Published: December 01, 2007 03:09 pm      

Lawmakers confront bleak budget picture

Ronnie Ellis

FRANKFORT — The word coming out of Tuesday’s Democratic House caucus retreat is that a few lawmakers are shocked — SHOCKED — they’re going to be facing a lean budget session when they come to Frankfort in January.

Really?

These are the same lawmakers who raided every available restricted fund and issued bonds for our children and grandchildren to pay off in order to fulfill present promises to constituents. They’re the ones who signed no-new-tax pledges while pledging to raise teacher salaries, build roads, lower health care costs and construct new buildings on university campuses while putting off looming disaster in the state and county employee pension plans.

Well, at least when they weren’t busy giving away tax incentives to multi-billon dollar coal corporations or basketball arenas, call centers and riverfront developments.

Yep, those lawmakers. The ones now fretting they won’t have any money to spend this time. But they’re shocked just the same. But it’s their budget that is now falling short and leaving them hamstrung in the coming session. And it’s not like they weren’t warned, even by some of their own.

Lawmakers convened for the 2007 short, non-budget session wanting to spend even more money from a projected surplus. They weren’t alone — Gov. Ernie Fletcher (and Republican legislators) also wanted to spend it. At the time, Rep. Harry Moberly, D-Richmond, the chairman of the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee, told them not to feel too good about that projected surplus. Moberly was trying to restrain their enthusiasm to spend money for a number of worthy projects and programs in a non-budget year because of what lay ahead.

“We have more obligations than surplus,” Moberly said back then. He ticked off the need to provide funding for the legislature’s pledge to increase teacher salaries to the average of the surrounding seven states, retirement system liabilities, and said “we still have a structural imbalance in our budget.

“So while it may be a technical surplus at the end of this biennium,” Moberly continued, “we still have obligations and we need to be cautious.”

Moberly proved to be right. In an election year, did those House Democrats who are now so shocked money was spent to curry voters’ favor really expect that wouldn’t happen?

And that technical surplus turned out not to be much of a surplus at all. But the structural imbalance — the one created by previous budgets passed by lawmakers which used bonds to borrow against the future and raided all of those restricted funds while under funding pension plans — is real.

But give the lawmakers some slack. Before constituents howl and point fingers, they should look first in the mirror.

After all, legislators are only responding to their constituents’ demands. Back home, we need roads, new schools, water and sewer projects, and jails are destroying county government budgets as they house the exploding number of state prisoners, convicted of more and more crimes created by the legislature.

We elect those candidates who promise to bring home low-paying call centers, state park improvements, and black top — not the ones who try to talk straight to us. What’s a poor legislator to do?

When we demand a dollar’s worth of government but only want to pay 75 cents for it, we get the fiscal picture now facing the General Assembly. We get the government we ask for.



Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. He may be contacted by email at rellis@cnhi.com.