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.”

Every scandal deserves its own name, a la the FBI’s Operation BOPTROT investigation that snared legislators and lobbyists in the early 1990s or former Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s BlackBerry Jam hiring mess.

Frankfort’s current scandal also stems from the Fletcher administration. An FBI investigation of Transportation Cabinet activity during Fletcher’s one term in office has led to the indictment of former cabinet Secretary Bill Nighbert, road contractor Leonard Lawson and Brian Billings, one of Lawson’s employees.

According to the indictments, former cabinet official James Rummage obtained confidential cost estimates for proposed road projects and provided them to Lawson either directly or through Nighbert. The indictments allege that Lawson gave Rummage a total of $20,000 in cash and funneled money to Nighbert through an Eastern Kentucky utility management company.

So, what to name this scandal? Well, a phrase Herald-Leader contributing columnist Larry Webster used in a recent column about the investigation seems to have caught on with some folks in Frankfort. Webster opened that column by saying, “The phrase ‘rummage sale’ takes on new meaning.” Now, I’m hearing Capitol hallway references to the scandal being a “Rummage Sale.”

Sounds highly appropriate to me. Anyone have any better ideas?

Sunday’s column:

This and that as the roars of the convention crowds fade:

For months, the rumors persisted: A federal grand jury investigating Transportation Cabinet activity during former Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s administration would issue indictments soon.

But the rumored date of jury action kept getting pushed back. From June to early July. From early July to the first week of August. From the first week of August to early September.

Wednesday, the rumor became reality when the grand jury issued a 22-page indictment accusing former Transportation Cabinet Secretary Bill Nighbert, highway contractor Leonard Lawson and Brian Billings, one of Lawson’s employees, of conspiring with “others, known and unknown” to commit a variety of crimes related to an alleged bid-rigging scheme.

Other than adding Billings’ name to the discussion and providing several excerpts from taped phone conversations between Lawson and former cabinet official James Rummage, who is cooperating with the investigation, the indictment didn’t advance public knowledge about the case beyond what was contained in an affidavit the FBI filed in federal court last month to obtain a search warrant.

The gist of the case is relatively simple. Nighbert allegedly had Rummage obtain the cabinet’s confidential estimates of proposed road projects’ cost and give the estimates either to Lawson directly or to Nighbert, who then gave them to Lawson.

In return, Lawson allegedly gave Rummage a total of $20,000 in cash and funneled a total of more than $67,000 to Nighbert through an Eastern Kentucky utilities management company.

According to the indictment, the obstruction of justice charges stemmed from alleged efforts by Lawson, Billings and Nighbert to influence what information Rummage provided to investigators.

Attorneys for the three men professed their clients’ innocence. And Howard Mann, Nighbert’s attorney, indicated that one line of defense will be to attack the credibility of Rummage, who “admitted lying on multiple occasions.”

According to the indictment and the earlier affidavit, Rummage acknowledged lying to representatives from the cabinet’s inspector general’s office and initially to FBI investigators. Later, he retracted those statements and agreed to cooperate. So, jurors may not find him to be the most credible of witnesses.

Prosecutors obviously have tapes of a number of Rummage’s telephone conversations. And the wording of the indictment suggests meetings that Rummage had with Billings were conducted under surveillance.

Still, with Rummage’s credibility subject to attack, it seems to these lay eyes that the prosecution’s case could be helped greatly if some of those other “known” conspirators agree to testify.

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Two months ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s approval ratings in a SurveyUSA poll of Kentuckians stood at 57 percent.

In the SurveyUSA poll released last week, his approval rating had dropped to 44 percent. Worse for him, his disapproval rating was at 47 percent.

Democratic Senate candidate Bruce Lunsford’s campaign to unseat McConnell has been less than awe-inspiring. But with McConnell favorables dropping so precipitously in two months, the multimillionaire Louisville businessman may still have a chance to make this a real race.

Gov. Steve Beshear issued the following statement Monday concerning the FBI investigation of Transportation Cabinet activity during former Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration:

"We have been and will continue to cooperate fully with the federal investigation into allegations of impropriety at the Transportation Cabinet during the previous administration. I was elected to create a culture of integrity at the cabinet and throughout state government and we are making substantive progress toward that goal. Our full cooperation with this investigation from the beginning has been an important part of that process."

Sure, the statement may have given the current administration a bit more credit than it deserves in regard to this probe. But that's what politicians do; they seize opportunities to make themselves look good. So, if Beshear was indeed being opportunistic, I'm not going to gig him much for it.

Besides, this investigation offers Beshear another opportunity he should seize as quickly as possible. If he and his aides are serious about cleaning up state government, particularly the Transportation Cabinet, the allegations of bribery and corruption contained in an affidavit filed in federal court by Special Agent Clay Mason should create the perfect political climate for doing so.

In the early 1990s, the Operation BOPTROT scandal created the climate for putting some distance between lawmakers and lobbyists who had developed a far too cozy relationship. Similarly, this brewing scandal should create a climate for ending the often too cozy relationship between Transportation Cabinet officials and road contractors.

Certainly, neither contractors nor cabinet officials would be inclined during the midst of an FBI investigation to draw attention to themselves by sticking their heads up and complaining about efforts to improve the integrity of the contracting process.

So, whatever the Beshear folks have in mind for cleansing the cabinet and making the road contracting process less political and more competitive, this is the time for them to seize the day.

I'm still filling in for absent H-L editorial board colleagues, but an opinionated old so-and-so such as me can't keep quiet when something as interesting as the latest news from the FBI investigation of the Transportation Cabinet comes along. So, a few initial thoughts on the subject:

The affidavit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in London by FBI Special Agent Clay Mason confirmed a rumor members of the media had been hearing for at least a couple of months - that former Transportation Cabinet official James Rummage had admitted taking $20,000 from highway contractor Leonard Lawson in exchange for supplying Lawson with engineers' estimates for road projects. The same rumor had Rummage, who was known to be cooperating with the investigation, implicating former cabinet Secretary Bill Nighbert in the scheme. For once, a juicy rumor turned out to be true.

Mason's affidavit says he started investigating the cabinet in July 2007 but the information about Rummage didn't surface until after the November election. That information "shifted the focus" of the FBI investigation, according to the affidavit. So, what was being investigated before the change of focus? Well, former cabinet official Sam Beverage's allegations about corruption in the Fletcher administration, including using road projects as rewards for political favors, became public in late June 2007 as part of a plea deal he made to get a perjury charge reduced to official misconduct. Whether that was indeed the impetus for launching the FBI investigation, the timing coincides.

My colleagues who have covered federal probes such as this one say it is at least a bit unusual for a document such as Mason's affidavit to become a matter of public record at this stage of an investigation. That begs the question: What do prosecutors and the FBI hope to achieve by getting such juicy details out in the open now?

Another question raised by the disclosures is this: What excuse will Fletcherites come up with to rationalize this latest scandal? "Partisan political witch hunt" won't cut it this time, not when the U.S. attorney was appointed by a Republican president.

During state Rep. Greg Stumbo’s time as attorney general, his office issued an opinion saying the General Assembly could authorize expanded gambling, including casinos, in Kentucky without a constitutional amendment. Now back in the House, Stumbo Wednesday released a draft of legislation that would authorize video lottery terminals at racetracks. Taxes generated from the machines would be earmarked for a variety of purposes including but not limited to education, enhanced purses at the tracks and to offset repeal of the state’s share of the personal property tax on motor vehicles and motorboats.

A few comments:

First, Stumbo should drop the VLT bull and rewrite the proposed bill to call these gambling devices by their real name: slot machines.

Second, lay person that I am, I agree with the legal reasoning of the opinion on expanded gambling issued while Stumbo was attorney general. But whether the opinion was legally correct doesn’t mean diddly. With more than 80 percent of Kentucky voters wanting the right to vote on a constitutional amendment on expanded gambling, lawmakers would be committing political suicide if they authorized slots prior to passage of such an amendment.

Third, Stumbo knows this. He knows his proposal may generate some discussion but isn’t going to pass. But he also knows that, by grabbing a few headlines just days before this Saturday’s 128th Fancy Farm Picnic, he will garner more attention there, where he and his potential rival House Speaker Jody Richards are expected to be pressing the flesh even if they’re not on the speaking program. Remember, it was on the eve of the 2005 picnic that prosecutors in his office gave the ”corrupt politic machine” filing to Franklin Circuit Court in the BlackBerry Jam investigation of hiring practices in former Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s administration.

So, Stumbo knows one other thing as well. He knows timing.

Today’s column:

FRANKFORT — Gov. Steve Beshear has gone tone-deaf in a big way about his 13-stop listening tour of the state (after which he hopes to hear that his lowly approval ratings have risen).

At a time when state services are being slashed and state workers face the prospect of potential layoffs, blowing thousands of tax dollars to fly key administration personnel to various stops on the tour creates a public-perception disaster for him.

At a time of high fuel costs, flying those aides around wastes even more tax dollars than usual.

And at a time when he and state lawmakers are stepping on one another’s toes trying to position themselves as the greenest politician in Kentucky, particularly in regard to energy conservation, sucking up the extra fuel that flying requires makes him look like a hypocrite of the first order.

While a defensible argument can be made for flying the governor to some tour stops (and filling up that one plane with some members of his staff), no such argument justifies piling everyone into three planes for these trips.

But Beshear insists that he will continue flying his staff to some cities. And he defends that decision with rationalizations that miss the point on multiple levels.

“I guarantee you this: The cost is a lot less to take them with me than it costs to take 400 Pike Countians down to Frankfort and back,” Beshear said in a speech this week.

Well, duh, yeah. But excuse me, Governor, that comparison is lame, bogus and just plain irrelevant.

The proper comparison is the cost of taking government to the people of Pike County in three planes (one of which was chartered for $4,474) versus the cost of taking government to the people of Pike County in, say, three state-owned vans.

Does anyone need a calculator to figure out which of those two options is cheaper?

(If the vans don’t appeal to this administration, well, past occupants of Beshear’s office took government to the people by loading everyone on a bus.)

A statement issued by the governor’s office offered a different defense of the Pikeville airlift, saying it “saved 100 hours of work time, if not more” for Beshear and the 15 aides who accompanied him.

Uh, excuse me again, but not!

In the first place, the Pikeville tour stop began at 6 p.m. That’s an 1½ hours after the normal close of business for state government.

So, at most, driving would have cost Beshear and his aides a couple of hours each of normal office time. And since the planes took off from Capitol Airport between 4:09 and 4:44 p.m., some of them missed a bit of normal office time anyway.

But that’s beside the point because there really is no reason for van-pooling to cause lost work time.

Being away from the office doesn’t equate to being away from the job in this wireless world. So, Beshear and his people could be taking care of business during a van ride. And if they hit a couple of dead zones along the way, well, a bit of paperwork carried along in briefcases could keep everyone gainfully occupied.

Bottom line: Beshear promised better than this same old, same old waste of tax dollars. He hasn’t delivered. Until he does, Kentuckians are going to be scratching their heads and wondering how they managed to re-elect Ernie Fletcher.

Wasting tax dollars in this fashion is no way for Beshear to lift his approval ratings. On the contrary, if he continues his multi-plane flyovers of Kentucky, his approval ratings could easily worsen.

Instead of stubbornly insisting on these wasteful flights, Beshear should admit his mistake and move on. His predecessor had trouble learning that lesson and became a one-term governor as a result.

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — This and that as Gov. Steve Beshear’s “Please Help Me My Ratings Have Fallen” tour gets underway:

OK, it’s officially the “Beshear About Kentucky” tour. But by whatever name, it will be coming soon to a town near you.

Counting Thursday night’s kickoff in Pikeville, Beshear will make 13 stops over the next six weeks  to hear what Kentuckians have to say about how the state can do more with less.

My first suggestion would be to stop taking three planes full of aides on this tour.

After limping through his first legislative session with little success, Beshear rebounded a bit by staring down the Council on Postsecondary Education on the selection of a new president, by getting lawmakers to come together on pension reform and by using the power of the pen on executive orders to reorganize the executive branch and set some new policies for it to follow.

(In that regard, the quick response of his newly reconstituted Kentucky Horse Racing Authority in addressing controversies in the racing industry has been particularly noteworthy and encouraging.)

Then, toward the end of a week in which energy conservation was a major topic around the Capitol, including his own press conference encouraging state employees to carpool and work flex time where possible, the governor blows a wad of tax dollars and a few tanks of fuel to make Kentucky’s carbon footprint even larger by flying staffers to Pikeville and back.

Surely, someone in the administration heard the dumb meter go off before this tone-deaf flight of fancy occurred.

It’s bad enough that this tour is all too reminiscent of the “Tell Me How to Spend a Surplus That Doesn’t Exist” tour of the state former Gov. Ernie Fletcher took in an unsuccessful attempt to win re-election. By kicking it off with a three-plane flyover of the state, Beshear just added to the list of what I have come to think of as his Stevie Wandering missteps – as in, where the heck was his mind wandering when he decided that was a bright idea?

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Even before the aerial circus, Beshear’s recent positive accomplishments were being undermined by his administration’s lack of adequate vetting of James F. Sullivan, who was recently appointed to the Crime Victim Compensation Board and the Board of Claims.

Sullivan was convicted of a misdemeanor in 1990 for attempted jury tampering in former state Rep. Jerry Lundergan’s 1989 trial. That’s a rather unusual qualification for a member of these panels to have.

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State Rep. Kathy Stein’s decision to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Ernesto Scorsone will leave the House in need of a new Judiciary Committee chairman come January. No doubt there will be more than one applicant pleading their case with the Democratic leadership.

But Judiciary is the traditional cemetery for bad bills and, therefore, demands a certain skill set of its chairman. To keep such legislation “resting peacefully,” as the late Rep. Gross Clay Lindsay used to say when he chaired the committee, it is best to have a chairman with a relatively safe seat and a strong spinal column.

I don’t know if he wants the job, but Rep. Darryl Owens of Louisville fits those characteristics.

Catching up on a few items:

1. For the first time in 20 years, there will not be a Bush or a Clinton at the top of a major party's' presidential ticket. The times really are a-changin', as Dylan might say.

2. Former Gov. Paul Patton deserves a seat on the Council on Postsecondary Education. He wrote the book on higher education reform in Kentucky, proposing the legislation enacted during a 1997 special session and using the force of his political will to overcome opposition from some entrenched higher education interests. He would be an excellent addition to a panel that has seen a bit of turmoil lately. His knowledge and insight might be particularly beneficial in evaluating applicants during the search for a new permanent president.

3. Former Gov. Ernie Fletcher added insult to injury when he chose Diversity Day in 2006 to sign an order removing a ban on discrimination due to sexual orientation that Patton had implemented in state government. Gov. Steve Beshear did the right thing Monday when he issued an executive order reinstating anti-discrimination protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender state workers. They deserve the same respect afforded to other employees.

4. It's too bad the state can't figure out a way to repo Education Commissioner John Draud's costly ride, the one pimped out with $13,000 worth of extras that he now remembers he did know about. But then, that's small change compared to the $448,997 low bid submitted for the next round of pimping out the Senate's digs. And that doesn't include the $400,000 in rent the state will pay to house the agencies kicked out of the Capitol Annex so none of our senators will have to suffer the indignity of being stuck in that "rather small office" Senate President David Williams mentioned recently.

Gov. Steve Beshear could not win legislative approval of his proposal for executive branch ethics reform, but he has called a press conference at 2 p.m. Tuesday at which he is expected to announce that he will implement some or all of his proposed reforms by executive order.

Among other things, his initial proposal would have required more frequent disclosure of contributions to any legal defense fund established by an executive branch official. Former Gov. Ernie Fletcher formed a legal defense fund to help pay the legal costs he accrued as a result of the BlackBerry Jam investigation into his administration's hiring practices, an investigation that led to his indictment on misdemeanor charges. Fletcher later cut a deal with former Attorney General Greg Stumbo's office to get those charges dropped. The current reporting requirements for a legal defense fund allowed Fletcher to keep the names of donors and the amounts they donated secret until after he left office.

In addition, Beshear's original ethics proposal called for the governor, the attorney general and the state auditor to select nominees for the Executive Branch Ethics Commission on a rotating basis. Currently, the governor has sole authority for appointing the panel's members.

Other changes in the governor's original proposal would expand the scope of the ethics commission to cover more executive branch officials and strengthen the rules on conflicts of interests and the acceptance of gifts.