Reading between the lines
Governor Bevin has wasted no time with press releases and executive orders. I'm looking at these and trying to see what the next 4 years has in store for my adopted home state. The early signs I'm seeing are not good.
Bevin issued an executive order to accommodate one citizen, then promptly issued a press release about it. That's never good policy. It says that he's more interested in scoring political points than doing what's right. It's a waste of state resources for two reasons: it's only benefiting one citizen, and it's unnecessary. The citizen in question is of course Kim Davis, the bigoted bitch of a county clerk who embarrassed a majority of Kentuckians and Christians while simultaneously demonstrating she's unqualified to be a county clerk, because she doesn't understand that Supreme Court rulings are not open to interpretation. The order requires the creation of new marriage license forms, state wide, that don't contain the name of the county clerk - a problem that doesn't need fixing. Bevin is clearly saying that Kim Davis' bigoted views are worthy of accommodation.
That same day, Bevin also reversed a pay raise for state workers making minimum wage. This "raise" was already in our state's budget, which our state constitution requires to be balanced. He also issued a state-wide freeze on hiring. He further said that all open staffing requests would be reviewed to determine if those positions are truly necessary. These are purely symbolic measures; they say "I'm going to reduce the size of government." Even Wal-Mart is giving its minimum wage workers a raise. Not to mention our state currently is enjoying a $165,000,000 budget surplus.
That's right, we got more revenue than we expected, so there is no financial reason to issue a hiring freeze. I suppose if you're an ignorant fool then the "guv'mnt is too damn big" mentality is all the justification you need for such a move, but allow me to suggest an alternate perspective. The one "featured" job over at careers.ky.gov is "prison plumber." I'm just sayin', maybe the prison actually needs a plumber. Maybe that's not some unnecessary bureaucrat living off our tax dollars. Maybe if some poor soul is willing to face the risk and filth associated with fixing shitters in a prison, we should hire him, thank him, and offer him a competitive benefits package, because I can't imagine there are a lot of people waiting in line to fill that post once he quits.
And about that surplus. If we're $165M in the black, why on earth would Governor Bevin say that "our state is financially in trouble" so we need to overhaul medicaid, something his predecessor just did? In fact, Beshear hired an independent commission to analyze the impact of the changes he made to medicaid, and they concluded it delivered a massive financial benefit to the state. It's brought in $3 billion and 12,000 jobs. The Feds have paid for all of it so far, and that continues through 2016. It's the same thing Ohio GOP Gov. Kasich did, because it's the right thing to do. Forbes praised Kasich for this "extraordinary example of successful conservative governance." I doubt they'll be writing any such articles about Bevin.
So overhauling Medicaid is not only unnecessary (because we just did it), it's financially stupid. Why is Bevin working so hard to undo Beshear's actions, when those actions are demonstrably helpful to the state? Even the way Bevin is going about this makes no sense. He's hired a Medicaid "expert" whose track record is having left Kentucky with a $389 million Medicaid shortfall during Ernie Fletcher's administration. We can't hire a prison plumber, but Bevin creates a high-paid bureaucrat job to solve a problem that doesn't need solving just so he can undo Beshear's legacy of expanding health insurance to the poorest people in our state? That makes no sense, and it looks to me like a bad sign of what we can expect over the next 4 years.
Bevin issued an executive order to accommodate one citizen, then promptly issued a press release about it. That's never good policy. It says that he's more interested in scoring political points than doing what's right. It's a waste of state resources for two reasons: it's only benefiting one citizen, and it's unnecessary. The citizen in question is of course Kim Davis, the bigoted bitch of a county clerk who embarrassed a majority of Kentuckians and Christians while simultaneously demonstrating she's unqualified to be a county clerk, because she doesn't understand that Supreme Court rulings are not open to interpretation. The order requires the creation of new marriage license forms, state wide, that don't contain the name of the county clerk - a problem that doesn't need fixing. Bevin is clearly saying that Kim Davis' bigoted views are worthy of accommodation.
That same day, Bevin also reversed a pay raise for state workers making minimum wage. This "raise" was already in our state's budget, which our state constitution requires to be balanced. He also issued a state-wide freeze on hiring. He further said that all open staffing requests would be reviewed to determine if those positions are truly necessary. These are purely symbolic measures; they say "I'm going to reduce the size of government." Even Wal-Mart is giving its minimum wage workers a raise. Not to mention our state currently is enjoying a $165,000,000 budget surplus.
That's right, we got more revenue than we expected, so there is no financial reason to issue a hiring freeze. I suppose if you're an ignorant fool then the "guv'mnt is too damn big" mentality is all the justification you need for such a move, but allow me to suggest an alternate perspective. The one "featured" job over at careers.ky.gov is "prison plumber." I'm just sayin', maybe the prison actually needs a plumber. Maybe that's not some unnecessary bureaucrat living off our tax dollars. Maybe if some poor soul is willing to face the risk and filth associated with fixing shitters in a prison, we should hire him, thank him, and offer him a competitive benefits package, because I can't imagine there are a lot of people waiting in line to fill that post once he quits.
And about that surplus. If we're $165M in the black, why on earth would Governor Bevin say that "our state is financially in trouble" so we need to overhaul medicaid, something his predecessor just did? In fact, Beshear hired an independent commission to analyze the impact of the changes he made to medicaid, and they concluded it delivered a massive financial benefit to the state. It's brought in $3 billion and 12,000 jobs. The Feds have paid for all of it so far, and that continues through 2016. It's the same thing Ohio GOP Gov. Kasich did, because it's the right thing to do. Forbes praised Kasich for this "extraordinary example of successful conservative governance." I doubt they'll be writing any such articles about Bevin.
So overhauling Medicaid is not only unnecessary (because we just did it), it's financially stupid. Why is Bevin working so hard to undo Beshear's actions, when those actions are demonstrably helpful to the state? Even the way Bevin is going about this makes no sense. He's hired a Medicaid "expert" whose track record is having left Kentucky with a $389 million Medicaid shortfall during Ernie Fletcher's administration. We can't hire a prison plumber, but Bevin creates a high-paid bureaucrat job to solve a problem that doesn't need solving just so he can undo Beshear's legacy of expanding health insurance to the poorest people in our state? That makes no sense, and it looks to me like a bad sign of what we can expect over the next 4 years.
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