Defining Education Reform For 21st Century

Kentucky's education establishment went ballistic yesterday over the mere suggestion they might have to take less money in the next budget to deliver their mediocre results.

The need to change the way we discuss education reform is not unrelated to the many problems in overcrowded county jails throughout the state.

Bureaucrats may be satisfied with papering over Kentucky's dropout problem, but yesterday's high school graduates -- in large numbers -- are today sleeping on the floor in county jails.

With the current push among the education crowd to shift more resources toward early childhood education, we have what amounts to a crass diversion from real problems in favor of spending on a new program several years removed from accountability.

New laws to force students to stay in school against their will are just the opposite side of the same coin.

We can't afford these games any longer.

Middle school is where we are losing our kids. When they give up in middle school, they too often start using drugs and drop out of high school. These are the people filling up our jails.

We don't need more tax money for teachers unions and bureaucrats nearly as much as we need to concentrate our efforts where they benefit kids more than the bureaucrats.

The People Want To Vote On Cutting Spending

Shutting down the state Treasurer's office as a rest area for politicians is a good thing to be thinking about the night before the 2008 General Assembly starts up.

SurveyUSA Calls Kentucky For Huckabee

...but they left off Fred Thompson and John Edwards from their polling.

Owensboro Gets State Pension Disaster

The levy has broken on the state employee benefits plans and some people are starting to really pay attention.

I'll be impressed, though, when I see pressure to cut back on the healthy slab of pork lawmakers cut for some of their pals back in 2005.

Update: Ashland gets it, too. Keep them coming!

Volunteering For Less

Tennessee may be about to lower part of their state merit scholarship standard to ease up on some of their failing students. They might want to notice, though, Kentucky requires even less of their students than Tennessee is talking about dropping to and gets almost an identical failure rate.

Kentucky policymakers should pay attention to this. It would make a lot of sense to pursue raising the minimum GPA for our college students to keep their KEES awards. As we pursue the lofty goal of doubling our number of college graduates, anything we can do to prevent dumbing-down has to be considered. We might even accidentally incentivize a little less drinking and drug use on campus.

Courier Journal Attacks Steve Beshear

... for not wanting to raise taxes.

Prioritizing our spending is the way out of this. Government transparency is the first step to recovery.

Someone Needs To Wake Up Jim Newberry

Surely it has been too cold for Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry to putter around on golf courses. Perhaps he has been hanging out at bowling alleys or at some of Lexington's "gentleman's clubs" while the city's jail is collapsing under corrupt leadership.

Will someone please, please wake up Mayor Jim Newberry.

We caught Director Ron Bishop earlier this week scrubbing his name off the 2007 FCDC training roster after failing to complete any of the required training.

Well, now the detention center employees union is working on a case to exempt its members who didn't complete their training from any kind of reprimand. The entire basis of their case is that the director didn't get his training, so they can't be punished since he won't be. Sounds like a fine way to risk the safety of the community all in the name of covering Ron Bishop's behind.

Are you getting any of this, Mayor Newberry?

Let's Sell All Our School Buses

We have a state budget crisis, escalating gas prices, and too many parents who aren't involved enough in their childrens' education.

Let's sell off all the school buses and use half the savings to give teachers huge raises. In exchange for the raises, teachers will have to give up tenure and allow their defined benefit pension plan to be converted to defined contribution.

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?