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This interview was conducted with Senator Damon Thayer, R- Georgetown, about transparency in the state of Kentucky.

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Some politicians claim N-A-F-T-A is a jobs-buster. Actually, America needs more trade not less.

Click here to listen to the 90-second audio commentary.

We now have FreedomKentucky.org bumper stickers!  If you would like to support our transparency and accountability project just let us know and we’ll send you a bumper sticker.  You can contact us at the email address here.

Here is what they look like…

The UK housing situation has been gaining steam in the past few weeks with the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government attempting to limit the number of students who can live together in a “single-family” home near campus.  This was brought about due to some complaints by non-student residents who were concerned with the amount of trash in the neighborhood, the number of cars on the street, and fear of declining property values.

LFUCG’s possible solution: change the definition of “family”.  The would prohibit anymore than four unrelated individuals from living together under one roof.

Besides the obvious property-rights-trampling going on here by dictating who property owners can have on their property, perhaps there is something else wrong with this approach.

Will changing the definition of the term ‘family’ effectively solve the problem?  I would argue no.  Sure, it will greatly reduce the number of students in an area but that’s not the problem.  Here are some things to think about relative to that:

1. Reducing the concentration of students living in campus-area neighborhoods will only displace more students into other neighborhoods. With UK enrollment increasing each year, this means we are sure to see this problem pop up again, just in other neighborhoods.

2. Students are going to congregate no matter where they live.  There will still be parking problems in UK neighborhoods simply because students will drive in to see their friends and attend class. 
3. Forcing more students to live farther away from campus will result in more commuters.  Is the city really prepared for a dramatic increase in in-bound traffic in the mornings?
4. Why can’t the LFUCG work with property owners and tenants on solutions for parking and garbage collection rather than attacking property rights?
5. This change in definition will affect ALL residential zones in Lexington, not just campus area housing.  This has a huge impact on all of Lexington property owners.

House committee dismally fails to do its job

It’s clear that the children of Kentucky don’t have enough friends on the House Education Committee.

This news release from the Kentucky School Boards Association nicely captures the committee’s contentious discussion, and ultimate rejection, yesterday of a badly needed improvement in the way Kentucky’s public school principals are selected.

In the process of yesterday’s voting, the majority on the House Education Committee turned their backs on the Kentucky School Boards Association, the Kentucky Association of School Councils, the Kentucky Association of School Administrators and the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents.

But, most importantly, the committee turned its back on the students of Kentucky.

As a consequence, the state is losing a chance to improve the far too many schools across Kentucky where the adult staff culture isn’t working well for kids.

Under Kentucky’s current, highly deficient process, principals are hired – not by the local school superintendent – but by the School Based Decision Making Council (SBDM) in each school. This creates some very unsatisfactory situations.

Local district superintendents have no effective control over the hiring process. The superintendent can try persuasion but is prohibited by law from active interference with council activities. The SBDM is supreme. The SBDM alone selects its principal.

Because teachers have the majority vote on SBDMs, they solidly control every single council in Kentucky. Thus, the employees hire their own boss in our schools. That makes the principal more beholden to the employees than to the local board of education or the superintendent.

One very unsatisfactory consequence of this upside down policy is that there is no effective way to change schools where teachers are not working for kids. Rather than change, teachers in poorly performing schools can simply select a boss who will go along with the existing, unproductive school culture. Meanwhile Kentucky kids suffer.

It gets worse.

Incredibly, while a superintendent can fire a principal, the rules for principal hiring are so dysfunctional that the SBDM can actually rehire the very same person who was fired. This isn’t hypothetical – it has actually happened!

Basically, local school boards and superintendents are effectively locked out of control over their schools. Teachers have total and absolute control.

This crazy quilt situation means local boards and principals can’t be held responsible for anything. Boards and superintendents simply have no authority where it counts, in the schools.

Meanwhile, because SBDM can protect their principals from firing, teachers can perpetuate damaging school cultures with little fear of consequences, not even if kids are not learning.

Basically, there is little real accountability anywhere in the system. And, despite all the rhetoric about KERA, teachers basically face no inducement to make change if they don’t want to do so.

Naturally, the teachers’ union loves having teachers in the real drivers’ seat. It enhances the union’s power base.

Sadly, it was abundantly evident during yesterday’s meeting that the union alone was behind the failure to get a more rational principal hiring law on the books. The union holds puppet strings for too many of the legislators involved, and yesterday those strings got yanked tight.

Now, kids will continue to suffer because too many legislators forgot they are not elected just to serve well-heeled special interests – they are elected to serve all of us.

You can view the committee discussion for yourself. Move your time slider about half way across to the 57 minute point to hear the specifics and see how the union shot down House Bill 322.

In this short interview, Rep. Jim DeCesare discusses 2010 General Assembly efforts for spending transparency in Kentucky government.

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