1. Gov. Steve Beshear’s signature campaign issue, putting a casino gambling amendment on the ballot in hopes of eventually recapturing the $300 million to $500 million in revenue flowing from Kentucky into other states’ treasuries, went nowhere in this year’s General Assembly session. Facing a $456.1 million revenue shortfall in the current fiscal year (and who knows how much in the next one), he’s proposing a 70-cent increase in the cigarette tax that, if approved, won’t come close to filling that void. So Monday, he created a Commission on Philanthropy to look at ways the state’s charitable foundations can get more bank for the buck in such areas as health early childhood education. The combination of these circumstances has put an image in my mind that I can’t shake. It’s the image of Beshear sitting at street corner with a tin cup in his hand begging for alms to pay for services the state should be providing.
2. Speaking of casino gambling, the fact that a task force Beshear created to study the future of horse racing in Kentucky failed to include any recommendation on expanded gambling in the report it issued Monday is completely mind-boggling to me. How can a panel that supposedly has just a tiny bit of interest in making sure this state’s racetracks stay competitive with their counterparts around the country ignore expanded gambling when purses at tracks in several other states are supplemented with proceeds from that source? How does this panel expect Kentucky tracks to remain competitive without help from expanded gambling? By sitting with its own tin cup on the street corner opposite Beshear?
Larry Dale Keeling, a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, has spent most of his 35-plus years in journalism reporting on or writing editorials and columns about Kentucky’s politics and political issues. He now brings his experience and expertise on those topics to the KyKurmudgeon blog.
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