Priorities, please
From the Associated Press:
A Senate spending plan to run state government for the next two years would release up to 2,000 felons from prison and put them into home incarceration or drug treatment programs.
The plan would allow for the release of nonviolent and non-sexual felony offenders and place them in drug treatment programs or home monitoring programs. State government could save up to nearly $50 million over the next two fiscal years under the proposal, lawmakers said.
To all those lawmakers who crammed an arena down Louisvillians' throats (that they really weren't really jazzed about, anyway), I ask this: Did you really want to release felons to pay for it? Even if many of these felons shouldn't be in prison in the first place, it's a tough political sell to Kentuckians, and for good reason.
This is why Kentucky needs a tax and expenditure limitation: Priorities would necessarily emerge if lawmakers knew going in exactly how much they could spend. Arenas would have to take a back seat in this case.
Here are two podcasts (one, two) on state spending limits from Michael J. New at the Cato Institute.
