Getting Benefits Right Another Beshear Opportunity

The Louisville Courier Journal's David Hawpe gets it right this morning when he calls the effort by the Fletcher administration on public employee benefits weak.

The answer clearly is not the anemic approach suggested last week by a (pale) blue ribbon commission. The truth is, the current system is unsustainable. It must be changed. Future state hires will have to accept the kinds of changes that millions of Americans have had to stomach, as private employers have adjusted their retiree pension and benefit plans.

Empowering a generation of state government employees as a strong goody-getting voting block was never going to work for our fiscal health. Demanding a phase-out of legislator pensions would also help change this culture of self-destruction.

Cutting the benefits won't hurt state government. Not cutting them will bankrupt us. Do the math.

This political gift was wrapped up by Ernie Fletcher last summer when he didn't make the special session about public employee benefits.

For Mayor Jim Newberry's Eyes Only

The meltdown at the the Fayette County jail includes a sexual harassment lawsuit whose mishandling is indicative of the leadership failure in Lexington.

It will be interesting to see if the sexual harassment grievance filed at the Lexington Police Department is managed any differently. (You know, the one regarding the effects of a bullet-proof vest.)

Pinching Pennies

If Governor Steve Beshear is looking for new ways to save money -- and he'd better be -- he should get rid of the law that requires government entities to publish public notices in local newspapers.

It's much cheaper to put them online. The Kentucky Press Association already has a website set up.

Any other ideas?

Dissenting Comments On A Blog Make It Better

I don't know when the Louisville Courier Journal will start deleting unfriendly blog comments like some other newspaper's political blog. Maybe they just haven't seen this yet.

McCain Is Not Going To Win KY Primary

SurveyUSA did a presidential poll but left off Fred Thompson.

Highlighting A Good Gun Bill

Theres's a lively discussion on Kentucky Votes about Rep. Bob Damron's new gun bill.

Ben "Tax Man" Chandler Strikes Again

Rep. Ben Chander voted late yesterday joined 63 hardy tax-raisers in the U.S. House of Representatives in voting against the commonsense Alternative Minimum Tax "patch" that will save 22 million middle-class Americans from the punishing tax in 2008.

Just One Goal

The Lexington Herald Leader jumps on the Fletcher administration's handling of the Medicaid program this morning.

You'd think someone would be keeping track of whether reforms affecting all that money (for fiscal year 2006, about $1 billion from Kentucky's General Fund and $3.3 billion in federal funds) was being spent effectively.

You'd think wrong. Neither the cabinet administering the program nor the governor's office to which it answered nor the legislature that passed the budgets funding the program seemed to know what was going on.

The politics of this is very much beside the point.

The only way to gain anything from this is to recognize the need for greater transparency in our government agencies. There is already a bill, pre-filed by a House Republican, that starts to address this issue. Rather than just kill it for partisan reasons, House Dems should expand it.

Medicaid's accounting issues are miniscule compared to the public employee benefits programs that have been allowed to go underfunded for decades. Now everyone is starting to pay attention because the black hole we have there threatens to swallow up the entire state.

Both of these problems -- and many others -- will benefit from a full-court press toward putting all the state's checkbooks online.

I Thought The Other Guy Was The Flip-Flopper

Double Dipper Dan v. AG Steve Beshear ('81)

The citizens of the 30th Senate district in Bell, Harlan, Leslie, and Perry counties would have a new state senator today if Governor Steve Beshear had called the special election on November 9 when Senate President David Williams made the request.

As it is, a special election for the seat can not now be held before the end of January. Double-Dipper Dan should do the right thing and insist Governor Beshear do his part to ensure the people in his district have the representation they deserve.

Governor Beshear really does understand the need to protect citizens on issues like this. Well, sometimes. He understood it when he wrote the following Attorney General's opinion in 1981, in which he ordered legislative staff not to mail but to hand deliver the Writ of Election for a special election.

As the Court pointed out in the case of Furste v. Grey, 240 Ky. 604, the framers of the Constitution had in mind that vacancies in the General Assembly shall not continue but should be filled immediately in the manner provided by the legislature.

Thus, because of the urgency for filling the vacancy in question so that the residents of the 75th Legislative District will be properly represented at the earliest possible time following the beginning of the Session starting on January 5, it is suggested that the Writ of Election be issued on January 1st and hand delivered rather than mailed, to the sheriff.

Governor Beshear also recognized this necessity when he elevated Rep. J.R. Gray to Labor Cabinet Secretary last week and immediately called the special election. He understood the need to call a special election right away. Why doesn't he get it now?

The $14 Million Jonathan Miller Subsidy

Wouldn't it be great if you could spend state tax dollars promoting your latest great idea? Wouldn't it be even better if you could go back every year and get a huge government check when your great idea blew up in your face again and again?

Governor Steve Beshear's hand-picked Finance and Administration Cabinet Secretary-designate Jonathan Miller has a $14 million check coming from the state's General Fund to fill the current year's hole in the KAPT program.

Heckuva job, Johnny.

Fiscal Time Bomb Still Ticking

There is really only one thing that matters in Kentucky right now and that is what we need to do now to survive a full-blown crisis in our state employee benefit plans.

It is nearly impossible to exaggerate this disaster. The best analogy I can think of is that we are on the Titanic and can only avoid getting sunk by the iceberg if we start turning now.

We are nearly $30,000,000,000 short in the funds we use to write pension checks and pay health benefits for state government workers. If we don't raise taxes, -- and we can't afford to raise taxes -- we are going to have to cut spending. A lot. There is no other way around this and if the people don't start screaming about it now we will see, within ten years, employers fleeing the state and leaving a real mess behind them.

And we can't fund our state government on Social Security checks.

What this will take is radically changing the way we look at state government. We are going to have to get out of providing a lot of services we have gotten used to. We will have to cut out a lot of programs.

Our bloated and inefficient school system might be a good place to start with a surgeon's knife. Did you know that no other state has a higher percentage of non-teacher school employees than Kentucky? If we start there and then eliminate most of the Kentucky Department of Education we will be heading in the right direction.

Then we need fewer state employees and we need them to stop retiring from one government job only to take another. Did you know only fourteen states have more state and local government employees per 10,000 people than Kentucky does? Kentucky has a law limiting the number of state employees to 33,000 but every two years the legislature votes itself an exemption from this law. In January they are going to do it again unless we make them stop it. Ask your Senator or Representative why he or she thinks government can't get by with less when the rest of us have to sometimes.

If you want your children to be able to live in Kentucky ten or fifteen years from now, you will take this threat very seriously.

I Guess We Know Results Of Stumbo Poll

Now we know what a political hit job looks like. Rep. Brandon Spencer just last week was filing a bill to line his own pockets with Medicaid money and now he is resigning quietly so Greg Stumbo can have a job.

Could Jody Richards be the one quaking in his boots this morning?

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