Each week, LINK nky is publishing a profile of one of our local legislators so that Northern Kentuckians can get to know the people representing them at the state level.
Senator Chris McDaniel is no stranger to public service. He started to find his place in that realm right out of college when he skipped the traditional workforce route to opt for four years as a commissioned US Army Infantry Officer. That was only the beginning.
After being honorably discharged with the rank of Captain in 2001, McDaniel returned home to pursue his MBA and work in his family business, McD Concrete in Erlanger. He soon became active in public and private education circles, serving as a member of Ryland Heights Elementary’s Site Based Decision Making Council and the Covington Latin School board.
Involvement in numerous professional groups filled his resume — but McDaniel still heard the call of duty. This time, however, it wasn’t from the military. It was from Frankfort.
By 2012, the Northern Kentuckian had jumped into a state political campaign. He ran for former Sen. Jack Westwood’s District 23 seat in northern Kenton County that year and won by 20 points over Democrat challenger and local attorney James Noll. In 2015 he hit a major legislative career milestone with his appointment as chairperson of the Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee. It’s a position he’s held for almost a decade.
The now veteran state senator credits what he calls “a keen eye for fiscal responsibility” for his role as gatekeeper of budget matters in the Senate. McDaniel plans to keep that focus going into the 2024 budget session, he told LINK nky.
“Crafting a disciplined state budget,” is his priority this session, he said. “Maintaining discipline has allowed us to reinvest in the Commonwealth and Northern Kentucky in ways never realized before. Further, it has allowed us to stabilize the previously broken pension system that threatened to bankrupt the state, increase the state’s reserves from $0 to over $2.5 billion, and reduce the income tax from 6% to 4%.”
The 4% quoted by McDaniel is the state individual income tax rate for the 2024 tax year under a 2022 income tax reduction law. That law (House Bill 8) has allowed the individual tax rate to fall from 5% to 4% over two fiscal years, or half a percentage point per fiscal year. State lawmakers have said the goal is to gradually reduce the rate by half a percent each year until it is eliminated.
But there’s a catch. Two conditions (or triggers) must be met for the rate to continue to fall. One condition requires state General Fund revenue to keep up with or exceed fund appropriations plus a 1% reduction in the state income tax rate. The other requires the state’s rainy day fund balance to total at least 10 percent of General Fund revenue at the end of each fiscal year. Only the rainy day fund condition was met for fiscal year 2025, according to an Aug. 2023 letter from the State Budget Director’s Office.
But McDaniel isn’t alarmed. The Associated Press on Sept. 8 quoted him as saying that lawmakers “appropriately weighed the importance of lowering taxes with the need for critical government functions such as education, corrections and more” with HB 8.
As a new budget cycle looms, McDaniel told LINK that his greatest legislative challenge is putting together a spending plan that balances the state’s needs. But it’s a challenge he says that he’s ready to accept.
“Balancing the needs of essential government services while combating those who want to use that money for pork-barrel projects is a regular challenge, but one that I welcome on behalf of 4.5 million Kentuckians,” he said.
Sen. Chris McDaniel (R-Ryland Heights) represents part of Kenton County in Kentucky’s 23rd Senate District. He serves as Chair of the Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee, and is a member of the Senate Licensing and Occupations Committee, the Senate State and Local Government Committee, and an ex-officio member of several Senate Budget Review subcommittees. Additionally, McDaniel is Co-Chair of the Interim Joint Committee on Appropriations and Revenue and a member of the interim joint committees on Local Government, State Government, and the Licensing, Occupations, and Administrative Regulations, as well as several Budget Review subcommittees. McDaniel also serves as Co-Chair of the 2024-2026 Budget Preparation and Submission Committee, is a member of the Public Pension Oversight Board, and serves on several legislative caucuses.