By RONNIE ELLIS
FRANKFORT — Greenup County was a winner in the House version of a $17.5 billion two-year budget laden with debt and bonded capital projects. Whitely County wasn’t. Neither was Metcalfe County.
There are three school projects in the budget for the district represented by Rep. Tanya Pullin, D-South Shore, and nine water and sewer projects totaling $2,382,000. Whitley and Metcalfe counties got nothing.
The difference? Republican representatives Charlie Siler who represents Whitley County and Jamie Comer who represents Metcalfe County voted against a bill last week to raise $371 million through a suspension of a business tax write-off and accelerating collections of some sales taxes.
“The people who stood up on this floor last week and committed to vote for them got priority,” was the explanation House budget chairman Rick Rand, D-Bedford, gave during floor debate on the budget bill Wednesday. He and House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, said Republicans can’t have it both ways – oppose measures to pay for the projects and still get a new school in their districts.
“It was not a quid pro quo vote,” said Pullin. “That’s not how I operate. But I will say we need jobs and I thought long and hard about the vote, but we need jobs.”
Stumbo called the construction projects a “jobs creation bill.” That’s fine, said Siler, but Whitley County needs jobs, too. Siler voted against the tax measures but he’s frequently crossed party lines in the past to vote for Democratic measures like increases in cigarette and alcohol taxes when he thought they were justified.
“There’s no institutional memory around here,” said the soft-spoken Siler. “You can do things for years and then the first time you don’t, they forget about you.”
Siler said he couldn’t vote for this budget because of the level of debt it contains – 7.43 percent of revenues will be devoted to paying debt, well above the typical 6 percent target lawmakers have set in the past.
Still, Siler said the folks back home shouldn’t despair just yet – “The game isn’t over,” he said, noting his district lies inside the district of Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville.
Pullin, smiling, agreed: “Charlie always seems to come out alright in the end.”
Many expect the budget to undergo significant alterations in the Republican controlled Senate and Williams – while not outright rejecting them – has questioned the business tax changes and borrowing contained in the House budget. Williams’ Senate district also includes Comer’s home county of Monroe – and that might mean Comer’s district will be included in any projects the Senate approves.
Comer is unhappy the budget funded 65 school construction projects, ostensibly the ones in worst disrepair. But there were school projects in the budget which don’t fit that description while some which do were left out.
“There are three category five schools in Metcalfe County,” Comer said after the House vote, “and not one of them is funded.”
House Republican Leader Jeff Hoover, R-Jamestown, said of 14 category five schools, only seven were funded – all in Democratic districts. The other seven, in Republican districts, were ignored.
“It’s not really about the e kids and the horrible conditions of schools,” Hoover said during a floor speech Wednesday. “If that was the case, we would’ve funded all the schools in Republican and Democratic districts. They’re all Kentucky kids.”
RONNIE ELLIS writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.
