Members from the Kentucky House and Senate met today to begin reconciling their versions of the state's two year budget.

One of the budget bills, House Bill one, exclusively funds one time projects using money from Kentucky's rainy day fund.

On Friday, our panelists on comment on Kentucky helped break down the bill.

How much is it and where's it going?

They're spending a lot.

This session, I mean, it's or at least they're proposed.

They're proposing to spend a lot of money.

It's 1.7 in additional funds, but total from the budget Reserve trust fund, it's more than 3.5 billion.

I mean, that is a lot.

And that was not in the House plan, right?

That will have to be reconciled.

The House was 1.8.

So we'll see.

We'll see.

Maybe they move that back a little bit.

But it's a lot of money spent and a lot of it is on these kind of like, I guess you could call them, like material projects when we think of like infrastructure and transportation and and buildings and and sort of kind of goodies for universities.

There's just a lot of stuff in there.

Well, let's talk about some of those projects.

About $100 million over two years to revitalize downtown Louisville.

The different types of projects, though, are really interesting in this.

Yes.

You're going to see your turret tourism avenues, the Belvidere updates to that.

But an interesting one that caught my eye was the community Care center that's actually going towards the homeless population.

So that's not necessarily a revitalization of downtown building or infrastructure that's addressing the homeless problem.

It's a $150 million to relocate in queue Chase Law and U.K. College of Medicine's Northern Kentucky campus to downtown Covington and an old IRS building.

That kind of, I think, ticks off.

I do not ticks off negatively, but checks off a lot of boxes for constituencies like NCCU, UK, downtown Covington.

It's also in Senate and our chair Chris McDaniel's district.

So we'll see if he has the umph to get it over that over the hump.

AUSTIN The Senate budget did pick up on a proposal from Governor Andy Beshear to add a 13th monthly check to retired state workers who have not gotten a cost of living adjustment in a long time.

Yeah, I think it's been more than a decade for these people.

They've really been clamoring for something.

It's not a permanent adjustment, but it is $75 million and it's tiered.

So the less you make, the more you get and the longer that you've been retired, the more you get as well.

Although no decisions had been finalized, conversations about the budget are ongoing.

There are only a few legislative days left in the 2024 General Assembly.