Louisville is an economic engine for the Commonwealth, and that's what state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say, and that's why they allocated more than $1,000,000,000 to the River City in the state's latest biennial budget.

As Kentucky additions June Leffler reports, transforming Louisville's downtown is part of that spending.

Louisville's Belvedere is calm on a weekday, but it's home to events that can bring thousands to downtown Louisville.

One of the major things about Belvidere is not only to bring in the talent, attraction and tourism and stuff, but we've got to look at the Humana towers that we got to have to be able to fill.

The Belvidere is just one site downtown that state lawmakers want to improve.

$100 million will also update medical and homeless resources and revamp the area home to Louisville's professional soccer teams.

When you go outside this county, people see love was their town.

They see Louisville kids as their kids.

They want to be they want a strong Louisville.

They want strong Lexington.

They want a strong woman.

They come here.

They send their kids here for college a lot.

They come here to to to shop.

And they want.

They want Louisville to thrive.

That's the gospel truth.

Both say Frankfort sets policies that businesses and workers care about.

By reducing income tax.

Now, I know a lot of people don't like that, but I think it's a good play.

When you look at the states that are growing, they have a lower income tax than we do.

And people in Louisville should be standing up and fighting like heck for reducing the income tax because it helps us more than it helps everybody else.

Because we always talk about we send our money to Frankfort, we don't get it back.

Well, let's not send it to Frankfort.

Let's keep it in mom and pops pocket.

And public safety.

But the most important thing, obviously security.

Nothing matters.

You can put you can put $100 billion in downtown Louisville if people aren't safe and if they don't think they're safe when they're down here, then it's not going to matter.

People in my neck of the woods, when they talk about coming downtown, a lot of them are just saying, I'm not going.

And what I've learned is there's no easy fix.

You know, there's just.

But what does work is long term investment.

It's long term.

And it starts with child education.

If we're one number one through eight of abuse and neglect year after year, those child victims more likely than not, will be in the justice system If we don't have a fully funded education model in the system, then those kids get left behind and we know that they're more likely to commit crimes.

State lawmakers set their vision in motion.

It's now up to the city of Louisville to use their own discretion and some additional funding to get the job done for Kentucky Edition, I'm June Leffler.

The Kentucky General Assembly earmarked hundreds of dollars for other projects throughout the city.