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Bluegrass Institute president resigns to run for House seat

February 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

For Immediate Release:

Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012                                                                        

(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) – Phil Moffett has resigned as president and CEO of the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free market think tank, in order to vie for a seat in the state House of Representatives.

Moffett, a Louisville businessman and former gubernatorial candidate, said redistricting developments in Frankfort offered him an opportunity to run for State Representative for the 32nd House District.

“We think Phil will be a great friend and ally of the institute in public office but understand that by becoming involved with the political process, he will need to have a different relationship with the institute,” said Kathy Gornik, chairman of the institute’s board of directors. “We greatly appreciate Phil’s contribution and concur that the institute must remain nonpartisan and a source of credible, objective and accurate information that empowers citizens to hold policymakers accountable.”

The decision preserves the independence that allows the institute to cross party lines and promote sound policies aligned with its founding principles of individual liberty, economic prosperity and property rights, Gornik said.

“Phil and the institute share a vision of a free and prosperous Kentucky – where government protects the rights of citizens to determine their own directions in life,” she said. “Being a business owner myself, I know how important it is that we have policymakers in Frankfort who understand how high tax rates, lack of school choice, heavy-handed regulations and Nanny State edicts hinder job creation and economic growth. Phil can and will make a difference.”

While the relationship between the institute and Moffett will change, he said the need for effective policymakers to protect liberty and advance freedom, defend liberty and shine the light on state and local governments remains unchanged.

“I leave the Bluegrass Institute with great respect and admiration for their mission of smaller government, free-markets, and the protection of personal liberties,” Moffett said in a statement. “I intend to continue this fight from within state government.”

For more information, please contact Jim Waters at 270-782-2140 or jwaters@freedomkentucky.com

Filed Under: Featured_News, Media, News Tagged With: ,

Future Shock: Legislators stoking the coals on Kentucky’s runaway pension train

January 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

For Immediate Release:
Contact: Jim Waters
Thur., Jan. 5, 2012
270-782-2140

Future Shock: Legislators stoking the coals on Kentucky’s runaway pension train (right-click & save target as…)

A failure to meet pension-payment requirements 11 of the last 15 years leads to a 3,000 percent increase in the Bluegrass State’s unfunded liability since 2000

(FRANKFORT, Ky.) – A new Bluegrass Institute report cautions that a failure to enact meaningful reform of Kentucky’s public pension system threatens to crowd out essential government services, including public safety and education. 

The report is the second of the institute’s four-part “Future Shock” series and chronicles the disintegration of the commonwealth’s six retirement systems. It urges lawmakers to undo past decisions resulting in unintended – and undesirable – results.

Addressing the deepening pension crisis “has become a societal issue,” writes Lowell Reese, the report’s author who also owns Kentucky Roll Call, a public affairs company, and is a former state Chamber of Commerce executive. “The standard of living of all Kentuckians is at stake.”

A failure by the state to properly fund, manage and maintain Kentucky’s retirement systems has deepened the commonwealth’s unfunded pension liability from less than $960 million in 2000 – a manageable amount – to $31.4 billion in 2010, Reese said.

He notes several issues that any successful reform must address:

  • Our six state pension plans are currently underfunded by more than $31 billion. The Legislature plans to continue underfunding each plan’s annual Actuarially Required Contribution (ARC) for several more years, some as late as 2024. This underfunding will cause the pension deficit to continue to balloon, putting more pressure on the commonwealth’s economy, diminishing the ability to grow jobs and leaving tax hikes as the “most likely” source for needed funding. 
  • Very soon, city and county governments will experience enormous financial pressure.  Unlike state government, city and county governments must fully fund their Actuarially Required Contribution (ARC). The ARC rate for cities and counties has skyrocketed from 6.34 percent of payroll in 2003 to 16.28 percent today. It is projected to jump to 23.51 percent by 2018. The ARC for hazardous-duty jobs like police and fire protection has skyrocketed from 16.16 percent in 2003 to 32.9 percent today, and is projected to be 46.29 percent of payroll by 2018. Unlike the General Assembly, which has nearly unlimited taxing authority, local governments are greatly restrained in their options for new funding sources to close widening pension gaps.
  • Benefit creep. According to Reese, there are at least 41 different ways legislators have bestowed “overly generous retirement benefits on public employees, and they authored and allowed abuses for decades.” By gradually bumping these benefits up several times over the decades, legislators have added billions of dollars in additional benefits for which the cost is ultimately guaranteed by Kentucky taxpayers. Some examples include a typical 37.5 hour work week; 11.5 holidays a year; accumulation of more than six weeks of “comp time” to add to end-of-career compensation and enrich pension payouts; accumulation of months and years of sick leave; one full day to vote; and two full days a year to donate blood; hazardous duty employees may retire after 20 years, regardless of age; 11 years of no increase in the percent they pay for health insurance; and guaranteed pension payouts, despite the economic condition of the state or returns on market investments.
  • State pension plans are considered “inviolable contracts” by law. The pension plan in place the day a state employee is hired is guaranteed for life for them – and their surviving beneficiary – regardless of economic conditions or returns on market investments. The inviolable contract, through force of law, obligates Kentucky taxpayers to pay the bill no matter how big it becomes.

Kentucky’s pension plans are shrouded in secrecy. Public employee pay plans are public record and available on the Internet. Yet the day these workers retire, their pension benefits are hidden from public view even though they are predominately funded by taxpayers. To fully understand the abuses taking place – like double- and triple-dipping – pension benefits must be transparent and open to public scrutiny.

“While we recognize a tough economy has resulted in poor market returns on pension-investment funds, the reality is that past and present legislators made the decisions that led us into this mess and they are the only people who can make the tough decisions necessary to get us out of it,” said Phil Moffett, the institute’s president and CEO. “Strong leadership is needed to stabilize the system so it doesn’t continue to threaten our entire economy. As part of this series, we will offer free-market solutions that, if followed, will help address this problem in a productive way that protects current retirees and future taxpayers.”

Download the report here.

For interview information, contact Jim Waters at 270-782-2140 or jwaters@freedomkentucky.com.

Filed Under: Featured_News, Reduce Government Spending, Smaller Government, Transparency and Accountability

Need a gift idea? Give the gift of a transparent and accountable government

November 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Tis’ the season for many struggling retailers to finally move their finances from the red ink column to the black. So, after enjoying a day of food and thankfulness, many of us will be putting on the full armor of early morning shopping, to include well-worn running shoes for capturing space at the head of the sale line and a steaming cup of coffee for that jump start needed for the upcoming Christmas shopping season. It’s that time of year when we all should at least begin to think about gift giving.

I’m sure many in the liberty movement have heard or read the phrase, giving the gift of freedom.  But how are we doing? Like me, you might be asking yourself, “I’ve been giving the gift of freedom in every way I know how and what do I have to show for it?”

Regardless of your religious beliefs, Proverbs is a great place to go for quotes and there is one that I think applies to our movement today and even right here in Kentucky. Proverbs 24:10 states “Don’t give up and be helpless in times of trouble (CEV).”

Unemployment still hovers at 9.7% across Kentucky and our state’s budget gaps with regard to our public pension spending and Medicaid are only beginning to worsen. It’s easy to look at the results of our statewide elections and those in neighboring states and be discouraged. But now is not the time. In fact, now may be just the time to start giving the gift of a transparent, accountable and constitutional government.

In fact, just several weeks ago, the Bluegrass Institute celebrated with an election day blog post that you can read here.   You see, the Bluegrass Institute is fighting for transparency and accountability in government everyday–election day and even black Friday.  And it looks like people are starting to wake up to the need for real transparency and accountability.

The Wall Street Journal, on November 18th, ran an article authored by Sarah Palin all about transparency and accountability. She talked about how politicians and their crony supporters get their power from their office and access to our hard earned tax dollars. She spells out how members of congress and the federal web of department regulators and bureaucrats exempt themselves from the laws they apply to the rest of us. She writes,

“That includes laws that protect whistleblowers and Freedom of Information Act Requests. The corruption isn’t confined to one political party or just a few bad apples. It’s an endemic problem encompassing leadership on both sides of the aisle. It’s an entire system of public servants feathering their own nests.”

And we know something about Freedom of Information Act Requests. You can follow our series on tips for filing an Open Records request by clicking here. We’ve been filing them since we won the prestigious Atlas Economic Research Foundation’s Dorian & Antony Fisher Venture Grant in 2008–one of only nine think tanks in the world to win and the only one in the United States–for our efforts to build a liberty wiki dedicated to publicizing the results of our transparency and accountability efforts.

As Sarah writes in the WSJ, “We can no longer afford to be indifferent to this system of graft when our country is going bankrupt.”

Maybe it’s time to consider giving the gift of a transparent and accountable government.

Filed Under: Featured_News, Smaller Government, Transparency and Accountability, Uncategorized

Open records tips

November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

Transparency is the first step toward accountability. Open records requests and open government laws are some of the best tools we have in transparency work.

In this series of blogs, I will be sharing lessons learning, tips for success, and general open records knowledge that the Bluegrass Institute has accumulated over the years. After submitting hundreds of requests at a variety of agencies, cities, school districts, etc… we have some knowledge we want to share!

TIP #1 – Know the law!

TIP #2 – Be Specific!

TIP #3 – Know who to contact!

TIP #4 – Three days

TIP #5 – Be organized, keep records

TIP #6 – Be polite!

Sample open records request

Filed Under: Featured_News Tagged With: ,

Rewarding Failure: The rubber-stamping of Kentucky superintendent evaluations

November 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 


Rewarding Failure is a commentary released by the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions discussing the broken process of evaluating school district superintendents in Kentucky.

Four districts - Jefferson, Knox, Carter and Newport Independent - are profiled with copies of their actual performance evaluations.

Full commentary in PDF

Summary

rub-ber-stamp [ruhb-er-stamp] -verb (used with object) 1. To imprint with a rubber stamp. 2. To give approval automatically without consideration: to rubber- stamp the president’s proposals.

Nothing more accurately portrays the concept of rubber-stamping than the performance evaluations of Kentucky’s school district superintendents. Kentucky’s recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) proficiency rates in math, reading and writing were abysmal. According to the NAEP, little more than one out of three fourth-grade students are proficient in math and reading, while in eighth grade, the most recent data show scarcely more than one in four students are proficient in math and writing.

Furthermore, a 2010 news release from the Kentucky Department of Education identified 13 school districts that failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under No Child Left Behind for an astonishing eight years or more. Eight years! Think about how many students graduated in that time and suffered through their school district’s underperformance.

Still, regardless of performance, Kentucky superintendents generally receive rave reviews that are not based on the achievement of goals and school performance. For example, Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Sheldon Berman, whose salary is $260,000 a year plus benefits, was praised by his board in May 2010 for his talent as an “engaging public speaker” and in the area of labor relations. Meanwhile, thousands of children are getting left behind in their educational opportunities in the 41 schools in Berman’s district that failed to make AYP in 2009. The JCPS school board’s evaluation of Berman is long on flowery language about Berman’s speaking qualities but short on measurable results. Yet somehow – despite the results – these evaluations almost always are accompanied by a salary increase.

Full commentary in PDF

Filed Under: Featured_News Tagged With: , ,

Man in the mirror: Change your ways

October 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Now would be a good time for those charged with educating and leading our nation’s young people to take a good, long look in the mirror and reevaluate their priorities and practices.

It’s not enough for leaders in our educational system – whether iconic coaches of powerhouse football programs or local superintendents and the school boards who employ them – to barely do what’s legally required. They have a moral mandate, too.

Legally, legendary Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno was only required to report incidents of abuse to his immediate superiors. But if those superiors’ response did not reflect the seriousness of the situation, all debate is removed about whether he – or anyone else involved for that matter – had a moral obligation not to allow a cover-up to occur.

A cover-up of different sorts is going on in Kentucky.

Students in some of the commonwealth’s persistently failing school districts have no one holding those in power sufficiently accountable for the educational maltreatment occurring in their classrooms.

Instead, these failing districts usually have enablers who seem more than willing to suppress the truth about their performance in the name of protecting a district or a popular leader from proper scrutiny – much less any real consequences.

For instance, the Dayton Independent School district inNorthern Kentucky is one of Kentucky’s smallest – only 32 of the commonwealth’s 174 districts are smaller – yet Gary Rye, its superintendent, takes home the 19th-highest salary among all of the state’s superintendents.

Yet despite the fact that the only high school in Rye’s district is among the state-designated “Persistently Low-Achieving Schools” – schools that have spiraled downwardin a state of continuing academic failure for years – he will take home a taxpayer-funded salary of $141,441.27 this year.

What we don’t know is whether the Dayton school board has held Rye accountable in any fashion for his district’s failure. Apparently, no written evaluation of Rye exists.

In a letter to the Bluegrass Institute, the board’s attorney Matthew DeMarcus wrote: “The Dayton Independent Board of Education conducts an oral evaluation. Therefore, there is no hard copy or electronic copy of the evaluation.”

While state law allows school boards to establish their own policies for evaluating superintendents, it mandates that once procedures are established, they must be followed.

That’s what so puzzling about the Dayton board’s action. Not only does its policy state that the board “shall develop procedures and forms for the evaluation of the Superintendent,” but also that the superintendent’s annual “summative evaluation shall be made available to the public on request.”

This requirement was not forced upon this board by the state. They made it their policy, but apparently refuse to follow it when doing so may present an inconvenience for the image of the district or its leaders.

Where are the “forms?” How about those “summative evaluations … available to the public on request?”

We’re not talking here about people in charge of the quality of widgets being turned out in some factory. This is about the future prospects of hundreds of young Kentuckians inevery district where such educational hanky-panky is rampant.

So, even if school board members are not legally requiredto report on the failure of those entrusted to lead, they aremorally bound to do so.

The Good Book warns: “to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”

“We don’t have them because we just do ‘oral evaluations’ of the superintendent” speaks of the leaders of a failing school district that needs to take a collective look in themirror.

Let’s hope they – and every official in all failing Kentucky school districts – don’t like what they see.

— Jim Waters is vice president of communications for the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. Reach him at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com. Read previously published columns at www.freedomkentucky.org/bluegrassbeacon.
Filed Under: Featured_News Tagged With: ,

‘Occupy Public Pension Feeding Troughs’

October 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Jim Waters

“Fairness” apparently becomes hip only when it benefits the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd, which promotes a philosophy of wealth distribution while shunning gainful employment, respect for property and proper hygiene.

What if the OWS (Offering Worthless Shenanigans) gang knew about the corporate scam run by teachers’ unions in Kentucky? Included among the more than 1,700 organizations participating in the commonwealth’s ailing public pension system are private – private – organizations, like the Kentucky Education Association, the state’s teachers’ union.

Not that I’m suggesting it, but could such information lead to an “Occupy the KEA” event in Frankfort? After all, the teachers’ union is affiliated with one of the nation’s largest lobbying organizations that donate more to political candidates than many of those big, greedy corporations.

A new Bluegrass Institute policy brief – the first in a series of releases on the state’s public pension systems – reveals that KEA staff members with prior involvement in a pension plan can join the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System. The amount they receive when they retire and begin collecting their pensions hinges on their highest-paid years.

If a teacher made more as, say, the KEA president for a few years than during her lower-paid years in the classroom, she gets a pension based on the higher-paid years.

That doesn’t strike me as fair, unless your fairness formula also includes allowing employees in a private union cozy with politicians to mooch off taxpayers.

The Education Intelligence Agency reports that during the 2008 presidential election cycle, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions — the National Education Association, of which the KEA is an affiliated chapter, and the American Federation of Teachers — outspent AT&T, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Microsoft Corp., General Electric Co., Chevron Corp., Pfizer Inc., Morgan Stanley, Lockheed Martin Corp., FedEx, The Boeing Company, Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the Walt Disney Corp. combined. 

Despite their goofy rhetoric and signs, “the occupiers” don’t seem interested in spreading the love around. At the very least, consistency isn’t their strong suit. Otherwise, they would raise a stink about the wealth, power and privilege exerted by private teachers’ unions surfeiting at public-pension spreads.

Wealth-redistributing groupies might be more interested in an “Occupy Commonwealth Credit Union” day. I might even show up for that one — considering the Frankfort-based credit union has 365 members in the Kentucky Retirement Systems.

Recently, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that the “legislature amended state law in 1992 to allow the credit union to join KRS because its customers are government employees.”

Such reasoning demands that if employees at a private credit union with assets of $900 million can stuff themselves on the dwindling amount of slop in Kentucky’s public pension trough, then so can a greeter dispensing shopping carts at Frankfort’s Wal-Mart. No doubt, many of that store’s customers also are government employees.

Occupy. Occupy. Occupy.

Lots of love has been spread around in the Kentucky Retirement System, which has seen a 39-percent increase in the number of participants guaranteed a lifetime pension since 2000.

The number of Kentuckians on the pension dole is now nearly 319,000 – the equivalent of one in every 10 Kentucky adults. This benefit creep has occurred even as our unfunded pension liability has grown from $960 million in 2000 to more than $30 billion today.

It’s appalling enough that, with the exception of some tinkering around the edges of the problem in recent years, Frankfort’s political leadership has pushed the pension crisis to the side. But to continue to dig the hole deeper by allowing private entities to get a piece of the taxpayer funded pension pie?

Now, that’s patently unfair to future generations of Kentuckians who will pay the bill.

— Jim Waters is vice president of communications for the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. Reach him at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com. Read previously published columns at www.freedomkentucky.org/bluegrassbeacon. 

Filed Under: Featured_News, Transparency and Accountability Tagged With: ,

Digital Learning Now!: Obstacles to Implementation in Kentucky

October 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Digital Learning Now!: Obstacles to Implementation in Kentucky is a report released by the Bluegrass Institute and authored by Richard G. Innes.

In December 2010, the Foundation for Excellence in Education released a report titled Digital Learning Now! outlining a set of proposals for increasing the use of technology-based instructional systems in classrooms around the United States. This foundation is headed by former governors Jeb Bush (Florida) and Bob Wise (West Virginia). The foundation’s report provided inspiration for the Kentucky-specific report highlighted here.
Download the full Digital Learning Now!: Obstacles to Implementation in Kentucky report HERE

 

Filed Under: Education, Featured_News Tagged With: ,

An Unsustainable Path: The Past and Future of Kentucky Medicaid Spending

October 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Kentucky Medicaid is on an unsustainable path. Its expansive spending growth over the past 25 years has put increased pressure on state and federal budgets. Medicaid has failed to fulfill the goal of improved health for most of its recipients. The recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) did not enact any fundamental reforms in Medicaid but expanded the program dramatically. Kentucky and the nation deserve much better regarding serving the taxpayers and in crafting a program that assists the truly needy. Read the full report here.

 

Filed Under: Featured_News, Reduce Government Spending Tagged With: , ,

Bluegrass Institute report: Private groups gorging at state pension trough

October 11, 2011 By 1 Comment

State workers at politically connected private agencies eligible for taxpayer-funded retirement, health care benefits

For Immediate Release:

Tuesday, Oct.11, 2011

Contact: Jim Waters at 270-782-2140


(FRANKFORT, Ky.) – A new Bluegrass Institute policy brief shows that hundreds of workers at a multitude of agencies – including some private organizations – are feeding at Kentucky’s taxpayer-funded public pension trough.

According to “Future Shock – Kentucky’s public-pension hole: Deep and getting deeper,” even staff members at the Kentucky Education Association, the state teachers’ union, are allowed to join the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System – as long as they had prior involvement in any of the commonwealth’s six public employee pension plans.

“Kentucky’s public pension plans are more than $31 billion underfunded and the hole is getting deeper by the day,” said Phil Moffett, the institute’s president and CEO. “We must understand how we got in this hole and what we need to do to get out. Getting private industry and privately employed individuals who work on contract with the state off the public dole is a good start. The ‘Future Shock’ series will shine a bright light on the problem and present solid free-market solutions.”

Also included in Kentucky’s pension plan are a faith-based housing group, master commissioners and their staffs and the Commonwealth Credit Union.

The credit union currently has 365 members in the Kentucky Retirement Systems, including 253 active employees, 83 current or former workers vested but no longer contributing to the plan and 29 current retirees.

A recent report by the Lexington Herald-Leader noted that Commonwealth Credit Union has $890 million in assets and $58 million in annual revenue.

“Why is this healthy and profitable private company getting corporate welfare at taxpayer expense?” Moffett asked.

Responding to claims that Commonwealth was allowed to join the state pension system because “its customers are government employees,” he said: “This seems ridiculous. Wal-Mart in Frankfort probably has a very large group of customers who are state workers. Should they also receive state pensions?”

Today’s release previews a full research report on the state’s ailing public pension system, which currently faces a $31.4 billion unfunded liability.

The institute will release the report, which is authored by Lowell Reese, owner of Kentucky Roll Call, a public affairs publishing company in Frankfort, and former state Chamber of Commerce executive, in sections that address:

• How Kentucky’s pension mess started and grew.

• Who the players are and who voted for the bills.

• Examples of gross abuse of the public pension system.

• Solutions based on free-market principles.

For interview information, please contact Jim Waters at 270-782-2140 or jwaters@freedomkentucky.com.

Filed Under: Featured_News, Reduce Government Spending, Smaller Government Tagged With: ,
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