Friday, December 3, 2010

Gov. Beshear champions 'It's all about who you know' policy to escape personnel axe

Hear ye, hear ye: Gov. Steve Beshear is making a decision without establishing a task force!

Beshear is asking the Kentucky Personnel Board to exempt 81 political appointees from a new budget-cutting law that would abolish their jobs on Dec. 31.

How many special jobs can a governor provide to "friends?" Apparently 856 -- the number of Beshear's political appointees on the state dole as of Sept. 29. Incredibly, that number had increased by 30 from last winter when the Kentucky General Assembly tried to force him to reduce that number.

Kentucky's budget is in tough shape, requiring cuts in funding for programs and non-politically appointed state workers, yet this governor seems determined to protect his political pals -- even if 10 percent of Kentuckians are unemployed.

Here's some questions that need to be asked and answered before the personnel board renders its decision on Dec. 10:

* What if these political appointees had to earn their job everyday like people in the private sector?

* What if the governor had aggressive transparent goals to be accomplished and made his personnel decisions based on actual measurable performance of the people 'accountable' to achieve those goals?

* Who’s going to make the tough decisions when the reality hits that the feds can't print anymore money to bail out Kentucky?

Let's look on the governor's award-winning transparency site and see if the answers are there. Oops. Not there. It appears that business-as-usual cronyism rules the day.

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