Time now for end of week review of some major political news in Kentucky this week with our good friends, our frequent commentators here on KCET, we've got Bob Savage with us and Trey Grayson.

You know who they are.

It's good to see you, gentlemen.

Thank you.

We'll start with Bob and talk about the budget.

That was the one of the big bills that dropped this week from the House Republicans.

How does it differ from what the governor proposed and where does the process now go from here?

Well, there are some differences.

And all these factors come into play.

The one thing we can gain from all this, it's going to be a while to get this budget finished.

It will take February or March and the House and Senate will have to work extensively to do it.

The House budget as it starts is somewhat of a continuation budget.

A lot of the elements that have been suggested to the legislature talk about spending.

Some of the Reserve are not in it, but yet to be considered doesn't mean they're out.

They're just not in yet or not fully considered for this time.

Then the Senate has opened its link to make suggestions for the budget.

That will take some time as well.

For all that's accumulated in the Senate will have a somewhat different version is anticipated and then they go together to work it out over a series of meetings that come up and to a part called Free Conference, where pretty much anything goes.

Your try to get it all finished up by the deadline, which obviously is April 15th.

But I think the intent would be to have it finished well before they take that veto break.

Right.

To have the governor consider bills and then they come back to maybe have some overrides as well.

They don't want to give the governor the opportunity to veto it without an opportunity to override.

You want to do it before the April 15th constitutional deadline.

Try to you your your thoughts about what the House Republicans have presented.

And it seems to make way for that trigger for the income tax reduction, does it not?

Yeah, it does.

Bob did a great job of explaining kind of the process, the timeline to get some to the substance of the budget.

Yes, it is set up to hit a trigger to continue the progression towards phasing out the income tax.

That was a priority that House and Senate leadership have talked about for the last couple of years.

And so they structured the budget to do that.

One of the ways they're doing it is using rainy day funds to pay for some one time expenditures, because the way the formula works, that's not considered part of the general fund.

We also saw that unlike the governor's budget, there was not extra money or or slotted money for teacher raises.

It continues the Republican legislators approach that schools should have the flexibility to do what they want.

They increase the C dollars and increase transportation dollars, and that should help school districts pass along increases in salaries to teachers and other other employees that are not really capital items in the House budget, which is not really a surprise.

Usually that is what comes in at the end.

What about called the free conference committee as sort of the sweeteners and using a lot of that one time money to to make some strategic, in many cases, economic development investments.

But there was money set aside for water and sewer and rural and underserved areas.

There was some money set aside for this grant program, which is designed to match federal grants that the state might be eligible for for local governments.

But they don't have the money to fund that match or they have to go to the private sector or the state is funding a pool of money for that.

I would say there weren't really any big surprises, as the legislators were pretty clear about having a different set of priorities than the governor.

And these priorities are pretty consistent with the last couple of budgets.

But it we'll see how it plays out.

The final version will look very different in Bob's right.

They'll pass this thing on day 58.

Every last governor who got to pass got and got unfettered veto.

He took advantage of it.

And nobody's ever going to ever do that again.

That's right.

That's right.

And we should also mention that universal pre-K is not in the budget that the House Republicans are proposing.

So that's a big item that the governor has been petitioning for for some time.

Correct.

When the governor did his budget address, he said we're in the best shape we've ever been as a state.

And that could be true.

And plenty of credit to go around.

A lot of people can take that.

But now, how do you use that so-called surplus to to make investments that advance us even further over the next couple of years?

Those are the hard decisions that legislators have to make with the executive branch and a whole lot of effort from other people.

Yeah, a long process to go.

We're only what it.

Dave 50 something or maybe where the 13 or 1313.

Ed Good math.

Okay.

Another big bill in just in a couple of minutes we have remaining the House Bill five, which is the Safer Kentucky Act.

On Thursday night.

They advance that from a committee, House judiciary.

We expect there to be a floor vote early next week when the lawmakers return.

It's a big bill, Bob, and a lot of things are in it.

And we heard some kind of mixed reaction, of course, last night to this proposal.

The testimony was so emotional, particularly from those parents and families who had lost younger members from the deputy's wife, from Sco The crime problem in urban areas is such that the GOP group in Louisville has come together to say we have to take some steps.

But is it an expansive piece of legislation?

And the opposition to it was equally emotional about where we go now We have this problem particularly related to drugs.

Not to oversimplify this, but do we lock people up or try a different route to to wellness or both or where do we go exactly?

That's the hard part of this decision.

It's a major bill.

Could be the most important bill of the session.

Right.

And Trey Grayson, many people who are asking who are on the opposing side.

When did homelessness become a violent crime?

Because a lot of there are some provisions that deal with homeless encampments, etc.. That's in this House Bill five Safer Kentucky Act.

Well, along with the rise of crime that we've seen in some areas, we've also seen this all across the country, a rise in homelessness.

And there's a lot of reasons for that.

But I think it is part of the discomfort that folks have with the as far as the perception of going downtown.

It's just you're you're you see more homeless folks.

They they're asking people for money.

And there's a concern about some of those substance.

So that's, I think, what that's trying to get at.

Jerry Bauman is a first term legislator from Jefferson County, has been kind of the leader on this issue.

Bob mentioned other Jefferson County members as well.

It got House Bill five.

So this is a top priority.

My suspicion is as it heads through the legislative process, I'm confident that a House Bill five with a lot of these items will pass.

But my suspicion is it gets trimmed a little bit as some of those issues get worked out and some of the more complicated issues might be dropped, either standalone legislation or future years.

But there will be there will be a bill that looks a lot like this that's going to be sent to the governor.

He'll probably veto it and they'll override it.

I'm pretty confident about that.

Yeah, While we're confident with that, we're out of time.

Unfortunately, we never have enough.

Thank you so much, Trey Grayson and Bob Babidge once again for your insight.

Have a great weekend.

Stay warm.