Frankfort 2011 debt increase largest in history

Governor Steve Beshear's administration today finally released details on state finances for fiscal year 2011 showing a net increase in state bonded debt of $908 million, a state record.

This figure doesn't include the billion dollar debt owed to the federal government for unemployment benefits or the tens of billions in unfunded public employee benefits.

As of June 30, 2011, the end of FY11, the state's total bonded debt was $7.96 billion. The largest single component of the outstanding debt is the Kentucky Housing Corporation.

These facts will likely continue to escape public notice due to the timing of their release. State government has had these figures since last summer. 

Thomas Massie running for Congress

Lewis County Judge Executive Thomas Massie has officially entered Kentucky's 4th congressional district Republican primary race to replace retiring Rep. Geoff Davis.

Massie enters the race with the apparent backing of Sen. Rand Paul to take on establishment pick state Rep. Alecia Webb-Edgington and Boone County Judge Executive Gary Moore.

The most interesting thing about this race at the beginning is the role presidential politics will play in whether Massie can overcome the geographic disadvantage of living in the rural, eastern part of the district. Massie's support for presidential candidate Ron Paul and Sen. Rand Paul is well-documented and those relationships are  far closer than either of his opponents has with any presidential candidate. So far, Sen. Mitch McConnell has been silent about the race.

Otherwise, Massie is solid on the issues, speaks well, is wickedly smart and should be a force to be reckoned with on the campaign trail.

Calling all Tea Partiers!

Kentucky's Senate State and Local Government Committee will take up the issue of a state debt limit Wednesday, January 11, at noon.

Now is the time to make your voice heard on this issue.

Kentucky has a very serious debt problem. Sticking with the status quo is not an option. Of course, getting this wrong won't work either. If you can, please engage in the process right away by telling your representatives we need to limit the amount of debt the General Assembly and Governor can pile on us.

The committee meeting will be in room 154 in the Annex and should be available live on KET.org.

Kentucky debt limit efforts gain steam

Kentucky now has two state debt limit bills setting a debt ceiling below its current level and requiring a four-fifths vote of both chambers of the General Assembly to raise it, and only then after an emergency declaration by the Governor.

Rep. Mike Harmon's HB 108 would require the limit of appropriation-supported debt service to be set at 5% of General Fund revenues. Senator Joe Bowen's SB 56 is essentially the same bill except that it sets the limit at 6%.

Given the choice, 5% is better. Both bills would put the question of a state debt ceiling on the November ballot to let the people decide. Please share this post with your networks and let your representatives know where you stand on limiting Kentucky's state debt.

Alecia Webb-Edgington picks a side

Roll Call profiled the upcoming Kentucky 4th Congressional District GOP primary with an article that included the following quote:

“I am not of the establishment. I am a Republican. And I think I represent all paradigms of the Republican Party,” (state Rep. Alecia) Webb-Edgington said.)

In other words, she is an establishment candidate. The Republican party contains people who really want to break up the big government, bailout, debt-and-tax status quo and it also contains people who prefer to keep things pretty much as they are, but for themselves to be in charge of it.

You can't represent both of those and Alecia Webb-Edgington does not.

We will keep having nasty primaries about the direction of the Republican party between those who really want    smaller government and those who do not until this is resolved. The best you can do is represent one side and work to persuade the other. Until then, claiming to represent both is a pretty cynical (and increasingly ineffective) way of perpetuating the establishment.

You can read the Roll Call article here.

Why Kentucky's CAFR matters

Another week has passed without Kentucky's Finance and Administration Cabinet releasing its 2011 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. State law requires that it should have happened by September 30, 2011.

This matters now because it will show clearly that state officials knew what a mess they had made of state finances well before the November elections.  We know that from digging through other reports.

The Commonwealth is buried in debt -- a fact which the CAFR will make abundantly clear -- and we got that way with bipartisan action in Frankfort.

This should have been the biggest issue of the fall campaign, but it wasn't an issue at all because neither of the two main candidates for Governor brought it up.

Disgraceful.

Will you vote for Steve Beshear's tax reform?

Governor Steve Beshear's new tax reform commission is supposed to report recommendations by the end of 2012 for action in 2013.

Among his key goals for reform is ensuring "adequate revenue to fund critical state services."

Bear in mind this is coming from a politician who spent more than $3 billion he didn't have in his first term while claiming he was being fiscally responsible. He boasts about recruiting tens of thousands of Kentucky families onto the government health insurance rolls and about doling out special tax treatment in order to "create" jobs.

Governor Beshear's idea of what constitutes a critical state service should tell us that to him, tax reform means tax increases.

Our legislative races this year are going to have to be about protecting us from tax increases and ever-expanding government for when 2013 comes around and Beshear starts touting his blue-ribbon plan for raising revenue.

If your representatives won't hold the line against Beshear on this, you shouldn't support them.

Beshear: I'll gladly tell you Tuesday, 1/17

A request to the Beshear Administration for the state's current debt ratio just resulted in the following response: the answer will be in the Governor's Executive Budget document on Tuesday, January 17.

The debt ratio is simply the current amount of appropriation supported debt service as a percentage of current revenue. It should be a pretty easy number to track down for the people who keep the books.

My best guess is that the number, whenever it is revealed, will have more than doubled since 2010 in a bipartisan Frankfort orgy of spending and borrowing.

Today is Day Two of Beshearmageddon.

Beshearmageddon

Governor Steve Beshear's spokeswoman has confirmed he will seek spending cuts of 7 to 9 percent this year.

InsiderLouisville.com has the story here.

From the story:

“Preliminary (cuts) have been requested for next year at 7 to 9 percent,” stated Kerri Richardson, Gov. Steve Beshear’s deputy communications director, in an email response to an Insider Louisville query.

Frankfort politicians in both parties had to know this was coming. The excessive spending never stopped during the recession and this is just the tip of the iceberg because principles of budgetary responsibility have been so actively ignored for so long.

This helps explain, of course, why the state finance people are hiding legally mandated reports.

And it is particularly odd that only two days ago, Speaker Greg Stumbo was on television discussing plans for huge increases in school spending. Was he totally in the dark?

The legislature will want to respond to this by borrowing more money but we can't let them do it.

Greg Stumbo is $7 billion too late

Monday night on KET, Kentucky House Speaker Greg Stumbo rehashed his old 2010 billion dollar school stimulus idea that gave Senate President David Williams his best talking point in last year's gubernatorial race about stopping Democrats' wild spending.

Stumbo apparently thinks he is still on the gravy train he and Williams rode on the way to larding themselves up with approximately $7 billion in bonded debt and federal stimulus in Beshear's first term. 

No one seems to have told Mr. Stumbo that the party is over. Worse, he appears to have the concept of "government money" backwards and sideways.

"Now is a good time to invest," Stumbo said. "My theory is that if the government doesn't invest in itself then why should private citizens have the courage to go forward and make investments. 

What Kentucky is doing with ObamaCare

None of the media "legislative preview" stories I've seen so far have mentioned the biggest potential budget-buster facing Frankfort: ObamaCare.

Governor Steve Beshear has been bobbing and weaving for months to avoid getting pinned down on his position regarding the federal takeover of health care. His excuse was that he was waiting for federal guidance on how to proceed, but that guidance came a week before Christmas.

So far, Kentucky is one of only 11 states who haven't even filed enabling legislation to set up a state-run insurance exchange. We've already taken millions of federal dollars for setting up an exchange, which is the hook that traps states into ObamaCare.

Beshear could try to set up a state exchange by executive order. If that is his idea, he shouldn't be allowed to do it quietly. As some other Republicans around the country are folding like cheap suits in the battle to stop ObamaCare, it's hard not to imagine Senate President David Williams doing the same when pressed.

Like last year's Snot Tax, this one is going to be up to us. Are you ready?

Kentucky needs a debt ceiling

The biggest news story with the least amount of coverage in Kentucky in 2011 is easily Kentucky's debt problem.

Revenues continue to increase for the state and politicians in both parties continue to claim they need more revenue. But at the heart of the problem is that spending has increased even faster.

And that problem has been hidden by debt and unfunded liabilities. In order to believe that Kentucky's budget finished the last fiscal year in surplus, as the state claims, you have to ignore the money borrowed from the 2012 state Medicaid budget and ignore the unemployment benefits money borrowed from the federal government and ignore the money not paid into the state public employee benefits system and ignore the new billion dollars in bonded debt created in just the last year.

That's a lot of ignoring. And in 2012 we are going to have to get a handle on it.

Why Steve Beshear thinks he can raise taxes

Governor Steve Beshear didn't say anything about raising taxes before this year's election. In fact, he bragged in nuanced fashion about not raising any "broad-based" taxes in his first term.

He got away with that because his general election opponent played the same nuanced game to, in fact, raise taxes. And they together also played a much more harmful trick on Kentuckians by jointly underfunding and raiding public employee pensions by hundreds of millions of dollars and borrowing to spend billions more.

So the two most powerful politicians in Frankfort see no downside to increasing revenues now. They need the money, as they see it.

This is the kind of bipartisan agreement we are going to have to fight against even harder in 2012. And that is why we need a state debt ceiling and/or to amend the Constitution to give us a real balanced budget requirement.

This isn't transparency, Governor Beshear

Ellen Ballard in the Commonwealth of Kentucky Controller's Office said this morning the state's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report will remain hidden from the public at least until next Wednesday.

The FY 2011 report will show clearly that Kentucky made its budget appear balanced for the most recent year with the issuance of hundreds of millions of dollars in long-term debt.

KRS 48.800(3) states this report must be made available within 90 days of the end of the fiscal year. That was September 30, about five weeks before the November election. We shouldn't have to beg to see this report.

Fletcher versus Stumbo one more time?

Former Governor Ernie Fletcher's Chief of Staff Stan Cave weighed in on Paul Patton's expensive and controversial plan to get state funding for the University of Pikeville.

"Admission of University of Pikeville into the public university system is quid pro quo for eastern Kentucky legislators' vote for expanded gambling," Cave said. "The House Speaker doesn't give a tinker's darn about a recurring $12 million cost to taxpayers."

Via Facebook.

Phyllis Sparks should be next

State Rep. Alecia Webb-Edgington has resigned as Kentucky's 4th Congressional District GOP chair so she can run in a likely crowded primary for Congress without an apparent conflict of interest.

Good move.

An even better one would be to replace her with Boone County Republican businesswoman and activist Phyllis Sparks. She has been very active in the Tea Party movement and would be a very solid choice to keep growing the party in the northern Kentucky district.

Can't grow cotton in Kentucky

I'm told anything that can be made of cotton can also be made of industrial hemp. Kentucky can't grow cotton. Growing hemp doesn't require the water and pesticides necessary to grow cotton.

Federal law prevents us from taking advantage of this competitive advantage.

Kentucky's new Agriculture Commissioner James Comer supports growing industrial hemp and resistance in the legislature is weak and based on ignorance of what industrial hemp is.

Anyone who supports economic growth in Kentucky should support overturning federal restrictions on growing industrial hemp.

Any questions?

Frankfort's chance to support Christians

The Commonwealth of Kentucky has been battling for years to keep an organization called Christian Care Medi-Share from saving Kentuckians money on their health care expenses.

This currently makes less sense than ever before and must stop now.

A constitutional amendment is necessary to allow cost-sharing programs to function in the state. As Medi-Share states on its web site, an exemption written into the ObamaCare law will keep their program a viable alternative should ObamaCare survive to 2014 and beyond.

Some Frankfort Republican leadership on this would really come in handy now.

What's $336 million among friends?

Earlier in the week, Kentucky's Consensus Forecasting Group predicted revenues for the fiscal year ending next June 30 will be $9.0 billion. They also predicted a $136.5 million dollar surplus for the same time period.

That's interesting, considering the legislature voted just last spring to spend $9.2 billion.

Frankfort in January is going to be a sight to behold. Merry Christmas!

Governor Beshear's Christmas horror story

Governor Beshear's Finance and Administration Cabinet appears intent on making good on their threat to keep the truth about the state's finances hidden until the last business day before Christmas.

The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report will show an increase of $1 billion in appropriation-supported debt in the fiscal year ending June 30. The report was apparently completed prior to September 30 but has been kept quiet since then.

The media is not going to report on this at all but this is exactly why we need a state debt ceiling.

Please spread the word.