Steve Beshear in 2013 Governor's State of the State speeches
On Drugs:
KASPER: KY All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting
We need to tweak House Bill 1, the landmark prescription painkiller legislation. But we are not going to backtrack on bringing integrity to prescription pain medication:- When it came to non-medical use of prescription painkillers, Kentucky at one
time had the 6th highest rate in the nation. But prescription drug abuse in Kentucky has dropped so much that we improved 24 spots.
- Furthermore, nearly half of the state's known pain management clinics have closed rather than submit to new rules that
protect patients.
- The use of our nationally recognized prescription monitoring program, KASPER, has increased nearly 7-fold as providers work to ensure that painkillers are being used legally and effectively.
- And prescriptions for some of the most
abused drugs have dropped up to 14% from a year ago.
As with most reform efforts, we can improve upon the new regulatory system. But we are not going to return Kentucky to the "prescription playground" that it was before House Bill 1.
Source: 2013 State of the State speech to Kentucky Legislature
Feb 6, 2013
On Drugs:
Reduce historic addiction to tobacco with smoke-free law
Over the years, we've taken numerous steps to reduce Kentucky's historic addiction to tobacco. And yet we still rank either dead last, or next to last, in the number of adults who smoke, teens who smoke, and pregnant women who smoke. Our smoking-related
mortality rate is the worst in the nation.Yet we've never instituted a statewide law to protect Kentuckians from second-hand smoke. More than half the states in the nation have smoke-free laws. So do three dozen cities and counties in Kentucky.
In fact, nearly half of Kentucky's citizens live in communities that have adopted protections for their residents & workers. It's time for us to begin looking seriously at doing this on a statewide level--to extend this protection for all our citizens.
Six in 10 Kentucky adults now favor a statewide smoke-free law, and that support increases with each survey taken. This isn't a rights issue. People could still smoke. Just not in places where their smoke endangers the health of our workers and others.
Source: 2013 State of the State speech to Kentucky Legislature
Feb 6, 2013
On Education:
We made cuts to survive; now let's assess damage
[In the Great Recession], we made cuts to certain programs that hurt, cuts that none of us would have made if we had not been forced to make them to survive. Well, we survived--better than most states--but now we must ask ourselves: What damage did we do
- We froze funding in our K-12 classrooms, despite rising costs.
- We eliminated funding for textbooks, going from $21.7 million in 2008 to zero. Instead of taking books home to study, students often must leave them for the next class.
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We cut school safety funding by 60% at a time in which we must be more vigilant, not less.
- We cut funding to our universities--causing tuition to go up an average of 4% a year at our community and technical schools and nearly 7% a year at our largest
4-year universities.
- At the same time, we reduced aid to needy students. In fact, we were forced to slam the door in the faces of some 73,000 would-be students--in just one year--who came to us asking for help to go to college.
Source: 2013 State of the State speech to Kentucky Legislature
Feb 6, 2013
On Education:
Reinvest in SEEK: Support Education Excellence in Kentucky
Now that we're emerging from the recession, it's time to rebuild programs, and reinvest in our future. For example:- It will take up to $300 million a year to fully fund the ARC for the Kentucky Retirement System.
- Fully funding SEEK--the basic
formula for classroom instruction--will also take substantial new revenues. We have protected SEEK from cuts.From 2008 to 2014, it grew zero percent--in a time when enrollment was growing, maintenance and other costs were increasing, and local support in
some areas was dropping. Our schools aren't treading water. They are slowly sinking. If we had maintained that [previous average] 3.4% a year growth for SEEK, we would be spending right now an additional $550 million on classroom instruction.
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It will take $75.8 million to restore cuts made since 2008 to textbooks, ongoing teacher training, school safety, technology, and programs like after-school and tutoring that prevent drop-outs by helping struggling students catch up.
Source: 2013 State of the State speech to Kentucky Legislature
Feb 6, 2013
On Free Trade:
Record exports to Asia & Europe means we're importing jobs
We're setting records with our exports, and we're importing jobs and investments from countries like Japan, China, Korea, India, France and Germany.
Four years ago, the auto industry was in crisis. Last year, Kentucky auto makers produced more than a million cars and light trucks for the first time since 2007.
Source: 2013 State of the State speech to Kentucky Legislature
Feb 6, 2013
On Government Reform:
Smart Government: sell surplus land, buildings and vehicles
The biggest challenge is finding the resources we need to strengthen our core. After inheriting a global recession, we spent five years bringing common sense to state spending--and we've done so in three ways:- Cuts. We reduced the state budget
13 times in five years, cutting spending by $1.6 billion and trimming the state workforce to its smallest size in nearly four decades. Some agencies have been slashed up to 38%.
- We found more efficient ways to run daily operations.
Through our multi-year Smart Government Initiative, we've realized both one-time windfalls and annual savings by selling surplus land, buildings and vehicles, consolidating offices, renegotiating contracts and bids, and changing how we buy goods
and services.
- And we made revolutionary changes to huge budget drains--closing a state prison as part of a wider Corrections reform, privatizing Medicaid and reining in benefits for public employees.
Source: 2013 State of the State speech to Kentucky Legislature
Feb 6, 2013
On Jobs:
Jobless rate is falling; Kentucky now 2nd in job growth
My immediate goal during the recession was to help our families and businesses survive. But merely surviving was not enough. So we also acted strategically to preserve our ability to make investments in our people and infrastructure that would strengthen
Kentucky's long-term capacity. By embracing tough but thoughtful fiscal decisions, you and I brought Kentucky through the worst recession of our lifetimes better than most other states, and today our economic momentum is gaining national recognition.
We've made a lot of progress. For example, our one-year net job growth recently ranked second in the nation, and our current unemployment rate is the lowest in over four years.
That jobless rate has fallen almost 25% in two years. In fact, we're now adding jobs at the pre-recession pace.
Source: 2013 State of the State speech to Kentucky Legislature
Feb 6, 2013
On Welfare & Poverty:
We face a heavy sword: public pension unfunded liability
As we emerge from this recession poised to do great things, fundamental weaknesses stand in our way, weaknesses that both require substantial investments in our future and at the same time prevent us from making those investments.
What are those weaknesses?- A tax system that works against us, not for us.
- A workforce that isn't as trained and skilled as it needs to be.
- An education system that isn't as efficient and rigorous as the world demands.
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A population whose health ranks among the worst in the nation.
- And a heavy sword called the public pension unfunded liability that dangles by a thread above us.
If we solve those challenges, Kentucky will lead the nation out of this recession. If we don't, we'll begin slipping backward, and our progress will fade away. And my friends, it can go either way.
Source: 2013 State of the State speech to Kentucky Legislature
Feb 6, 2013
Page last updated: Dec 05, 2018