Listen in today as WLAP's Leland Conway shines light on gov's 'baloney' (comment)

Long-awaited transparency bill signed by governor

Listen in today during the 4 p.m. (EDT) hour as WLAP's Leland Conway, host of "The Pulse," no doubt will have some fun with Gov. Steve Beshear's opinion of the Bluegrass Institute.

In an interview with Louisville's 84 WHAS morning talk show host Tony Cruise earlier this week, the governor called the Bluegrass Institute a "right-wing think tank" and its research "a bunch of baloney."

That was in response to Cruise's question about whether the governor's plan to address the Medicaid budget gap this year was just a "Band-Aid," especially considering the fact that Beshear had failed to achieve $250 million worth of promised savings in the current budget.

Beshear followed with his attack on the institute, but never answered the specific question.

The governor's probably not too happy with the fact that he had to sign Senate Bill 7, sponsored by Sen. Damon Thayer, which amazingly passed the House on March 8 with a 95-0 vote and was signed by Beshear on Thursday, the day after he attacked the institute.

SB 7 requires all three branches of Kentucky government -- executive, legislative and judicial, to put their checkbooks online so that taxpayers can see just how quickly the commonwealth is running out of Band-Aids.

Hmmmm. I wonder why the Beshear administration didn't make as big of a fanfare about the signing of this bill as they did the other fluff, mostly meaningless -- or liberty destroying - legislation that usually gets most of the attention? Of course, the governor knew that not signing the bill would be the equivalent of political suicide.