Governor Andy Beshear hosted an update with state and local media Monday afternoon, where he announced that $9.1 million will be reallocated to support home delivered meals across the Commonwealth.
This comes after it was announced in September by Area Development Districts that funding cuts were severely impacting their home delivered meals programs for seniors, including in the Pennyrile Area Development District. PADD and the Pennyrile Allied Community Services announced that in their service area only, the program was hit with a funding shortfall of $1.5 million.
Over 750 seniors in the region currently receive home-delivered meals, five days per week, and with the funding cut the program would have only been able to support less than 300 clients. In an attempt to make sure seniors were still getting meals, PADD and PACS transitioned to a three-day-per-week delivery schedule that would have covered those meals for another seven-weeks, using supplemental funds.
On Monday, Governor Beshear announced that $9.1 million in funding has been reallocated from other sources, meaning those meals will be covered through the next fiscal year—and it was not a ‘simple’ redistribution of funds.
He says it was thanks to work by the State Budget Office and Kentucky legislators; they can move forward with getting those dollars where they need to go.
Governor Beshear says he’s relieved a solution was found, but it is a temporary one, as these programs will need to be appropriately budgeted for in the future.
He also took some state legislators to task, saying when super-majority chose to end the COVID-19 national emergency declaration in Kentucky earlier in 2022, that removed roughly $50 million in food assistance. He also noted that he believes that national tariffs and inflation have led to the nearly $300 million state budgeting shortfall, lending itself to the problem.