Time now for an end to a review of some major political news this week with two of our favorites, former Kentucky secretaries of State Bob Babbage on screen left and Trey Grayson on screen.

Right.

And you'll notice that Trey's got the cool car video going on here.

He is attending his and he is in a wedding of his daughters.

And so we appreciate him taking time to speak with us.

Let's start with you, Bob, to talk about this week at the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce had their legislative preview day.

Usually the bigfoots come out for that.

Who was there and what did they say?

And what can we expect January 2nd when the session begins?

It's a terrific amount of leadership there.

Speaker Osborne and President Stivers, the majority leaders committee chairs a number of others.

There's exceedingly well done.

I think you take away that we're in a excellent financial position as a state, but the legislature majority especially wants to hear the triggers or benchmarks to keep the tax cut in place and moving in the right direction, which is toward zero.

That's the state income tax.

There is a surplus that will be allocated for different purposes.

Some of those ordinary some of those extraordinary one we watch is the pool that will be created to match federal grants that are being targeted to energy impacted communities in Kentucky and several other energy states in the country.

But a whole lot of very good conversation, very good give and take, and a lot of prediction that the session will be a significant one in many ways.

Right.

And Trey, we know this is a budget year and reelected Democratic governor.

So any insight about how all of this is going to shake out when they start the lawmaking session in January?

Well, the Republicans talked about how they plan to introduce their own budget very early in the session, which they did two years ago.

They surprised us all by doing that two years ago.

This time, they're very much out in the open.

Traditionally, viewers watching this will remember that the governor would introduce a budget first, then the House would modify it, the Senate would modified, they would go to committee, and now the House is going to do its own budget.

So it's more like Washington, D.C., you know, building upon what Bob said.

Financial picture is pretty good.

However, I got the sense that they don't want to spend a much more money.

They do want to focus on reducing the income tax.

We also heard about some issues that maybe the federal government hasn't and should work on, but doesn't work on, like autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, data privacy.

So there's it was a fascinating day because you could hear the deep dives on discrete topics like that.

But the budget, as you said, it's a budget year.

That's the big topic.

So I want to pick up on that income tax trigger because we know that we did not meet both of the conditions necessary for a trigger to happen in 2025.

There will be one that will happen in 2024.

So is there a conversation that they would bypass their own rules to have that income tax cut happen quicker than is already laid out to do?

Is that what you were getting from that conversation, Bob?

I didn't get that directly, did you, Trey?

No.

I think they're pretty committed to the trigger, is that we always hear that they want to avoid what happened in Kansas where there was an attempt to cut the income tax to about to dramatically without regard to revenues.

And then they created a big deficit.

So I think they're going to stick with these triggers where they are and just maybe craft a budget so that there could be the kind of surplus that could be met at the end of this fiscal year.

And they're talking about educator or teacher pay raises or teacher pay.

Was that a topic of discussion today?

Yeah, education is on.

It's the biggest part of the budget.

So it is something that was talked about.

There seem to be consensus that teacher salaries need to go up.

There was a reference to the fact that other states are seeing their salaries go up.

So there's a competitiveness with keeping talent and also just keeping teachers in general.

There was also some conversation about the potential for a constitutional amendment to address some of the school choice legislation that's either been challenged in court or has been struck down by courts such as the opportunity accounts or charter schools or even vouchers.

There's interest in doing that, although it's not clear the politics will allow that.

But I think we're going to see higher salaries for teachers.

It just might be funded by giving more money through a seek formula as opposed to straight up salaries.

But that did seem something that there was consensus among Republicans to do.

Which is what they've done in the previous budget cycle.

Go ahead, Bob.

Right.

Yes, there was a point made by Gus, Chairman Tipton, that we'll need more money in both years for teacher retirement.

Also, the eligibility for Pell Grants is going to grow dramatically.

That's been redefined so that more receive Pell grants.

There is a budget impact that he explained very well, potentially of $60 million.

So those are significant obligations that the state will have to make in a new budget with a good economy.

We just had 14 months in a row of $1,000,000,000 income to the state from tax revenues.

That's a promising picture.

We do have the surplus, but as Trey points out, that surplus in part will be dedicated to making sure the triggers get or allocated in a way the tax cut can get back on track.

Yeah, well, more to watch as January 2nd just gets closer and closer.

Let's talk about one other topic real quickly.

In that minute and change, we have remaining the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

A national group is embarking on a seven figure strategy to weaken the GOP supermajorities and states that have a Democratic governor or Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

What do we expect?

What have you heard about this, Bob?

And do you think we'll see some type of effort in 2024 on in Kentucky on the state legislative races here?

Everybody's reading all they can and maybe even a little extra out of last week's results in Ohio on amendments and Idukki and other places, Virginia in particular, where young man who was a presidential prospect got a bad day at the office when Democrats took the legislature.

So what were those messages that mattered?

And how can you put together now a conversation that will resonate with voters immediately for next year, Republicans and Democrats alike?

There was some conversation this week around the legislative preview and other moments about how Kentucky Republicans might change their messaging a little bit next year based on the governor's results and the race that we just saw.

It's always about the next election, and we're getting ready for 2024.

Even though it's 2023, candidates are already moving out, already raising money as they must, particularly if they're incumbents, because they don't raise money during the session itself.

Yeah.

Well, we'll have to leave it there.

Sorry, Trey, you didn't get the last word this time, even though it's a big celebratory recap for you.

What I got for the next time, we'll let you get back to the occasion at hand.

Thank you for being with us, both of you.

And have a great weekend.

Thank you to everybody.