The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky has long recognized the need for long-range planning for state government's capital needs. The 1986 General Assembly adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 30, directing the Capital Projects and Bond Oversight Committee (then known as the Capital Construction and Equipment Purchase Oversight Committee) to conduct a study of the space needs of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of state government in Franklin County. The findings of that study led the Committee to develop a number of recommendations. The number one recommendation was that the Kentucky General Assembly should enact legislation which requires each branch of government to develop, maintain, and implement a long-range capital improvements plan.

During that same period, the state's policy makers were attempting to determine what the state's debt limit should be. The 1988 General Assembly created the Debt Capacity Task Force to establish a method for evaluating and monitoring the Commonwealth's debt position. Because most of the Commonwealth's bonds are issued to finance capital construction and road projects, the Task Force could not evaluate how much debt the Commonwealth should have without an accurate assessment of its capital needs. The deliberations of the Task Force led to several recommendations to the 1990 General Assembly, including one that:

A Capital Planning Advisory Board of the General Assembly be established to prepare a comprehensive state capital improvements plan and to make funding recommendations to each branch head as to state spending for capital projects.