page_title: Bert Combs
section_title: Kentucky's first billion-dollar budget
hierarchical_section_title: Bert Combs / Political career / Kentucky's first billion-dollar budget
caption_attribution_description: English: A floral clock on the grounds of the Kentucky State Capitol
context_page_description: Bertram Thomas Combs was an American jurist and politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. After serving on the Kentucky Court of Appeals, he was elected the 50th Governor of Kentucky in 1959 on his second run for the office. Following his gubernatorial term, he was appointed to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President Lyndon B. Johnson, serving from 1967 to 1970.
  Combs rose from poverty in his native Clay County to earn a law degree from the University of Kentucky and open a law practice in Prestonsburg. He was decorated for prosecuting Japanese war criminals before military tribunals following World War II, then returned to Kentucky and his law practice. In 1951, Governor Lawrence Wetherby appointed him to fill a vacancy on the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Later that year, he was elected to a full term on the court, defeating former governor and judge Simeon S. Willis. Kentucky's Democratic Party had split into two factions by 1955 when Earle C. Clements, the leader of one faction, chose Combs to challenge former governor and U.S. Senator A. B.
context_section_description: During the campaign, Combs had advocated a progressive platform that included increased funding for education, highways, parks, industry, and airports. Soon after his election, he won approval for a three-percent sales tax to pay a bonus to military veterans, although he could have funded the bonuses with a one-percent tax. He had asked for the larger tax in order to fund his other priorities. As a result of the sales tax, Combs presided over the state's first billion-dollar budget. One study showed that Kentucky doubled its per capita expenditures between 1957 and 1962, growing its appropriations faster than any other state. Combs held large public relations events for each tax-funded project that was completed, declaring in dedication speeches that the sales tax had made the project possible.
  In 1960, Kentucky had one of the highest dropout rates in the nation, and ranked second only to Arkansas in the number of one-room schools. Fewer than half of the state's high school graduates attended college. Many teachers educated in Kentucky sought higher salaries available in other states. Combs' biennial budget, passed by the General Assembly in 1960, used money from the new sales tax to increase school funds by fifty percent and establish the state community college system (now the Kentucky Community and Technical College System). It also increased funding for free textbooks by more than $3 million and allocated another $2 million to vocational education. It allocated over $5 million to the state universities for new buildings and another $10.5 million to fund completion of the Albert B. Chandler Hospital, a facility at the University of Kentucky named in honor of Combs' political foe.
  The state's roads were in poor condition when Combs became governor. The Automotive Safety Foundation found that two-thirds of Kentucky's federal roads were below standards for existing traffic demands. It further found that twenty percent of the state's major city streets were inadequate, that another fifty-five percent would soon be inadequate due to increasing traffic, and that half of the state's secondary roads were unfit for modern industrial traffic. To address these problems, Combs issued $100 million in bonds to increase funding for highways, appointing Earle Clements as state highway commissioner to oversee the correction of the road issues. One of the new roads, the Mountain Parkway, which connected Combs' native Eastern Kentucky to Central Kentucky, was later renamed the Bert T. Combs Mountain Parkway in Combs' honor. Because of generous funding in Combs' budget, Kentucky finished its portions of the Interstate Highway System much sooner than surrounding states such as Virginia and Tennessee.
  Combs also won approval of a $10 million bond issue to benefit the state parks, which had poor lodging and few amenities. Combs combined the bond issue with $10 million in revenue bonds and effected major renovations at all 26 of the state's parks. Though his dreams of seeing privately owned tourist facilities spring up around the parks did not come to fruition, out-of-state tourism to Kentucky more than doubled during his administration, accounting for about sixty percent of state park visitors and fifty-three percent of the overnight visitations to the parks. Journalist John Ed Pearce recounts that Kentucky natives began to complain that they could not get reservations in the parks during peak seasons and called for limitations on the number of out-of-state visitors or a reservation system that favored Kentuckians, although nothing was done to address these complaints.
  On April 10, 1961, Combs appropriated $50,000 from the governor's contingency fund to construct a floral clock on the lawn of the state capitol. Combs had seen a similar clock in Edinburgh, Scotland, and believed it would be a colorful addition to the capitol grounds. In a subsequent gubernatorial campaign, Happy Chandler mocked the clock, declaring "Well, they don't say it's half past 2 in Frankfort anymore. They say it's two petunias past the jimson weed." Chandler's derisi
caption: The floral clock in Frankfort
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