Count on Massachusetts to think of this first

Just when you thought Kentucky's time bomb of a public employee benefit program couldn't get any worse, you realize our workers aren't going to court to demand pension payments based on their government-provided cars, Blackberries, and computers -- yet.

"In fact, he argued, if the court rules that the use of a car is considered income (though it's not taxed as such), it would open the door to future retirees claiming pension increases based on their use of computers, or even for health benefits."

Our public employee benefits plans are currently $26 billion in the hole. Kentucky's two-year executive branch budget is $19 billion.

Are you a "stupid conservative?"

John David Dyche, a Republican, showed today why the Louisville Courier Journal doesn't mind running his columns:

"Republicans in the Kentucky General Assembly have conflated the concept of conservatism with opposition to any and all tax increases. This is unfortunate and incorrect. Properly understood, conservatism is an attitude of realistic prudence toward politics and society, not a rigid position on any single issue."

And then former Republican Rep. Jon Draud, currently Education Commissioner, showed the same condescending attitude toward people who oppose making government bigger in an interview this afternoon. If these guys are looking for someone else to be smarter than, I hope they feel free to pick me.

Ben Chandler getting comfortable in D.C.

The National Taxpayers Union 2007 Congressional report card is out and the numbers are fairly predictable for Kentucky's delegation.

The one thing that stands out is how far and how low Rep. Ben Chandler has slipped in his regard for taxpayer interests during his time in Washington D.C.

Chandler scored a 4% F in 2007, down from his high-water mark of 21% in 2005. For a little perspective, Senator Hillary Clinton had a 9% in 2005 and a 3% in 2007. Rep. John Yarmuth scored a 6% in 2007.

Kentucky's Republicans did significantly better.

Follow this link and you can look them up on your own.

Too much money in Kentucky education?

One of the least reported state government stories in recent years is the deplorable condition of financial controls in Kentucky's school systems.

Understanding this shines a different light on the current yammering about money by education bureaucrats and their enablers.

Be on the lookout for the talking point du jour about Kentucky underfunding its schools compared to other states. The other side of this one statistic suggests we may be actually overfunding schools. Given our mediocre education results in Kentucky, that should be some serious food for thought.

Now is when it starts getting fun...

In the last week before a pivotal grand jury session in Covington coming on April 10, the guillotine is about to fall hard at the Fayette County Detention Center.

Jail Director Ron Bishop is on his way out. Very soon.

Mayor Jim Newberry may actually have to comment on this one.

Long live the Gatton Academy!

Did you know David Hawpe is still alive and writing silly garbage for the Louisville Courier Journal?

In yesterday's column, Hawpe took issue with a magazine article headline that described the 120 high school students who got into WKU's Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science as the brightest in the state:

Based on that system, the ideal applicant ought to be a test-tutored grind who is adept at sucking up to teachers and counselors and telling interviewers what they want to hear.
Not exactly the type to end up on the senior superlative page in the yearbook, under the heading "Most Popular."
What do they do in the Florence Schneider Hall rec room: sit around chugging chai and debating string theory? Grooving on the latest episode of "Battlestar Galactica" or re-runs of "Dr. Who?"

Hawpe is upset that a small number of high school students who are better at math than he is don't have to stay stuck in their district schools if the curriculum isn't challenging enough for them.

Hawpe may be in luck, though. The Gatton Academy looks to be headed to the dustbin of good educational ideas because the General Assembly didn't put any funding in the 2009-10 budget for it. And, frankly, I'm surprised he seems to have missed the fact that the school was already operating illegally.

The Gatton Academy may well not exist for long, but the idea of improving educational opportunities shouldn't stop there. If we ended Kentucky's ridiculous prohibition of charter schools, it wouldn't have to.

You are your neighbor's corporate financier

Government at all levels has already done such a fine job fixing up real estate markets, it is should be no surprise the Lexington city council wants to build a 35-story building.

And why should they worry something might go wrong? Lexington taxpayers are underwriting the project.

Not sure he cleared that with the candidates

Speaking on Face the Nation this morning, DNC Chair Howard Dean just explained that the increasingly bitter Democratic presidential primary won't hurt the eventual winner because "both candidates know this race is bigger that Senator Clinton or Senator Obama."

New twist in Fayette Jail saga

FBI agents bearing subpoenas paid a visit to the Fayette County Detention Center yesterday in search of senior administration officials.

And a new word was added to the mix: embezzlement.

The grand jury investigating the mess at the jail meets Thursday, April 10. Justice Department officials speak privately about their surprise that the senior officials at FCDC have been unusually unhelpful in their investigation, which continues to grow tentacles.

Mayor Jim Newberry had no comment.

Kentucky's out-of-touch school bureaucrats

A month-old letter from Kentucky Education Association President Sharron Oxendine to legislators pushing for a seventy cent cigarette tax increase, Rep. Jim Wayne's wish list of further tax increases, and legalized casino gambling shows how far this "education" group has strayed from its intended purpose.

Now that Governor Steve Beshear is making the rounds to push for a special session on tax increases, this might be good time for a reminder of what these folks are up to.

Meanwhile, Education Commissioner Jon Draud is putting together his task force to study "improving" the CATS education assessment program. This group will be stacked with people like Oxendine and Prichard Committee-types with little interest in doing anything but screaming for more money.

While the Kentucky Department of Education is in charge of grading its own assessments, though, additional funding should be considered a very unwise investment.

Go here for the latest on that.

Focus on the big money

Now that our loan sharks are safe and schoolyard bullies are running for cover, we'd better get serious about our $26 billion monster.

Helen Mountjoy doesn't want you to read this

... but she probably wants your fourth grade teacher to "coach" you for a few months on the essay you will have to write about it.

Helen Mountjoy is the state Education Secretary and a big supporter of the status quo in Kentucky primary and secondary education.

Bad Kentucky test scores are bad news for her. Of course, the stranglehold the teachers union has on the system is bad news for the rest of us. But raising awareness helps matters over time. Go ahead and read this.

And then take a look at the KDE spin you will read in tomorrow's MSM.

Let's call them Austere Bonds

The word of the day in Frankfort has been "austere." That refers, of course, to the adjective most commonly used to describe the $19 billion dollar state spending plan passed last night. Just curious, I've looked all day for mention of the level of bonded indebtedness in this bill.

Haven't seen it in the media anywhere.

Bonded indebtedness is the amount that we expect to overshoot the mark of incoming revenues, but plan to go ahead and spend the money we don't have anyway, our constitutional prohibition of such activity "notwithstanding," as they say in the biz.

Got that?

Anyway, the bonded indebtedness we just agreed to heap on ourselves over the next two years is $1.2 billion. Thank your kids.

6:48 Update: Read Section 49 and 50 of the Kentucky Constitution for more on borrowing.

Making budget sausage in Frankfort

The Senate has put some of the previously removed infrastructure projects for the 2009-10 biennium into HB 410.

House Budget Chair Harry Moberly is on the floor now explaining why he is going to vote against the budget. He spoke feverishly, claiming the Senate was buying the House members off with projects.

The budget passed.

Live-blogging Mitch McConnell

Senator Mitch McConnell will speak to the Madison County Republican Party's Lincoln Day dinner gathering this Friday night. Dinner starts at 6pm at the Russell Action Folk Center, 212 W. Jefferson Street in Berea. Tickets are $25 and you can reserve yours by calling Chris Cooper at 859.200.7711.

See you there!

Courting the rapist and murderer vote

One interesting thing about the internet is so many people feel emboldened now to say what they really think.

Take, for instance, this from Kentuckians for the Commonwealth:

House Bill 70 to Restore Voting Rights to Former Felons who have served their debt to society has finally been called up for a vote on the House Floor today and passed with an overwhelming 80 "yes" votes to 14 "no" votes!

We're not at all happy that the House took took so very long to act on this bill, giving very little chance for it to get through the Senate, but we're very pleased that the bill did pass by such a wide margin.

The six floor amendments to the bill that KFTC opposed were all defeated, but Rep. Sal Santoro of Boone County, attached an amendment that exempted former felons convicted of manslaughter from the automatic restoration. KFTC opposes this change because we want all former felons to have the same chance to get their rights back.

HB 70 would automatically restore voting rights to convicted felons except for those convicted of sex crimes, murder, and manslaughter.

Some people -- like child molesters -- tear up their humanity cards. Forget about their voter registration cards. The bill has no chance in the Senate -- and having the KFTC folks screaming at David Williams is an interesting image. It seems to me we already set the bar for civic participation plenty low enough.

I thought Harry Moberly was the budget expert

Rep. Greg Stumbo made his way down to Senate President David Williams' office Tuesday and they agreed to scuttle the budget deal Harry Moberly and Speaker Jody Richards had negotiated.

In the super-secret closed-door negotiations, Moberly seemed more interested in not giving in to Williams than in arranging the budget properly so as to collect matching federal funds to build Kentucky roads.

Moberly and Richards were trying to work out the road spending so that Governor Steve Beshear could spend all the money in Democratic districts. They couldn't work that out and receive the matching funds, so they insisted on going without.

The bottom line is that Moberly and Richards let partisanship get in the way of common sense. This will cost them dearly. The new deal will result in more road and water projects across the state without spending more money.

How could Moberly and Richards have screwed that up so badly?

You mean maybe it WASN'T our fault?

Didn't the House and Senate leaders tell us the public had to get out of the conference committee room so they could work their magic and get a budget worked out?

Polwatchers suggests the House now doesn't have the votes to pass the secret spending plan.

Whether they pass the budget bill or not, the very idea that their lack of progress last week was the public's fault is worthy of the harshest scorn.

Bowling for sissies

Can we have a leader of the free world who bowls like this?

We are passing a tax increase

It looks increasingly likely that little or nothing will be done to address the public employee benefits shortfall we have known about for a long time.

Save the congratulations for the closed-door conferees until we see strong action taken on this front. Years after we started calling tax increases "fee increases," the ticking time bomb health and pension payments we are obligated to make, but don't have the money for represent an unprecedented tax increase on Kentuckians.

I wish this were an April Fools' joke. But at $26 billion and counting, it is no laughing matter.