As Education Week points out, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has long been considered an asset for the Obama Administration. But, Duncan made some incorrect claims recently about the impacts of the pending fiscal sequestration on education around the country, and he is being called out about it – NOT by Republicans, but the…
Taxpayers should be outraged that the House State Government Committee extracted what few teeth exists in Senate Bill 2, which largely is a bill designed to offer the illusion of politicians taking meaningful action on Kentucky’s public pension crisis. Today, the committee voted to approve a watered-down version of the bill that fails even to…
Some of Kentucky’s public schools – especially some in Louisville – perform so poorly that education commissioner Terry Holliday told the Kentucky Senate’s Education Committee today that he doesn’t think the situation “could get any worse.” Holliday told the committee he wants to add public charter schools to the mix of tools he has to…
The tables below (click on it to enlarge, prints out best on legal size paper), have some very interesting information about the new PLAN test performance in Jefferson County’s high schools and the most recently available demographic data for those schools. PLAN is a test from the ACT, Incorporated that is linked to the ACT’s…
Bluegrass Institute President Jim Waters discussed public pension reform with on 84 WHAS’ Mandy Connell Show Monday morning. you can listen to the podcast below.
I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the thinking in House Bill 283. This bill would allow locally elected school board members join the health care plan their school district offers to employees at taxpayer expense. That is problematic. For one thing, local school board members are not full time – or even part time…
“I think on both of these issues we need to have discussion and input from providers, advocates and citizens in the community. And it shouldn’t fall to any one person. And this is in no way a slight to the governor. It wouldn’t matter to me if we had God himself as governor. I think…
Is there a better place to rally and speak out against the lack of transparency and greedily enhanced legislative pensions than the place where Kentucky’s legislators make policy? I can’t think of one. Bluegrass Institute president Jim Waters will be speaking at the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday, February 27 at 2 p.m. at a rally…
Lowell Reese, the author of the Bluegrass Institute’s public pension exposé series Future Shock, talked about Kentucky’s pension crisis with Joe Elliott on 970 WGTK this week. The discussion took place during the Hour 2 segment. You can read the Future Shock reports here.
Public pension transparency legislation finally lands in Frankfort Legislation filed by Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Taylor Mill, requires the state’s public pension systems to finally open their books. Currently, information specific to individual Kentucky Retirement System members, including names and actual or projected payments, are confidential. The proposed policy in SB 57 would require the public…