Talk about the Budget Talks

by State Representative David W. Floyd

Kentucky’s Constitution allows for 60 legislative days in even numbered years. We are constitutionally required to start the session on the “first Tuesday after the first Monday” and finish up all business by April 15.

A bill that passed both Houses of the General Assembly will become a law when the governor signs it. If the governor doesn’t sign it, then ten days after final passage it will become law without his/her signature. That is, unless the governor vetoes it and sends it back to us.  Then if at least 51 members of the House and 20 members of the Senate vote to override the veto, it will become a law. 

You might have heard about the “line item veto” for the President of the United States. This would give the Chief Executive the authority to strike through specific appropriations. Kentucky’s constitution already provides for it. The governor can accept a budget but strike through specific earmarks. Then we have the opportunity to override that veto.

This column is printed on Wednesday, so today should be the day that we vote in the General Assembly on the budget. I say “should” but it is possible – maybe even likely – that budget negotiations will bog down to where we need to delay it yet again.

Recall that the governor presents the budget to the House.  Then the House works on it and changes most things, and passes it on to the Senate. The Senate didn’t have a whole lot of time to work on it, but they presented a budget back to the House a week ago. We did not concur with the changes (we never concur with the changes) and so there is formed a conference committee to iron out the differences.

In 2002 and 2004 the differences never got ironed out. Both Patton and Fletcher then laid out their own provisional spending plan and we pressed on until the legislature could meet later and pass a budget. Nobody likes it when we can’t pass a budget on time. And since the courts last year decided that governors cannot use a spending plan after the last budget runs out, there is an additional imperative to iron out those differences.

There was a rocky start to negotiations this year when a couple of leaders met and recalled for the benefit of each another their most recent insults. That meeting lasted only a few minutes. After that it took a bit for things to cool down enough to agree on the basic rules of the conference committee, and on Saturday they got down to the serious business.

We had to postpone our budget vote from Monday to Wednesday (and maybe Thursday), so that there would be enough time to negotiate and then print the budget. I am hopeful that this is the case.

Remember that a bill becomes a law when the governor signs it, or ten days after both chambers pass it. Since this is the case a governor could wait until nine days have passed and then veto the bill. And since we run out of legislative days (we only have 60) and we have to end the session by April 15 that could create a scenario where the governor could veto and there would be no legislative review.

That’s why we recess after 58 days (March 27) and then reconvene 10 days later (April 10). In this way we can consider any vetoes and override if we so decide. We can still conduct other business and pass bills, but we would be giving up the ability to override any veto that the governor might subsequently issue.

Finally, since we took a little extra time getting started on the budget conference we had to slip our last regular day to today (March 29). And then we had to slip our “veto days” to April 11 and 12.

We had our last Saturday coffee this past weekend. They have been valuable to me (and I hope also to those who were able to attend) so I plan to add more such meetings in the months to come. Not every weekend, of course, but I will publicize any details in this space.

I’m here to help, so just call 1-800-372-7181 and ask to leave a message for me. Or you can call me at home. Hearing from you is the best part of my job.