KyKurmudgeon

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — When distillery representatives poured good bourbon — very good bourbon — on the still snow-dotted Capitol terrace Tuesday, my first reaction was horror over the waste of some nectar of the gods.

My next reaction was to think we might be witnessing a modern-day Whiskey Rebellion, reminiscent of the one quelled by President George Washington when he personally led federal troops into Pennsylvania in the 1790s. Since one tax collector got tarred and feathered in that brouhaha, I began to wonder who would get selected for such an honor this time.

But last week’s uprising involved more than Kentucky’s bourbon distilleries. Beer distributors were raising a ruckus, too. And they provided most of the trucks that circled the Capitol for hours on end over four consecutive days.

(Trivia tidbit: Ann McBrayer, president of Kentucky Eagle Inc., said each of her company’s trucks racked up 60 miles a day driving around the Capitol from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.)

Since the Whiskey Rebellion comparison doesn’t really fit, maybe we should just refer to the week’s activities as a display of alcohol anarchy. But whatever you call them, the protests proved unsuccessful.

On Friday, after the Senate approved it with just one vote to spare, Gov. Steve Beshear signed into law a tax increase on tobacco products and alcoholic beverages that will allow state government to limp along to midnight, June 30 with maybe a penny left in the treasury. A minute later, though, the state likely will face an even bigger revenue shortfall for the next fiscal year.

And that’s the problem with House Bill 144, even more so than the fact that it places an unfair share of the burden for balancing this year’s budget on the alcoholic beverage industry and Kentucky’s “wet” cities and counties. It is just a temporary patch of a pothole in the state’s structurally unsound revenue base.

Sure, it is commendable that a Democratic governor, a Democratic House leadership and a Republican Senate leadership cooperated so well on finding a solution to the immediate crisis. Gov. Steve Beshear, House Speaker Greg Stumbo and Senate President David Williams deservedly patted themselves on their respective backs for their bipartisan cooperation.

And yes, all three say they are committed to comprehensive tax reform sometime in the future. Beshear and Stumbo had to pledge their commitment to that goal to get HB 144 through the House.

But we’ve heard those promises before, so often that I suspect Sen. Julie Denton, R-Louisville, was right Friday when she said of such vows: “Well, the check’s in the mail and I’ll respect you in the morning is what I think about that.”

Somehow, “comprehensive tax reform” never lives up to its “comprehensive” name. Lawmakers always settle for “tax tweaking,” as they did Friday, or “tax tinkerization,” as they did during former Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s term.

So, despite all the talk heard during Friday’s Senate debate and throughout this session about bringing the state’s tax code into the 21st century, holding your breath in anticipation of it happening will just leave you breathless.

Next year, when they need to patch an even larger revenue pothole and realize their dream of doing so with money from the federal stimulus package was unrealistic, they’re more apt to tweak a bit, tinker a bit, shift a bigger share of the burden to some other group and mumble something about “comprehensive reform.”

If they’ve been around long enough, Kentucky lawmakers have known what comprehensive tax reform would look like since the mid-1990s, when a task force created by former Gov. Brereton Jones drew them a picture. That picture became more clear in 2002, when William Fox, a consultant hired by a special legislative subcommittee, predicted the state’s recent fiscal woes.

The dominant element in the picture drawn by each report was an expansion of the sales tax to include selected services. Until lawmakers are willing to go there and bring the state tax code in line with a 21st century economy dominated by the service sector, there will be no “comprehensive tax reform.”