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Wednesday, Jul. 09, 2008

Beshear planning town hall tour

FRANKFORT — In an effort to regroup from a rocky start to his term, Gov. Steve Beshear will embark later this month on a 12-city town hall tour that will take him from Pikeville to Paducah.

The circuit will be key, Beshear's top aide said, as the administration retools its agenda in the wake of uncertain economic times and a rough first go-around with the General Assembly this spring.

“The governor is going to talk about where we are, how we got to where we are and the challenges that exist before us,” said Adam Edelen, who took over as Beshear's chief of staff last week. “And we'll be talking about some of his ideas for going forward. But broadly this also is a listening tour.”

Beshear will seek Kentuckians' input about steps the state should take to improve in areas of education, health care, economic development and infrastructure, Edelen said.

But Edelen said the Democratic governor probably won't talk much about specific ways state government can raise more money — even though the state is struggling to pay for existing services, such as public defenders, incarcerating criminals and public employees' pensions.

Beshear's biggest disappointment during the General Assembly session this spring was his failure to deliver on his pledge to shepherd through the legislature a constitutional amendment allowing casino gambling, which could produce several hundred million dollars in additional state revenue.

Beshear also made a late push to increase the cigarette tax from 30 cents to $1 a pack. That effort never gained traction, even in the Democratic-controlled House.

To press on, Beshear's first step will be to figure out a destination, then chart a course to get there, Edelen said.

“It's important to note that the cigarette tax and allowing the people to vote on expanded gaming are both means to an end,” Edelen said. “At the end of the day, we can't get so caught up in the means that we lose sight of the end. It's a private sector mind-set that you establish your goal and you build backwards.”

Kentuckians can expect to hear Beshear talk again about one of his major pledges during the 2007 election: providing funding for pre-kindergarten programs, Edelen said.

Expanding such a program could cost the state tens of millions of dollars. That's largely why the initiative dropped off of the radar during this spring's legislative session once it became clear that Kentucky faced a bleak budget outlook.

Former Democratic Gov. Julian Carroll, now a state senator from Frankfort, said he'd encourage Beshear to use the upcoming town hall meeting tour to detail the fragility of the state's financial foundation.

“I don't believe that the general public truly understands how devastating the debt is for Kentucky state government,” he said, pointing to the amount the state owes for bond payments and the chronically underfunded state employee retirement systems.

Carroll took his own forum tour while governor in the mid-1970s, speaking mostly to groups of state workers across the state. Those meetings, he said, led to new policies that reduced paperwork in state government.

In fact, town hall tours have long been mainstays of a governor's political repertoire.

Former Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher crisscrossed the state in December 2006 asking citizens for suggestions about how to spend a projected budget surplus that never materialized. Nevertheless, it helped Fletcher reconnect with voters on the eve of his re-election run.

And former Democratic Gov. Paul Patton said during his 1998 town hall tour that “it's important as elected officials that we go out and face the public on their ground.”

Whether Beshear can use his trip to help bounce back from sagging approval ratings this spring remains to be seen.

“Quite frankly, you're measured by your deeds rather than by your talk,” Carroll said.