Fighting the Good Budget Fight
One bright spot in an otherwise ridiculous debate yesterday was offered by Representative James Comer.
As noted below, the budget that just passed the House is, once again, the most indebted in the commonwealth's history.
Recently it seems that the budget discussion in Frankfort is simply a comedy of repetition. The Governor proclaims billion-dollar shortfalls, suggests 'all options are on the table', then proceeds to ignore one of the simplest solutions: repealing the prevailing wage requirement. As we've said before:
Eliminating this artificial wage requirement would mean more jobs building more projects for the same money.
It means our tax dollars go further:
In a 2004 Memorandum developed by the Kentucky Department of Education's Facilities Management Division, it was reported that from 1999 to 2004, Kentucky's prevailing wage requirement unnecessarily inflated the cost of school construction by more than $480 million. The amount of unmet need for schools in the most deplorable condition is around $500 million. It is conceivable that if SB 145 was currently the law, nearly every child in Kentucky would be attending an adequate school. In addition, these returns can be realized without one additional dollar being invested!
If legislators were truly serious about stretching our tax dollars and truly focused on creating jobs in Kentucky, this would be the first place to look.
At least one legislator is serious.
For the last two days, Representative Comer has led an effort to exempt the projects in this budget from prevailing wage requirements.
Given the historic level of debt-financed spending in this budget, the impact of this legislative change has never been greater.
Various analysis have shown that reverting to the pre-Patton rule that prevailing wages are not applicable to public construction would save the state 17-25%.
For the record, 17% of $2.2 billion is $374 million, which happens to be twice as much as the revenue expected from the tax hike on struggling businesses.
Thanks to Representative Comer for standing up and championing real proposals for reducing spending and creating jobs in Kentucky.
