What’s to come in the 2025 legislative session

FRANKFORT, Ky. – As we get closer to the New Year, many are celebrating the holidays, but our legislators are taking this time to prepare for the next legislative session.

In January, they will meet in Frankfort to discuss new bills, bills that didn’t pass in 2024 and hold hearings to make sure the money they spend is being used as intended. But where does our money go? Of Kentucky’s $31.5 billion budget, around 90% is spent on education, incarceration and medication.

Holding testimonies and discussing studies on these topics are always at the top of the list each legislative session.

“If you boil down that $31.5 billion budget, you would get 90% of it would come from education, medication and incarceration. So we’ll be doing some studies and doing some testimony in Frankfort to see if our money is being spent and if we’re getting the biggest bang for our buck in especially those three areas, which is the great majority of our budget,” Kentucky State Rep. Kevin Jackson said.

One bill that the legislative body is excited for and Kentuckians should be excited for is the Income Tax Reduction bill, which would lower the income tax rate from 4% to 3.5%. This bill would put hundreds of millions of dollars back into the pockets of Kentucky constituents.

“I think one of the first things we’ll do is pass the income tax reduction from 4% to 3.5%. So that would not take effect, though, until the following year. So it’d be 2026 when that would take effect. But every time you cut the income tax by a half a percent, that’s about $650 million that Kentucky constituents get to keep. That’s money in their pocket,” Jackson said.

Other topics of discussion for this years legislative session are affordable housing, solving Kentucky’s workforce problem and artificial intelligence, along with finding ways to to utilize it while diminishing the negative impact it could have on Kentuckians.