Jack Conway gripes and swipes; Goettl responds

Attorney General Jack Conway never complains when he gets his customary kid-glove treatment from the mainstream media. But as soon as a less-than-glowing description emerges, the claws come out:

But while I appreciate the attention to the issue, I am disappointed that neither I nor my office was contacted to respond to false allegations contained in the article.

It quotes Jessamine County Attorney Brian Goettl, the owner and operator of a conservative blog, who implies that the reduction in prosecutors' budgets was due, in part, to my lack of attention to this matter with legislators.

You may read Conway's entire whinefest here.

What appears below is Goettl's response to Conway, which the Herald-Leader now refuses to print:

In response to AG Conway’s recent guest opinion in the April 28th, 2008 Lexington Herald-Leader, let me provide your readers with some facts regarding the budget process, and why I vocalized my criticism of General Conway. On March 11th, Assistant Attorney General Janet Graham sent out the following e-mail:

Hi folks, we have representatives from the County Attorneys Association and the Commonwealth's Attorneys Association up here in Frankfort today advocating on your behalf for your budget. We have been meeting with members of the Senate to stress our budget concerns. The uniform message that is coming back to us is that we need to get a meeting with Senator Williams and Senator Stivers. If any of you believe that you can assist us in getting these meetings, please give me a call at (502) 696-5641.

The e-mail was entitled “Help with the budget please”. After receiving the e-mail, I arranged for a meeting with Senator Stivers and Senator Borders through my association with Becky Harrelson, chief of staff to Senate President David Williams. Ms. Graham acknowledged as much with the following e-mail:

Thank everyone for all of your help on this - we now have a meeting with Senator Stivers regarding the budget, so all of your calls and emails certainly helped. Much praise should be directed to Jessamine County Attorney Brian Goettl for his efforts to get us this meeting. If you see him, give him a big pat on the back.

General Conway did not attend that meeting. I, along with Mke Foster, Janet Graham, Chirs Cohron and members of the PAC budget staff did attend. In a subsequent PAC meeting, General Conway implied that he did not have much sway with Senate Republicans.

I suggested that a public relations campaign be conducted in much the same manner as the Department of Public Advocacy had done concering their budget. The prosecutors present at that meeting were in unanimous agreement with my suggestion.

As a result, General Conway did say that he would assign his deputy press secretary to that task, but asked Commonwealth Attorney Chris Cohron to work with the deputy press secretary, instead of himself. My opinion is that there would have been a better press response if General Conway had held a press conference and spoken directly to the press about the budget situation.

Considering that prosecutors did not receive any media coverage about the budget short fall following that PAC meeting, until after the budget had been set, I feel that I was right.

There is no doubt that General Conway did a great job with the budget when dealing with House Democrats. As well, his PAC budget people and Assistant Attorney General Janet Graham did an outstanding job throughout the entire process.

And, the reality is, General Conway may not have had much sway with Senate Republicans. But, he failed to take advantage of the few opportunities he did have with the Senate. I criticized him for that failure. His implications otherwise are false.

Sincerely,

Brian T. Goettl

Jessamine County Attorney

Fayette Jail story just got harder to ignore

Fayette County Detention Center Sgt. John McQueen has been placed on administrative leave for his role in the prisoner beatings scandal at the facility.

McQueen came under increased scrutiny after questioning last week by FBI agents.

Blast from the past

Remember blogger Mark Nickolas? Congressman Ben Chandler's campaign manager is now busily making enemies of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Congressman Chandler, what say you?

Cry me a revenue stream

A new report on state budgets coming up short has elicited at least a couple of skeptical responses (here and here) to the suggestion that what we really need is a tax increase or some other new way to feed the monster.

Check the mainstream media over the weekend for the standard point-of-view.

Why we need blogs

I don't think Mitch McConnell needs my help beating whichever opponent he winds up getting in the fall. For the same reason, I didn't pay much attention to the political opposition to or media coverage of his latest television commercial.

Fortunately, Elephants in the Blue Grass is on the case. I appreciate the effort and will be paying closer attention to this blog now.

Start limiting pension abuse in Kentucky

In a sane world, the retirement of Supreme Court Chief Justice Joseph Lambert would start a debate about cutting back on the outlandish pension benefits some public employees get.

For their part, New Jersey is looking a plan to cut back on giving state pensions for everyone who walks by a government office. Kentucky should, at the very least, look at getting rid of pensions for part-time workers.

Thanks unions: Volkswagen not considering KY

Here's one for the good folks who are trying to unionize Toyota:

"It really comes down to how much the states want it and how much they're willing to pay," Peterson said, referring to potential tax incentives. "The risk of unionization is very low in Tennessee and Alabama, and Volkswagen doesn't want to work with unions if it can avoid it."

This is what they were talking about when the right-to-work people said Kentucky had to get off the no-call list.

Instead of moving in the right direction, our government is in a big hurry to elevate the big unions in Kentucky.

Use transparency to end welfare abuse

The government transparency movement caught fire when Republican U.S. Senator Tom Coburn and Democratic U.S. Senator Barack Obama worked together to put some federal expenditures online.

As with most very good ideas, this one hasn't yet awakened Kentucky's legislative leaders, despite their promises.

Let's require recipients of all forms of welfare including Section 8, food stamps, EITC, and Medicaid to be posted on the internet. Those figures have to be written down and reported anyway. Just make the reporting electronic and let the public see the data. People would think twice about welfare fraud if they knew the neighbors were watching.

Pick your poison Ben Chandler

Congressman Ben Chandler is getting some pressure to pick a side in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary. And now that former Congressman Ken Lucas has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, it's easy to see why Rep. Chandler has gone into hiding.

Here is a screen capture of Chandler's press release page, showing he has done nothing to crow about in seven weeks:

Republican party's stupid tax ploy

If the latest fiscal policy idea from the McCain campaign is an indication of what lies ahead, the GOP nominee would do better to go back to watching from the sidelines as Hillary and Obama bleed each other dry. McCain's big plan is to go back into the old playbook and talk about suspending federal gas taxes for the summer.

If he thought about it, he would reject this idea for the same reason he opposed some of the Bush tax cuts: if this move doesn't correspond with spending cuts of an equal amount, then all we are doing is wasting our time on another expensive political stunt.

Not having much else to work with, the Republican National Committee doesn't see it that way. At least not according to this email:

I can't believe they are touting agreement by Hillary Clinton on a fiscal idea as a good thing. In fact, Clinton's response indicates only that she gets the political gamesmanship:

“I would also consider a gas tax holiday, if we could make up the lost revenues from the Highway Trust Fund,” she said, without specifying how to make up those lost revenues.

Republicans won't be rebuilding much public trust with this one.

Get used to hearing this

Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer has polling data indicating he could pretty much run for emperor in Kentucky and win, so he is sitting back and waiting for the opportune moment to announce he is running for governor in 2011.

MoveOn.org?

Yes, that MoveOn.org has purchased an ad on this site. They are asking their readers to pick the next Barack Obama ad for them to run on television.

It's to the right, just under the button you can use to donate to the Bluegrass Institute.

You know what to do...

A vote for fiscal sanity in Kentucky

Will Terwort, candidate in the 63rd House district GOP primary, will report raising over $32,000 so far in his contest against moderate Rep. Alecia Webb-Edgington.

The last man between us and President Obama

Hillary Clinton is just about done.

And John McCain is going to be on Leland Conway's radio show in Lexington Wednesday at 9:15 am. You can listen here and call in on 859-280-2287.

How to really underfund your big government

I thought it was pretty funny when Kentucky wanted to raise the cigarette tax to bring in more money for an ever-expanding number of overspending problems while also trying to get people to quit smoking.

Massachusetts is going to show our big spenders how it is done.

From the New York Times:

"To keep the state’s landmark universal health coverage plan afloat, Massachusetts lawmakers are looking to tap an increasingly popular source of financing for health-related initiatives: tobacco taxes.

If the state raises its tax by as much as $1 a pack, it will join New York — and possibly a number of other states — in enacting significant increases this year. The speaker of the Massachusetts House, Salvatore F. DiMasi, a Democrat, pushed the increase, to $2.51, through the chamber this month, and the State Senate president, Therese Murray, and Gov. Deval Patrick, also Democrats, have signaled support.

The $175 million in projected revenue would be used to shore up the state’s year-old mandatory health insurance plan. State officials say the plan, which is the first to require that individuals have coverage, is over budget because enrollment has been higher than expected for state-subsidized insurance policies offered to low- and middle-income workers.

The state subsidies were budgeted at $472 million for the first year but actually cost $625 million. Only months ago, Mr. Patrick proposed spending $869 million for the coming year, but his aides already acknowledge that will not be enough. The state recently agreed to increase its payments to insurers by 9.4 percent. More costs are being passed along to policyholders in the form of higher premiums and co-payments."

Let's hope this gives some of our slow learners pause before pushing again for socialized medicine in Kentucky.

Word association game: Clinton, intern

While the Ohio Democratic party is busily trying to nominate Hillary or Barack, you would be hard-pressed to find the names Clinton or Obama on the Kentucky Democratic Party site.

In fact I could only find the name "Clinton" once. It was in an essay written by Chairwoman Jennifer Moore recruiting young interns to serve the party in Frankfort. In the essay, she mentions that she served an internship in the White House. In the Clinton White House. In 1995.

Since you are wondering, 1995 was in fact the same year young Monica Lewinsky met Bill and Hill.

Taxpayers soaked -- and without pools!

I think we have had about enough of government officials cutting services while clinging to outlandish perks of office. The city of Louisville wants to close swimming pools rather than reduce the number of government employees driving home in expensive taxpayer-provided cars. A letter to the editor in today's Courier Journal lays out the details very nicely:

It's not that the purpose of government is to provide swimming pools. But given the choice, shouldn't we be cutting the fat around the bureaucrats before we cut something that benefits the public far more widely?

Possible VP candidate coming to Lexington

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, subject of recent speculation about his future as a vice presidential candidate on more than one ticket, is coming to Lexington Tuesday, April 29.

"We had a deal"

Senator Damon Thayer lambasted House Speaker Jody Richards and Majority Caucus Chairman Charlie Hoffman tonight at Georgetown College for fumbling public employee benefit reform in the waning hours of the 2008 General Assembly:

The state faces a $26 billion shortfall in the accounts that fund state and local government employee and retiree benefits. Legislators appear to be headed back to Frankfort for a costly special session to address this failure.

FairTax Advancing

Kentucky's Sixth Congressional District Republican Party Convention just voted to support passage of the FairTax.

Delegate Don Strosberg of Frankfort attempted to have the resolution tabled on the grounds that it is "too complex." His motion failed on a voice vote.

Here is a video of the resolution: