bill that would prohibit the sale of Kentucky farmland to individuals, groups and companies based in countries that are federally prohibited from buying American arms.
“We don't want to hurt economic development. But at the same time, we want to protect our safety,” he said. “We have army bases here in Kentucky, and we don't want these countries purchasing land close enough to those army bases that they could spy on us, like they've tried to do in some other states.”
Despite the budget battles to come, Paducah-based Republican State Rep. Randy Bridges told people to prepare for a quiet session.
“It's gonna be a slow, boring session,” he said. “Where does it go from there? I don't know, but I want to be prepared. I'm gonna put my seatbelt on and hold on.”
The 60-day Kentucky General Assembly legislative session will begin on Jan. 2, 2024, and run through mid-April.
