An article in The Paducah Sun last week detailed a litany of everyday services provided by the University of Kentucky that are likely to be affected by cuts in the state budget this year.

Many people are aware that UK, as the state’s flagship university, provides a number of extension services that go beyond its core mission of education. None of them, as it stands, will escape the misery of the 6.25 percent budget cuts Gov. Matt Bevin is proposing across all state agencies. The reductions are being made to cope with a massive deficit in the state’s public employee pension funds.

The article notes that the school’s Division of Regulatory Services analyzed 47,000 soil samples for farmers and homeowners last year. The agency also halted sales of 206 batches of fertilizers based on samples showing they were harmful to gardens and pets. And more generally the agency is responsible for monitoring handling of milk and cream products in the state.

The article cites as another example the work of the UK Veterinary Diagnostic Lab, which is responsible for testing for mad cow disease, avian flu and other threats to the state’s agricultural flocks and herds.

The two agencies stand to lose $1.8 million and $2 million respectively over the next couple of years as the budget proposal now stands. UK officials say overall cuts at the university would total $26 million – about 10 percent of total state support. In addition to the 6.25 percent base reductions, the budget calls for eliminating 70 programs around the state that account for an additional $10 million to UK.

UK President Eli Capilouto recently spoke to a legislative panel about the consequences for the state. He noted the importance of higher education to workforce development, which in turn is critical to the ability of the state to attract new employers and business expansions. The cuts would affect everything from scholarship availability to cancer research, in addition to the services like those mentioned above.

Capilouto is correct about all of this. Like Capilouto, we would prefer not to see our state drink of this cup. But we believe it is bound to.

This is where the near-criminal mismanagement of Kentucky’s pension obligations over the past two decades has brought us. There’s plenty of blame to go around. We have little doubt that those who have been complicit in creating this disaster smugly assumed that when the time came, the state would simply raise taxes.

Here’s why that’s not going to happen: There’s a legislative election this year, and a governor’s election next year. The chances taxes will be increased in the next two years are precisely zero.

Longer term, Illinois stands as testament to the truth about the tax option. That state has massively raised taxes in response to its own pension debacle. The result: it is losing population at the fastest rate of any state in the nation. And still, its pension deficit expands.

College-bound Illinois students are attending out-of-state schools at record rates as pension-driven budget cuts decimate higher education. Officials at Southern Illinois University said last year that enrollment there is in free fall, with freshman enrollment down 40 percent since 2015. The school is looking at merging 42 departments into 18 “schools” after enduring $50 million in budget cuts the past couple of years.

This outcome is what we at the Sun have been warning about for years. And unfortunately UK and the state’s other higher education institutions are getting their first taste of it now. It’s a tragedy, a terrible penalty exacted not by Bevin, but a past, long lineage of lying politicians.