Farris Talks Budget to A&R

Interim Commissioner Elaine Farris takes to "the hill" today to chat with House and Senate Appropriations and Revenue committees.

She is scheduled for the Senate A&R in a little less than an hour - 10:15 am - Room 149, Capitol Annex; and later this afternoon with the House A&R - 3:15 pm - Room 154, Capitol Annex.

The proceedings can be viewed at KET.

Follow along with the Commissioner's presentation here.



This from Ronnie Ellis in the Ashland Daily-Independent:

Lawmakers start review of budget shortfall
70 cent cigarette tax in doubt

FRANKFORT — Gov. Steve Beshear hopes lawmakers produce a solution to a projected $456 million shortfall in state revenues quickly – but it might not get it done as quickly as he’d like.

“If we can get to the end of this process by the end of this month in terms of information gathering,” Beshear said Tuesday afternoon, “and talk about some solutions we can agree on, hopefully by the first week or so of February, we can have this problem solved so we can move on to other areas.”

But Senate Appropriations and Revenue Chairman Charlie Borders, R-Grayson, said earlier that lawmakers “recognize the complexity of the problem” and plan to review carefully the state budget and Beshear’s proposals to deal with the shortfall. That began Tuesday with a presentation by Beshear’s acting Budget Director John Hicks before a joint meeting of the Senate and House A&R committees.

Both committees will meet separately throughout the day Wednesday and Thursday, hearing from cabinet secretaries about what impact the budget reductions may have. New House A&R Chairman Rick Rand, D-Bedford, said the committees plan to convene at 9 a.m. and work until late in the afternoon both days...