Now that the House budget proposal has been out for a few days, we’re starting to see the extent to which the House contorted numbers and ideas to avoid having to support real reforms.

The budget does a couple of things that are not bad. It puts some much needed money into community health centers and services like Meals on Wheels, and starts to fund the Boni Bill, a bill that passed in 2007 to increase the protections of social service workers.  This funding is good and necessary.  But in addition to the cuts to higher ed, adult education, the school year and teacher pay, and services that we need, the budget does many things that show a lack of leadership by playing with our future instead of solving our problems of today.

The budget includes $74 million dollars that is the result of moving the one paycheck for state workers back one day, from June 30, 2012 to July 1, 2012.  This way, the $74 million dollars is technically part of the 2012-2014 budget cycle.  This little nugget was slipped in to the 238^th page of the House budget proposal.  It didn’t make any headlines, but was embedded in a Herald-Leader article about the House’s proposal to halve the salary of Economic Development Secretary Larry Hayes. 

It’s an important little nugget, though, because it shows the acrobatics that legislators were willing to perform to avoid taking up real solutions.  A budget that’s “balanced” because it pays state workers the day after the budget cycle?  It doesn’t inspire confidence, does it?

This shell game is also exactly the kind of game that jeopardizes Kentucky’s credit rating.  Kentucky is already on the watch list of some of these credit rating agencies, both because of our policy makers’ failure to pass sustainable revenue reforms, and because of our dependence on a manufacturing economy.  Moody’s is one such agency.  When their analysts look at Kentucky, they don’t see a credible borrower.  According to a memo from the Legislative Research Commission in September of  2009, Kentucky's leadership should be very concerned about what credit ranking agencies are seeing when they look at Kentucky. Here are the pieces of evidence they see:

Our lack of leadership predates the recession.  The LRC ehoes credit agencies' concern that Kentucky depends on one-shot, nonrecurring revenue sources to fund services and programs that we rely on every year.  Eventually, the smoke and mirrors aren’t going to be able to hide the ever-worsening real-world gap between the revenue the state brings in and the cost of the services that we need.

Kentucky is still bending over backwards to bring in manufacturing, which is not as good of an investment as it was fifty years ago, as we move toward a technology and knowledge-based economy.  This dependence, according to credit agencies, jeopardizes our standing as a worthwhile investment. 

Credit agencies and analysts maintain that states should evince some good faith effort toward keeping themselves financially secure.  Part of that effort is having a Rainy Day Fund, money reserved for emergencies.  Here, too, Kentucky falls short.  Leaders haven't adequately funded our Rainy Day Fund since 2001.  Our Rainy Day Fund is supposed to be between 3 and 5 percent of our General Fund revenue.  Kentucky’s is 0%.  We have no Rainy Day Fund.

These pieces of evidence aren’t good, and they've caused Kentucky's rating to slip from stable to negative. It's true that many states are in uncertain times.  But it's also true that thirty-three states have done something to raise the revenue they need to pull themselves through.  Oregon, for example, just passed a tax increase on income above $125,000. 

Kentucky, on the other hand, is going in the wrong direction.  The House budget would make Kentucky even more vulnerable.  If the debt in that budget passes—the debt that replaces the real revenue reforms that Kentucky needs—the credit rating agencies will also see these pieces of evidence:

• Kentucky will have taken on $2380 in debt for every man, woman, and child in our commonwealth, according to the Legislative Research Commission.
  
• According to the LRC, Kentucky’s debt as a percentage of our revenue will shoot up to 7.43%.  It’s supposed to stay below 6%.  When it gets too high, it sends another message to credit agencies that we’re not putting forth a “good faith effort” to generate revenue.
  

Why does this matter? 

Because when Kentucky doesn’t look credible to lenders, we pay higher interest rates. Those higher rates cost taxpayer dollars, dollars that most folks would rather see put toward smaller class sizes and clean water.  Kentucky's budget has had nine rounds of budget cuts since early 2008 for most public services, and these on top of chronic underfunding of these services and programs. 

We can't afford the borrowing in the House budget, but we can't afford the cuts, either.  Cutting school days from the calendar and adult education resources doesn't put Kentucky in a position to move forward. 

The House had a choice.  It could have chosen to invest in Kentucky's people by sending money back to the pockets of working families who are struggling with a state EITC, and by raising the revenue that we need.  Instead, it chose to play games with our future.

Take Action

• Write a letter to the editor supporting tax and revenue reforms that fix our broken system.  You'll find helpful tips and links to lots of local papers here, on an earlier blog entry. Writing these letters is valuable and easy!  Feel free to post your letter in the comments section so others can see your letter here.

• Call House and Senate Leadership, Senator Leeper, and your legislators and leave a message in support of a budget with fair and adequate reforms.

  Call the Legislative Message Line, 1-800-372-7181 (7am-11pm M-F of this week) and ask to leave a message for House and Senate Leadership and your own legislators (if you don't know their names, the operator can look them up for you). Leave a simple message like "This budget process is taking Kentucky in the wrong direction.  I support the fair and adequate tax reforms in HB 13 as solutions that will move Kentucky forward.”

• Contact Governor Beshear in support of a budget with fair and adequate reforms. Call him at (502) 564-2611, or email him through this link.  You can use the same message: "This budget process is taking Kentucky in the wrong direction.  I support the fair and adequate tax reforms in HB 13 as solutions that will move Kentucky forward.”

And feel free to share your thoughts about the House budget below!

The social networking site Facebook has been a key way to mobilize members and allies of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth for a few years now - for events, legislative call-in actions, etc.

But today may have been the first big (albeit fairly spontaneous) instance of lots of KFTC members and allies using Facebook to both organize and directly contact a legislator to demonstrate support for a bill. 

Senator Damon Thayer has been preventing HB 70, our bill to restore voting rights to former felons who have served their debt to society, from being voted on in his committee.  He also uses Facebook to organize his own supporters.

Today, over 80 KFTC members and allies contacted Thayer by leaving public messages on his Facebook page, all asking him to support and/or allow HB 70 to come to a vote in his committee. 

You can see the full list of comments and leave your own (polite but firm) encouragement to Thayer to allow his committee to vote on HB 70 at Damon Thayer's Facebook Page HERE.  Maybe we can top 100 comments.

This has also proven to be a great way to get people to write down how they feel about an issue so they can use that same content in a letter to the editor.  At least two of the people who have posted to Thayer's Facebook wall have already submitted the same letter to their local newspaper.

We even got a little local blog attention from the folks over at Barefoot and Progressive. 

Kudos for the idea of posting the requests on Thayer's wall. I hope it is wildly successful. And just as an aside, it is so encouraging to see all of the comments. Nothing against calling the message line, but this action gives you a real visual of solidarity on this issue." - Hillary Bullock, after she left a note on Thayer's wall.

We'll see how Senator Damon Thayer responds. 

And either way, we'll keep calling, writing, holding events, going door-to-door, and building leaders until we win this one.

Yesterday, KFTC members and allies filled the halls of Frankfort for our major lobby day to support HB 70, our proposed constitutional amendment to restore voting rights to former felons who have served their debt to society.  

Three hundred of us were there, breaking most of us into small lobby teams to talk to senators about House Bill 70.  We met with more than twenty senators total (of only 38), including many key meetings with leaders and committee chairs.  We built more and more support among legislators, slightly moving many of them in the right direction. 

At this point, we have the votes we need to pass the bill both in the Senate committee and the 60% we need to pass the full Senate.  The primary obstacle to a victory is allowing the bill to be voted on in the Senate State and Local Government Committee, chaired by Senator Damon Thayer.  

We met with Thayer with 13 people including 9 from his district, 2 religious leaders, 2 law students, and others with powerful personal stories. 

They made strong arguments rooted in values like fairness, democracy, faith, and crime prevention - and rooted in real life experiences.  When Thayer dismissed HB 70 by claiming we have a process to restore rights already, Charlie House stepped in to let him know that he's tried to get his rights back four times and has never succeeded. 

Mostly, Thayer didn't make a reasoned argument at all, instead simply saying "no" without  rationale.  He explained to members that this is a Republic, not a Democracy, and he is elected to make decisions for the people using his own best judgment.   Furthermore, he told us that as committee chair, he has the ability to decide which bills are allowed to be voted on and he has never allowed anything to come to a vote that he didn't agree with. 

Our campaign is now strongly focused on just that point - putting pressure on Senator Damon Thayer to allow the bill to come to a vote - and also to put pressure on Senate President David Williams.  We had a meeting in Thayer's hometown in Georgetown last night after the lobby day to focus on what we can do there.  More on this in another blog post soon. 

Our Voting Rights lobby day culminated in a powerful rally and included a lot of people who brought their personal stories about why we should restore voting rights:

Tayna Fogle – Former felon, Lexington
Charlie House – Former felon, Henderson
Jerry Moody – Brother of a former felon, Lexington
Rep Jesse Crenshaw – Kentucky Representative, Lexington
Gail Ray – Mother of a former felon, Georgetown
Maria Houghton – Former felon from Lexington – singing America the Beautiful
Carl Shoupe – Father of a former felon, Harlan County
Janssen Willhoit - Former felon, Lexington

We'll have some video from the event soon in the next few days.

Some local media pieces on the event:

Ashland Daily Independent Story

WTVQ Story

Wave 3 Story

 Look for another blog post soon about some next-steps.

Our big Voting Rights Rally and Lobby Day is Tomorrow (Thursday) in Frankfort!

We're working to help restore voting rights to 186,000 former felons in Kentucky once they've served their debt to society.

Several hundred of us will be in Frankfort from 9am to 2:30pm with a powerful rally in the rotunda from 1pm to 2pm.

For more details on the day, visit here

To learn more about the issue and find other ways to take action from home, including calling or writing legislators, click Here

The Northern KY KFTC group had it's second meeting last week, and got a good start on planning local actions. 

The group broke into functional issue workteams focusing on tax justice, voting rights, and mining issues, planning local events including a letter-writing day and a Budget Bake Sale on NKU's campus. 

Since the meeting, the group held its first fundraiser at Joe Gallenstein's home - a Euchre for Justice tournament.  That same day, they held their first Chapter Development Workteam meeting to plan out next month's big meeting and to better spread out leadership roles in the organization.

Nine KFTC members sat in a semicircle with a four-foot scroll in front of them. They had come to Frankfort Thursday to declare the need for real political leadership.

One by one, they read paragraphs from “The Unified Declaration of Members in Good Standing of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.” Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, the statement included the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” and went on to state:

We believe that embedded within these rights that have defined our nation are additional rights to be respected and preserved, that among these are the right to breathe clean air and drink safe water, the opportunity of a basic education for our children and safe employment. We believe everyone should enjoy the opportunity to worship freely and the right to speak openly without fearing for their jobs or attack from their neighbor.

The Declaration included specific grievances about the legislature’s dominance by the coal industry and its eagerness to please powerful energy interests while ignoring the needs of its constituents. Members called on Governor Steve Beshear and House leaders Greg Stumbo and Rocky Adkins to:

• Invite a genuine, open conversation among all stakeholders leading to a new vision and ideas for a more prosperous, healthy and sustainable economy in Kentucky, and especially in our Appalachian counties.
• Call for an immediate end to extreme and sometimes violent speech that is being aimed at citizens who are working to protect Kentucky’s land, air and water.
• Oppose legislation that puts the interest of the coal industry ahead of the public interest.
• And vigorously support clean energy legislation and the Stream Saver Bill.

Members also asked that a new chair and members of the House Natural Resources & Environment Committee, who are not among the legislature’s strongest pro-coal and anti-environment members, be appointed.

“It is not an accident that the committee has a preponderance of coal interests on it,” said Doug Doerrfeld. “All that we are asking is that they be representative of all the people.”

In written documentation of the grievances, they cited a remark by committee vice-chair Rep. Keith Hall, sponsor of numerous pro-coal/anti-people bills, regarding his appointment by House leaders as co-chair of an interim energy committee: “I don’t think I got that position by accident.”

Kentucky author Wendell Berry and retired miner Carl Shoupe

Following the reading, members answered questions from the press. That included explaining the difference between supporting coal miners and supporting the coal industry. They provided oral and written examples of how miners are disrespected and harassed, by legislators and the industry, just as those fighting against mountaintop removal are.

KFTC and people in eastern Kentucky are not supporting “coal, the industry, but coal, the worker, which is different than supporting everything the industry perpetuates on a community,” explained Beverly May.

Asked about electing better leaders, Patty Wallace replied: “We’d love to send somebody else, but our hands are tied by the coal industry.”

Member Carl Shoupe agreed. “Coal has such a stranglehold in Eastern Kentucky. People dislike mountaintop removal. People dislike strip mining.”  But he explained that almost no family in his community is not tied to coal in some way, through a direct or indirect job of family member – and they feel that threat.

While the Kentucky legislature has generally ignored the economic and environmental consequences of coal, it did get a few minutes today to consider the effects on human health when the House Committee on Health and Welfare gave KFTC 20 minutes on its agenda.

Our three panelists made those 20 minutes count, focusing on the dangers not only to coal miners but to the health of whole communities in the coalfields.

KFTC member Beverly May, a nurse practitioner who works in Perry County, said she sees miners who have contracted lung diseases from exposure to coal dust and silica dust. “At home in Floyd County, I have friends in Hueysville, David and Allen that are plagued by dust from both nearby strip mines and from coal trucks passing by their homes. This is the same sandstone dust which causes silicosis in the workers, so I have to wonder, what does it do to children with asthma or elders or anyone who breathes it every day?”

She described the headwaters of Raccoon Creek, which are now polluted from nearby mining. “So I have to wonder, is the public water supply safe?”

Beverly May

Dr. Michael Hendryx

“The coal industry isn’t answering these questions because they don’t have to,” said May. “This body and the federal government have not held them fully accountable.”

Dr. Michael Hendryx, director of the West Virginia Rural Health Research Center and an associate professor at West Virginia University, said his research has revealed higher rates of chronic heart, chronic lung and renal failure mortality rates in coal-producing areas than in the rest of Appalachia or the nation, even after the rates have been adjusted for other factors such as smoking, age and education.

“We have some evidence that the effects become stronger as the level of mining increases,” Dr. Hendryx said. He attributed this to “significant impairment of air and water quality near mines.”  He also noted that poverty and economic disadvantage are major predictors of public health and that mining areas have the highest poverty rates.

A couple of Dr. Hendryx's reports can be found here and here.

Nancy Reinhart read a statement from Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Among other findings, Epstein stated that 19 of the known chemicals used and generated in processing coal are known cancer-causing agents, 24 are linked to lung and heart damage, and several remain untested as to their health effects.

The oral testimony was supplemented with dozens of pages of documentation and medical research given to committee members.

Bill Bissett, president of Kentucky Coal Association, asked to rebut and was given a couple of minutes. He did not say burning coal or dumping toxic mining wastes in streams improved anyone’s health or offer any refuting evidence, but did say the coal industry offers some scholarships to eastern Kentucky students to go to medical school.

Here's a video of the 21-minute hearing.

On December 15, House Speaker Greg Stumbo was told by a reporter that many legislators don't have an appetite for tax reform.  He said this, as quoted in the Lexington Herald-Leader:

So what happened?

Speaker Stumbo and Senate President David Williams have agreed to ignore the revenue shortfall and instead chose to close the budget gap in the first year of a two-year budget with cuts to health and human services, layoffs and more one-time fixes. What happened to the real revenue solutions that we need and that Speaker Stumbo seemed to promise early in the session?

Some of these cuts are called "contracted positions."  This is a vague term for lots of services that most of us would agree are not only necessary, but smart.  The poison control hotline, for example, is funded largely by its contract through the Kentucky Department for Public Health.  On average, their handful of staff get 192 calls a day from doctors, parents, child care workers – anyone who gets that sick feeling when they realize that someone they love could be in serious danger.  What will it mean if this service is cut?   

More cuts come from Medicaid, even though Medicaid enrollment continues to grow.  Just as Governor Beshear proposed a budget that assumed money from non-existent expanded gambling, House Speaker Stumbo and Senate President Williams are putting forth a budget that assumes that there will be increased federal funding for Medicaid.  Advocates say that this is far from a safe bet.  Asking legislators to spare health services from cuts, a representative from an agency that offers disability services explained that if their agency gets further cuts, they'd need to start rationing the adult diapers.  This, instead of letting people who use limos pay a sales tax on their joyride?

What do you think of the choices that our elected officials are making?

Related story: Human services cuts still possible, key lawmaker says

Take Action

Action #1

Call Speaker Stumbo and your legislators and leave a message.

Call the Legislative Message Line, 1-800-372-7181 (7am-11pm M-F of this week) and ask to leave a message for Speaker Stumbo and your own legislators (if you don't know their names, the operator can look them up for you). Leave a simple message like "Please support the comprehensive tax reforms in HB 13.”

A message might be: 

"On December 15, you were quoted in the Lexington Herald-Leader:  "I don't have an appetite to turn my back on the needs of our state....I'm willing to do whatever it takes."  We haven't seen much evidence of that in the budget that House leadership is talking about.  There are none of the revenue reforms that you have said were so very necessary, and no policies to make taxes fairer for working-class families. 

It's not too late.  Please support the comprehensive reforms in HB 13"

Action #2

Write a letter to the editor in support of HB 13.

You can find a great how-to here.  It includes links to many of the state and local papers.  Tell your own story of why we need to protect health departments, or the poison control hotline, or Meals on Wheels, or environmental protection, or after-school programs.

Thanks!

Rick Handshoe

The movement to end mountaintop removal mining is featured this week in a cover story of the LEO, a free weekly newspaper in Louisville. The article, written by Jonathan Meador, can be found here.

The story features Floyd County KFTC member Rick Handshoe.

“I go down in (that valley) to hunt, and there’s nothing there,” says Handshoe, adding that because of the contaminated runoff generated by local mountaintop removal mining operations, the water line had to be dismantled, and water is now piped in from elsewhere at a greater overall cost. “Some of the people here, they call people from Louisville and Lexington ‘outsiders,’” he says. “But you’ve got a stake in this too. You guys are drinking the water that’s coming from here."

Citizens marching to the Capitol in support of the Stream Saver Bill

It also focuses on the close relationship that Rep. Jim Gooch, chairperson of the House Natural Resources Committee, has to the coal industry, and places responsibility for inaction on the Stream Saver Bill at the feet of Governor Beshear.

"If you wonder why someone in Gooch’s position is allowed to repeatedly kill the routinely unsuccessful Stream Saver Bill — which would significantly reduce the toxic pollution created by surface mining — every time the bill lands in his committee, you don’t have to look much farther than the governor’s mansion."

State Senator Kathy Stein, a key sponsor of the Stream Saver Bill (SB 139), is also quoted:

“They (coalfield legislators) continue to support the coal industry and everything that they say — that coal’s so good for the economy — but if you look at the poverty rates in some of these counties with coal producers, you find it’s not the case. If you’re so damn good for eastern Kentucky, then why does eastern Kentucky end up perpetually one of the poorest regions in the nation?”

Rep. Yarmuth meeting with coalfield resident and member McKinley Sumner

And the story gives a nod to U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, a primary co-sponsor of the Clean Water Protection Act. He refers to a recent study by Downstream Strategies which notes that coal production in central Appalachia is expected to "decrease by as much as 50% over the next decade while becoming increasingly expensive to mine."

“The report kind of validates what a lot of us have already known,” says U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3. “What peripheral evidence has shown is that coal is something any economy cannot depend on. A third of the number of people in coal mining are employed now (compared to) the peak of production.”

We had a powerful Voting Rights Strategy meeting on this past Saturday in Lexington, bringing out a total of 35 people from all over the state, including former felons, long-time voting rights activists, and people who are new to the campaign.  The focus was on building our legislative strategy to pass HB 70 - our bill to restore voting rights to former felons who have served their debt to society.   

Allies represented included The Beacon House, KY Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression, KY Jobs with Justice, ACLU, People Advocating Recovery, The KY Quakers, and the Central KY Council for Peace and Justice, as well as many KFTC Chapters.

Much of the beginning of the agenda focused on finding common ground and learning from each other - what we've accomplished as individual organizations and rooting ourselves in the reasons this campaign matters to us. 

Senate legislative strategy was also key - identifying key legislators and thinking about who we know in their districts and what it would take to move them to strongly support HB 70, our bill to restore voting rights to former felons.

Another big part was about making commitments - to generate letters to the editor, bring people to Frankfort, conduct education activities and door-to-door work, and enhance our ability to tell stories of former felons through videos and interviews.  We spent a lot of time making plant to bring as many people as we can to our March 4th Voting Rights Lobby Day in Frankfort.

Another result of the meeting was that we've set a statewide voting rights call-in day for Tuesday, February 23rd.  On that day, all of our allies will encourage members to call-in via the legislative message line, focusing on Senators, asking them to support HB 70. 

 We hope that you can plan to join us for our major voting Rights Lobby Day on March 4th and can also join us in calling and writing your KY Senator about this important issue.