805. Call the House, Call the Senate, and Call the Governor

Governor Bevin has managed to pit 70 groups of program supporters against the 69 others, and many of the 70 seem to have lost sight of the pension crisis. Yes, there are some really good programs he has proposed to cut, in fact almost all of them and a few, maybe three, that maybe should be done away with. 
I'm partial to some eastern Kentucky educational programs, particularly the Robinson Scholars as well as several based in Lexington such as the University Press, this one mostly because my great-grandmother Alice Colston Hockensmith (Miss Alice to you Frankfort people) gave me many books from the press growing up and I've continued her gifts with gifts of my own.

The Chaffee Program in Louisville is an important program on its own but is nostalgically important to me because it is housed where I went to register for school for the first time, the old South Park Elementary School in Fairdale. That's probably not a good reason but it caught my attention. The Agriculture Public Service Program, another UK item, takes me back to my freshman year as an Ag-Econ student. Cuts to the State Tree programs and aid to the local County Conservation Districts show a lack of concern about the environment for the future. There is a conservation district in each county except Logan which has two.

And closing down the cafeteria in the Annex should be grounds for impeachment.

So these programs all have supporters and good reasons for that support. And as the governor points out, they all cost money. And he says he is proposing these cuts to help fund the pension crisis shortcoming which up until his address last night was all most anyone was talking about when it came to budget items in Frankfort.

Thanks to this "list of 70" the governor slyly and intelligently has everyone talking about all kinds of other things they want to spend dollars on and at some point, according to his critics, he is going to say "well if you want this, you can't have that" and "that" is pension reform. To the less cynical and more hopeful (and while it may pit me against my fellow Democrats, I should be counted in this group), he may say "if you want 'this' and 'that' then you've got to raise taxes."

Now I don't know if Matt quite has the gumption to say the word "taxes" or not but I firmly believe that he knows to do both, or to do any true pension reform, taxes must be raised. And, his Medicaid strategy debacle notwithstanding, I believe he wants to correct the pension crisis one way or another. But if he has 70 groups of supporters calling on the 138 to save their program with no coinciding and coordinating call for a raise of revenue, he'll understandably choose to do one or the other, or worse yet, allow the 138 to do one or the other and not both. If your concern is about pensions, make the calls to your legislators (800-372-7181, 502-564-8100) and tell them. If your concern is about saving one of the list of 70, make the calls to your legislators (800-372-7181, 502-564-8100) and tell them. If your concern is about both, make the calls to your legislators (800-372-7181, 502-564-8100) and tell them we need more revenues. And in this latter case, after you have called your House member and your Senate member, call Governor Bevin at 502-564-2611 and tell him he needs to lead the call for revenue to lead the Commonwealth forward.

This isn't about Democratic or Republican strategy - it is about taking care of the Commonwealth.