‘Fresh start for Kentucky’: Bevin says improvement will come with sacrifice

FRANKFORT — For years there have been calls for more transparency in Kentucky’s retirement systems, especially the system for lawmakers.

The lawmakers’ system is also criticized because legislators are permitted to take other, higher-paying state jobs and then use the years of legislative service as a multiplier against the higher salary of the non-legislative job, significantly increasing retirement benefits.

Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Taylor Mill, wants to pry off the lid. He is again sponsoring a measure that would require upon request the disclosure of benefit information for current and former lawmakers.

The bill could come to the Senate floor for a vote Tuesday where the Republican majority is expected to pass it.

But its prospects in the Democratic House aren’t so promising.

Rep. Brent Yonts, D-Greenville, who chairs the State Government Committee where McDaniel’s bill is likely to go for hearings, has said the retirement benefits of an individual really aren’t anyone else’s business — especially once that person has retired to private life.

“Once a person becomes a non-public person, that’s private in my opinion,” Yonts said last week.

The part of the law that allows lawmakers to “spike” their pensions by taking a higher-paying job is especially controversial — and it has political implications.

It’s an inducement for lawmakers to give up their positions in favor of administration or judicial posts and it’s been used by successive governors to attempt to alter majority control in one or other of the two legislative chambers.

Former Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear used that inducement to appoint three prominent Republican senators to non-legislative positions: one to the Public Service Commission and two to judgeships, including David Williams, then the Senate President and Beshear’s biggest nemesis in the General Assembly.

Now Republican Gov. Matt Bevin is offering good-paying jobs to Democratic House members in an attempt to end Democrats’ near 100-year stranglehold on the House. He appointed Rep. Tanya Pullin, D-South Shore, to an administrative law judge position and Rep. John Tilley, D-Hopkinsville, to his cabinet.

McDaniel’s bill might discourage governors from tempting lawmakers with such offers because of the public outcry if it was known just how much it could increase a part-time lawmaker’s retirement benefits.

But the bill has another political implication — one which McDaniel doesn’t entirely deny.

Part of Republicans’ strategy to take over the House majority is to criticize the leadership and personal foibles of Democratic Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg.

In 2003, Stumbo left the House when he was elected Attorney General. At the time he probably saw the step as a natural progression toward running for governor.

Four years later, in fact, Stumbo ran for Lieutenant Governor on the gubernatorial ticket of Bruce Lunsford, but they lost in the primary to Beshear.

Stumbo subsequently won a special election for his old seat after the incumbent resigned and took another job. So Stumbo can use the four years of the Attorney General’s salary of more than $100,000 to calculate his retirement benefits.

That might make an attractive campaign ad for Republicans this fall.

McDaniel was asked if that might be one reason for the bill.

“One can draw his own conclusions,” McDaniel replied, smiling. “But I’ve run that bill several times before.”

Stumbo suspects he’s a target just the same.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of people they’d like to target,” Stumbo said. “I wouldn’t doubt that I’m one of them.”

Neither does Yonts.

“I’d say a big part of it is political,” he said. “It’s all political in my opinion. Everything is political up here.”

If passed the measure would also apply to people like former state lawmaker James Comer who left the legislature after being elected Agriculture Commissioner. And it might have applied to McDaniel himself had his political fortunes unfolded differently.

McDaniel ran for Lieutenant Governor on Comer’s unsuccessful gubernatorial ticket in the 2015 Republican primary.

RONNIE ELLIS writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.