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$294 Million General Fund Shortfall Predicted
The state's budget outlook has gone from very bad to even worse. Despite devastating cuts to funding for after-school programs, environmental protection, community mental health services, and higher education, as well as meager pay increases for teachers and state employees that don't even touch the rising cost of living, and cuts to education that have reduced the number of teachers and staff while class sizes swell, Governor Beshear is warning that even deeper cuts are in our future.
Beshear's warning comes as the state Budget Office predicts a General Fund--the fund that enables us to invest in education, clean water, college affordability, etc.--shortfall of about $294 million for this year.
The legislature failed to pass revenue reforms during the last legislative session; the House passed some provisions, but the Senate failed to follow suit.
To read about the revenue reforms that KFTC supports, take a look at our Tax Justice pages. You can read more about the state Budget Office's predictions in these Herald-Leader and Courier-Journal articles.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
Our governmental revenue structures are in no less of a mess than the financial, energy and employment systems.
United For a Fair Economy also did a report in 2004 that outline how the tax burden has shifted over the last 25 years (actually since 1957) from corporate and the wealthy to being shouldered by the middle class.
You can see the charts of those figures as part of another timely article about the pending crash of the government pension security system. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wolff191205.html
For Kentucky it is an "opportunity" to address its slipshod tax system. Some very relevant ideas can be found in a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on "Combined Reporting" that eliminates loop holes for out of state corporation from paying their share of state taxes. http://www.cbpp.org/4-5-07sfp.htm
worth a read
"But the elephant in the room that neither candidate mentioned during all the debates was the corporate tax system..."
The article goes on to say: "In reality, as a July 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office revealed, between 1998 and 2005 about two-thirds of all corporations doing business in our country paid no taxes. That's right: none."
These are some things to chew on as Ky looks for revenue solutions....