How Will Kentucky Spend $3 Billion in Stimulus Funds?

Governor Steve Beshear has released his plan to spend the $3 billion Kentucky will get in federal economic stimulus funds over the next two years.

No, there are no ponies. No immediate general fund dollars to help relieve the current half-billion-dollar shortfall the state has to make up between now and June 30. Ninety-six percent of the money is restricted to specific areas like education, health care, transportation and public safety.

There are three areas of likely waste and corruption, and no, it's not in Medicaid.

‘Kentucky At Work,’ the commonwealth’s plan to implement American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars signed into law last week by President Barack Obama, will provide a much-needed, one-time infusion of dollars for two primary purposes: to maintain jobs and quality of life through investments in education, health care and public safety; and to make strategic investments now to position Kentucky for the future.

SNIP

• Medicaid: Kentucky’s Medicaid program will receive about $990 million over the next two years. The program currently faces a $232 million deficit this year, while demand for services is increasing by about 3,000 people a month due to the economy.
• Health and welfare: Kentucky will receive about $272 million for areas like public housing, weatherization, child care, child support enforcement and homelessness prevention.
• Education: Kentucky will receive about $924 million in stimulus money. Approximately $535 million will be used to preserve existing commitments to K-12 and higher education, as well as to continue efforts to hold down the cost of tuition. The remaining $389 million, administered through the Kentucky Department of Education, will go to Title 1, Head Start, technology and school lunch programs and other programs that help families in crisis.
• General Fund: Kentucky will receive nearly $120 million to help address critical shortfalls in priority areas and mitigate against even deeper cuts over the next two fiscal years.
• Job training and public safety: The commonwealth will receive $66 million in job training and workforce development dollars. In the area of public safety, Kentucky will receive about $30 million to combat violence against women and to support criminal justice efforts at both the state and local levels.
• Roads and Bridges: Kentucky will receive $421 million for highways and bridges. Gov. Beshear and legislative leaders have been working together on a road plan that contains projects that meet the federal government’s requirement that 50 percent of those funds be obligated within 120 days. Projects must be shovel-ready.
• Transit: About $50 million will be allocated for transit.
• Water and Sewer lines: Kentucky will receive about $71 million for water and sewer infrastructure.
• Community Development: The state will be allocated some $12 million for local community development block grants.
• Energy Projects: About $63 million will be allocated to Kentucky for energy initiatives.
  

Yep, the three problem areas are "General Fund," "Community Development Block Grants" and "Energy Initiatives."

Any time over the next two years that the governor cuts an essential program or claims he can't fulfill his obligations because he doesn't have the money, everybody needs to yell, in unison: "What happened to that $112 million for the General Fund?"

There are at least 250 separate municipal entities who will compete for the $12 million in Community Development Block Grants. The likelihood that the actual best projects will get the funding they need is vanishingly small.

Giving Kentucky $63 million for unspecified "energy initiatives" is like giving a teenager the keys to the liquor cabinet and the car and telling him to have fun. Everybody who thinks a single dime of that money will be spent to conquer our addiction to coal, stand on your head.

One last thing: Remember that Kentucky's entire Republican Congressional delegation - Senators McConnell and Bunning, and Representatives Ed Whitfield, Brent Guthrie, Hal Rogers and Geoff Davis - voted against the stimulus. Republicans are on record as wanting the stimulus to fail, and the state and the nation to fall into economic catastrophe so they can win elections in 2010 and 2012.

Any suggestion any republican - Congressional or General Assembly - makes about how to spend Kentucky's share of the stimulus must be rejected automatically on the grounds that a) they didn't want the money in the first place and b) they only want to use it to make President Obama look bad.