Kentucky edition for Wednesday, January 7th.

I'm Laura Rogers.

Thank you for joining us.

Governor Andy Beshear just wrapped up his 2026 state of the Commonwealth and Budget address.

You saw it live right here on KET and his roughly 40 minute speech, the Democratic governor talked about creating new jobs, the state's housing challenges, health care issues and education.

And for more on the governor's address, let's go to Renee.

Shaw, who is here in our studio with her guest, Renee.

>> Yeah.

Thank you.

Laura, a pleasure to be with you.

We hope you stayed with us since 530, when the governor made his seventh state of the Commonwealth and final budget address and quote his words in this job.

And we're glad to have Amy Wickliffe, who is a Republican strategist with she's also a partner with McCarthy Strategic Solutions and Sherman Brown, who's also with that same firm and is a Democratic strategist.

And they are often here to help us break down what the governor says and dissect what others may be saying as well.

So we just heard the governor wrap up, and he made the point about, as we mentioned earlier, about this being his last budget address.

For now, if there was any kind of confusion about perhaps political ambitions beyond this job that might have been put to rest tonight.

>> That's exactly right.

I think this look, this was a big moment for the governor.

I think that I'm sure he's going to hope that some of the pieces of this speech are going to be picked up on the national scale and the national media to talk about Kentucky.

It's no surprise to me.

You know, I think every speech we hear from the governor continues to kind of set the stage for a future run for whatever that might be for him.

So, yeah.

So, you know, I think it's more of was it a state of the Commonwealth or a state of the campaign?

I think it was probably a little bit of both tonight.

>> Right.

And what are the main themes that he really hit on tonight?

>> Sherman Brown as I said, you know, when we were wrapping up there, I think the the positivity, unity promise, and he really took the opportunity to talk just about our politics, just toning down the rhetoric, finding compromise, finding things that we can all get around and get along on.

I really thought that was one of the things I was kind of looking for where that is.

It was to the point of a national.

It could have been a very easy thing.

It's one thing to say and be critical of policies that that the that are coming from the federal government, which is what he did.

But he didn't really there was not it was not an attack.

It was not there was not that it was a difference stating that showing where you differ and what we're going to do here as far as specifically on health care, what we're going to have to do to address the the shortcomings of where the money is coming from.

But really.

>> He did rename the big ugly bill.

>> He did and noted some federal failures.

Right?

So I would say, yeah, he took his shots at the which I would expect him to do.

Right.

Especially if you're looking at running for president or VP or whatever that might be.

You're going to take some shots at this current and in his role as the chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

Right.

I think he's trying.

>> To be under underscored.

Right.

He's going to be in that prime position.

And so, so looking at maybe some of the content elements of what he discussed tonight, job creation, he really did chalk up a lot of what he's done in his administration, the billions of dollars of investment that he's taken credit for.

I will say that's right.

And you always like to clarify.

That's right.

How this works.

>> Someone has to also create the environment so that these manufacturing businesses, that these entities that want to locate and break ground in Kentucky, somebody has to help create the tools that are needed to help invite those entities to Kentucky.

And I would always say the Republican legislature, when you go back and you look at the tax reform, you look at the fiscal conservative budgets that they've had, you've looked at all of the bond ratings that we have in Kentucky.

Those are things that are all beneficiaries that Governor Beshear, right.

It helps him as he goes out and recruits new business to Kentucky.

So it really is you know, it it's the legislation as well.

It's the governor who gets to stand up there and cut the ribbon and announce the jobs.

And so it's tricky.

>> And but you would say he should do that, right?

>> Absolutely.

I think when you look at the other states around us, other states are doing the same thing as far as taxes.

And we're modeling.

A lot of the things that we've done has been modeled after other states that have been led by Republicans for a long time.

Why are they not all going there?

So there is some there is something else happening.

Not saying that that it's not you know, legislature doesn't get credit.

But you also heard we we did this.

We did this.

And he's presenting a budget that goes to the legislature and goes through the process.

So it is all about that.

It is a comprehensive and collaborative effort that it should be anyway.

>> So we should let our viewers know that the budget presentation that the governor made tonight is, we think now in bill form, that should be available for the public to review in short order, hopefully online.

And so then those discussions will begin in earnest.

And we know that the House, the super majority, House and Senate, it always originates in the House.

They will take liberties with it and do as they will.

Right.

And perhaps they already have their own plan that they will unveil in the coming days.

>> Well, it's no secret.

The House and the Senate, the House in particular, because they are the ones who are required to submit their budget first after the governor or whenever they choose.

They have been working on this bienniums budget since April of last year, if not before.

And so they they have had very open and transparent dialog through the interim joint committees about what what pressures different agencies are feeling.

There has not been a lot of open dialog between the executive branch and the legislative branch, which I think has made it a little bit hard, right, to really finalize some numbers.

I think what's different this year is in past budget cycles, the House has already dropped their budget prior to the governor this year, they didn't.

I think they're looking to see, especially as we have maybe an anticipated budget shortfall of about $156 million over the biennium.

What does that do to the governor's budget.

Right.

What does that do to the budget that the House presents.

And so I think being able for the House to see what the what the governor has presented, then this will kind of kick off.

Right?

And I don't know when we will see that house budget hopefully in the next couple of weeks and then that negotiation will begin.

>> Sherman, we know that agencies have been asked to kind of present back to the governor of what their reductions might be.

We don't know what those numbers will be.

We don't know if that's I haven't heard.

That's across the board.

So is it where is you know, where are they prioritizing where that money is?

That's something that we're going to see here in the actual document.

I mean, it's one thing to go through a 40 minute speech and be able to talk about it.

You can't do that.

You can't give everything that's going to be in those, you know, hundreds of pages of a budget.

>> So we just received a joint statement in response to the governor's State of the Commonwealth and Budget address from the Kentucky House speaker, David Osborne, and the Senate President, Robert Stivers.

And I won't read the entire passage here, but one quote is just kind of piggyback on what we mentioned earlier.

They say, quote, in keeping with the constitutional role of the General Assembly, we have received the governor's remarks and appreciate the governor's comments.

We are hopeful they will include the data and information we've requested of his administration for the last several months.

And I'll put a pin right there.

And, Amy, toss it to you.

>> Yeah.

I mean, look, especially we saw that in an open committee hearing recently, right, where Chairman Jason Petrie requested some very specific data from Budget Director Hicks, and that was denied.

Right.

And there was a little, you know, discourse back and forth.

I think good budgeting happens when all parties who have a role in the budget process, right?

The legislature crafts the budget, the implementation happens at the executive branch.

And so if the executive branch is not sharing where those pressures are right with the legislature, it makes it very hard to actually have the legislature craft a budget that meets the needs of what we're hearing.

And so I think, I hope that after this, there will be some some more data given.

Right.

Because I think the governor was still probably making some decisions.

Right.

And before tonight.

And so hopefully after this, there will open up some dialog so that they can have the data to respect each other enough to be able to really get down and talk about what the needs are to make sure agencies have what they need going forward.

>> The joint statement also goes on to say Kentucky is well positioned because of the sound, fiscally responsible policies enacted by Republican supermajorities, often overriding gubernatorial vetoes to do so.

These policies have produced a record budget reserve trust fund and allowed us to responsibly lower the state income tax.

And we know that will be a big issue.

And that's not something the governor mentioned in his speech a little bit ago.

>> No, I mean, we don't we don't know whether whether that's going to actually happen.

I would look back to to Amy on that as far as where the House and the Senate are on both of those, I think we've had some differing information or differing opinions there of just kind of where where leadership is on both sides.

So don't know if that's.

>> Going to happen.

Yeah.

Well with that we're going to leave it there.

And on Monday night on Kentucky tonight, the House speaker, David Osborne, and the Senate president, Robert Stivers, will be here, along with Representative Lindsey Burke and the House Democrats and also Cassie Chambers Armstrong the new Senate Democratic whip.

They will be here in this studio to talk more about the governor's speech and where things now go from here for Kentucky General Assembly Session 2026.

For now, right now, we'll send it back over to you.

Laura, thanks so much.

>> All right.

Looking forward to that conversation.

Thanks, Renee.

You can see our coverage of the governor's address and his speech in its entirety