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?”