Is this "sound fiscal stewardship?"

Speaker Jody Richards is having a ball campaigning for a pay cut for one legislative employee, as he plays a starring role in overspending that imperils the state.

One small but telling example is the Gatton Academy for Mathematics and Science on the campus of Western Kentucky University. Slipped into the budget in 2006, the program operated as an illegal charter school for a year. Thanks to a 2008 law, it is now legal and serving 120 high school students a year from across the state at a cost to taxpayers of more than $20,000 per student.

The Gatton Academy comes up now because the Interim Joint Education Committee is going to spend the day at the school on October 13 getting the grand tour.

I don't doubt for a second that this is a fabulous program, but it could easily be duplicated across the state with local students who live at home for much, much less money. That would be more fair and make more sense than just having this one program in Richards' district.

What we are talking about here is charter schools. The idea of a charter school is basically no teachers union, less bureaucracy, and more accountability. In Kentucky, of course, charter schools are illegal.