This week, You Decide, Kentucky takes our campaign to modernize Kentucky’s local revenue laws to join county leaders from across the state at the Kentucky Association of Counties’ annual conference in Lexington.  Reforming how counties can generate revenue is vital for the long-term health of many of Kentucky’s communities.

Kentucky counties generate 88% of their revenue from three sources: occupational taxes, property taxes, and insurance taxes.  The rest comes from a variety of fees or taxes as dictated by the General Assembly. Meanwhile, counties are mandated to pay for items such as maintenance of county roads and bridges, 911 services, and county jails on top of spending money on economic development and quality of life improvements in the county.

The limited number of revenue options for counties mean they are increasingly facing hard the decision to keeping going back to the well and raising rates on those already carrying the bulk of the burden or cut non-mandated services.  Neither is a viable option for the long-term flourishment and growth of our communities.

As the General Assembly diversifies the tax base at the state level, Counties should have the same flexibility to shift and apply modern options at the local level. Every county’s economy is different and there’s no reason Pike County should be forced to provide for their community with the same revenue streams as McCracken of Jefferson Counties. Our local leaders must be empowered to make decisions for their communities that allow their their local economies to flourish while meeting all necessary financial obligations.

We look forward to seeing many friends and supporters at KACo this week and look forward to continuing the discussion the local elected officials about why modernizing local revenue sources is such an important issue.