By Charles Wolfe
The Associated Press

FRANKFORT, Ky. - One of the General Assembly's ranking Democrats shocked his colleagues Thursday by standing up in the House and announcing he had sneaked funding for a construction project into the proposed state budget bill.

Majority Whip Joe Barrows, D-Versailles, said no one else - not even his longtime friend, the appropriations committee chairman - knew that he had worked with a legislative staffer to insert $1.4 million for debt service on bonds to finance completion of the renovation of Lexington Center, including Rupp Arena, home of the wildly popular University of Kentucky basketball team.

Barrows' gambit violated a bipartisan agreement to pass a no-tax, no-project and no-amendment budget bill and get it to the Senate as quickly as possible.

It also jeopardized Barrows' position in House leadership, and it angered and embarrassed the appropriations chairman, Rep. Harry Moberly of Richmond, who said the stunt "makes us all look like a bunch of monkeys."

"How can we trust anything that's in this document now?" Moberly, visibly chagrined, said in a floor speech. "For a friend of mine of 23 years, I have to say I'm ashamed of him. ... This is a terrible thing. It reflects badly on this chamber."

The House had expected to vote on the budget bill this morning. Instead, the Appropriations and Revenue Committee will meet after the House session today to vote out a substitute bill. Because Monday is a holiday, the earliest possible House vote would be Tuesday.

Barrows said he was disclosing what he had done because "it would have been disingenuous" to keep mum and have it discovered later. He had with him a draft of a floor amendment, which he waved before him during his floor speech, to delete the Rupp Arena funding if House members so desired.

But Minority Leader Jeff Hoover said that put legislators in an awkward position. "It makes us take a vote as if we're against Rupp Arena," said Hoover, R-Jamestown.

Barrows said afterward he was surprised by the reaction. He also said he did not plan to resign as whip, the Democratic majority's chief vote counter.

But whether Barrows could remain in leadership was immediately called into question. Speaker Jody Richards and other House leaders hastily huddled in Richards' office to decide what to do. Before going inside, Richards said Barrows' removal was "not being considered right now."

But inside the suddenly idle House chamber, "there are already murmurs on the floor for a (Democratic) caucus to reconsider leadership," said Rep. Kathy Stein, a Democrat from Lexington who would have been among those forced to vote "for or against UK."

Asked afterward if Barrows might be ousted, Richards said: "We may have to do that. I don't know."

Rep. Brent Yonts, D-Greenville, said he thought House Democrats should have a caucus on the subject of leadership change. Earlier in the week, "we sat in a caucus and the budget was explained to us" by Moberly and Barrows, Yonts said.

Rep. Hubert Collins, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said Barrows' timing was all wrong. "Projects have been hid in the budget many times," said Collins, D-Wittensville, "but not under these conditions."