Gov. Steve Beshear closed out a busy week by making several stops in western Kentucky Friday, including one in Murray late in the afternoon.

Speaking at the Murray Ledger & Times offices, Beshear said he started Friday morning with a stop in Henderson to announce a $15 million tax break for the aluminum smelter Rio Tinto Alcan. He said it was a little-known fact that about 30 percent of aluminum manufactured in the United States is made in Kentucky and that there are around 120 aluminum-related businesses located in the state. He said some had moved overseas in recent years but that it looked like Alcan, which employs about 500 people, will stay and use the tax incentives to make upgrades to their facility.

Beshear also stopped in Owensboro Friday to break ground on a new $14 million Kentucky Army National Guard Readiness Center. He said it would serve a couple of Guard units as well as well as acting as a command center in the event of a natural disaster.

On Thursday, Beshear met in Frankfort with former Los Angeles Laker Earvin “Magic” Johnson, who expressed support for raising Kentucky's minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 in a press conference with the governor and first lady Jane Beshear. Beshear said he had never met the NBA star before and was impressed by how nice he was and the generosity he showed by donating $10,000 to a program in Lexington that mentors African-American boys. Johnson also surprised six Lexington boys by promising to pay for their college education once they finished high school, Beshear said.

Also on Thursday, Beshear met with Toyota President Akio Toyoda, who called and said he wanted to visit the company's largest North American plant in Georgetown before heading back to Japan after Wednesday's Congressional hearings in Washington, D.C. Beshear said he thought the hearings went about as he expected them to and that he thought most comments were meant to serve the interests of those who asked the questions, as he said is the case in most hearings of that type. In his opinion, though, Toyota handled their recent crisis well because they not only recalled the cars that were believed to be dangerous but also stopped production of those models.

“To me, that means they put the safety of their customers ahead of their own profits,” he said.

Beshear also spoke about his 2010-2012 budget proposal, which includes $780 million in projected revenue from video slot machines. With it being an election year, he said he isn't surprised that House leaders have “turned a deaf ear” and not shown much support for his plans to gain additional revenue through expanded gambling. He said, though, that House leaders are finding it harder than they might have thought it would be to find the money to balance the budget by finding it elsewhere or making additional cuts.

Beshear said his two-year budget plan calls for no cut in higher education in the first year and a 2 percent cut in the second year. He said some lawmakers had proposed cutting two days from the K-12 school year, which he said would be moving backwards. He said that with 177 days, Kentucky is already below the national average of 180 days and well behind the international average of 200 days.

Beshear said he is strongly supportive of Murray State University's role in moving the state forward and that his budget's proposed capital projects include finishing the last part of MSU's science complex with the construction of the physics and engineering building.

While it is an election year for many, Beshear will not have to worry about running for a second term until 2011 and he said he is thankful for that. He said many people are angry right now for the difficulties they are facing in the worst economic crisis in his lifetime. While much of that anger has been directed at his party while Democrats are in charge at the national level, he said he doesn't think Republicans will have an easy fall either.

“I think it's going to be a tough year for incumbents in general,” he said.