Public interest not always preeminent in budget negotiations

By Ronnie Ellis
CNHI News Service

FRANKFORT, Ky. March 28, 2008 01:26 pm

— Put 24 lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, in the same room and ask them to hammer out their differences over a $19 billion, two-year state budget.

Start with significant differences of substance and add philosophical differences over taxes and spending priorities. Throw in Republican control of the Senate and Democratic control of the House and do all of this in an election year. Then give them five days to get the job done.

Good luck.

As this is written, the free conference committee of Kentucky legislative leaders continues to try to come up with a budget – and may have completed its work by the time you read this. But after three days of tedious review of differences in the two spending plans, late Thursday night they began to focus on the central issue which divides them: how to generate additional revenue.

The House, led by budget chairman Harry Moberly, D-Richmond, seemed resigned to abandoning their plan to raise cigarette taxes by 25 cents – although Moberly didn’t go quite so far as to say the idea is officially dead. He said instead it “is off the table for the Senate.” But he said if there is no new money from the tax, then the Senate isn’t going to get its water, sewer and capital projects. He apparently plans to see which the Senate would prefer – a higher cigarette tax and projects or neither.

Watching the posturing and sometimes the personal shots taken across the table, it’s difficult not to conclude politics rather than the needs of the state are preeminent in the lawmakers’ negotiating positions. But however they resolve the budget, those lawmakers know there are ramifications. The final budget will affect the lawmakers politically, it will please or displease key constituents – but it will also affect the real lives of real people struggling to get by in a poor state during difficult economic times.

That’s where you come in. Lawmakers know what is coming. But they don’t believe the public fully realizes just yet that their decisions are going to cause pain – for the disabled, for those needing mental health services, for the poor and for those paying college tuition.

A member of Gov Steve Beshear’s staff asked Thursday: “Do you think the public just doesn’t pay attention or get involved until they actually feel the pain in their own pocketbooks and lives? Is that what it will take for us to get something done up here?”

In addition to the lawmakers, the legislative staff and reporters following every nuance and every line item, the halls of the Capitol Annex are filled with lobbyists advocating for the farm industry, the poor, universities, the coal industry, municipal governments and others. Some lawmakers on the committee rarely speak until it comes time to defend a project in their districts or for some narrow constituency back home. They aren’t bashful then.

But there’s no one there on behalf of Kentucky, no one who argues that a budget is more than a financial document, that it should lay out a plan for the future of an entire state and all of its residents. No one to argue that if Kentucky’s leaders continue to do the same things over and over they are likely to get the same result: a state that ranks near the bottom of all quality of life measurements.

If you want to change that, then you must do it.

Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort, Ky. He may be contacted by email at rellis@cnhi.com.

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