KyKurmudgeon

For the past couple of weeks, the H-L editorial staff has been shorthanded again. When you’re down to as few people as we have now, it happens frequently. So, I’ve been filling in, writing editorials, editing copy, etc., while still trying to keep the columns going. But the blogging has suffered. Now, though, everyone is back on the job (for the next couple of weeks, at least). So, the ol’ Kurmudgeon can get back to being kurmudgeonly. We’ll start with a few short takes on recent events.

1. Rand Paul’s performance at the Fancy Farm Picnic left me unimpressed, but I can’t say the same about his Aug. 21 Internet “money bomb” event. Anyone raises more than $425,000 online in one day has proved he will have the money to be a player in the Republicans’ 2010 U.S. Senate primary. So, what if most of the contributions came from out of state? Out-of-state money spends the same as in-state money when it comes to financing campaigns. Secretary of State Trey Grayson remains the favorite, and I suspect he leads Paul by a wider margin than the recent SurveyUSA poll indicated. But even though Paul appeals more to libertarians than to mainstream Republicans, Grayson has to treat him as a serious threat, because the Bowling Green ophthalmologist won’t be going away anytime soon.

2. Some may see Democratic state Rep. Robin Webb’s narrow victory in Tuesday’s special election to fill the state Senate’s 18th District seat as a sign of public support for racetrack slots. I don’t. Even though expanded gambling was an issue in the race, Webb’s winning margin was too small to suggest any kind of mandate on any issue. But there is a gambling-related lesson that came out of this race, one that relates to Webb’s support for racetrack slots during the June special session of the General Assembly. The lesson is that a vote for expanded gambling is not sufficient in and of itself to get a lawmaker defeated the next time he or she faces voters, even in a district that has voted conservatively for the last 20 years. Maybe that will give a few legislators a bit more backbone the next time this issue comes up for a vote.

3. State Rep. Darryl Owens has pre-filed legislation that would take the reference to dueling out of the oath public officials swear to when they take office. I’m agin the bill. I think the provision requiring officials to swear they have not fought a duel, sent or accepted a challege to fight a duel or acted as a second in a duel adds a bit of character to the Kentucky oath of office. The state constitution has many outdated provisions that need to be addressed. But our dueling oath isn’t one of the important ones.

We’re still a bit short-handed on the H-L editorial staff this week, so I’ll still be helping out some with the routine of putting out the daily editorial and oped pages. But there’s at least time for a couple of quick observations.

1. Secretary of State Trey Grayson passed his first test as a potential U.S. Senate candidate by raising a little more than $600,000 during the first quarter his exploratory committee was in the field. That surpassed the bar set by Cathy Bailey, a prolific Republican fund-raiser and former ambassador to Latvia, when she said in early May that a candidate’s exploratory committee ought to generate at least $500,000 in its first quarter. Bailey’s name has also been mentioned as a potential candidate for the seat now held by Sen. Jim Bunning, and some viewed her $500,000 remark as something of a challenge to Grayson. No word yet on how much Bunning raised during the quarter that ended July 1. No word either on the efforts of the two major Democratic candidates, Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo and Attorney General Jack Conway, although hallway chatter suggests Conway had a very successful quarter.

2. With the special General Assembly session and the Fourth of July behind us, it’s time to look ahead to all that yummy food and entertaining political oratory and shenanigans at the Aug. 1 Fancy Farm Picnic. Mark Wilson, who handles the political program for the St. Jerome Parish’s annual fund-raising event, says the speaking commitments received so far include four announced U.S. Senate candidates: Mongiardo; fellow D candidate Darlene Fitzgerald Price, a former U.S. Customs agent from McCreary County; Rand Paul, a Bowling Green ophthalmologist who has formed an exploratory committee for the R nomination; and Bill Johnson, a Todd County businessman who is another R candidate. State Sen. Ken Winters and state Rep. Fred Nesler have also committed to speak. Although Bunning hasn’t responded to the invitation from the picnic committee, he previously said he planned to attend.  You can expect most statewide constitutional officers - including Grayson and Conway - to be there as well, although Wilson indicated Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer has declined.

Between taking some time off and spending some working time on the routine chores of putting the H-L editorial and oped pages together, the old Kurmudgeon has left his blog somewhat idle lately. Let’s remedy that by catching up on a few issues today.

1. National Republican leaders continue to treat U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning like a pariah. His approval rating hovers down there in the “Brrr!” numbers. The most recent polling showed him trailing in head-to-head match-ups with both the “name’ contenders for the Democratic senatorial nomination. The finance reports he and Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo filed recently reflected a political rarity: an incumbent trailing a challenger in early fund-raising.

All the hits Bunning has been taking suggest that, if the 2010 Senate race were one of the Major League games he pitched, it would be the one where he suffered his rockiest first inning. But he’s still in the game and shows no signs of handing the ball over to a Republican reliever voluntarily. If he does insist on completing the game, he’s the type of candidate who probably can’t lose a Republican primary but can’t win the general election. If you’re Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and you’re trying to keep Democrats from gaining a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority, nightmares don’t get any worse than that.

2. Some of the current Frankfort scuttlebutt suggests any special session dealing with next year’s anticipated revenue shortfall will be delayed until September to avoid any conflict with legislators’ summer vacation plans and to allow more time to assess just how bad the shortfall will be. But the problem with a September session is that, the closer you get to the January filing deadline for the 2010 elections, the more difficult it will be to get lawmakers to cast hard votes on revenue. Better to give voters six months to forgive and forget rather than three. Besides, other scuttlebutt heard around Frankfort suggests the revenue projections Gov. Steve Beshear will receive in early May could be so dire that a three-month delay in addressing them wouldn’t be feasible. So, if you’re one of those folks whose calendars revolve around legislative activity, I’ll pass along the word I got last week: Keep your summer vacation plans flexible.

3. When Transportation Cabinet officials realized they made a couple mistakes in recent merit hires, they backed up and took some do-overs. If former Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s administration had reacted the same way when its merit problems surfaced, he could easily be in his second term today.

4. Whatever you do this Derby Week, do not commit the sacrilege of using the nectar of the gods known as bourbon in one of those gosh-awful mint julep concoctions.

Give it up for Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr., who reportedly wants to let the sun shine on the judicial branch of state government. A Supreme Court decision exempted the judiciary from the state’s Open Records Act more than 30 years ago. But The Courier-Journal reported Wednesday that Minton plans to propose some open-records rules for the judicial branch later this year. It would be a welcome and long overdue change.

While court proceedings themselves may sometimes warrant confidentiality, the administration of our justice system should be subject to just as much public scrutiny and accountability as the executive and legislative branches are. But Herald-Leader reporters researching the “Law and Mortar” series about a 10-year, $880 million courthouse construction program encountered difficulty obtaining details about financing and contractor selection from the Administrative Office of the Courts even though the same details would be readily available for construction projects handled by other state agencies.

Such a lack of transparency is unacceptable when any amount of taxpayers’ money is being spent, much less $880 million. Minton’s proposed rules should assure total public access to this type of information in the future.

A few ramblings as yet another legislative session slip-slides away:

1. This General Assembly session could set some kind of record for non-productivity. As of adjournment Monday, the 19th day of a 30-day session, just five pieces of legislation had passed both chambers. And two of those were housekeeping resolutions. Much of the early part of the session was consumed working out the details of the tax increase on alcoholic beverages and tobacco products, reworking this year’s budget and twisting enough arms to get both measure passed. Since then, the dominant issue has been the still mysterious road plan that remains hidden in some undisclosed location known only by a select few. Sure, committees keep pumping out bills. And each house keeps passing its own measures, most of which likely will die in the other chamber. Oh, well, if they’re not doing much for us this year, they at least aren’t doing much to us either.

2. House Speaker Greg Stumbo did the right thing pulling the plug on his poorly vetted General Assembly Accountability and Review Division (GAARD) legislation. As originally proposed, GAARD resembled the secretive Court of the Star Chamber English monarchs used against their political rivals in the Middle Ages. A revised version offered more transparency, but a transparent GAARD would still waste taxpayers’ dollars by duplicating the efforts of other agencies and even some of the General Assembly’s existing committees. As some House members indicated during a hearing Monday, GAARD would step on those committees’ toes and concentrate too much power in the hands of the legislative leaders who make up the Legislative Research Commission. So, what Stumbo ought to do is pull the plug on GAARD entirely and save taxpayers the cost of studying it in the interim.

3. Exile, the Central Kentucky band that has achieved national success as both in both rock and country music, performed in the House Monday. During most of their performance, five female House members stood together in the front of the chamber near the band with big grins on their faces and occasionally swaying and clapping their hands along with the music. Watching them, I began to see Reps. Leslie Combs, D-Pikeville; Kelly Flood, D-Lexington; Martha Jane King, D-Lewisburg; Tanya Pullin, D-South Shore; and Robin Webb, D-Grayson in a whole new way. To me, they will now always be the House Groupies. UPDATE: A member of the House Groupies informed me that Rep. Marie Rader, R-Mckee, was rocking along with them.

1. For the past two years, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell used the threat of filibuster based on the 49 votes in his caucus to great advantage. Those votes gave him considerable power to influence any and all legislation passing through Congress. But passage of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package late last week was a clear indication that the next two years will not be nearly as much fun for McConnell. Now, that Republicans occupy just 41 Senate seats, all it takes for Democrats to get the 60 votes they need to cut off a filibuster is to lure a few moderate Republicans over to their side on any given issue. It happened on the stimulus package, and it will happen again. As University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato told McClatchy’s Halimah Abdullah, “McConnell is in a terrible position. The Democrats have a hand full of aces. He has a bunch of twos.” That must be more painful to McConnell than having fellow Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning ignore the pressure to not seek re-election.

2. With Democrat Mike Reynolds’ defeat of Republican J. Michael Hughes in the 32nd District last week, Senate President David Williams is now tied 1-1 with Gov. Steve Beshear in seeing hand-picked candidates lose special state Senate elections. Maybe they both ought to let their respective party’s candidate selection process work without interference in the future.

3. Tuesday’s Save the Mountains rally, which drew about 800 opponents of mountaintop removal mining to the steps of the state Capitol, featured several creative signs such as “Hey King Coal Hold the Toxins I Take My Water Plain” and “470 Mountains Missing in Action.” My favorite, though, was “Topless Mountains Are Obscene.”

Noting that her Eastern Kentucky roots go back at least eight generations, featured speaker Ashley Judd told the crowd, “I’m very proud to be a hillbilly.” The activist actress also called the mountains “my spiritual home” and said it was the love of that home that “brings us to this place of power where we shall speak truth to power.”

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — This and that as eastbound and westbound trains head for the inevitable pileup:

OK, maybe I’m too pessimistic. After all, the House is under new management, elected (barely in some instances) by Democrats frustrated over last year’s train wreck/meltdown/implosion/pick your own favorite catastrophic metaphor.

Surely, with new Speaker Greg Stumbo as their leader, House D’s will rally ’round their party’s governor (which they kind of failed to do last year) and finally stare down those mean Senate Republican bullies who have been pushing them around for, lo, these many years.

Yeah, right.

Following some closely contested leadership races that ultimately cost a few former committee chairmen their jobs, House D’s hardly qualify as poster children for unity.

They remain a severely fractured caucus that split 34-31, 34-31 and 33-32 in three of the leadership races. One of the 34-31 votes allowed Stumbo to take the gavel from former Speaker Jody Richards.

Under those circumstances, Stumbo could find Senate Republicans easier to deal with than his own caucus. And if House Democrats spend as much time and energy conspiring against each other as they did last year, another train wreck moves from the category of “possibility” to that of “probability.”

                                                           * * *

For now, everyone is observing the formalities with a series of hearings on the impact of a projected $456 million revenue shortfall in the current fiscal year. These hearings give each side a chance to establish its position for the debate to come.

Democrats spread the gospel of raising new revenue as a means of avoiding a “scorched earth” destiny for various state agencies and services.

Where this gospel is concerned, Republicans play the role of skeptical agnostics who think the revenue situation for the current fiscal year may not be as grim as the projections (from the independent Consensus Forecasting Group) suggest.

Reality probably lies somewhere between the two extremes, although closer to the D gospel than the R agnosticism. There will be a significant revenue shortfall this fiscal year, and most likely a bigger shortfall next year. And dealing with those shortfalls without additional revenue will require severe cuts in some state services.

A couple of factors could prove problematic in resolving the issue.

Gov. Steve Beshear has a proposal on the table that includes a 70-cent increase in the tax on a pack of cigarettes. Beshear’s plan would fill the hole in this year’s budget but does not address the larger shortfall everyone expects next year.

That presents a problem for some Democrats who are willing to take a political hit for doing the right thing, but don’t want to be subjected to a second hit next year, which just happens to be a legislative election year. If revenue must be raised, they prefer to raise it enough to handle next year’s shortfall as well.

However, if legislative Democrats try to up the cigarette tax ante with, say, Stumbo’s proposal to authorize slots at racetracks, Republican revenue agnostics almost surely will respond by accusing the Beshear administration of manufacturing a “crisis” to justify expanded gambling.

Right now, the best case scenario for more revenue looks like no more than half of the cigarette tax increase Beshear has proposed. To get even that, Democrats may have to give Senate President David Williams whatever he wants on road projects.

Such an outcome would allow Williams to walk away from his suit challenging Beshear’s veto of a road projects bill last year — a suit that, for the moment at least, has extended his losing streak in actions he has filed in his capacity as Senate president.

The worst case scenario is no new revenue and at least some scorched earth in state agencies.

                                                           * * *

Beshear’s best hope for success in this session? Step aside and let Jody Meeks be interim governor. What University of Kentucky fan would deny him anything he asks?

                                                           * * *

“I have full confidence in Adam Edelen, and he’s done a great job as chief of staff,” Beshear said Thursday.

Edelen, whose outside business activities have created the perception of a conflict of interest with his official duties, may want to start worrying now. Such votes of confidence have a way of coming back to haunt the parties involved.

… big time. Throw in the demands of jury duty, and you have all of my excuses for the blog being for a couple of days. But on the state level, at least, nothing much has been missed, at least nothing that can’t be handled in a couple of quickies.

1. State House and Senate budget committees have begun separate, and duplicative, hearings on the consequences of a projected $456 million revenue shortfall for the current fiscal year. Did it not occur to the folks in charge of the General Assembly that joint hearings would be more efficient for everyone concerned? After all, there is a cost involved (of time, if not tax dollars) when administration officials have to deliver the same testimony to two different panels that could just as easily be meeting as one. But hey, legislative leaders aren’t nearly as concerned about efficiency as they are about using these hearings to stake out each chamber’s position going into the hard bargaining that lies ahead. So, the show(s) must go on - and on and on.

2.  Speaking of posturing, uh, I mean positioning, it wouldn’t be a General Assembly session if Senate President David Williams wasn’t engaging in misdirection, as he did Monday on Kentucky Tonight by suggesting that a statewide ban on smoking in public places would be preferable to an increase in the cigarette tax. As a former smoker, I’ve never been a big supporter of smoking bans. They run against my libertarian instincts. But the smoking question isn’t an either-or choice between a statewide ban or higher taxes, despite Williams’ attempt to portray it that way. Each of those issues should stand or fall on its own.

Gee, how time gets away from you when your return to work after 2 1/2 weeks of R&R coincides with the opening of an organizational session of the General Assembly, not to mention having to report for two months of jury duty. But hey, jury duty may provide a pleasant respite from watching the perennial clash of political egos that occurs whenever lawmakers convene. Anyway, now that I’m back from the holidays, it’s time to get kurmudgeonly again. So, on to the quickies.

1. It appears the House of Representatives underwent a major transformation while I was away. Democrats apparently picked up about 20 more seats, giving them a majority of 85 votes or so. At least, that’s the total when you add up the number of D votes incumbent Speaker Jody Richards and his challenger, Rep. Greg Stumbo, claim to have on their side going into Tuesday afternoon’s leadership elections. Someone is going to find out a few of their “friends” have been lying to them.

2. OK, back to square one on the little matter of the state pension plans’ $27 billion unfunded liability. Square one is the fact that a major portion of that unfunded liability accrued from, duh, 15 years of underfunding in a succession of budgets passed by the General Assembly. (Square two is the soaring cost of health care, but we’ll leave that for another day.) So, after lawmakers failed to enact pension reforms in the 2008 General Assembly, Gov. Steve Beshear calls them into special session and got a reform bill passed that included getting the state headed in the right direction (albeit with miles and miles to go) on adequate funding of the retirement systems. It was arguably the primary achievement of his first year in office.

Now, in what can only be described as something of a U-turn, Beshear has proposed giving cities, counties and school systems a break on meeting their funding obligations to the pension plans. Sure, cities, counties and school systems are struggling during these economic hard times, just like everyone else. But allowing them to stretch out their contributions over a longer period of time, as Beshear proposes, denies the systems not only a portion of the money they are due now but also the investment return that money would produce in the coming years. Although Beshear’s plan might ease the pain now, it would exacerbate the problem of unfunded liability by taking the same short-sighted, irresponsible approach to funding that caused a big portion of this mess in the first place. Bad idea. Very bad idea.

3. Beshear just doesn’t get the whole “public perception” thing in this Adam Edelen-Bob Babbage deal. What the public sees is a top-ranking administration official who is now the governor’s chief of staff maintaining a partnership with an influential lobbyist for at least a year after joining the administration. And even though Beshear, Edelen, Babbage and all their friends try to rationalize it from now until the cows come home, the public will still see exactly the kind of good-ole-boy croynism Beshear promised to eliminate from state government. That’s a damaging perception for the Beshear administration. And even if the Edelen-Babbage partnership produced no benefits from the state for Babbage, nothing is going to change that perception now. The time for eliminating that perception was prior to Edelen joining the administration. That was when the partnership with Babbage should have been terminated. And Beshear should have made it happen before bringing Edelen on board.

4. It didn’t take long after the elections for the remodeling of Senate offices to resume, albeit on a somewhat more modest scale that originally envisioned. Still, in the present revenue environment, even modest remodeling comes across as extravagance.

5. Count me with Rep. Tim Firkins, D-Louisville, on his proposal for a cut in lawmakers’ pay during this revenue crunch. Sure, it wouldn’t mean much in the grand scheme of a projected $456 million shortfall for this fiscal year. Like the cuts Beshear, Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo and several top administration staffers volunteered to take, cutting legislators’ pay would be strictly symbolic. But there’s a lot to be said for such symbolism when others are feeling real pain from the budget reductions.

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?