Our view: Legislators pulled wrong plug

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July 4, 2010

Anonymous Glasgow Daily Times The Glasgow Daily Times Sun Jul 04, 2010, 06:54 AM CDT

GLASGOW — “Come hither, sir. Though it be honest, it is never good to bring bad news,”

— William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra

Imagine the scene: A member of the state legislature, flanked by cohorts, sitting high upon the dais motioning to the director of the Kentucky Long-Term Research Center. The director steps forward and the politician says the words above.

That’s not how the center’s 18-year run came to an end, but the way it happened smacks of just such an execution. On the front page of the center’s website is a note on the end of the its run that came Wednesday.

“The Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center was created by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1992 during an era of remarkable progress. … Over the subsequent 18 years, a modest budget would enable a staff of no more than six people to compile a remarkable body of work and use groundbreaking communications tools to inform policymakers and the public about their findings.

“However, during the 2010 session, the Kentucky General Assembly suspended all funding for the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center.”

The legislature suspended the center’s operation by cutting the $500,000 allocated from the budget. Sen. Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, told Kentucky Public Radio’s Tony McVeigh that in the age of the Internet, there's no shortage of research material for lawmakers to study.

“It just became redundant in a very difficult economy,” said Thayer. “And I think the taxpayers of Kentucky expected us to look at ways to trim all branches of government and this was one way that we chose to do that.”

Sounds like sound reasoning by Sen. Thayer, but the $1.1 million dollars cut from the biennial budget of more than $17 billion is less than a 10th of a percent of the total budget. By comparison, the special legislative session in May called by Gov. Steve Beshear in order for lawmakers to pass that budget cost the state approximately $378,000.

It’s that kind of inability to do the job that has brought the state to where it is today. Kentucky’s policymakers are banking the future on making small cuts in hopes the state will survive the present economic down turn without them having to make tough decisions.

That being the case, they certainly do not want to hear from a group that has no political allegiances and whose purpose it is to provide information without icing on top.

It seems more and more like our state’s policymakers need the guidance the center’s research provided. Instead of seeking it, they opted to “suspend” it until the economic times are better. We hope they fund it with the next budget cycle because it was an invaluable resource.

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