It's time for our midweek check in on all things Kentucky Politics with Rylan Barton, a senior editor for NPR based in Kentucky.

Rylan, thanks for taking a couple of minutes to be with us.

Good to be with you, Casey.

RYLAN We'll start off with the governor's budget address.

This week, he unveiled his $136 billion budget on KCET and include an investment in broadband for clean drinking water.

But the big portion of that was investments in education.

So what are some of the highlights that people should take away from that address?

Yeah, So kind of filling a lot of campaign promises here.

He's done this throughout his first term and also on the campaign trail.

But education first includes a 11% raise for all public K-12 school employees.

Also, funding for universal pre-kindergarten, which is something that's come up on some of these proposals previously and just hasn't gotten much traction with the legislature so far.

Tennessee is giving a big raise to their teachers, like about 22%.

And so I think part of what this year is saying is that this is to help Kentucky competitive with other states.

Right now, Kentucky's kind of at the bottom ranks towards the bottom in terms of teacher pay this to kind of get up towards a middle of the pack.

And there's a $141 million for that expanded pre-K. Also, funding for more social workers and and funding for certain foster homes and also more money to kind of help with the state's ailing juvenile justice system.

Obviously, a state budget is a big, sweeping document.

There's a lot of things that the budget funds.

So that there's a lot more that we can really get into here.

But just kind of want to talk about the politics of this to a little bit.

He released this very early.

Normally, a governor will do this once the legislative session starts.

But he's trying to get ahead of Republicans who who jumped the gun, who got unveiled their proposal for how to spend money on through the state's budget before Beshear last time.

Kind of, you know, taking away the some of the the you know, the the publicity over that moment right then.

Granted, Republicans are in the driver's seat when it comes to passing the state budget.

They it's very easy for lawmakers to override a governor's veto in Kentucky.

It just takes a majority of votes in each chamber and then whatever they do.

Beshear certainly veto elements of it.

But Beshear said that part of why he wanted to get this out first is he said that there were things that were missing the last time the lawmakers released their own version of their budget.

And so, you know, as the leader of the state's executive executive branch, he felt it was important to be the first one to release the proposal for how to spend money for the executive branch budget.

One of the things Governor Beshear has said and legislative leaders is they'd like to improve the relationship between the executive branch and the legislative branch.

Do we get any sense how this will impact that?

I mean, Bashir's been doing a lot of year end interviews with with different outlets, and reporters are dutifully asking that question, What's your relationship going to be like with the Republican led legislature?

And, you know, he's very hopeful.

He thinks that as a second term governor, you know, there there there aren't the political stakes involved where Republicans would be trying to block him from having certain wins.

And he's hoping that that dynamic will be a little bit better or for him, I think that in some ways that that might be true.

And actually in some of the in some of the budget negotiations, we don't always see that happen behind closed doors.

Yeah, maybe the discussion is a little bit simpler then.

But I think as for what the public sees as what reporters see, a lot of the times, they're still going to be fighting over some of the big issues of how to fund state government and and really especially looking into the future for what Republicans want to do.

They want to reduce the state's income tax, meaning, you know, that's kind of affecting how the state brings in more money.

Meanwhile, Beshear is proposing an expansion of state services, a more expensive budget than likely what Republicans will or will come forward with.

So I think in the end, yeah, it's probably Republicans are probably not going to propose as expensive of a budget as Beshear is right here.

So that they can continue in the future to whittle away at the state's income tax.

As people are looking for changes in the Kentucky General Assembly.

State Representative Katara Herron announced that she would run for the state Senate.

That's a state senator.

Two days after Handel's old seat, she announced earlier this month that she wouldn't seek reelection.

So, Ron, could you tell us a little bit about Herron, the type of candidate she'll be, and whether or not other people will run for the seat?

Yeah, Representative Herron has been around for a bit.

She was a lobbyist for the ACLU for a while and helped pass some some prominent criminal justice reform legislation, especially in Lexington and Louisville, helping pass a ban on on or at least restrictions on no knock warrants for cops.

And in the wake of the death of Breonna Taylor in 2020 and and also helping pass some other criminal justice reform elements in the state legislature.

Yeah.

So she's she's running for the state Senate now, a more prominent position in the legislature.

But she's somebody who, even when she was running for office in the state House, that Republicans really congratulated her and also, you know, pointed out that she was somebody who, through some of her lobbying efforts, was really able to work across the aisle.

And, yeah, this opening kind of happened at the right time for Denise Harper, Major Angel being in her district and nobody else has filed to run for that seat yet, Although the deadline for candidates to file is January 5th.

So things could change.

We want to take a minute for some national politics with some state flavor.

Earlier this week, Governor Andy Beshear commented on former President Donald Trump's rhetoric about immigration.

He called what former President Trump was saying dehumanizing.

Why was this the moment for the governor to speak out on this island?

Yeah, I thought that was really notable.

Again, in some of these your year end interviews, he's been he's been bringing this up.

I think this is notable one just the title which are countries.

And right now there is this a big influx of of migrants coming through the southern border in the United States and and states like Texas are, you know, have implemented a lot of policies to further criminalize that, trying to empower state police to be able to apprehend migrants, which is, you know, really this is something that's left up to federal officials, immigration and border policies.

And I think what he's trying to do is get his voice out there on the national stage, on this on this very divisive issue, and especially as everybody in this in this year seeing Beshear soundly win reelection, a Democrat in a largely Republican state, I think he's you're trying to put his stamp on that in this national conversation.

And and also, as we talked about before, if he doesn't have some of that political risk as a as a second term governor, he can say some of these things and not worry about the blowback of, you know, possibly not getting reelected.

But it does help pave the way for, you know, talking about some of these issues that are national issues and talking about them in a way that Democrats across the country and others are talking about and then try to be a leader on that issue.

Rylan, thanks for taking a few minutes to be with us.

Appreciate you.

Thanks, Stacey.