A Kentucky college in the western part of the state is wanting to offer a new doctorate program to help shore up the shortage of veterinarians in the state.

Our Toby Gibbs tells us how a proposition 50 years in the making is being received in Frankfurt by state lawmakers.

That story begins tonight's legislative update.

Almost three quarters of the state like veterinarians.

Murray State University officials offered a plan to a legislative panel today to help fill the gap.

First and foremost, we have more private students in vet tech students than any other college or university in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

We have fought about 450.

And so we're going to surpass everyone else in regard to the the assets that we have in place, the breadth of veterinarians center that we have in Hopkinsville, which is an animal diagnostic laboratory.

So that asset is there doing animal diagnostic work and a lot of research in the veterinary and space.

But also, we have so many students who come to Murray State because of the quality of the Hudson School of Agriculture.

And and so it's the right place where we have the farmland.

We have the we had the livestock, we had the animals, we have the assets already there.

And so we think this is the logical next step.

There's not a vet school in Kentucky.

There are 33 elsewhere across the country.

The university has a school of agriculture that currently serves about 1400 students.

University officials say Murray already has about 1600 acres of farmland available and a $4.2 million endowment to support students studying vet medicine.

What they need is a facility to get the school going, which is anticipated to cost $90 million.

Not all stakeholders share the excitement for a vet school in Kentucky.

We currently have an excellent contract space program with Auburn and Tuskegee High Quality Institutions, which has produced many of the state's veterinarians over the past 70 years.

The CVM wants to ensure that any new scenario that might replace the current system would produce equally highly qualified veterinarians.

Some lawmakers on the panel also expressed their doubts.

I think we need a more detailed package of how you're going to run this, how much staff it's going to take, how many staff members it will take to do the research.

All of those things I know you're talking about 89, $90 million to build the building.

I know we've discussed $15 million to run it.

I just don't think that's feasible to run it.

I think we need to have a longer talk and conversation about the academic rigor of everybody has a dream.

They want to be a vet, but not everybody is qualified to get there academically.

Matt Cook is one of those people.

And we really need to face that before we go adding more spots and throwing this out and everybody can live their dream.

Are we giving them the tools before they ever get there to achieve that dream?

I'm very concerned about the long term economic impacts of what we're going to do if we go down this road and the conflict that will inevitably come up when we hit a economic recession.

And we have to choose between continuing to fund a new veterinarian school at Murray State or continuing our 70 year relationship with Auburn.

The House Agriculture Committee advanced House Bill 400 with 14 years to know and for past votes, it doesn't have an appropriation tied to it.

But the plan could be heard by the Budget Committee before it advances to the full House.

For Kentucky