Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear says he is planning a roughly 3% budget cut to “many agencies” in Kentucky’s executive branch in response to a revenue shortfall in the current fiscal year.  Beshear said during a Thursday press conference that his office and the office of Democratic Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman would also cut their budgets by about 3% to help cover a projected $156 million shortfall. He also called on other state constitutional officers — all Republicans — to reduce their budgets by 3% as well. He said such reductions could be made not filling or eliminating vacant positions. “We’re going to be able to manage this shortfall and still provide necessary services to Kentuckians,” Beshear said. Beshear said many cabinets in state government are choosing to not fill vacant positions, though “absolutely necessary” vacant positions would still be kept. He said the state’s budget reduction plan does not make cuts to K-12 school systems, higher education, pension funding for state employees and educators and public safety funding including State Police and juvenile justice programs. He said the executive branch cuts would result in $77.7 million in General Fund reductions; he did not say how the remainder of the shortfall would be covered.  That budget reduction request has been met with pushback by at least two Republican officeholders, and his move to cut executive branch agencies also drew caution from GOP leadership in the Kentucky House of Representatives.  “We have seen reports of temporary cuts and strongly urge the governor to reject broad, across-the-board budget cuts and instead make deliberate, strategic decisions,” said House Speaker David Osborne in a statement through a spokesperson. “Across-board cuts may help the governor avoid difficult decisions at the state level, but they do not distinguish between effective programs and those that can absorb reductions, and they risk serious harm to essential services that individuals and communities across the state depend on.”  The Consensus Forecasting Group, a committee of economists that forecasts Kentucky government revenues, slightly upgraded its outlook earlier this week when it projected the state’s revenue shortfall for the current fiscal year would be $156 million instead of an earlier projection of $305 million.  Beshear said during the press conference his administration had not received formal plans yet to reduce budgets from Attorney General Russell Coleman, Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Shell and Secretary of State Michael Adams.  But he said State Auditor Allison Ball and State Treasurer Mark Metcalf are “refusing” to go along with the request, breaking decades-long precedent “to do their part to be fiscally responsible and to take part in the budget reduction.”  “There is nothing partisan or political about a budget reduction,” Beshear said.  Kentucky Democratic Party Chair Colman Elridge in a statement following the press conference said in part that the state constitutional officers’ “refusal breaks more than three decades of precedent and adds insult to economic injury by forcing families who are losing access to food and health care to cover the expenses of elected officials who refuse to take even a 1% funding cut.”  Republican pushback But both Ball and Metcalf took strong issue with Beshear’s characterization. Both of the Republicans stressed their offices were independent of the governor’s administration. Clay Skaggs, a spokesperson for Metcalf, in an emailed statement said the state treasurer “has not refused to participate in budget reductions and continues to act responsibly with taxpayer dollars.”  Skaggs said Metcalf on Dec. 9 had “formally acknowledged the obligations of the Budget Reduction Plan to the State Budget Director and noted that his office will manage the Treasury’s budget internally.”  “The treasurer is an independently elected constitutional officer — he answers to the people of Kentucky, not to the governor’s inflated sense of authority,” Skaggs said, mentioning the Kentucky State Treasury would “achieve the required savings.”  Both Metcalf and Ball also pointed to language in the last two-year state budget passed by the GOP-controlled legislature that appears to allow state constitutional officers to choose whether to comply with a budget reduction request by the governor.  Ball in a statement provided through her spokesperson said the governor “demanded that my office reduce its budget, even though state law says he cannot demand that of constitutional officers.”  “My office is responsible for identifying waste, fraud, and abuse, and I identified five times the amount of wasteful spending that could be cut to avoid the budget shortfall entirely,” Ball said in her statement. “If the governor would just follow our recommendations, there would be no shortfall.”   Joy Markland, Ball’s spokesperson, shared with the Lantern letters between State Budget Director John Hicks and Ball, dated from late September through November, highlighting disputes between the Beshear administration and Ball over the requested budget reduction.  One of Ball’s letters to Hicks mentions language in House Bill 6, the two-year executive branch budget bill passed by the GOP-controlled legislature in 2024, that gives constitutional officers the choice whether to follow along with a request from the governor to reduce budgets during a revenue shortfall. Ball’s letters to Hicks also mention various audits her office has conducted of the executive branch. Hicks in a letter dated Oct. 24 to Ball wrote it was his understanding “that you have said you will not participate in the General Fund budget reduction plan.”  “And as a matter of context, it may be the first time an executive branch agency has refused to do their part. The Auditor’s office appropriation has been reduced in every mid-year General Fund budget reduction plan but one over the last 25 years,” Hicks wrote.  Hicks wrote that the state auditor’s office in a submitted budget proposal had 13 vacant, full-time positions representing $1.3 million in costs “with the bulk financed from the General Fund.” He wrote a 2% General Fund cut from the auditor’s office would represent a $263,100 reduction and that many state agencies were participating in the budget reduction by not filling vacant positions.  Republican Auditor candidate Allison Ball waves to the crowd during the 143rd Fancy Farm Picnic on Saturday, Aug. 5, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony) Ball in a reply letter on Nov. 7 wrote: “We have no problem with you implementing a budget reduction plan. We simply believe that it should come in the form of targeting the executive-branch agencies that are actually responsible for creating budget problems and not those agencies that are actively working toward fixing them.”  Andrew McNeill, a deputy state budget director under former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin and president of the free-market think tank Kentucky Forum for Rights, Economics and Education, said he implemented a few budget reductions during his time with the administration.  Two big differences from back then compared to now: the state has billions of dollars in its Budget Reserve Trust Fund, colloquially known as a “rainy day” fund, to rely on; and lawmakers had passed language that allows state constitutional officers to choose whether they want to reduce budgets when requested by the governor.  During his time working with the state budget office, “we had the authority to unilaterally reduce the allotments of the constitutional officer budgets.”  “When we were doing these budget reductions, we didn’t have any choice but to impose these reductions on everybody because there wasn’t any money,” McNeill said. “That’s really the big difference here.”  The post Beshear request to help cover budget shortfall meets pushback from GOP state officials appeared first on The Lexington Times. ...read more read less