Legislative session a lot of shift and shaft

The 2018 General Assembly featured larger throngs of protestors than any session in recent memory. Thousands of Kentuckians trekked to Frankfort to stand up to an agenda they saw as serving powerful special interests rather than workers and families.

That pushback is the reason major legislation was sneaked through the process without committee hearings and public debate. Most notoriously, lawmakers in the House inserted a new pension bill into wastewater sewage legislation and passed it quickly without the required actuarial analysis. Soon after, a far-reaching overhaul of the tax system was unveiled and passed in a single day. Lawmakers used these backdoor tactics because they knew their ideas would be unpopular.

Now that we are able to study those bills and others, we see why.

The tax law is a shift, cutting taxes for the wealthiest 5 percent while increasing taxes on average for the 95 percent. It’s especially a tax cut for the richest 1 percent, who make on average $1 million a year and will pocket over $7,000 from the law. The changes also give more tax breaks for big corporations. These changes make our already upside-down tax system even more so.

The tax law, projected to raise a small amount of new revenue over the next two years, will weaken the revenue stream over time. That’s because it follows the path of Kansas and other states by moving away from our strongest revenue source, income taxes, toward slower-growing consumption taxes on items like cigarettes, bowling and car repair.

While the budget funds pensions responsibly and puts needed dollars into a few areas like social workers, it continues troubling trends. It contains the 20th round of cuts since 2008. Core funding for public schools will be less total money in 2020 than it is today, and per-pupil funding will be 16 percent below what we spent in 2008, once inflation is taken into account.

The budget cuts areas ranging from higher education to services for the elderly to preschool by 6.25 percent, and again lacks raises for public employees — for the eighth time in 10 years. It is a recipe for wider funding gaps between rich and poor communities, layoffs (already seen at places like Eastern Kentucky University), longer waiting lists for vulnerable Kentuckians and more.

The pension bill also ends the inviolable contract for new teachers and shifts them to a riskier cash-balance plan. We’ve seen the same shift make it harder to attract new firefighters and police officers since adopted in 2013. Without the security of a defined-benefit plan, the low pay of public employment is less attractive — and the quality of public services is affected.

The legislature also created barriers to benefits for those hurt on the job — including older workers and coal miners with black lung disease. Already, restricted benefits have resulted in declining employer workers’ compensation premiums for two decades, with costs now 17 percent lower than the national median. Yet the bill will cut premiums further and increase profits for insurance companies.

New legislation means more incarceration of young people, particularly people of color. The so-called gang law will make it much easier for those convicted of even misdemeanors to serve long jail terms simply because someone can associate them with a gang, broadly defined as three or more people with a couple of things in common. The law will take $19.5 million from other needs in the budget and is likely to backfire by increasing gang solidarity in prisons.

People flocked to Frankfort because they felt they were getting the shaft. Between now and next session, they will be looking for a shift to policies that serve Kentucky’s people first.

This story was originally published April 18, 2018 at 7:10 PM with the headline "Legislative session a lot of shift and shaft."