Yesterday, the Senate and House GOP talked about their legislative priorities for the 2024 session, particularly addressing the budget.

House Speaker David Osborne and Senate President Robert Stivers both emphasized fiscal restraint and their approach to the budget.

When you look at what we've done in a collaborative way since 2017, this is the group that has put together sound fiscally responsible budgets, that have met our pension obligations, that have put us in a position over the last seven or eight years to have better bond ratings, to have better reviews for locaters and everything else, because the work we've done to make sure we have a good environment for creating jobs, which creates better families.

We build our budgets now on based on our on our needs.

Another once and I think you'll continue to see that in this in this budget.

There are obviously some other things that we're going to be working on in the House, predominantly some of the things that are being talked about very publicly.

The Safer Kentucky Act is a crime bill, but it impacts the entire state budget.

But certainly the Louisville area legislators have been very involved in that.

We will also be doing some things and looking at energy.

Energy is critical.

And while we have become one of the utmost places to locate because of cheap energy costs, I think it's critical for us to know that we have a competitive edge, to know what our energy demands that energy consumptions in the future will be.

The state's budget reserve trust fund, or what's often called the rainy day fund, continues to grow, and currently sits at over $3 billion.

We pressed Speaker Osborne to see if the GOP majority is willing to spend any of that money and if so, on.

What?

I do believe that by the time we end this fiscal year, we will have more a larger budget reserve than is necessary.

As I've said previously, the one thing that we have excluded in the actual construction of our tax reduction formula that does not account is as an appropriation, is payment down payment of pension debt and pension liability.

So I think that understanding that that is one of the things that we can actually do to invest in the the financial stability of the Commonwealth and also stay within the grounds of the bounds of that that formula.

I think it's reasonable to expect that we will utilize some portion of it for that.

House Republicans are expected to release their budget proposal within the next week or so.