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A lot of ‘gas’ spewing from a hollow tank

By Jim Waters

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” – Solomon

Loyalty is sometimes a desirable – but often misunderstood and misplaced – virtue.

For example, former-governor-turned-legislator Sen. Julian Carroll somehow considers leaders who speak their minds disloyal and more devious than people who hide their true intentions.

But after Lt. Gov. Steve Pence recently announced his support for a gubernatorial candidate other than his boss, Carroll certainly spoke – better yet, shouted – his opinion from the Senate floor while calling for Pence’s resignation.

Set aside the obvious folly associated with calling on an elected official to grovel at the feet of the governor rather than remain loyal to the electorate. Carroll’s diatribe also included a startling display of fiscal hypocrisy and political bullying.

In his call for Pence’s resignation, Carroll sniveled that it costs taxpayers too much to provide the lieutenant governor with a state-owned vehicle, gasoline and state-trooper protection.

It seems that in the process of sniffing gasoline tanks for premium unleaded, the silver-haired senator may have become dizzy from the vapors.

Did he forget that his record hasn’t exactly been one of fiscal frugality?

For instance, last January, Carroll supported a bill to increase the level of retired teachers’ health-care benefits to the same level as that of active teachers. These folks already receive top-notch benefits paid for almost entirely by taxpayers. Yet, many of those taxpayers cannot afford to insure their families.

Meanwhile, a brutal storm swirls around the nearly $17 billion funding shortfall in the state’s retirement systems. Yet Carroll wants to increase the benefits of retired teachers even more.

An independent actuarial analysis of Carroll’s proposed legislation, which can be found next to Senate Bill 24 on the Legislative Research Commission’s Web site, indicates that this fat-laden piece of pork would have cost Kentuckians an additional $2.35 billion during the next decade.

Perhaps Carroll discovered a money tree on the Capitol’s front lawn that no one else knows about. If so, it should be used to first take care of the seriously cash-strapped pension funds before any additional benefits are offered – especially to those no longer in the workforce.

Even with the high price of gasoline, Pence could drive many times across Kentucky — an eight-hour trip from west to east — and never spend as much as a drop in the bucket compared with what Carroll would do if he ever got his hands on the state’s checkbook again.

Methinks that Carroll’s evangelistic fervor directed at Pence could have been fueled in part by where Pence recently traveled to in that state-owned car.

The lieutenant governor went to the Kentucky Educational Television studios in Lexington, where he appeared with me on “Kentucky Tonight,” along with the gentlewomen from the state and Jefferson County teachers’ unions.

On that show, Pence spoke his mind about how parents of the state’s 109,000 special-needs students should get the right to take some of their hard-earned tax dollars in order to send children to schools that provide the best education and needed services for individual disabilities.

“This isn’t a matter of a parent putting themselves in a system to promote a system,” Pence said. “It’s the parent putting the child in a school to help their child. They have more interest than anyone else, including a teacher, an educator or the principal of the school.”

Yikes! One can almost envision Carroll seated in front of his television shouting political fulminations at Pence. You see, Carroll’s record shows that he would never upset labor leaders and that he would summarily send any school-choice plan down the road – in a fully fueled vehicle at the proposed 70-mile per hour speed limit.

Your humble correspondent had a different take.

I found the lieutenant governor’s remarks refreshing. The teachers-union representatives should have saved their gas and skipped the trip to KET.

It’s a shame Carroll doesn’t use his considerable experience to demand that his colleagues give serious attention to new ideas on solving Kentucky’s most pressing problems. Instead, he’s suggesting that a duly elected lieutenant governor doesn’t have the right to disagree with the most powerful politician in the state and remain loyal to his conscience – and his constituents.

And that’s too bad.

Jim Waters is the director of policy and communications for the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. You can reach him at jwaters@bipps.org. You can read previously published columns at www.bipps.org.

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