KyKurmudgeon

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign … ”

Pardon the flashback to 1971 when the Five Man Electrical Band had its signature hit. But the intro to the topic of the day involves signs – signs that a Democratic governor and a Democratic-controlled state House coexist in a world without love. (Yeah, I know, that’s time traveling even further into my youth.)

Sign: No member of House Democratic leadership has signed on as a co-sponsor of Gov. Steve Beshear’s budget proposal.

Sure, Democratic leaders snubbed former Gov. Ernie Fletcher, a Republican, in the same way. But Rep. Harry Moberly, a former Appropriations and Revenue Committee chairman who has been in the House since 1980, could not recall any other time a Democratic governor’s budget proposal didn’t have some members of leadership signed on as co-sponsors.

“There’s no significance to that,” House Speaker Greg Stumbo said in an interview last week. “I’ll co-sponsor it if they want me to.”

“We really didn’t mean to slight (Beshear),” Stumbo added. “ … I just forgot about it, to tell you the truth.”

But in that same interview, Stumbo said he generally sponsored all legislation proposed by governors, including the budget, “as a courtesy to the governor” during his many years as majority floor leader. Odd how a politician as practiced and savvy as Stumbo “just forgot” that kind of tradition.

Sign: The Jan. 29 edition of This Week in Frankfort, a newsletter produced by the non-partisan Legislative Research Commission’s staff, began this way: “If there’s such a thing as a reverberating thud, the last echoes of a big one faded away in the Capitol this week, as the governor’s dead-on-arrival budget proposal receded into memory and the General Assembly turned toward drafting its own.”

Having referred to Beshear’s budget landing with a “thud” myself, I’m reluctant to criticize others who do the same. Still, a governor with friends in high General Assembly places might expect an LRC newsletter to be a bit more respectful than a curmudgeonly old newspaper columnist.

Sign: Aside from a budget briefing open to the leadership of both parties in both houses, House Democratic leaders had not met with Beshear this year until this past Monday, the 18th day of a 60-day session.

A governor and House leaders of the same party who are on the same page don’t wait until a session is nearly one-third of the way to the finish line to start discussing budgets and other issues. They’re plotting strategy together from Day One.

You might expect a disconnect between a D governor and an R-controlled Senate, but a disconnect between that same governor and a D-controlled House needs a bit of explanation.

Part of it stems from the shift in the balance of power in state government over the past three decades. During that time, Kentucky moved from a strong governor and weak legislature to a strong legislature and weak governor — at least during legislative sessions. Between sessions, a Kentucky governor still wields considerable power.

To illustrate this transition, one need only look at how budget politics have changed. Back in the day, strong governors used budgets introduced late in the session to reward or punish lawmakers for their voting habits during a session. Today, budgets are still used to reward and punish. But governors now are required by statute to present their budget proposals early in the session, leaving legislative leaders plenty of time to transform them into their own system of rewards and punishments.

In addition, this shift in power has produced greater legislative oversight of executive branch activity and has reduced gubernatorial patronage powers. That latter circumstance represents an improvement over a past when governors could call lawmakers in and buy their votes by promising contracts or leases to their friends. All of this has made it more difficult for governors to influence legislative elections. So, lawmakers have less reason to fear them.

Today’s lawmakers, regardless of party, relish their freedom and power and aren’t inclined to sacrifice any of it, even if it means sacrificing the agenda of their own party’s governor. After all, governors come and governors go. Lawmakers hang around forever.

But the changing balance of power doesn’t fully explain the disconnect between Beshear and House Democrats. If that were the only factor in play, former Gov. Paul Patton might never have been able to get his higher education reforms enacted in 1997.

Style comes into play as well. As legislative power has grown, so have legislative egos. Their continuing takeover of the Capitol Annex to provide them with ever larger and better offices — some of which make the Governor’s Office pale by comparison —  reflect their improved self-image.

Where lawmakers of the distant past marched to daily orders from the Capitol’s first floor, today’s legislators expect to be stroked. But stroking does not appear to fit Beshear’s nature. He has confidence in himself and his staff. And he expects the rightness, the sensibility, the wisdom of the policies they collectively produce to sell themselves.

But Patton didn’t succeed by dropping higher education reform in lawmakers’ laps with the expectation that they would approve it because a governor said it was the right thing to do. He not only stroked them, he spent months crisscrossing Kentucky pitching his ideas to anyone who would listen. Because of that effort, and only because of that effort, he slew the most powerful political dragon in the land at the time — the University of Kentucky’s network of community colleges.

Beshear has not exerted that kind of effort and commitment in pursuit of his own No. 1 goal: expanded gambling that makes Kentucky racetracks competitive with their counterparts in “racino” states. Had he done so, his relations with House Democrats might not be any better. But his won-loss record might be improved.

Finally, there is this: Beshear and House D’s do not appear to trust each other, with good reason.

Beshear got ambushed by House D’s in his first attempt at getting expanded gambling through the General Assembly. But during that same session, he sprang his own ambush by proposing, out of the blue and without consulting House D’s, a 70-cent increase in the tax on a pack of cigarettes. This year, he ignored House leaders who urged him not to introduce a budget that anticipated revenue from racetrack slots.

He doesn’t listen to House D’s; they don’t listen to him. And based on their past experiences, I suspect each side believes the other would throw them under the bus if it were politically expedient to do so.

Trust issues and communications breakdowns are signs, too, signs of a fractured relationship.

“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign … Can’t you read the sign?”

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — Silly me. I’ve read and heard so many recent reports about Americans — Kentuckians included, I assume — losing faith in government I had begun to take them as gospel truth,

Until Tuesday, that is.

By the time Tuesday’s 4 p.m. filing deadline for the 2010 elections passed, more than 200 Kentuckians had demonstrated their faith in government by expressing a desire to be a part of it at either the national or state level. (With the state’s 120 counties and many of its myriad cities also holding elections this year, the candidate numbers at that level had to run into the thousands.)

One U.S. Senate seat attracted 11 wannabes. Six U.S. House seats brought out 23 more.

At the state level, 49 people signed up for the 19 Senate seats on this year’s ballot. (That number should grow by at least one since Independents — including incumbent Sen. Bob Leeper of Paducah — don’t have to file until later in the year.) In the House, 183 hopefuls filed for the 100 available seats.

If passersby didn’t know better in these financially troubled times, they might have mistaken Tuesday afternoon’s traffic at the office of Secretary of State Trey Grayson — himself one of those 11 U.S. Senate wannabes — for a run on a bank.

Republicans in particular turned out in large numbers, spurred no doubt by the results of a couple of recent special elections — Scott Brown’s upset win in a U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts and Jimmy Higdon’s romp in the state Senate’s 14th District.

Since midterm elections tend to punish the party in power, particularly on the federal level, eager Republicans rushed to file against the state’s two Democratic congressmen. Five Republicans will compete for the right to challenge Rep. John Yarmuth in the 3rd District, and six more want the right to run against 6th District Rep. Ben Chandler in the fall.

Political experts and pundits (who, blush, aren’t necessarily expert at anything but stringing words together in reasonably coherent fashion) expect this to be a good year for Republicans. And the signs suggest the swing voters who gave Democrats control of Congress and the White House now are swinging in the opposite direction.

Here’s the thing, though. A mere 12 months ago, Democrats inhaled the rarified air atop a political Mount Everest while Republicans prayed the water pressure in the depths of the Mariana Trench wouldn’t crush their sinking ship.

If 12 months can produce a reversal of fortune that now has Democrats tumbling down the mountainside and Republicans floating back up to the relevancy surface, it’s way early to anticipate the outcome of elections that are still nine months in the offing.

In politics, nine months equate to about nine lifetimes. Conditions could get much worse for Democrats and much better for Republicans during those lifetimes. Or the rightward swing of the pendulum could slow or even start to reverse itself.

That’s my excuse for being too chicken to predict much of anything about this year’s elections this early in the game, except this:

By the evening of Nov. 2, 10 of Kentucky’s U.S. Senate candidates, 17 of its U.S. House candidates, 30 state Senate candidates and 83 state House candidates will have found themselves on the short end of the vote count, in either the primary or general election.

Maybe then, they really will lose their faith in government. For now, though, it seems they’ve only lost faith in the incumbents currently in charge of our government.

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — This and that as we await the real liftoff for the 2010 General Assembly, which should finally occur sometime after Tuesday’s 4 p.m. filing deadline for folks masochistic enough to want the responsibility of solving future $1.5 billion budget holes without (a) voting for expanded gambling in an election year or (b) voting for a huge tax increase in an election year:

Gov. Steve Beshear’s budget bomb landed with a thud (rhymes with dud) Tuesday night. By Wednesday, his proposal to include $780 million in revenue from racetrack slots in the two-year spending plan was the subject of considerable derision, even among House Democrats who passed a racetrack slots bill last year only to see it die in a Senate committee.

When I heard Beshear might include slots revenue in his budget plan, I must admit my initial reaction included the word “stupid.” After further reflection, though, I realized he had nothing to lose.

If he had sent lawmakers a plan based on current revenue projections, they might have passed it with few if any changes. Then, when the pain started to be felt in education, social services, Medicaid, environment protection, criminal justice and every other aspect of state government, they would be in a position to point fingers at Beshear and say, “We gave him just what he requested.”

This way, responsibility for making those cuts will rest solely with lawmakers — in a legislative election year. Beshear offered them a way out of the $780 million hole. If they choose not to take it, they — not he — will have the targets on their political backsides if a pared-down budget prompts marches on Frankfort by teachers, state workers or ordinary voters who feel the pain from lost services.

That’s really the way it should be. Governors can only propose budgets. Legislators enact them. And ever since former Gov. John Y. Brown Jr. ended the era of strong governors who sent representatives and senators their marching orders on a daily basis, budgets increasingly have become the offspring of lawmakers, carrying far more of their DNA in recent years than any governor’s.

Mind you, Beshear is hardly wearing a clean white hat here. In a way, he passed the buck. But the legislative leaders who spent the last few weeks urging him not to include slots revenue in his budget proposal were passing the buck as well. They wanted him to make the tough choices for them, so they could blame him for the consequences.

In what you might call a political game of chicken, Beshear didn’t swerve to avoid a crash. But the crash may have made him political road kill by rendering him irrelevant in the budget discussions to come.

Slots revenue will not be a part of those discussions — not unless Senate President David Williams experiences a light-in-the-road-to-Damascus conversion on the subject.

Don’t count on tax reform either. If the group of House members Speaker Greg Stumbo has working on the issue do arrive at an acceptable compromise, it’s more apt to be dealt with in a special session than in this one.

That leaves cuts and the world’s full supply of smoke and mirrors in lawmakers’ hands as they go about building a budget from scratch. Expect them to use more of the latter than the former.

One option is to craft a budget that uses the last of the stimulus money to minimize the damage in the first year — after all, it’s a legislative election year — and shove all the real pain into a second-year budget balanced with wishes, hopes and pipe dreams. Doing so would allow lawmakers to delay the serious cutting until 2011, when they can do it themselves in a non-election year for them or pass the buck back to Beshear in his own re-election year by simply authorizing him to make whatever cuts are necessary.

Hmm. The former requires lawmakers to act responsibly. The latter allows them to get even. I like the odds on the latter.

                                                    * * *

One of the hopes some Kentucky legislators still cling to is that Congress will bail states out with another stimulus package.

If Beshear’s budget plan was “delusional,” as Rep. Mary Lou Marzian suggested, continuing to dream of another stimulus in the wake of Tuesday’s election results in Massachusetts qualifies as “delusional in the extreme.” A second stimulus package probably died when Republican Scott Brown upset Democrat Martha Coakley in the race to fill the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat.

                                                    * * *

Those Massachusetts results represent a national example of what we have seen so often at the state level in recent years. Democrats have an infinite capacity for self-destruction.

They returned to power in Congress because voters tired of the arrogant and heavy-handed way Republicans ran things. But as soon as they took control, Democrats began displaying the same arrogant, heavy-handed ways the Republicans used. The only change was in the policy goals the ruling party pursued.

You would think one of the parties would learn from the mistakes of the other, if not from their own. Democrats didn’t learn from the Republican mistakes, and they paid the price in Massachusetts.

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — Admittedly, listening to a bunch of economists talk tax policy for three-plus hours doesn’t register on my list of favorite ways to spend a wintry morning. Extra snooze time in a warm bed offers far more comfort for body and soul.

Still, there I was Wednesday, sitting in the Capitol Annex listening to those economists describe the myriad ways Kentucky’s tax policy sucks wind – big time.

Not that this in itself was news. Numerous studies over the years have reached basically the same conclusion. All of them continue to gather dust while resting peacefully somewhere in the halls of state government. Such has been the commitment of our elected leaders to giving this state an equitable, stable and sustainable revenue base. Unfortunately, that seems unlikely to change in the 2010 General Assembly.

But if the tax symposium sponsored by the University of Kentucky’s Martin School of Public Policy and Administration didn’t make news in regard to the overall performance of the state’s tax structure, it did provide some interesting reminders of why it sucks wind – big time.

For instance, there is the shrinking sales tax base. In 1979, the state’s sales tax base as a percentage of personal income was almost 55 percent, according to William Fox, the University of Tennessee economist known best in Kentucky for producing one of those studies gathering dust somewhere in this capital city. By 2008, that number was down close to 40 percent.

No doubt one of the reasons for this decline has been the growth of the service economy. Kentucky taxes the sale of things, but not the sale of services. We won’t have a modern tax structure until it’s tied to that fastest growing part of the economy.

But another factor stems from the fact that, nearly every time the General Assembly comes to town, some industry or segment of the business community drops by asking for tax breaks. Too often, lawmakers grant these requests. Earlier in January, the Herald-Leader reported on the consequences of these actions.

In fiscal year 2010, the story noted, the state will collect about $3 billion in sales tax revenue. But it will take a pass on another $2.4 billion in potential revenue from sales that have been granted exemptions.

As University of Kentucky economist David Wildasin noted at Wednesday’s symposium, specialized tax breaks amount to selective subsidies of the affected industries. Kentucky tax law is full of such breaks.

Another problem mentioned several times by the economists is Kentucky’s heavy reliance on income taxes as opposed to property taxes. That has multiple negative consequences, according to their presentations.

Income taxes are more volatile than property taxes. That has been evident during the worst recession of most of our lifetimes. Property values have taken a hit, but nothing like the hit double-digit unemployment rates have inflicted on income.

Even more than business taxes, individual income taxes on company executives tend to be a deciding factor when corporations think about locating facilities in a state.

Along Kentucky’s borders with neighboring states, particularly Tennessee, high-income families are more apt to live in the neighboring states with lower income taxes.

And Kenneth Troske, another UK economist, made the point that Kentucky’s taxes favor older workers who own property but hurt younger, highly educated workers whose wealth is in human capital. This circumstance, Troske said, limits the state’s ability to attract the kind of high-tech companies that employ the younger, better educated crowd.

In all three of these instances, Kentucky’s antiquated tax code works to the detriment of its economic development efforts.

A few other items of interest gleaned from Wednesday’s discussion:

* The best tax policy would include a broad base and low rates. Kentucky’s tax policy has produced just the opposite — a narrow base with high rates, higher as a share of income than our neighboring states.

* People hate income taxes more than they hate sales taxes. I see that as one more argument for shifting our emphasis to an expanded sales tax base, particularly in the service sector of the economy. Oh, and picking up a bit of that $2.4 lost to exemptions would be a good idea, too.

* Tobacco taxes don’t translate into revenue growth. But as a nine-year survivor of lung cancer, I would argue the health benefits of raising tobacco taxes are well worth the effort.

Somewhere in all of the information shared at this symposium, there ought several items of interest to a governor and General Assembly facing a $1.5 billion hole in the next two-year budget. But a recession is no time to do tax reform, says Gov. Steve Beshear. And few are the lawmakers rushing to tell him he’s wrong.

Guess we’ll just keep sucking wind — big time.

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — More than once in this column, I’ve noted the sight that often greets folks leaving the Capitol late in the day.

Buzzards. Hundreds of buzzards circling the sky above the seat of state government. Hundreds more roosting in the trees lining the nearby Kentucky River.

They come to mind again as another General Assembly begins because their numbers and the sense of impending death these carrion convey make them a fitting symbol for the likely outcome of the triangular political maneuvering that will play out below them during the next few months.

Call this the Buzzard Triangle, because it can be just as deadly as the fabled Bermuda Triangle. Not for ships, sailors and passengers, mind you. But rather for reason, common sense and any semblance of bipartisan support for good public policy that can drag Kentucky out of the mid-20th century — if not the 19th — onto the doorstep of the 21st century’s second decade.

Gov. Steve Beshear occupies one corner of this triangle. He wants Kentucky racetracks to get slots, and not solely because it would put them on an equal footing with their counterparts in “racino” states where purses and breeding incentives are fattened with revenue from expanded gambling. Taxes from racetrack slots would make it a bit easier for Kentucky to deal with a $1.5 billion revenue shortfall over the next two-year budget cycle.

But Beshear repeatedly has voiced opposition to enacting comprehensive tax reform during a recession. Never mind that real reform would give relief to low- and middle-income Kentuckians at a time of their most desperate need. Never mind that it would give the state the stable, sustainable revenue base that would make it more resilient in future economic downturns. Now is not the time to do tax reform, according to Beshear.

In another corner of the triangle sits House Speaker Greg Stumbo. He, too, supports racetrack slots. He even pushed a bill through the House last summer only to see it die in a Senate committee.

Unlike Beshear, though, Stumbo has made positive noises about addressing some level of tax reform in this session. His stated motive is that he doesn’t want to turn his back on education, which has been protected from the effects of other recent revenue shortfalls but may be at risk now.

That leaves the third corner, where Senate President David Williams talks about slots as if they are a societal ill, even though he has acknowledged frequenting casinos himself.

Williams also has indicated a willingness to address tax reform. But his recent comments regarding the size of the revenue shortfall (he puts it at something less than $1 billion) suggest he’s more inclined in this session to reduce the size of state government and make it live within its means. Of course, that probably would involve layoffs of state employees that increase the state’s jobless rate as well as the demand for the very state services that get cut in the process.

Beshear needs a win. Midway through his first (and perhaps only) term, his administration’s achievements, commendable as some of them may be, fall considerably short of “legacy” status.

Partly, that is the result of having to deal with a series of revenue shortfalls that not only demanded much of his attention during the past two years, but also left no spare budget change for sexy new initiatives.

But a significant share of the blame rests with Beshear himself. He squandered much, if not all, of his post-election political capital in a disastrously unsuccessful attempt to keep Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo’s former Senate seat in the D column. He has never fully recovered from that debacle and has yet to demonstrate the political and persuasive skills a governor must bring into play if he wants to bend the legislative process to his will.

Stumbo’s recent comments on taxes and education (following his success at pushing expanded gambling through the House after Beshear failed in his first attempt) at least suggest he may be positioning himself as a strong, progressive alternative to a weakened, hesitant incumbent in the 2011 Democratic primary.

Upset by Beshear’s attempts to improve Democratic numbers in the Senate by appointing incumbent Republicans to plum jobs, Williams can be expected to make life as difficult as possible for the governor during this session. Of course, if obstructionism by Senate Republicans produces Draconian results, well, that has a down side, too.

So, there it is. Welcome to the Buzzard Triangle.

Mixing comparisons, if not metaphors, the inscription at the entrance to Hell in Dante’s Inferno provides an apt warning of what lies ahead as this triangle maneuvers through the 2010 session: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

Hooray! Column time again. But this is the last one for the year. We’ll be shorthanded next week, and I’m outta here the following week. So, happy holidays to all.

Sunday’s column:

You win some; you lose some.

Gov. Steve Beshear and the Kentucky horse industry won one, barely, in a special election to fill the state Senate’s 18th District seat. Then, they lost one, big time, in a 14th District special election.

After Rep. Robin Webb won the 18th District seat vacated when Beshear appointed Republican Charlie Borders to the Public Service Commission, Democrats figured they had found a winning formula for taking back the Senate after 10 years of being exiled from power.

On the other side, the unsuccessful pitch Senate President David Williams and Sen. Damon Thayer made to a horse industry group about  linking expanded gambling to a vote of the people suggested Republicans were hearing hoofbeats.

So, Beshear tried the “appoint and conquer” gambit again, naming former Majority Leader Dan Kelly to a circuit judgeship. But the second attempt turned into a big “Oops!” for Beshear and the horse industry when Republican Rep. Jimmy Higdon soundly defeated the Democratic candidate, former state Rep. Jody Haydon, in the special election to fill the 14th District seat.

For different reasons, Beshear and U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell tried to spin the result into a reflection of the national mood — Beshear to deflect blame, McConnell to argue the public is outraged at the Democratic powers that be in Washington.

But even though Republicans used some national issues in this race, all politics is local. And this race was as local as it gets.

First, the horse industry hurt its own cause by going negative early and often. Higdon, a likeable candidate well known in the district, no doubt picked up some sympathy votes as a result.

Second, Beshear angered some Democrats in the district by appointing a Republican to a judgeship coveted by members of his own party. Angry members of your own party don’t help you win elections.

Third, appointing one Republican to a cushy job in hopes of electing a Democratic replacement can be spun as something other that what it really was. But a second appointment establishes a pattern that looks remarkably like a power grab, and voters tend to dislike power grabs.

Finally, Higdon may have started the race with an edge in name recognition because he had been on the legislative campaign trail more recently than Haydon and because the geography of the district put him in proximity to more of its voters. Marion County, Higdon’s home, borders three of the district’s other four counties while Nelson County, where Haydon lives, borders just two.

Even though he’s 1-1 in special elections created by appointment, Beshear probably won’t try it again anytime soon.

So, what does the horse industry do next in pursuit of racetrack slots?

Well, if it can’t change the 20-17-1 Republican-Democrat-Independent dynamic in the Senate, maybe it can exploit the division in the Republican Party over gambling to change the dynamic within the Senate Republican caucus.

Williams has the caucus aligned with the party’s voting base, which opposes expanded gambling. But that upsets many Republicans because it has cut off some of the flow from its money base, which traditionally has included the Thoroughbred industry as a major player.

It still can be a player if, instead of just giving money for any Republican cause, it focuses on fielding well-financed, pro-slots primary opponents for incumbent Republican senators who have let a “red” industry down.

Even in safe districts for one party or the other, the fear of well-financed primary opponents can concentrate incumbents’ minds, perhaps enough so in this case to change some of those no Republican votes into yeses.

Other duties have me tied up this. Next week probably will be the same. And the week after that, I’m taking some time off for the holidays. Don’t know when normality will return.

Sunday’s column:

This and that as the morphing of the state Senate continues:

Frankfort’s worst-kept secret in recent memory produced its expected conclusion when Gov. Steve Beshear picked former Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly to fill a vacant seat on the 11th Judicial Circuit bench. Funny, isn’t it, how the months of hallway chatter preceding the nominating process proved to be so eerily accurate on this one?

Oh, well, Beshear at least gave the appearance of considering the other two nominees. He let a full weekend go by before naming Kelly to the post, thereby creating another opportunity for Democrats to capture a seat formerly held by a Republican in a special election.

But the Kelly gambit has more potential for exploding in Beshear’s face than the appointment of Republican former Sen. Charlie Borders to the Public Service Commission, which set up the special election won by Democrat Robin Webb.

Although a coveted job with big-time pay, a PSC commissioner essentially serves at the whim of the governor. When Borders’ initial term is up, whoever occupies the governor’s office will decide whether he gets reappointed or gets shown the door.

But appointment to a judicial post invests the lucky recipient with the perks of incumbency when the next election rolls around.

By giving a Republican the opportunity to run a “Keep Judge Kelly on the Bench” campaign in the next election, Beshear upset some members of his own party who thought a Democratic governor should bestow such favors on fellow Democrats. Should they decide to sit out the upcoming 14th District special election, picking up Kelly’s seat would become more problematic even though Democrats’ advantage in voter registration is more than 2 to 1.

All other things being equal, though, the 14th District ought to be receptive to the current Democratic mantra about giving Kentucky’s signature racing industry the expanded gambling options it needs to compete with racino-enhanced purses and breeding incentives that are luring Kentucky trainers and owners to other states.

The 14th isn’t in the heart of horse country, but elements of the racing industry exist there. And it has a significant population of Catholics, who are more accepting of gambling than some other faiths.

                                                         * * *

I grew up in the 14th District, in Washington County. I came of age, slightly ahead of legal age, at a couple of Lebanon nightclubs way back in the day.

But I know the two candidates in the special election — Republican Rep. Jimmy Higdon and Democratic former Rep. Jodie Haydon — only through their legislative careers. Both are good guys. And left to their own devices, I would expect them to run a clean campaign.

Unfortunately, their respective parties and assorted other groups rarely let two decent candidates settle the issue by themselves these days.

                                                         * * *

Then, there were none.

Entering last week, 11 of the 12 states Kentucky’s racing industry competes with offered some form of expanded gambling. On Tuesday, Ohio voters made it 12 for 12.

Not immediately, of course. A Cincinnati casino isn’t expected to open until 2012. But when it does, the one remaining gap in the line of casinos along Kentucky’s northern border will be closed.

And Kentucky tracks, which recently requested 67 fewer racing dates in 2010 than they initially requested for 2009, will find themselves at an even greater competitive disadvantage.

All the more reason for Kentucky lawmakers to take the legislative route to approving racetrack slots rather than a constitutional amendment process that could delay approval by up to two years.

                                                       * * *

“Holiday tree” is too PC by far for the kurmudgeon in me.

But having gone there, Gov. Beshear should have stayed there. Reversing course to “Christmas tree” comes across as a flip-flop.

I’m not dancing yet, but I got lucky and had the “one week on crutches” version of knee surgery. So, I’m back to being a kurmudgeonly editorial writer/columnist/blogger.

I’m scheduled to get a knee scoped Wednesday. If I’m lucky, I’ll be bouncing around again in one week. If I’m unlucky, I won’t do any bouncing for four weeks. Since it’s my right (driving) knee, guess which I prefer.

Anyway, if it’s the unlucky option, I may do some blogging and editorial writing from home during those four weeks. I might even write a column or two. On the other hand, I may just lie on my butt reading good books, watching old movies and cussing out the brace immobilizing my leg.