By Tony McVeigh, Kentucky Public RadioKentucky House and Senate budget conferees got down to work Wednesday night in Frankfort.The negotiators spent nearly three hours poring over 200-pages of material outlining the differences between the House and Senate budgets. House Speaker Greg Stumbo says the media wasn’t invited in because experience has shown the work gets done faster behind closed doors.“This is the way we’ve found through trial and error – I’ve been here through these things since 1985, except the four years I was attorney general - it works better doing it this way. We get our business done quicker,” he said.The conferees return to work Thursday morning. They’re trying to find common ground on competing versions of the 17-point-five-billion dollar biennial spending plan, and have only a few days left to finish their work.
Rick Howlett was midday host and the host of LPM's weekly talk show, "In Conversation." He was with LPM from 2001-2023 and held many different titles, including Morning Edition host, Assignment Editor and Interim News Director. He died in August 2023. Read a remembrance of Rick here.
