Can Beshear Walk His Talk?

Governor Beshear is saying some good things about spending cuts right now.

The real challenge will be for him to let us help keep him honest with spending transparency. And then he gets to really do something about the state employee benefits disaster.

Presidential Google Search Fun

We all say stupid things sometimes, but Mike Huckabee's mouth will ultimately run him out of his big race.

For just one example, try googling "Huckabee Satan" for an interesting theological discussion.

Jody Richards' Come To Jesus Meeting

I was a guest on the Leland Conway Show this morning, telling Leland about the government transparency movement.

Leland said he will have House Speaker Jody Richards on the program next Tuesday at 10:15 and will ask him about this. There's your heads up, Mr. Speaker.

The Senate needs to get to work on this as well.

BIPPS Offers Pension Mess Advice

The bill with the most lasting impact in the 2008 session hasn't been filed yet and may not be filed. That bill will be the one that seriously addresses the $28 billion public employee benefits emergency.

The Bluegrass Institute's Jim Waters jumps on previous politicians for punting the ball on this and offers commonsense actions:

Irresponsible governance created the under-funded crisis in the first place. The system paid the price for self-serving politicians to fund local pork and win the next election instead of properly funding the retirement accounts.

Now lawmakers – particularly House and Senate leaders – must think beyond short-term political gains that come from doing nothing. If they don’t, we’re looking at either a massive tax increase or a bankrupt commonwealth.

The commission offered some worn ideas on how to shore up the under-funded accounts, including the credit-card approach of borrowing money. But it mentioned nothing about lengthening the time state employees must work before drawing cushy benefits or changing the benefits structure for future hires – two areas that legislators absolutely must address.

We didn’t need a commission to recommend a rope-a-dope approach – including more study, yes, more study! – in order to conclude that requiring employees to work only 27 years before they draw a Cadillac benefits package for life creates a bottomless pit of spending.

You can read the whole thing here. This is the problem that is consuming the Beshear administration right now. It should be.

David's Blue Ribbon Commission On Pensions

We need to quickly phase out the Kentucky Retirement Systems and replace the whole cesspool with index mutual funds.

We need to put all new hires into defined contribution plans and eliminate health insurance for any new non-Medicare retirees not currently in the system.

We need to phase out legislative pensions.

We need to lower the legal limit on executive branch employment to 30,000 jobs and end the practice of double-dipping -- and end the practice of suspending the limit on executive branch employment.

Any other suggestions?

Harry Moberly Hasn't Learned His Lesson

Education commissioner Jon Draud says House Budget Chairman Harry Moberly told him he may be able to bust the Kentucky Department of Education budget in 2009.

Here is the quote (found here):

"Even though we don’t have a good financial picture (for 2008-10), I’m going to be active over there," he said. "(House A&R Committee Chairman) Harry Moberly has promised me that if the economy improves, we may be able to come back in the second year of the biennium for more funding for education."

Now do you see why we really need to be able to watch these people like hawks?

We're Off To See The Kruser

I'll be on Lexington radio this afternoon at 1 pm talking about the upcoming General Assembly. That's 590 on your AM dial and, if you are so inclined, 859-253-5959 is the call-in number.

Putting Their Mouths Where Our Money Is

Every legislator worth a sound bite is talking about being fiscally responsible these days.

I'll believe it when they get rid of the provision of this 2005 law that allows them to resign from the legislature and take a brief stint elsewhere in state government worth a huge pension boost.

The offensive -- and expensive -- goody was slipped in by a Senate committee and approved by a voice vote. Governor Fletcher allowed the bill to become law without his signature.

Several good legislators voted against this. Won't one of them file a bill to repeal it?

Call it the David Williams/J.R. Gray/Steve Nunn/Dan Mongiardo/Harry Moberly/Greg Stumbo bill.

Like Poop In A Sandbox

How many times have you heard that the cover-up is worse than the crime?

Perhaps Fayette County Detention Center Director Ron Bishop would have done well to hear it one more time before he scrubbed his name off the facility's training roster.

You see, Bishop didn't complete ANY of his 2007 required training. And apparently, he didn't want anyone to know about it.

In a city with legitimate leadership, Bishop would be long-since fired.

Time To Audit Big Ed

The hubbub over the Auditor's performance audit of Medicaid has died down. It's now time to do one of the Kentucky Department of Education.

But there's no way I would trust the partisan Auditor to do the job. We need to hire an outside firm for this one. The accounting at KDE is so bad that any honest efficiency report writers would have a field day sorting through their mess.

Throwing (Jerry) Down The Gauntlet

Page One Kentucky promises to lay the smackdown on Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson in 2008 and suggests their information is the reason he didn't get in the race for governor.

Meanwhile, the Lexington Herald Leader wants to see Abramson's running mate, Rep. Ben Chandler, act a little more like Al Gore.

U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler: Follow the path of another Albert. Use your popularity to illuminate inconvenient truths.

Yeah, I'd like to see that too.

Fixing Things In 2008

An income tax on businesses with no income is always going to be a bad idea.

Let's kill it.

And after we do that, perhaps we should reconsider the wisdom of dropping 500,000 low-income Kentuckians from state tax rolls, which we did in the same 2005 bill that created the state AMT. Seems like subsidizing our least productive citizens might be something we would want to target more carefully than that. Our "welfare state" mentality, you must agree, is the biggest thing holding us back. Couldn't we better help those who can't help themselves if we made it a little more difficult for capable people to exist on the dole?

2007 Kaypee Awards

Probably should have thought about this a week ago, but I was inspired today by Bluegrass Roots' Rooties and came up with a name for a Kentucky awards show called the Kaypees.

Time is short to really do it justice, but if you have a funny nomination, have at it. Otherwise, I thought we might take the high road and try to come up with a consensus Best Public Policy Idea/Worst Public Policy Idea for 2008.

Eyes On Arizona

Starting Tuesday, Arizona starts cracking down on employers of illegal aliens. Kentucky has a bill that would do the same thing here.

The Song That Never Ends

One thing that would really inform the present debate about what kind of fiscal shape state government is in would be to put all state government checkbooks online.

Where are all you good government types on this?

The House Democrats should have all kinds of motivation for supporting this. Jody Richards was out there this past week blaming the state shortfall on the national economy, for heaven's sake. If his much hoped for recession doesn't materialize -- or even doesn't materialize soon enough to lend some credibility to his ridiculous assertion -- what will he do?

Face it, big spenders, the cat is out of the bag. Citizen awareness and communication will soon demolish the old way of running Frankfort. Soon Rep. Harry Moberly (Mr. Government Secrecy and Mr. Conflict of Interest) will be the last one operating in the shadows.

Other legislators with better motives had better make sure there is no confusion about which side they are on in this most important battle.

Oklahoma!

The great state of Oklahoma leads the way on government transparency and Kentucky would do very to follow them.

Did I mention we already have a bill?

If you don't like being surprised by details of the state's finances when we change governors, you will probably want to get on board the transparency movement as well.

Saving State Health Dollars

We all agree that having more affordable health insurance would be a good thing. What should be clear, but apparently isn't, is that more competition and wider consumer choice would create a more efficient health insurance market.

In Kentucky, we seem to like to pack our insurers with mandated benefits. This increases costs, pricing more people out of the market. So, rather than address the root cost of the higher prices, we then seek to subsidize those prices with tax dollars. Any economics textbook would tell you this just causes prices to go up further still.

We need to give up the long-running lawsuit against Christian Care Medi-Share and encourage more such providers to come to the state. We need to shut down the ICARE subsidy Governor Beshear wants to expand.

And we need to give insurers more flexibility on which people they agree to insure.

Cut Spending, Have More Money

If we only cut the level of executive branch employment to the legal limit, stopped advertising the Kentucky Lottery, stopped the coal-to-liquid subsidy nonsense and cancelled the Louisville Arena project, we wouldn't have a "budget crisis."

I'm still laughing about Julian Carroll comparing state overspending to getting a car repossessed, but it's probably time we should seriously start talking about what assets the state should sell -- or at least stop leasing.

Beshear's Campaign Promises Dropping Like Flies

In his weekly column, Bluegrass Institute's Jim Waters says if we really want to lower healthcare costs we will push to allow people to buy insurance across state lines and let individuals purchase coverage just like businesses do -- with pre-tax dollars.

Typically, with the Bush vetoes came attempts to label him as the Grinch who stole health care from needy kids. But the president made the right decision.

Bush argued that expanding the program would hurt kids. It would “move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage,” he said.

Buckeye Institute researcher Marc Kilmer agrees: “Kids who would have had better private care will instead be using substandard government care.”

All of this sounds Grinch-like to those with an inclination to expand public programs rather than look for better solutions.

Reality is forcing Governor Steve Beshear to abandon more and more of his pie-in-the-sky plans. Cutting spending and state employee benefits will be the first two dominoes to fall. Casino gambling has no chance in a possible GOP super-majority Senate. Might socialized health insurance be next?

Anybody Up For A Media Appearance?

I will be a guest on the Leland Conway Show tomorrow with guest host Jim Waters. It's on 630 AM or www.wlap.com from nine to noon.