Kentucky state government faces a budget shortfall.

And today, Governor Andy Beshear announced his plan to cut spending to balance the budget.

And he talked about the programs he wants spared from the budget ax.

The governor says the consensus forecast and group is predicting a budget shortfall of $156 million this fiscal year, which is less than the earlier prediction of 305 million.

It's about 1% of the overall $16 billion spending plan.

Today, he talked about his plan to deal with the deficit.

The primary portion of my plan for the executive branch is to reduce general fund appropriations by $77.7 million for many agencies.

This is a 3% reduction to their enacted budget.

Most agencies are meeting this reduction through what we call vacancy credits.

These are jobs that were budgeted for that.

There are dollars in the budget for, but are not currently filled.

And what the cabinets are opting to do is not filling them through the end of the year, but they've gone through and made sure that any that are absolutely necessary.

That funding is still there for while saying we can wait until the next budget, or we can operate without some of these jobs.

So we're going to be able to manage this shortfall and still provide necessary services to Kentuckians on priorities that we are protecting and that people will see include funding for our K through 12 systems.

There are no cuts there.

The post-secondary education institutions no cuts their Medicaid, no cuts their pension funding for educators and state employees.

No cuts there.

Public safety, including state police and juvenile justice.

There are also, no cuts.

Now I want to make sure that people know that I am personally, taking part in this budget reduction plan.

When I was A.G.

and there was a needed budget reduction under the law, I always participated as governor.

My office and the lieutenant governor's office are also taking the 3% reduction.

According to the governor, the state auditor's office and state Treasurer's office say they will not cut their spending by 3%.

He says he has not heard from the other state constitutional officers.