Thursday’s Rooster Booster featured a Legislative Preview including a Q&A session with a panel of current and newly elected delegates for the Greater Owensboro area.
The free event, sponsored by German American Bank, can be viewed in full via the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce Facebook page here.
The Q&A panel was moderated by Bart Darrell, 2020 Chamber Advocacy Chair and 2018 Chamber Board Chair.
The Legislative Preview portion of the event began at 25:45 minutes.
Each legislator gave a brief introduction, then each answered the five questions posed by Darrell.
Participants included (time of introduction listed in parentheses):
- Senator Matt Castlen, KY District 8 (27:15)
- Rep. Suzanne Miles, KY District 7 (29:35)
- Rep. Jonathan Dixon, KY District 11 (31:20)
- Rep. Jim Gooch, KY District 12 (32:10)
- Rep. DJ Johnson, KY District 13 (34:35)
- Rep. Scott Lewis, KY District 14 (36:20)
Questions/topics included (time listed in parentheses):
1 (38:00) – Through no fault of the people, many employers have had to close doors either temporarily or permanently because of the pandemic. That’s resulted in a lot of people having to seek unemployment benefits that may not have had to before. That’s depleted a lot of state funds, which will result in significant tax increases to eliminate that debt. What plans do you have to work to ensure that businesses are not hit during this tough time?
2 (49:15) – Every state and every community is always trying to make itself somewhat unique from an economic perspective. Kentucky has become a real distribution hub for our part of the country. As we continue to grow, we have to make sure our infrastructure is sound — roads, bridge, etc. There’s been a lot of discussion about raising the gas tax to help fund road improvements. What is your view on an increase in the gas tax to fund this initiative?
3 (1:00:00) – Public higher education’s budget has decreased about 35% over the last decade. The state appropriations four our nearest public university is down to 19% of their funding. Community colleges are even more underfunded. Some of our neighboring states are doing a lot better than us. The natural result of this kind of funding mechanism is a decrease in our workforce development, and that hurts our competitiveness as a state. What is your plan to reduce the slide we’re in when it comes to education as it relates to workforce development?
4 (1:15:50) – Most experts nationally agree that early childhood education is critical to a good economy and a better way of life, and Kentucky would certainly be no different. Yet the funding piece of that really hasn’t been addressed to the satisfaction of many. Currently the state only funds ½ day of kindergarten for our local public school districts. Would you be in favor of funding all-day kindergarten from the state level so that local districts can use those freed-up funds for early childhood education?
5 (1:27:35) – A lot of people in Western Kentucky feel like over the past years we’ve kind of lost some of our clout in Frankfort. We look to you all for guidance. We need to hear from you in terms of any ideas that you have that we might do that we haven’t done before, or maybe something we can do differently, to improve and enhance our presence at the state level to help our part of the state and community?
