KyKurmudgeon

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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

Sunday’s column:

That didn’t take long.

Prominent members of his party take Senate President David Williams publicly to task for blocking any resolution of the gambling debate, and it suddenly starts raining proposed constitutional amendments sponsored by Senate Republicans. One of them even comes from the obstructionist himself.

Of course, Williams’ amendment wouldn’t resolve the gambling issue. On the contrary, it’s a delaying tactic. If his proposal to ban expanded gambling absent the passage of a constitutional amendment wins legislative and voter approval in 2010, the earliest an amendment authorizing slots at racetracks or any other form of gambling could pass would be 2012.

(Yeah, I know it’s technically possible voters could approve both Williams’ amendment and the one proposed by Sen. Damon Thayer — that actually would authorize racetrack slots — next year. But let’s be real. Kentucky voters aren’t bipolar, which they would have to be to pass both of these measures at one time.)

But delay is secondary to the real motive behind Williams’s proposal — a desire to have an amendment on the ballot that brings conservative voters out in a crucial election that will determine which party controls the Senate during the legislative and congressional redistricting following the 2010 census.

You can say the same for Thayer’s amendment, but he at least wrapped it up in prettier packaging for the racing industry. Still, the horse crowd isn’t rushing to unwrap this present either, and with good reason.

Slots legislation passed by the House in June limits this form of gambling to the grounds of existing racetracks and one track that may be licensed later. Except for that one available license, the bill would have limited slots to locations where gambling already occurs on a near daily basis.

Under Thayer’s proposal one license would be auctioned off to the highest bidder in each of the seven counties with existing tracks. It’s conceivable tracks could be outbid for these licenses. That not only would expand the locations where legalized gambling occurs, it would also put the tracks in competition with other gambling venues in their own counties.

Kentucky needs a geographic expansion of its gambling options — if it involves destination resort casinos, some of which are owned by the tracks. That’s the best way to recapture the $500 million or so Kentuckians now gamble in other states each year. But slots halls competing with tracks within the same county? Uh, no.

In addition, implementation of Thayer’s plan simply takes too long for a signature Kentucky industry that is, as Ellis Park’s Ron Geary told lawmakers in March, “fading away, folks, before our very eyes.”

Assuming Thayer’s  amendment wins approval from state voters in November 2010, local option elections in those seven counties could push the start-up of slots operations well into 2011 or beyond. By then, the circuit that has provided Kentuckians year-round jobs for decades could resemble a half-circuit, if we’re lucky.

Not to mention the fact that the details of Thayer’s plan would be added to an antiquated constitution that hinders governance in a modern society because it already contains, like, 9,000 too many details. If this bombs, the fix can only be made with another amendment.

Kentucky racing being a “red” industry, the state’s horse farms traditionally have provided fertile ground for Republican fund-raising. But despite a wet growing season this year, word is that particular cash crop has dried up a bit because the Republican state Senate killed the slots bill passed by the House during the June special session. Neither of these proposals is apt to get those greenbacks blooming again.

Tied up with other duties all week. Hope to return to some level of normality next week.

Sunday’s column:

“Due to (Senate President David) Williams’ utter mismanagement, this (gambling) issue now pits Republicans against Republicans, not Republicans against Democrats, as he would have us believe,” Lane’s End Farm general manager Bill Farish wrote in a column published by the Herald-Leader in late September.

“Sadly, Williams seems less concerned about helping our (racing and breeding) industry and more concerned about maintaining control over his Senate fiefdom,” the son of former President George W. Bush’s ambassador to Great Britain added later in the piece.

Last week, Williams drew criticism from Louisville lawyer John David Dyche, author of the recently released Republican Leader: A Political Biography of Senator Mitch McConnell.

Williams’ “hard-line posture and strong-arm tactics on gambling are counterproductive,” Dyche wrote in The Courier-Journal, adding that “Williams has put several GOP legislators in difficult political positions.”

Of the two blows delivered to Williams by fellow Republicans, Dyche’s was perhaps the more telling. Farish, after all, has a stake in the push to keep Kentucky racetracks competitive with their counterparts in states where purses and breeding incentives are supplemented by revenue from alternative gambling. His displeasure with Williams’ obstructionism on this issue could be expected.

Dyche, on the other hand, is one of Kentucky’s better known Republican pundits who tends to reflect mainstream thinking in the party.

So, when he writes about the need for Republicans to “put gambling behind them — preferably by letting the public vote on a constitutional amendment,” you have to believe he’s speaking for a lot of like-minded Republicans. And you have to consider the possibility that pressure from within his own party might force Williams to allow a floor vote on gambling in 2010.

If it does, it likely would take the form of a constitutional amendment, perhaps sponsored by one or more of the Republican senators from horse country who have been put at risk by Williams’ current stance.

The thing is, though, a constitutional amendment on the 2010 ballot is the last thing Democrats should want if they’re truly committed to winning back control of the Senate.

With former state Rep. Robin Webb’s win in a special election for the 18th District seat formerly held by Republican Charlie Borders, Democrats have reduced the Republican Senate majority to 20-17, with one independent. They hope to whittle it down a bit more in another special election later this year, assuming Williams’ oft-voiced prediction that Majority Floor Leader Dan Kelly will get a judicial appointment comes true.

(Republican Rep. Jimmy Higdon has already filed papers with the Registry of Election Finance for a 2010 race in Kelly’s district. Democrat Jodie Haydon, a former state representative, also has filed with the Registry. So, both parties apparently believe Kelly will get a judgeship.)

If Democrats succeed in picking up Kelly’s seat, they would go into the 2010 elections — which will determine who controls the post-census redistricting — down to just 19-18-1 with a few Senate Republicans from horse country at risk because of their anti-gambling votes earlier this year and at least one Republican seat open due to the announced retirement of Sen. Gary Tapp.

Under those circumstances, Democrats would have to be politically brain dead to go along with putting an amendment on the ballot that would draw conservatives to the polls to vote against gambling. Better to just sit back and watch the Republican squabbling on the subject continue.

FRANKFORT — Call it vindication for the surviving spouses of the Comair Flight 5191 crash, mining disasters and other accidents who came to the Capitol in 2007 seeking to right a legal wrong, only to be rudely, insensitively, insultingly rebuffed by the Republican-controlled state Senate.

Call it an affirmation of those survivors’ recognition that Kentucky case law regarding loss of spousal companionship (consortium in legal language) in wrongful death cases turned reason on its head.

Most of all, call it justice at last. Not so much for those survivors who passionately and eloquently argued their case in the Capitol halls more than two years ago. (For instance, only one suit stemming from the Flight 5191 crash remains unsettled.) But justice for Kentucky’s future survivors whose lives are shattered when their wives and husbands die as the result of “a negligent or wrongful act” of a third party.

Since 1970, KRS 411:145 clearly has stated that surviving spouses can seek damages for loss of companionship in these cases. But Kentucky’s prevailing case law has disagreed, nonsensically allowing loss of companionship claims when a spouse is injured and survives but denying such claims when a spouse suffers a wrongful death.

Thursday, the Kentucky Supreme Court corrected this injustice by ruling that the statute means exactly what it says.

“The courts have been exhorted that ‘common sense must not be a stranger in the house of the law,’” Justice Mary Noble wrote in the unanimous opinion. ” … It defies common sense to put a value on such losses while a spouse is lying incapacitated, but to say the loss is worthless after death.”

Later in the opinion, Noble posed this question: “Can it reasonably be said that one whose spouse survives suffers more loss of consortium than one whose spouse dies?”

The answer, of course, is no, a resounding no. If anything, the loss is greater in instances of death.

As the opinion pointed out, the flawed logic of the prevailing case law — which traced its origins back to English common law — could cause people to make sure the victims of their negligent or wrongful acts do not survive “as only by instantly killing them can the (responsible party) be guaranteed to owe no loss of consortium damages. While this logically follows the common law rule, it is obviously absurd.”

Unaddressed in the opinion is an opposite absurdity that is of just as much concern for people who, like me, desperately want the plug pulled as soon as it’s evident they have slipped into a permanent vegetative state. Prior to Thursday, Kentucky law encouraged people to keep vegetative spouses alive if it meant they could collect loss of consortium damages, a prospect I find abhorrent.

While justice in this instance was delivered to Kentuckians through the wise ruling of a unanimous Supreme Court, I firmly believe credit also goes to those surviving spouses — of Flight 5191, of mine disasters, of other accidents — who brought their crusade to the halls of the Capitol back in 2007.

They brought the injustice of prior case law to the attention of the public. They started the conversation about its absurd consequences, a conversation that reached a proper conclusion Thursday in a case unrelated to any of their losses.

They struck me as heroes then. They still do.

Regular H-L readers know we’ve endured significant budgetary cutbacks in the last year or so, including multiple rounds of buyouts and layoffs. Regular visitors to KyKurmudgeon probably realize, from the reduced number of posts and the reduced number of columns, that I’ve been spending more time on other editorial duties as a result of our staff losing one-and-a-half positions in earlier rounds of reductions.

Well, it’s about to get worse. As a result of the most recent round of layoffs, Friday will be the last day for one of our editorial writers. It’s a tremendous loss of knowledge, experience, creativity for our pages, not to mention a tremendous loss of humor in our office discussions. And personally more me, it means I’m going be writing a lot more editorials in the future as well as helping out with more page production work, both of which will cause me to spend even less time blogging.

Plans at the moment have me continuing to write Sunday columns on a regular basis - or at least a semi-regular basis since our numbers are now so low that the absence of any of my colleagues due to vacation or illness will drastically increase the workload on those who remain in the office. Those columns will continue to be posted here at KyKurmudgeon. And I hope to throw in other posts occasionally as time allows.

This new situation also means I will spend less time on the ground in Frankfort than I have in recent years, although I still hope to be there for as much of future legislative sessions as possible and for other important events. Since the best information is the information you gather up close and personal, I am way disappointed by this situation.

But it is what it is, and I and my remaining colleagues will try our best to continue producing quality work and to continue the lively conversation we’ve had with our readers over many years. But without our friend and longtime colleague it won’t be nearly as much fun as it has been.

I’m filling in for absent colleagues this week.