Ky. House committee OKs transportation budget
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A $4.5 billion transportation budget that would widen interstate highways, expand airports and dredge river ports over the next two years passed a Kentucky legislative committee Tuesday and will advance to the House floor for a planned vote the next day.
The House Appropriations and Revenue Committee approved the measure 25-2 on the second day of a special legislative session that Gov. Steve Beshear called because lawmakers didn't pass the measure in the regular session that ended last week.
"It is just absolutely critical that we pass this bill," said Rep. Rick Rand, chairman of the House budget committee. "These are projects in every district and in every corner of this state. They create jobs, help with economic development, as well as the safety and maintenance of our road system."
The bill also appropriates funding for the state's single largest project: $2.6 billion for two bridges across the Ohio River in Louisville. It also includes $200 million to widen the heavily traveled Interstate 65, where numerous fatal traffic crashes have occurred in recent years. A crash on a rural stretch of the highway near Munfordville in 2010 killed 11 people, 10 of them members of a Mennonite family.
Stan Lampe, president of Kentuckians for Better Transportation, heralded the highway appropriations bill as a measure that will improve all modes of travel in the state.
Lampe said the bill includes $1 million to dredge silt that is clogging up Kentucky's river ports, $3.2 million to upgrade railroad crossings around the state, and $10 million to improve more than 50 of the state's smaller airports.
The airport funding, Lampe said, is especially crucial considering the importance of air travel to economic development.
"When economic development site selectors travel the United States, and they're looking for a community to put a new plant in, they travel by air," Lampe said. "They don't travel on Greyhound buses."
Gov. Steve Beshear called lawmakers back to Frankfort to pass legislation to appropriate money for road construction projects and to curb overdose deaths from widespread prescription drug abuse in the state. The House Judiciary Committee will tackle the prescription bill later Tuesday.
The special session will cost $60,000 a day. Logistically, Kentucky lawmakers need a minimum of five days to get legislation through both the House and Senate. If lawmakers can wrap up their work by the end of this week, the cost of the session would be some $300,000.
Budgeting has been one of the more time-consuming chores this year for Kentucky lawmakers, who passed the $19 billion state government operating budget in late March. That budget includes sharp cuts to most government agencies, leaves employees without pay raises and erases a planned cost-of-living increase from the monthly pension checks of retirees.
The measure also includes 8.4 percent cuts to most government agencies and programs because of lingering financial woes brought on by the recession. Those cuts will account for nearly $300 million in savings.
