By Charles Wolfe
The Associated Press

FRANKFORT - Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration has scraped up $10 million more for public schools in the coming fiscal year and wants a recommendation from the state school board on how to spend it.

Fletcher also wants school districts to be given more discretion to administer and spend direct state grants that fund an array of education programs, officials said Thursday.

Both developments are part of the preparation of an "executive spending plan" that Fletcher would use in running state government if there still is no state budget by July 1, when the fiscal year begins.

Education Secretary Virginia Fox said the idea was to make it easier for districts to shift money among programs to get the maximum return in learning results.

Fletcher wants the state board to "tell us how you can give them more flexibility so that they can manage their way through this unusual time," Fox said. "It is only one year and maybe only six months. We don't know when a budget will be passed."

The General Assembly did not pass a budget before adjourning April 13. The Senate and House were left at an impasse over whether the budget should include numerous tax code changes proposed by Fletcher.

The absence of a budget complicates more than the distribution of money. The budget law itself is routinely used by governors and legislators to suspend or otherwise get around other state laws - such as the statute that requires teachers and state government employees to get a 5 percent raise every year.

Neither Fletcher nor the House and Senate planned to give raises that large in the next biennium. A new budget bill, had one been passed, would have suspended the pay statute for two years.

Former Gov. Paul Patton used a spending plan to suspend statutes in 2002, the first time the General Assembly failed to pass a budget. A lawsuit to test the governor's spending authority was dismissed as moot after a budget finally was passed in 2003. Suspension of statutes remained an open question.

Fox said districts would not be given total discretion over grant programs because some, by law, are to be run by the Kentucky Department of Education.

Fletcher, in a memo to the state board and Education Commissioner Gene Wilhoit, who heads the Department of Education, said he wanted the board to recommend which of a long list of education grant programs should be subject to greater local discretion.