House and Senate negotiators reached final agreement early Thursday on a $19.3 billion state budget for the two-year period beginning July 1.The agreement was reached at about 2:40 a.m., which is just in time for the final version of the bill to be prepared and printed for final votes in the House and Senate on Friday afternoon...
The final budget approved by the House-Senate conference committee is similar to the lean budget Beshear proposed in January...
During the final negotiating session, the Senate agreed to fund the House priority scholarship fund for students in Eastern Kentucky coal counties. However, the Senate got the House to agree that the scholarships would be available to students in any coal-producing county, including those in Western Kentucky.And the Senate agreed to authorize $100 million in bonds to be issued in 2014-16 for school construction, another House priority...
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Kentucky House and Senate reach deal on state budget
This from C-J:
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Is it me or does something seem particularly inequitable to giving scholarships to kids just because they happen to live in county where coal exists. (I would be interested in knowing what counties qualify for this and exactly how much money this is going to involve.) I honestly can't think of a more capricious and less deserving way to distribute scholarship money to students. Why not give it to kids who were born on days which are divisable by five or if you have a tree that happens to be less than 20 feet from your house or if you are the third child born in your family.
If you want to give it to poor students, fine. If you want to award it to counties based upon level of education, great. What does having coal in your county have anything to do with scholarships other than some sort of UP political appeasement? Just remember that everytime you hand out one of those scholarships you are taking away two classroom sets of textbooks from the K-12 kids you are trying to prepare to go to these post secondary institutions - so don't come complaining about not being prepared for college when you are depositing those checks into the university coffers.
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