♪ Lawmakers from Northern Kentucky gathered this week to celebrate massive funding awards for projects and organizations in the region.

Here's more on how much and where some of its going from Kentucky additions, Clayton Dalton.

>> Over 1 billion dollars have been set aside in the state budget for projects in northern Kentucky's Kenton County.

807 million dollars will be spent fixing the Brent Spence Bridge, which connects Covington to Cincinnati.

125 million dollars will go towards a new bio medical center and 20 million dollars was awarded to the Cdg airport to expand its facilities for cargo airplanes.

State Senator Chris McDaniel, Kenton County lawmaker and chair of the Appropriations and Revenue Committee says one project in particular stands out to him.

You know, the biggest thing is the center for biomedical excellence down on the riverfront where we will be combined.

The Chase College of Law.

>> University of Kentucky College of Medicine under a single Bring those doctoral studies down into an urban core urban core that we've already invested in to try to can continue to accelerate the pace of biomedical engineering of, you know, far of the next generation of pharmacy.

And I think that will be absolutely transformational for the riverfront to have those people there to have the ball school students close to the federal courthouse isn't a law firms where they will add jobs have have real world professor is come in and teach.

So I think that will be the big, transformational one.

>> Senate President Robert Stivers also attended the event he lives in Manchester, a small community, almost 3 hours south of Covington.

But he explained why investing in northern Kentucky benefits the entire state yet to be cognizant of the fact of where you're at income generators are less equated to a business.

If you have a business and and you have multiple product lines, we have 120 in the state and 3 or 4 of them generate 10 per se.

It.

Another one generates 15%.

You have to make sure those areas, those product lines in this case, you have to make sure that your income generating areas have infrastructure and investment to continue to grow to generate tax revenues.

And that's what you want to.

You want to broaden the base.

You don't want individuals to pay more.

You just want to create more taxpayers.

And so we focused on that.

And that's why you're saying that smaller buckets of money went to other organizations in the region like Children's House and drug treatment facilities.

The Ion Center of Violence Prevention Group in downtown Covington says the money it received from the budget will help support the community.

>> The money that we receive from the Legislature allows us to provide critical services to survivors.

For example, we provided over 16,000 sate shelter bed nights for folks who are escaping power base, personal violence.

We were able to hire 6 additional crisis response specialists who respond to say a hospital.

24 7.

So when somebody presents at the hospital for sexual assault or domestic violence, we are able to send somebody 24 7 and provide care.

So these dollars help us provide Kentuckians and northern Kentucky ends critical resources to stay safe and escape violence as well as KET it from him in the first place.

>> For Kentucky edition, I'm Clayton Dalton.