The Kentucky Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling Thursday and said Gov. Matt Bevin exceeded his authority by cutting current-year state university budgets by 2 percent.
In a 5-2 ruling, the state’s highest court said the governor’s executive order “effectively intercepted the funds before they became available to the universities.”
Gov. Matt Bevin
The decision effectively puts $18 million back into the budgets of the state’s public universities and reverses a May decision by Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate. Wingate ruled that the colleges and universities are part of the executive branch of government and that as such, Bevin had the power to reduce their funding despite the fact that the money had been allocated by the General Assembly as part of the current state budget.
Attorney General Andy Beshear, who challenged the governor’s budget cuts in court as well has several of his executive orders abolishing or revamping existing boards, said the ruling shows the “governor, like everyone, is bound by the law.”
“Based on today’s ruling, I am calling on Gov. Bevin to immediately release the $18 million he wrongfully withheld from our public colleges and universities,” Beshear said. “As the court stated, it is my job as Attorney General to ‘vindicate the public rights of the people of the Commonwealth,’ and I will continue to do so.
“I am also calling on the governor’s office to use today’s ruling as a turning point. It is time for him to stop attacking, and to instead join me in building a better Kentucky. We live in a state where far too many of our children are abused. Our seniors face daily scams that seek to rob them of their hard-earned savings. Thousands of victims of sexual assault have been denied justice based on our rape kit backlog. And our communities face the most deadly drug epidemic imaginable. These are the problems Kentuckians expect us to address, and they are problems that all of us – democrats, republicans or independents – can address together. So I would hope that after today, the nasty press releases and name-calling stop, and the governor joins us for the real work that needs to be done to help Kentucky families.”
Attorney Steve Pitt, representing Bevin before the court, contended the governor has the power to alter payments to any state agency through actions taken by the State Budget Office.
But the Supreme Court disagreed, saying:
“Money that the General Assembly made available to the universities through its appropriations was made unavailable by the governor’s actions. Simply put, there is a difference between exercising an authority not to spend money once it has been made available and preventing the money from being made available to the entity that has the power to decide not to spend it.”
Justice Mary Noble wrote the decision for the majority while Daniel Venters and Samuel Wright III dissented.
The issue was further complicated with the university presidents met with Bevin during the final days of the 2016 General Assembly session and agreed to the cuts in exchange for Bevin’s promise to reduce his proposed cuts in higher education over the next two years.
“I predict today’s decision is the first of what will be a series of Kentucky Supreme Court rulings against Governor Bevin’s illegal actions,” said House Speaker Greg Stumbo. “The court’s opinion strongly re-confirms the legislature’s spending authority as the constitution’s framers intended, and it gives our public postsecondary schools and our college students the money they should have had all along. While I am certainly pleased about the overall ruling, I am worried about the effect it will have on legislative standing in future cases. I think legislators should have the right to join cases where constitutional matters are in question.”
Bevin’s Press Secretary Amanda Stamper released the following statement on the ruling:
“We are disappointed in the Court’s decision today and strongly disagree with its reasoning. The Attorney General clearly does not understand the severity of the pension problem which became the nation’s worst funded plan under the watch of his father’s administration.
“Today’s ruling only affects $18 million of the universities’ overall budgets which is 0.0027 of their annual $6.6 billion expenditures. Nonetheless, we have to be vigilant about every taxpayer dollar spent if we are going to solve our pension crisis.
“The Commonwealth’s public universities have thousands of employees who participate in our pension system and, having such a large stake, should be part of the solution to fix the state’s $35 billion underfunded pension liability. Gov. Bevin recognizes that preserving our retirement systems for state workers and retirees is both a legal and moral obligation.
“We remain determined to fix Kentucky’s pension crisis, no matter the opposition. This administration will continue to use every available tool to solve our pressing financial problem.”
Staff report
To bad. But no surprise that a D Supreme Court would not allow spending cuts; D’s are always against the people who pay taxes.
If the Governor is serious about solving the problems of the pension systems in Kentucky, then he needs to sit down with the leaders in the Senate and the House and work out a serious tax reform bill that will raise the needed revenue to address the pension liability and at the same time meet the legitimate needs of the state for vital public services. Our tax system is antiquated and upside down, with those at the lowest income levels paying a higher tax rate than those with higher incomes. You can’t cut this state to prosperity and you can’t keep robbing vital public services such as education to plug other holes in the budget. The solution to our problems is tax reform.
Sorry Jack, but you have not been paying attention for the last several years. Under the previous governor, a Democrat,the budget was cut often and repeatedly. If Democrats are always against people who pay taxes, why is it that those at the higher incomes pay a lower tax rate than those with lower incomes in this state? The problem is everyone wants public services, but everyone wants someone else to pay for them. The ones who least want to pay for them are the ones with the highest incomes. Our businesses want an educated work force, but they moan and groan when they have to pay taxes to support public education. Everyone wants good roads. Business needs them to transport their products, but they don’t want to pay taxes for new road construction or maintenance of existing roads. Everyone wants police and fire protection. Those cost money.
Budgeting is not rocket science. As a retired teacher of consumer education, I taught budgeting to my students. You decide what the state’s needs are and then you develop a revenue stream to pay for those needs. It’s all numbers and mathematics and both are unbending. You want a trained work force? How much are you prepared to pay for it? You want good roads? How much are you prepared to pay? You want fire and police protection? It comes at a cost! Nothing is free! The job of government is to do for the society that supports it things that individuals can’t do for themselves. No one person or small group can afford a transportation system. No one person or small group can afford an education system. These are functions that governments can and must fulfill.