This and that before taking a long holiday weekend:
1. Throughout this year’s gubernatorial campaign, Gov. Ernie Fletcher bragged about the great budgetary balancing act his administration has performed during his term. A particular point of emphasis in that portion of his campaign spiel was in Medicaid, where he claimed the reforms his administration initiated had solved an inherited "deficit."
Only after the election did Kentuckians learn that the Medicaid "deficit" didn’t stay solved. This week brought word that the Medicaid program needs another $112 million in state money to leverage federal matching funds and fill a $389 million shortfall in the current budget year.
Oh, by the way, a few other state agencies are finding themselves running short this year, to the tune of about $20 million.
Meanwhile, state revenue forecasts are shrinking as the budgetary demands for fulfilling commitments to higher education, teachers’ salaries, the state’s pension programs and assorted other areas of government grow.
Under the best of circumstances, crafting a budget proposal is a difficult task for an incoming governor simply because of the short time between Election Day and the deadline for submitting a spending plan to the General Assembly. With current fiscal circumstances obviously being less than optimal, Gov.-elect Steve Beshear has some unpleasant decisions to make in the next couple of months.
And I wouldn’t bet on the Medicaid shortfall being the last surprise Beshear will find during the transition of power in the Governor’s Office.
2. At first, I thought it a bit odd and somewhat less than "newsy" that Beshear would call a press conference just to announce a Web site where people can register for non-merit positions in the new administration.
But I attended anyway. (We media grunts tend to do that with governors - and perhaps even more so with new governors - just in case they say something that does qualify as "news.") And I came away with the impression that the Web site announcement was just an excuse for Beshear deliver a "lesson learned" message about the Fletcher administration’s hiring scandal.
Beshear owes his election to the hiring investigation, or at least to Fletcher’s bumbling responses to the probe. But if the lesson from it is truly learned, the governor-elect will continue to enjoy some beneficial effects from it throughout his term. The outcome of the scandal, and particularly the state Personnel Board’s reinstatement of Mike Duncan to his job in the Transportation Cabinet, should help immunize him from the kind of political pressures that led the Fletcher administration to politicize the hiring and firing or merit system employees.
After all, Democrats can’t want their governor to wind up in his own BlackBerry Jam, can they?
3. Although Beshear has said he wants Democrats to retake control of the state Senate next year, it might be wise of him to avoid being overtly involved in that fight during the upcoming General Assembly session.
Yes, he is the leader of his party now. But he’s also a governor who wants to get at least some of his agenda through a Republican-controlled Senate, and Senate President David Williams has made it clear that task will become infinitely more difficult if Beshear is at the same time recruiting opponents for Republican senators. And Williams doesn’t make idle threats.
So, if Beshear wants to have some successes during the first session of his term, he might want to leave legislative candidate recruitment to the Democratic caucuses in the respective houses and to Jennifer Moore and Nathan Smith, the new chair and co-chair at party headquarters.
Of course, after the session, there’s nothing stopping Beshear from helping his party’s candidates raise money. That’s to be expected from any governor.
4. Before I started writing editorials/columns/blog entries and realized the best job in journalism is being paid to be an opinionated SOB, my last assignment as a reporter was covering the 1979 gubernatorial race between John Y. Brown Jr. and Louie Nunn. I gained respect for Brown during that campaign, and I thought he did a decent job as governor.
But try as I might, I can’t think of any way to describe his decision to skip the inauguration of Beshear, his opponent in a contentious 1987 gubernatorial primary won by Wallace Wilkinson, as anything but the act of a sore loser.
5. Enjoy your Turkey Day. I’ll be back Monday.