LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Toward the end of a two-hour meeting Thursday, Louisville Metro Councilman Stuart Benson (R-20), who hadn't spoken for most of the meeting, was recognized.
"We failed, and what we gotta do is say, 'Can you bail us out? We screwed up, and we need you all's help,'" he told his colleagues in a passion-filled speech.
"And I'm embarrassed."
Despite his remarks, for the most part, Metro Council's Budget Committee meeting had a sobering, subdued tone as council members discussed Louisville's financial stalemate.
"With a month left, we're faced with dire choices," Councilman Kevin Kramer (R-11) said.
Mayor Greg Fischer outlined a plan Wednesday that would triple the city's tax on some insurance premiums to help close a $65 million gap on ballooning pension obligations.
"This is an invoice that we get from the Kentucky Retirement Systems, and we have to pay it, and it's going up at the rate of $10 million or more a year," Budget Committee Chair Bill Hollander (D-9) said.
In the meeting, Hollander and his colleagues saw just how much that obligation will grow over the next few budget years, and he said Metro Council is left with only two choices: severely slash services like public safety or pass the tax hike.
"As we go forward, if someone is saying, 'We don't need to raise revenue. We can cut the budget enough to make up for this new pension expense,' they really need to say how they would cut the budget," Hollander said.
Republicans at the meeting didn't give a plan to escape the tax hike. But some, like freshman Councilman Anthony Piagentini (R-19), took Metro Council and Fischer to task.
"You can't move forward unless you know where you've come from," he said.
He pointed out that last year, the council skirted its pension problem by using one-time funds instead of coming up with a long-term solution then.
"This was one-time tricks to get through an election year, and then come into this year, and now it's like we have almost double the problem," Piagentini said.
Hollander came to Metro Council's defense.
"We've used these kind of revenues to balance budgets many years in the past, not just last year, and not a single person on the council raised this as an issue last year," he said. "No one!"
To Hollander and some of the others, it's the future, not the past, that's important right now.
Related Stories:
- Small Jefferson County cities may not need revenue from Fischer tax plan
- Louisville mayor proposes tripling tax on insurance premiums to close budget gap
- Emergency services could face serious cuts due to city's budget shortfall
- City workers could be laid off to counteract state pension costs, Mayor Fischer says
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