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Beshear Meets with Lawmakers

By Carrie Pond

Frankfort, KY – Kentucky House and Senate leaders met separately with Governor Beshear yesterday to discuss the state's financial crisis. Beshear will announce later this week how he intends to deal with a projected 456-million dollar revenue shortfall. But there's still no word on a possible cigarette tax hike.

"We're just now going through that decision-making process, and by the end of the week, we'll have our plan together and we'll publicly announce it."

Beshear says the sooner the General Assembly addresses the deficit, the better. Since lawmakers control their own legislative calendar, Beshear believes it may be possible to act in January without a special session. Right now, lawmakers are scheduled to meet for four days in January to elect new officers, and then recess until early February.