Please have a seat. I, as is often the case, i actually do have notes this time and it might even look at them, i dont know. Not sure and highly what will happen. We were blessed to be able to hear what you just heard, that indication of a student outside those doors. And you talk about just wanted to go home. I dont know that i can add anything to that. We are blessed indeed to be kentuckians. We are blessed indeed to be americans. We ar until blessed indeed to b i tell you, you read the preamble, if you dont believe that the things that we just heard in that invocation are indeed the very foundations of not only the commonwealth of kentucky but of our nation. Read the preamble to kentucky constitution. You will understand that there are core foundational underpinnings to what we value here in kentucky. Im grateful to each and every one of you in this chamber and those of you who are members of the house and of the senate, to our judiciary come certainly to speaker over and president stivers. Thank you very much for the invitation to come in and address their respective caucuses, to all those who have gathered here, my wife is a able to be here and able to buy the debt of gratitude to her. She is out of town at a funeral this evening but ill take what, it is not possible that i could serve in the capacity that i do without such an amazing woman, mother of our nine children in an incredible help to me and a guide to me and encourage her to become the first lady of the commonwealth. We are blessed indeed. And thank you all for being here. [applause] i have so many notes here i dont even know where to start. I will say this pic before you begin i want to draw your attention to something. Last year if you remember we began this session with a discussion about the overlook above the capital. And mention it using summit as an analogy for the fact that we are, in fact, estate that has not always looked up to its best self. Though we have not always been the best version of ourselves that we could be. If you remember i challenged you all to be the best version of yourself to help kentucky to become the best version of itself possible. In the state of the commonwealth address, it is my constitutional responsibility to report to the people, to these chambers and to those assembled and to those watching, on what is the state of the commonwealth. It is the responsibility. We could get way down in the weeds and talk about policy and ideology. We are not going to do that. We may touch on a few things, but there are at a time like this opportunities to both look back on a unit that has transpired and a lookahead at what will come before us. And i will say this as i talk about this first year in hindsight. It has been a true joy to me and a pleasure to me to be joined at the hip literally and sometimes almost it seems literally but certainly figuratively with our Lieutenant Governor, jenean hampton, who truly [applause] i will tell you this. I love kentucky and this woman less kentucky every bit as much as i do. We have a lot of fun running around the commonwealth and representing the greatness of this state. I do to say one thing. I want to draw your attention to the website and for those of you are watching or taking notes in any way, shape, or form if you want to get more of the statistics of things that happen, not going to run through everything that has happened in the last year, but these bodies did some amazing work last year. But you can go to bevinannualreport. Com, no spaces, bevinannualreport. Com. Take a look at the things that it happened and we will update that and will continue to be updated as we move forward. There are as i think about last year at this time i began my presentation last year with, do you remember when we used a to have winter . Remember that . We were thanking the folks i been out plowing the roads and had shown in kentucky what it was like to handle that responsibility as well or better than any state in this region. And they did that. Its, i was hoping with this you can rent i would not have to single out a group who also set the example for how to operate in a certain arena. While this year it was not our highway workers who plowed the roads, was our firefighters. Think about so much on a rainy night like tonight we forget about the fact that it wasnt too many months ago, just a couple really, that 49 out of 120 counties were burning. Think about that, 49 counties, 320 different fires encompassing over 49,000 acres. And the hundreds and thousands of paid and volunteer firefighters who put those fires out and who come in kentucky, we lost one barn. We lost no homes in which people live. No lives. It was an example once again to the nation of people stepping up and doing their duty as well or better than anybody anywhere. So join me in thanking our firefighters who kept us safe. [applause] thank you all. I tell you, i was pretty to so many others, anytime you single anyone out you always feel as if you are missing others. If you remember last year as well we have sent out an email and some you got as well, and asked folks to please respond to us about ideas that they had come things we could do in the commonwealth to make kentucky the greatest version of itself that it could possibly be. And, indeed, we heard back from hundreds and hundreds of folks. And we went into those. Last year with several of the folks who werent responded in the gallery and we singled them out. I thought about doing that again but i decided i just going to take some of these responses that weve gotten an a going to read them to you. So i dont want you to think that everything is organized, i also think that look like the ones ive seen on your desks we have lots of are so many of these. These are just some of those we received but i dont enough time to read them all but i want to touch on a couple. Robert gresham road upper right i think. You can see he wrote a lot of stuff, but one of the things i was struck by, he is a volunteer firefighter in line with what we were just saying. He was saying i wish there was more emphasis on volunteering in kentucky. He does we in the Volunteer Fire Department and some other Community Organizations need volunteers. I would encourage all of you, each of you to take it upon herself issue, maybe we will come back to that at the end when we talk about a few challenges to everyone. But let us be estate that regardless of what the call themselves just south of here, dont even worry about that. Let us be the volunteer state. Let us be the state that shows america what its like to ensure that no worthy cause in our commonwealth is for lack of people to come alongside. There is a note in your from a woman by the name of ruth called that. Im not going to read this note other than to say that ruth is a Science Teacher Leslie County high school. I kid you not, ruth, if youre not also not teaching creative writing, you should be. This is a woman who has a clear passion and love for education. For pouring into young people which she has done year after year. I want you all to know who wrote in. I read these emails. My team reads these emails. We are moved by these, inspired by these. Heres a note thanking in from what of our cps specialist at the building downtown. Somebody who, her name is crystal wilder. I does what is the present without reading the whole note. Crystal, i am grateful for your enthusiasm. Its contagious. To every person who works in State Government and those of us who dont, spread the contagion of enthusiasm of joy of positiveness, of being people who see the glass is halffull. There is a note in here for a gentleman who said actually this is from who said this is the first government in my 29 years years as a state employee was ever asked for my opinion. This individual gate some opinions of one of which was if we need to do something with our tax system, we will get to that in a few minutes. Indeed theres a lot we need to do with our tax system in the state. There was a thank you note from a democrat, yes, democrats are also encouraged to write in at any time they would like. This facility is that although im a democrat and pray for the job thats being done. This person, i wont read the whole thing or it might get them in trouble in certain circles by some other things are most grateful for our things that typically seen as being those represented by the party that she is a member of. This was brenda hale. Ill tell you this, im grateful for the fact that our things that transcend party. Today we celebrate in the rotunda one of those very things. Those are the prolife pieces of legislation we will touch on those in the moment as well. Theres a note in here from a gentleman by the name of John Montgomery who said we need to spread the word in kentucky are going to work is good. Theres a lot of other things he said but indeed we do. We need to make kentucky a place thats not 4 47 and workforce participation but most rapidly up that we need a place where going to work is considered to be good, proud, people are proud and we celebrate it. I want to read this one, the bulk of it in its entirety. This is from a woman named judy commons. Judy commons works at Campbell Ridge school in alexandria kentucky. I was very moved by this and im going to just read a portion of it. She said im just a custodian at one of kentucky schools. And it gets a lot more than just cleaning. Whatever it takes is our motto here at Campbell Ridge school and build up to this. And she goes on to apologize for the fact that this was incorrectly spelt and she was putting it together in a hurry. She said im just a country girl but im proud of you and your staff. Shes proud of kentucky. I want to thank you for sending that note. I want to thank all of the custodians, the custodians to take care of every one of these trash cans, the people who emptied every one of these out every night in this chamber, in every office in this villa, in every school in kentucky, and every Office Building in kentucky, so often they come in when we go home. We come back to a clean tidy, empty cleaned up place and its because of people exactly like her. People who think they are just a custodian. But i tell you what. The backbone of america is comprised of people who do jobs like that. Please join me in thanking the people who keep us frankly from being buried in the paperwork that we generate over and over again. Please join in thanking judy cummings. [applause] thank you, judy. Thank you. [applause] judy commons, thank you for writing in. For a guys used to clean office with my dad at night, that when meant a lot to me personally. There certainly are the ones in here. Somebody saying that they were complaining when asked him to send in a note last year, this year they were happy to do it. Thank you to dana for that comment. I can so many others, a coach that i had occasion to run sprints with his team. Next year im going to have cleats and did h you tell you gs to be ready. Talking about the food in our public schools. While im not going to go off on this, just commenting on how much food is wasted because, frankly, were not feeding people anything to actually want to eat. Something to think about. Lets think about these kinds of things as we move forward. [applause] people here who have eaten or who are kids are not eating these lunches, apparently. I want to touch on this one really quickly and only going to mention this one was for spain. Her name is deborah and this is what she wrote to me. She said, id like to see more help for our young men and women who are coming home. Our young veterans are committing suicide at a rate of 22 per day. My son became one of these young people. When he took his life four months ago. He had served in the marine corps, did two deployments. He attempted to get help, but the help came too slow and too late. As a mother i dont want to see this happening to other families. My son my son asked in his letter to be remembered for the man he was and not the man he became. That is his legacy that i want him to leave. My legacy to him is to do whatever i can to stop the young men and women from committing suicide. Deborah, we will be in touch with you. And i will need your help to lead that charge. And i challenge of those of you in this legislative body, the two bodies, take this to heart. These are the young men and women who have laid everything out for us. And there is no greater love than that. Want to read just a couple more real quickly. Theres somebody, a member who wrote in about foster care and adoption, people like amanda barney. Amanda, i want you to know, and christina and others, we are going to be appointing, for lack of a better term, a czar, somebody whos going to oversight for adoption and foster care in the commonwealth of kentucky. And it is my vision, it is my intent and im determined to see how that the fact that kentucky will be the model for america when it comes to adoption and foster care. That there will be no state in america that more safely, more quickly, more efficiently and more costeffectively facilitates the adoption process. If you are to be a foster child anywhere in america, youre going to wish you a foster child and kentucky. Thats what we are going to quit going to take this on. It is going to be a position [applause] more than 8000 children and are fostered system. It needs to be whole lot lower than that if were going to get this problem fix. Theres a woman who wrote in, hannah wrote in with them, on medicaid. Once to see medicaid preserved for those who truly need it. She talked about her 16 month old son who has battled some truly debilitating health issues, and she talked about how impactful and important medicaid was to her and her family. Hannah, i hear you and i understand exactly how critical it is and its why we need to reserve medicaid for families like yours for whom it was intended, for the medically frail, for children, for pregnant women, for those with dependence, those truly in need. If we offered to those who dont need it, allow people to take advantage of the system at the misuse of the system, it comes at the very expense of those who truly need it and it comes at a price that frankly cannot be afforded and ultimately takes away from those who needed. So i i hear you and we will make these notes we really well. I got a number of notes from legislators. I want them to your of you by reading, but thank you for having written. I truly take your comments to heart. Last one i will notice that from a woman, note is lori adams who works at the Boulder County Welcome Center talk about the fact that you love to see the stops and Welcome Centers be better versions of themselves, just like we aspire to in kentucky. Too bad these be more welcoming, more beautiful, more memorable pick and, indeed, im working with our tourism cabinet on this exact issue. We are determined to make sure that people truly do feel welcomed when this topic i wanted to stop in kentucky and wish they could stay. Wanting to come back, especially if they are taxpayers. I wanted just just a couple things that we have done in the past year. We put aside 1. 2 billion into our failing pension since bit more money, and yet is just a drop in the bucket. Weve come to that in a moment when we talk about what we need to address going forward. The fact of the matter is we have got to shore this up and weve got the worst funded Pension System in america. We started on that. We increase funding to combat hair when in the Substance Abuse by 12 million over the next two years to expand our rocket docket programs that we expanded our social worker programs we increased treatment option for those that are incarcerated and transitioning from incarceration back into society. We expanded our neonatal treatment programs. We provided funding to clean up our state parks and to take care of deferred maintenance. We put in 18 billion in the last budget. You all did this and im grateful to you. The people of kentucky are grateful to you. But that 18 million believe or not was only 10 roughly of the amount of deferred maintenance we have. And yet that 18 million was three times as much as we have put in combined in the previous 10 years. Theres a lot of deferred maintenance here in the commonwealth, not the least of which is this building itself. I hope you have appreciated that we are starting to clean it up. Its no small task. Its no small building but ill tell you some of his beautiful frescoes, these beautiful stone carvings are not as green and mossy as they once were. This is the kind of thing were doing will be lead by example and show the pride we have in the commonwealth. We submitted and 1115 demonstration waiver where asking from the federal government as relates to our ability to provide Better Health care to those in need in our commonwealth. Stay tuned. I think its an opportunity for kentucky to lead. I had a call to do with a bunch of other governors from around the country. We are all wrestling with this. As the Affordable Care act which has turned out to be anything but goes away, what will take its place . How will it be done . Whos responsible . We have proposed something that has the ability to lead the nation in terms of entitlement reform the likes of which weve not seen in 20 years since the mid 1990s with welfare reform. These things are coming. We provide a sense of dignity to recipients through Community Engagement in this proposal, the ability for people to have an engagement. These things will be good. I want to also talk about how were going to maintain longterm viability of medicaid. Thats something you will see it you can find a copy of this on our website. Its an 1115 waiver. If youre interested, take a look at it. If you want to contact her office and we will get your copy. For education in 2016 we put more money into the formula that its bee a been put in not only absolute dollars but as much or more per capita as has ever been applied to k12 education. Yet theres more to be done. Its not just purely dollars. There is real need for education reform. We will talk about that in the mold. We put 100 dollars into Workforce Development. 100 million. Thats what it has been competed for by high schools, colleges and Business Community working together. Those applications flooded in hundreds of them. They ultimately were seeking more than 500 million and yet we only had 100 million. The first 65 of those have just recently awarded and use the powerful thing. Those 65 million that you all authorized the people of kentucky to invest in future Workforce Development spawned 140 million worth of commitment to developing workforce. The average grant that is being given, the average amount of money that is being given is 50 . The most is about 85 and thats just some of our smaller counties and some of the smaller projects. Thats 6 65 night of the first 100 million is resulting in 140 plus Million Dollars of investment. This 50 million went into a dual dual Credit Program your past into law that allows our High School Students to start already earning credit toward college while theyre still in high school. An apprenticeship program, you appropriate 500,000 for our apprenticeship program. That money has given our secretary of labor the ability to go out and apply for and receive an 896,000 grant from the federal government for the very same purpose, to create apprenticeship programs and work with our grace companies over 1100 of which currently are always psyched up for our wanting to be engaged in an apprenticeship program. We are going to become a model for this in the nation. My vision, and ive said it many times, i will say it again, my vision is that kentucky becomes the hub of excellence for engineering and manufacturing in america. That there is no stat statementf position that is geographically, demographically with the logistics capabilities, the seasonality that we have, highways, the roadways. I stayed and upkeep cited. I sing it loudly and proudly when im with other governors. We will be the absolute center for excellence for engineering and manufacturing. That pendulum is swinging back to america right now if you all havent been paying attention and will be the epicenter of the. Nobody better position and this is something were going to see and weve seen examples of that just recently in terms of some of the major decisions made by employers who are coming here. Others were talking to the very same reason. We did things last year for supporting our communities, a basis for police officers, social workers, transportation workers and others long overdue. There are still others and a note. I really do. We are looking at ways in which we can ensure we start to honor those who continuously work so hard on the half of the commonwealth. We launched our fostering success program. This is where we are allowing the students ampligen people who have aged out of foster care 1823 who are just dump out into sighside with no family and a support network to be able to be lined up with families are willing to come alongside them without legal obligation, without financial obligation will need to come alongside and helping out. My wife has been a pioneer in that project and has helped to launch that. We are working with foundations around the country were wanting kentucky game to be a model on this front and im grateful for the work that was done there. We signed historic prolife legislation which we will talk to in a moment. These are things, even last year and again this year that are allowing kentucky to serve as a model for the nation. In terms of our respect and appreciation for the sanctity of human life. Weve passed legislation oath last year and this year and we will touch on it. That a given people last year was legislation, this year thus far was an executive action and i think will soon be legislation as well. It is not required to do the same. So many Good Companies like target and home depot and walmart, and these are large employers who have taken it upon themselves to do the same thing. I encourage all of you to doing so. Some cities and counties have done the same. I want to talk just briefly as well about the fact that weve also cleaned up the back log of rape test kits. This has been talked about for years. So many different offices and people and administrations have talked about it. Its finally cleaned up or the backlog is gone. Congratulations to all those who helped make sure that happened. [applause] as we move forward into 2017, i want to encourage you all to please be patient. There is so much, ive spoken to these two gentlemen behind me. We are all chomping at the bit. There is so much stuff we want to do. Theres stuff that has been bottled up for the better part of 96 years or so. There are things we would like to see get done and they will get done, but in fairness to them, there is known way what they did in the first week of the session is even remotely possible on an ongoing basis. We need to be thoughtful and careful with everything that we do. Those were possible because so much work had been done in advance of that session beginning. As we get deeper into the session, things start to catch up. I encourage encourage you, please be patient. Those of you out there watching that want this and that in the other thing done, they will come. If they dont come this year, they will be coming soon either in special sessions are the years that follow. We will be working on a variety of things moving forward. I want to take a brief moment and congratulate these bodies to all that are watching on the truly unprecedented and historic and unbelievable, nation watching, mind blowing first week that was had under the first speaker of the house as a republican that we have had in the past 90 years. He accomplished something people didnt think was possible. [applause] hes always telling me i told him everything he knows, but in all seriousness ive learned a ton from both of these guys. We could could not have done it without the leadership of these two guys passing the legislation and right to work legislation, it allows us to fish and bigger ponds. I sat next to the ambassador from sweden the couple weeks ago he told me although wanted to be here. They couldve been here and wouldve been here. Had we been serious about passing right to work and had we shown interest in them as a company with any significance they wouldve been here. Those are the companies who wanted to see this. Companies who have come here recently wanted to see the spirit others looking at it want to see this. These things will open up our window of opportunity and create jobs for all parties concerned tennessee is a right to work state and has been for many years. This is the type of thing that will create opportunities. I spoke with several people already, just today at an unrelated event. People were talking to me about the fact to how much it has saved on projects in their School Districts and communities i mean as in since they passed legislation just a couple weeks ago. It is already saving significant money. Its estimated it will save somewhere between 125 or 135 million. Year in not overpaying for projects being paid for with taxpayer money. We passed paycheck protection. This will allow us to be able to not put things on employees in the state that they dont want put on them. It puts the power in the employees hand and thats the way it should be. That is the american way. We passed two significant piece of the prolife legislation. For those who think this was not desired or popular, they were not here in the rotunda today. You can find standing room on any of the decks in this place. So many legislators did such a good job and i tip my hat to those of you who were part of the 83 of kentucky who recognize we in the commonwealth of kentucky respect the sanctity of human right and we will do everything we can to defend them. [applause] [applause] [applause] i encourage you, if if youre watching, think your legislatures, think president stivers. I would truly ask you to write a note to them, not only by email but take time to write a letter to the editor. Thinks these men and women for a passing important legislation like this. We talk about empowering women with knowledge and allowing women to have the best in healthcare and safety, this ultrasound bill will provide them with the absolute best in terms of medical knowledge, to allow them to make informed decision. This 20 week ban on abortion allows us to recognize the fact that an unborn child at five months of development feels intense pain and it is cruel and unusual and harmful to be able to take that childs life would not even the thought of an anesthetic. We would not do that to someone put to death in capital punishment. We would punish someone doing this to our pets. Thank you all for being part of passing that legislation. We talked about other challenges and i will switch to that briefly and talk about a couple ideas. We do still have a lot of wood to chop for all the things weve done and all the opportunities ahead of us, some of them seem daunting. We still have a tremendous hole in terms of our pension. If we look at it honestly and actually take what we owe to the liability of what we have in assuming were only going to get 30 year treasury notes as a return, not these hypothetical numbers we dont have a 30 or 35 or 38 38 billiondollar pension problem. We have an 82 billiondollar pension problem. 82 billion is what is owed. That is just short of 19000 for every single man, woman and child in kentucky. It touches all of you. Legislators, those in in the judicial ranks, all of the aforementioned state workers, teachers, a number of folks. Every single one of these, if we use a true expected rate of return that we are likely able to get, the best system we are able to have is less than 60 funded. I will simply say this. The worst is for the majority of our employees. The majority of kentucky retirees have a pension plan that is only . 10 for every dollar thats owed. Thats not a Pension System. That is a Checking Account and its about to go bankrupt. That is a fact, not an overstatement. It is so close to insolvency wouldve been taken over long ago this was a private company. They wouldve taken this over years ago. We have an obligation to the people of kentucky and we had better clean it up. There are going to be hard decision made by this body, by the house and senate and i encourage you to be bold and be strong because there are going to have to be tough decisions made. We have an obligation for the people who have worked and expect their check to keep coming. That is a legal and moral obligation and we better do it. We have the lowest workforce participation in the country. Thats unacceptable. We have 225,000 ablebodied men and women in kentucky who are not looking for work or do not go to work. 225 ablebodied working age not looking for work. You can make twice as much not working can make twice as much not working in the state as you can in tennessee. There will be those and im sure theres already those writing headlines about how we keep comparing ourselves to other states. Guess what, some of the companies that look at coming here. The people who are considering coming here, they comparison to other states. They look at these statistics as well. Ive got a text from another governor, i wont i wont mention the exact direction he mentioned that he said we liked it better when the people werent thinking about competing with us pretty was somebody south of us. He said when people up there werent sinking about competing with us we liked it better. Other states are taking notice of what were doing. Weve got to clean it up. We cant make it so easy to not work. I want to talk about the fact there are the arc which tracks 13 states that basically covers all of these that have whats known as the appellation region. We are a state that has part of our stay in it as do other states. There are 82 counties that they consider to be in distress. Thirtyseven of them, 45 of the total counties in those 13 states, 45 of them of them are in kentucky. Thats unacceptable. Thirtyseven of those in distress counties are in our state. These are things weve got to take care of. We will need a special session for tax and pension. We talked with your leadership and you know this is coming. We wont get it done in the next several weeks but it will get done in 2017. We heard the war of the voters. I talked about it after the election. The people of kentucky, those of you assembled in watching, you asked for change to come and change has come. Change is coming in a significant way in this legislative body, just in the past couple weeks and it will continue to come. It is humbling to us and inspiring to us, the to us, the degree to which you overwhelmingly, the voters, turn this house around. Those first bills we mentioned, those were the first bills ever in the history of the commonwealth of kentucky that were signed governor, a speaker and the president of the senate theyre all republicans. Neither here nor there in respect to the party but its significant in the fact that as so many of you did, you voted your values and not your party. The majority of the people here understand they have an obligation to you. Ill be grateful if you could thank them for the work they are doing. I want us to be the center for excellence. Ive talked about the reasons why. I wont say that again except every time im out there, every time i meet with the company, i make sure sure they know we will do what is needed. I dont want to single out any company, but there are some Companies Small and some very large and have recently decided to come here to understand we are committed to doing what we can. We are innovative and investing in our infrastructure and investing in education. We are investing in Workforce Development. I will say this. Education. Education Workforce Development go handinhand. Last year, i happen to single out a single discipline that no public university. I will say this, you wouldve thought based on the reaction that every third person graduating from Kentucky University happen to have a degree in that. I mention it simply because my argument then is the same as it is now. We need to use the money youre all responsible for. On behalf of our taxpayers we need to invest in education where we can get good return as taxpayers. This is not where the jobs of the 21st century are. Theyre just not. We are going to invest where we can get good return on that. This is something we will see from our universities as well. We are moving toward outcomebased funding. That will be coming in the your head. Weve got to start to be more competitive. We have start reaching down farther into her house high schools. We have to teach fiscal management and fiscal discipline. We have to start teaching the very things that were once taken for granted and are no longer available. We need to teach civics. You will see legislation moving through these bodies that will help us educate better and prepare them for work in the 21st century. I want to talk a couple other things. We wont just move to outcomebased funding, thats something that everyone of our University President signed off on. Some didnt like it. Nobody fully liked her and thats why we know its about as good as were going to get. Nobody fully loved this piece of legislation. When it was past it required them to look at it, we gave them the ability to actually determine the rules. That is something that we will now move legislatively through the process. They came up with the rules. We wont lead the witness on that one. We allowed them to come up with something they liked. We will remove ward those universities that invest in young people and allow them to become productive members of society. Charter schools are coming to kentucky. I will tell you that right now. They will come to kentucky and it will be good for kentucky. With all due respect, we are not doing as well as we could be. Weve got Great Teachers and great administrators. We have great superintendents and principals. They are buried in bureaucracy. They are in a mess is at risk relates to all of the things they are required to do. This has got to change. Expect in the legislature movements that you will see movement on this front. I will leave it to those legislators to discuss and committee and in these bodies as we move forward. Good things are coming. We will see School Choice coming to kentucky. We will see in abolishment of common core. It will be gone from kentucky. There will be greater accountability for our schools and that will be good for our students. Above all it will be good for their parents and our teachers. We will see tort reform coming to kentucky. The exact form and fashion will be determined by the house and senate. These things will be debated. We need tort reform in this state. Our medical profession needs it. Our retail profession needs it. Business in general needs it. The people who produce things and move things around have been begging for this. We are a state that is highly regulated, studies have been done that say we have 30 more regulation than the average state. We are one of the five most highly regulated states in america. The reason i wear this button and others do as well, people might ask you to cut their hair with a little paris scissors, cutting through red tape, people truly arent sure what it is so it does create good conversation. I pledge to cutting 30 of all the red tape in this state in the next two years. We will do that. Some of it will need to be done legislatively an executive lay in some of it will be done by updating things that have been needing to be updated for long time. We talked about pension and tax reform, they are coming in a special session. Work is being done behind the scenes with folks and people in the legislature and not in legislature, people in private business and in and out of the state looking at best practices. Lets look at what works and what doesnt. What have i others tried that was successful or not. We have got to do these together pension and tax reform have to be done together. If not the state will become financially insolvent. We have 82 billion in pension obligation. We. We only take in ten or 11 billion a year. Eight times what we bring in in any one year is already owed. If we took the recently brought in in the next eight years we would only get back to the top of the whole that we have dug for ourselves. One of the things we have to look at his tax expenditures. I would encourage you on this body to think big. Be bold. This is what you were elected to do. This is what the people want. It will not be easy. It will not make you popular with everybody. Everybody likes the idea of spending a little more of other peoples money but we have got to make hard decisions. These tax expenditures, more than 300 of these loopholes, these loopholes, we examined more income in kentucky then we taken. That has to change. These are things that may be part of the conversation, but im talking about bringing every single sacred cal that people think cant be touched on the tax front, bringing them all out of the barn. Some of those sacred car cows will be returned to the barn and some of them will be turned into hamburger. Im going to need your help to make it happen. Its going to happen. Another thing i want to say, and i will take the heat for it and you can blame me if you would like. There are people who have supported me and have supported me that wont like this. This will not be a tax neutral tax plan. We cant afford for it to be. We cannot pay off eight times what we bring in if we simply reshuffle the deck. This is a state that needs to move from a Production Base tax economy to a consumption based economy. We will be getting rid of the inventory tax and the death tax. These are things that will be gone but we have to do this as part of a broader plan that not only lowers the overall tax burden, broadens that, it makes it fair and easy to understand, more in line with federal policy because our state has one of the most convoluted text plans and programs you can imagine, but it has to be done in a way that allows us to pay off the obligation that we have. That will be the task before each and everyone of you. Please get ready. It will be hard to do but we can do it. Criminal Justice Justice reform is coming. We passed an expungement bill. People have a chance to have the record wiped clean after five years after waiting a. Of time after not getting in trouble and paying their obligation to society. They can expunge that for a number of felonies. Not for all, but for for those words appropriate to give people a second chance. We talk about taking off the requirement to check a box for theirs other legislations that will open up licensing and things of the sort to give them a chance to get back on track. We owe people desperate it will be good for them. It will be good for society. It will be good for all of kentucky and it will be good for tax players. Well get a better return on that as well. I want to challenge you with couple things in closing. Last year i asked you to consider reading a book. It was called dreamland. If you have not read it, read that book. It talks about the opioid epidemic. He wrote this book and its a good one. I want to give you another book to read. I will do this every year. I will challenge you to read a book that will make you think about kentucky in ways that you should be thinking about whether or not you want to because frankly some of the stuff is hard reading. Theres a book that a number of you have read, got a little more publicity than did dreamland and i bet a number of you havent read it, its called hillbilly eligibility. Its a good book. It talks about the cultural challenges that are challenging so much of our state, Eastern Kentucky in particular. Please read these books. I will say this, i mean it sincerely for your parents and especially homeschoolers. Theres a lot of salty language in that book. Its very true to life. Any of you have been in Eastern Kentucky will recognize that what you read is what you hear, just bear that in mind. Parents you might want to read at first but it is a sobering and thoughtprovoking book that needs to be read by people who care about kentucky. One is a couple other things. This is a state that has so much going for it. We are so blessed, weve talked about these things. We are going to become a hub of excellence but as surely as i stand here and i want want the support of you in this body, this includes a number in the judiciary, i want to be in kentucky, the absolute last place you want to live if you are going to be so many who wants to commit welfare fraud. If you want to try to milk the system and abuse the system and take advantage of the system, this should be the last state you want to live. When were done cleaning this up thats exactly what its going to be. [applause] [applause] if you are a sexual predator, your neck youre not. 1 a living kentucky. If you are a drug dealer, especially someone who is not an addict but is creating addict, youre not going to want to live in kentucky. We will hammer that. [applause] if there is somebody that doesnt respect the law and respect Law Enforcement officers and you are taking the lives of those who are protecting and serving us in the lives of others, we will hammer you and come down on you and you will not want to live in the state of kentucky. [applause] this is where i asked, in particular, those of our county attorneys and others will touch on this, if your deadbeat dad, you might want to think about moving somewhere other than kentucky. [applause] kentucky has an embarrassing 50 of monies that are old or actually being collected. 58 is our average. Heres whats heartbreaking, thats 40 that the rest of us are paying for. If you are having children and you are not taking responsibility for raising those children financially, shame on you. I will say it applies mostly to males because these are not men. Real men pay for their children and take responsibility for financially supporting their children. This is a habitual problem and there is something is known as people who are habitual in their efforts to avoid paying child support. Right now as i said, 58 , a significant number of counties, almost half of our counties are below that average. I want to single out, not to to make you feel bad, but frankly i do feel hope you feel bad and the county attorneys will do something about this, in lee county, i know these are pork counties and they struggle with some of the other things weve talked about, but the actual rate at which they collect for the children in those counties are 34 and 29 . That is unacceptable. That is inappropriate and im calling on the county attorneys to help do something about that. I want to uphold the very best example we have, Morgan County, im sorry, forgive me. Butler county. Let me make sure i have this right. I dont want to give credit. It is Morgan County. I stand corrected. 70 . Thats not a hundred, it should be a hundred, but heres what id like to ask. Id like to ask that our goal a year from todays that every single county is collecting at least 70 of the monies owed to the young people in our respected counties. But but what Morgan County is doing be the standard for kentucky. That is a challenge i would like to throw out there. I also like to challenge you with one other thing. Id like to challenge you to beautify your community. We talked about cleaning up this capital. We will be cleaning up our rest stops and are Welcome Centers but i want to start something that we will call beautifying the bluegrass. I havent figured out the exact rules of it. The Lieutenant Governor and i will be working on this and we will promise to come and throw a party and a picnic for whatever community is the winner. The rules of which will be defined, they will probably break it into sizes of communities, but i want to encourage people to figure out how you can become the most Beautiful Community in the commonwealth. How are you going to do it. I want i would ask you please find ways to clean up your community, pick up trash, trash, beautify, be proud of who we are. We are blessed indeed. I want to say one other thing. For those of you who want to truly see what is happening, follow along through social media. We cant ignore things like murder rate and failing schools and discrimination suits being filed against people who are constitutional officers in the commonwealth of kentucky, things that are being ignored that are absolutely inexcusable are being ignored because we are looking at things that are idiotic. I would challenge those who would purport to be media to focus on things that matter, to elevate kentucky and focus on ways we can improve kentucky, how we can become the best version of ourselves. You will see me starting to use more live facebook and other forms of social media. You can take it for whatever you want in terms of believability but do your homework. Dont wait until you read it tomorrow after it already happened. Communicate with us and your representatives through social media. Expect government to work for you. If we are to be the best version of ourselves, if we are to be the hub of excellence in america for engineering and manufacturing, it will take us doing simple things like living by the golden rule. We will have to treat other people the way we want to be treated. Its not that complicated. We have to clean up after ourselves, take pride, clean up our trash, bring good ideas forward. We have to cut red tape, and if you have ideas for that go to red tape reduction. Com. Give us ideas. We will clean the state up. We work for you. Thats what were going to do. Get out there, volunteer, take pride in kentucky and god bless each and everyone of you and may god bless the commonwealth of kentucky. Thank you. [applause] we will have more from the conservative Political Action conference later today with remarks from vp mike pence. He will be be speaking at the c pectin or. Coverage gets underway at 70 stern with the Vice President expected to speak at 70 stern. Theres more tomorrow when donald trump will speak to the conservative conference. You can watch live coverage at 10 10 a. M. Eastern also on cspan sunday night on after words. Our focus was to try to get justice for trade on. All of these opticals were placed in our past. What parent do you know that has a 17yearold that if something happens to them, they wouldnt want answers. Since its been thrust on us, we understand there is a bigger picture. There is something more Something Different than the death of our son. There are other lives that we are trying to impact. On the fifth anniversary of his death, they talk about his sons life and death and their experience with the judicial system in their book rest in power. They are interviewed by a National Reporter covering Law Enforcement, justice and race what you think of the legacy of your sons life and death and the activism that has been birthed because of it . Books were written in response to the failure to convict george zimmerman. What comes to mind when you think of that. First and foremost, we definitely think of our son as a young man who galvanized this country. I think the main thing represents not just who he was, but all young black and brown boys and some girls as well that have been killed and nobody has been held accountable. Sunday night at nine eastern on after words. Now a Panel Discussion on the opioid epidemic. This was hosted in los angeles recently. Panel is included as assistant u. S. Attorney who has prosecuted doctors and drug rings. Also the author of the book dreamland, the two true tale of americas opioid epidemic. This is just over an hour. Now it is my great pleasure to introduce tonights moderator lisa geary and is a Top News Editor for the americas at riders. As a former Investigative Reporter at the l. A. Times, she works in a series of stories that connected drugrelated death to the doctors who wrote prescriptions and the pharmacies that filled them. Her team also reported on oxycontin producer which failed to disclose risk factors for addiction as well as evidence for illegal drug trafficking