where the money should come from.

Kentucky Auditor Allison Ball is asking Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration to dip further into a pot of money he used to temporarily fund senior meals to pay for a long-stalled law to help kinship care families. 

On Monday, Beshear announced his administration transferred $9.1 million to fund the senior meal program a month after pandemic-era funding expired. The temporary funding came from a $25 million pot of money for a previously-funded study that never took place and will help fund senior meals through the fiscal year. 

In a Tuesday letter, Ball said the remaining $15.9 million in that pot should go to fund Senate Bill 151, passed in 2024 with the goal of giving much-needed financial relief to families raising minor relatives. The legislature didn’t fund SB151, which Beshear signed and the cabinet initially said would cost $20 million to implement. The parties have fought in court over the issue since May, when Ball sued. 

On Oct. 14, the cabinet filed regulations on the law that updated the estimated cost to implement from $20 million to $14.7 million, according to a copy attached to Ball’s letter. 

“Your administration has a constitutional duty to do what it just did elsewhere — reallocate what it needs from that remaining $15.9 million to execute the kinship care bil l,” Ball wrote. “Even though that amount of money more than covers the alleged $14.7 million annual cost of the kinship care bill, I would encourage your administration to recalculate that estimated cost. The true cost of executing the kinship care bill may be much lower than that, if anything at all.” 

The Lantern has asked the cabinet to comment. 

This story may be updated.