By Mark Hansel
NKyTribune managing editor
Riverfront Commons will lose $150,000 in state funding in each of the next two years, as a result of a veto by Gov. Matt Bevin.
The funding was approved by the General Assembly as a line item in the Economic Development Cabinet portion of House Bill 303, but was included in a list of items vetoed by the governor.
Gov. Bevin provided the following explanation for the veto, which also included the elimination of funding for Louisville Waterfront Development projects.
“With the commonwealth facing significant fiscal constraints, agencies must retain maximum administrative flexibility to effectively deploy agency resources.”
Jack Moreland, president of Southbank Partners, said the veto was disappointed, but not completely unexpected.
“It’s unfortunate, and I know that other agencies, like the universities are experiencing cuts, so, we’re not in this alone, but it’s going to slow our progress down,” Moreland said.
Riverfront Commons, a Southbank Partners project, is an 11.5 mile walking/biking path that runs along the Ohio River from the city of Ludlow on the west to the city of Ft. Thomas on the east.
The state has allocated the $150,000 in funding for the last four years and Moreland said he believes Southbank Partners has put the money to good use.
“We have used them for things like the match for our 80/20 Transportation Alternative Grants and our SNK Grants,” Moreland said. “We also gave Covington, Newport, and Bellevue $20,000 each for the Red Bike Project and Dayton used approximately $20,000 for the KZF study of the riverfront. We’ve tried to do things with it that are very legitimate.”
Moreland testified before joint sessions of the General Assembly in January to explain just why the funding is so important to the region and felt he had gotten the message across.
“To their, credit, we wound up in the final document, so I must have been convincing when I talked to them,” Moreland said. “They tried to help us as much as they could, but it’s so unfortunate because $150,000 is such a small amount of money out of a $20 billion budget.”
Questions are also being raised by some legislators regarding the validity of the vetoes. It appears Bevin’s signature was not original and the document was dated April 27, while the governor was in Germany attending an industrial fair.
Eric Summe, president and CEO of meetNKY, the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Bureau said Riverfront Commons would spur tourism in the region and generate money.
“When you look at it from a tourism perspective, it’s an investment,” Summe said. “We sometimes have trouble getting the message across that an investment in tourism pays big dividends and this is an example where you have to spend money to make money. When we invest in marketing and we invest in product development there is a big return.”
At meetNKY’s annual meeting Summe pointed out that each dollar spent on marketing by the organization generates $25 in visitor expenditures.
“That’s the part that is particularly disappointing to us,” Summe said. “I applaud Governor Bevin on trying to restore fiscal stability to the state budget, but from another perspective, you are cutting an investment that could actually make more money.”
When completed, Riverfront Commons will connect to trails in Cincinnati by way of the Purple People Bridge, to the Licking River Greenway in Northern Kentucky, and to Devou Park in Covington.
Gov. Bevin also vetoed $420,000 over each of the next two years allocated to the Louisville Waterfront Development Corporation that would benefit the city’s Waterfront Park.
“They actually did not get funded in the last biennium, so they had worked it pretty hard and thought they were in good shape, but it didn’t work out,” Moreland said. “They are losing out on more money than us, but none of it is easy to take.”
An additional $225,000 in each of the next two years to develop waterfront botanical gardens in Louisville was also cut.
Bevin’s action eliminated the budget funding for the waterfront projects, but the Economic Development Cabinet could restore some of the money through discretionary allocations.
Contact Mark Hansel at mark.hansel@nkytrib.com