The Senate is looking to spend.

The first version of House Bill 1, a large one-time appropriations bill already passed in the House, proposed $1.8 billion in spending from the state’s Budget Reserve Trust Fund. The version unveiled Wednesday by Senate Appropriations & Revenue Chair Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, would clear a whopping $3.5 billion.

House Bill 6, the state’s operating budget, remains about the same in terms of General Fund investment. Both the initial House version and the new Senate version appropriate roughly $15 billion each fiscal year. Both chambers are controlled by Republican supermajorities.

To the disappointment of Democrats and public education advocates, the total allocation to the state’s per-pupil funding formula increased by a small margin from $6.4 billion over the next two fiscal years to $6.5 billion. No funds were allocated directly towards teacher raises, which was a key plank on Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s re-election campaign platform.

Also at issue was the swift movement of the state’s all-important budget document. The bill was unveiled at 10 a.m. Wednesday and was expected to get a vote on the Senate floor mid-afternoon. However, budget negotiations typically linger until right before the veto break, which starts when the clock strikes midnight on March 29.

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House Bill 1 retains all the provisions put in the initial House version, headlined by $950 million to pay down pension obligations, but doubles the overall investment from the Budget Reserve Trust Fund, also known as the Rainy Day Fund, through a litany of spending projects.

The overall emphasis from McDaniel when presenting the bill was its focus on spending one-time funds from the state’s Budget Reserve Trust Fund. As of the filing of Beshear’s budget recommendation at the end of last year, the latest balance on the state’s Budget Reserve Trust Fund was more than $3.7 billion.

“These investments — in our people, in our energy, in public safety, education, the economy, health, quality of life and infrastructure in our communities — are both necessary and worthy. We stand in an odd juncture in history, where we’ve taken in far more in receipts than we anticipated. We have one-time monies and we have maintained our commitment to spend those monies in a way that is one-time spending, and not only does not (add) to current obligation but instead stimulates recurring economic activity,” McDaniel said.

The new projects, listed from most to least expensive, in House Bill 1 include:

• $890 million for transportation projects “identified for industrial development, economic and quality improvement, or located in counties that are projected to have the largest change in total population in both numeric and percentage gain”

• $150 million for a joint project between the state, Northern Kentucky University and the University of Kentucky College of Medicine for Northern Kentucky University’s Salmon P. Chase College of Law and UK’s College of Medicine Northern Kentucky Campus to relocate to downtown Covington

• $100 million to fund infrastructure projects in Warren and Hardin counties, where massive growth is anticipated due to the construction of two major electric vehicle battery production facilities

• $100 million to the city of Louisville for various downtown revitalization projects

• $75 million for a tiered one-time check for certain state retirees, mostly through the Kentucky Employees Retirement System. The tier system prioritizes those who retired before 2015 and who receive an annualized retirement allowance of less than $45,000.

• $75 million to UK’s Center for Applied Energy Resource research center “to support and facilitate the development of nuclear energy”

• $60 million to Murray State to “construct a facility for the veterinary technician program”

• $50 million to construct the “Western Kentucky Law Enforcement Training Academy” in Madisonville

• $36 million to the Kentucky Horse Park for facilities upgrades

• $35 million to create a “defense industry development fund” to attempt to attract defense contractors to the state

• $30 million to the Home of the Innocents in Louisville for the expansion of the Kosair for Kids Complex Care Center

• $25 million to the University of Louisville to build the Center for Rural Cancer Education and Research in Bullitt County

• $25 million to the Department for Local Government to administer a “community-focused park grant program”

• $10 million to Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government to support Lexington’s Transformational Housing Affordability Partnership

• New economic development fund for the 60 poorest counties in Kentucky

• Extra $90 million from the BRTF to the road fund.

McDaniel told reporters that the budget team has run analyses showing that under the Senate’s proposals, the state will hit mandated “triggers” to decrease the income tax from its current 4% to 3.5% to start 2026. They budgeted around that goal, he said.

“Our second year spending plan took out about $390 million dollars, specifically for the idea that we would be able to hit the trigger to lower to 3.5% at the beginning of ‘26,” McDaniel said.

The bill retains a provision that sidesteps conventional budgetary constraints to increase the likelihood of additional cuts to the state’s personal income tax, which was recently reduced two years in a row from 5% to 4% under GOP-backed legislation. By not classifying the bill’s spending as “appropriations” under certain conditions, it effectively removes a significant barrier to decreasing the state’s personal income tax by an additional 0.5%.

Juror pay, a source of consternation and legislation, was bumped up from the current $5 per day to $25 per day in the latest version of House Bill 6.

Senate Democratic Leader Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, said Democrats were only given a preview of the budget Tuesday night and a full copy Wednesday morning.

“It’s not the most transparent process. People need to know, we need to know,” Neal said. “I’m a great proponent of transparency, but it’s a difficult process.”

Neal also expressed some disappointment that more funding wasn’t put forward for education, specifically to pay teachers.

“We have mechanisms that we could use to address teacher raises now, in my opinion. We also have the funds to do that. But there’s an emphasis on one-time costs as opposed to recurring costs, so they militate against that idea of raising salaries because obviously that’s a recurring cost,” Neal said.

Though K-12 education funding was a source of worry for some, House Bill 6 proposes significantly increases the state’s investment in performance-based higher education funding. It ups the dollar commitment in that fund from just over $100 million each fiscal year to $200 million each fiscal year.