Frankfort – After 8 days, the General Assembly passed bills addressing the budget shortfall, an economic incentive package, and mega-transportation projects between Indiana and Kentucky. As a member of the Transportation Committee, I was an active participant in the discussions.

House Bill 4, the budget bill, largely follows the original proposal put forth by Governor Beshear and adds language on certain economic development projects.

While most executive branch agencies would be cut by 2.6 percent, K-12 SEEK funding, colleges and universities, and local jail funding will be kept constant. The state’s Medicaid program will also be fully funded, while the governor’s proposal to require state employees to forgo some holiday pay was removed.

The plan also increases funding to county attorneys, Commonwealth’s Attorneys, and public defenders, whose expenses are largely personnel-driven. County PVAs, another office whose spending goes mostly to salaries, are forbidden from being cut. These expenditures insure the vital operations of our justice system and revenue collections.

Finally, the bill approves the use of a 1,550 acre site in Hardin County for a proposed advanced battery plant.

House Bill 3 dealt with creating a funding mechanism for mega-transportation projects between Indiana and Kentucky and various economic incentives, tax breaks, and tourism provisi ons. The bill also included a motor vehicle use tax incentive that would reduce new car tax calculations to consider only the difference between a new car purchase and the owner’s trade-in, loan support for certain economic incentive projects, and an extension of tourism development incentives.

Other provisions in the bill include incentives for reinvestment in existing manufacturing facilities, streamlining of business incentives while creating new jobs, increasing the cap from $3 million to $5 million for historic preservation projects, incentives to draw film and Broadway play productions to the Commonwealth, incentives to attract a NASCAR Sprint Cup race to Kentucky Speedway and the Breeders’ Cup to Churchill Downs, small business tax credits and income tax incentives for railroad improvement and transport, and a tax credit of up to $5,000 for new home buyers, capped at $25 million.

I am pleased to report that after several years of effort, we were able to get the House on board with tax relief for military families. Pay for active military duty will now be free from state income tax — a small sum in the overall state budget, but a well-earned benefit to military families that are already sacrificing so much for our freedom and well-being.

The one item left unresolved is a plan to help our horse industry. We can all agree that we must protect Kentucky’s signature industry, but the debate over how to do that remains ongoing. Contrary to Governor Beshear’s promise to allow the people to decide, he attempted to legalize slot machines by pushing a bill through the House in a Special Session that was supposed to be about a budget “crisis.” The bill offered would have resulted in over 10,000 slot machines placed at race tracks throughout the state. The economic projections required new gambling at a rate 5 times greater than all current forms of legal gaming combined (lottery and horse racing). Because of the negative consequences, I remain strongly opposed to expanded gambling. Perhaps now we can focus the discussion on protecting our horse industry by increasing purses and breeder's incentives through practical solutions that are fair, transparent and democratic.

Overall, we have had a productive special session and we will now return to the regular schedule of interim committee meetings in Frankfort as we prepare for the issues coming up in the 2010 General Assembly Session slated to begin in January.

Sincerely,
David Givens
State Senator
District 9