Your tax dollars, their final vote: what's in Kentucky's $32 Billion budget
– 2 min read
As Tax Day approaches, Kentucky lawmakers face a big deadline of their own: deciding how to spend your money.
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Wednesday is Tax Day- the federal and state deadline to file your 2025 income tax return. And while you're squaring up with the government, Kentucky's lawmakers will be doing the same thing on the other end of the equation: wrapping up the final day of the 2026 legislative session, with a $32 billion budget for your tax dollars already on the table.
This year's session produced House Bill 500- a two-year spending plan that directs the spending of $32 billion of state tax revenue by executive branch agencies over the next two fiscal years. Republicans who control the legislature have called it fiscally disciplined. Governor Beshear has called it insufficient. Both are partly right- and here's what that means for you.
What's in the budget
The final budget fully funds pension obligations, provides 2% pay raises for state employees in both fiscal years, and maintains the Dolly Parton Imagination Library with a total allocation of $5 million over the biennium. It also includes a $1.7 billion one-time appropriations bill funding more than 300 individual local projects- water and sewer systems, airports, economic development, and affordable housing.
The budget invests more than $1 billion in Louisville specifically, which Mayor Craig Greenberg says will be used on downtown revitalization projects, local non-profits like Dare to Care and the Kentucky Center for Performing Arts, and re-opening the Metro's youth detention center.
What's not
The final version of HB 500 appropriates nearly $700 million less for Medicaid benefits than what Beshear requested, though lawmakers did set aside a reserve fund as a potential backstop. And the budget increased the K-12 per-pupil spending formula by two percent over the biennium, but ignored requests from the governor to set aside money for mandated raises for public K-12 school employees and an expanded pre-K program.
That last point matters. Kentucky currently ranks 48th among states in starting teacher pay at roughly $40,000 annually, while those same teachers make $50,000 in West Virginia and $55,000 in Tennessee.
What's still being decided this week
The session doesn't end until lawmakers gavel out April 15th. They return with the power to override any Beshear vetoes and pass any remaining legislation. That means the Medicaid overhaul, JCPS governance changes, and several other bills your family may be directly affected by could still move- or get blocked.
The budget fight happening in Frankfort right now is, at its core, a conversation about your money: how much the state takes, how much it spends, and who benefits. Wednesday is a good day to pay attention to both sides of that equation.
You can track Wednesday's final session proceedings live through KET's legislature stream or the LRC YouTube channel.
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