RONNIE ELLIS
FRANKFORT — The Kentucky League of Cities got an unwelcome Christmas gift Thursday when State Auditor Crit Luallen released a report on her examination of the organization. KLC may not be pleased but the public should be grateful to Lexington Herald-Leader reporters and Luallen’s auditors for exposing what was going on.
The KLC report follows similar findings about the Kentucky Association of Counties and Bluegrass Airport in Lexington. The pattern is familiar: staff gone wild, running up expenses at fancy hotels, restaurants, even strip joints, and at KLC “unprecedented salaries” and “exorbitant retirement benefits.”
Board members are shocked of course and have already taken corrective action and, you know, it won’t happen again. Uh huh. Right.
Where have board members been and what were they thinking? Why don’t people on important boards with significant financial responsibility ask the chief executive or school superintendent hard, probing questions?
The KLC executive board members are mayors or city managers of member cities. They are responsible for those cities’ budgets and operations. If they are so comfortable with what they’re told by KLC staff, so comfortable they never ask questions, is it because that’s the way they operate their city governments?
KLC director Sylvia Lovely’s salary increased 95 percent in seven years, from $171,000 to more than $331,000. Another salary jumped 80 percent in the same period. Yet the elected mayors of 15 Kentucky cities and two city managers didn’t know how much those people made. The board blithely approved a line item in the budget which listed only total salaries for more than 80 employees.
Yes, they’re busy people. Yes, KLC has grown dramatically and generates most of its revenue not from city dues but from its insurance business. Clearly they were – and some remain – impressed with the staff’s management of that growth. But, as Luallen said, surely in times of recession when public anger about government is on display everywhere those mayors and city managers should have taken their oversight responsibilities more seriously.
The cities which make up KLC were the ones who ultimately paid the costs – and the taxpayers who fund those cities’ operations and mayors’ salaries. Because these people were asleep at the wheel, their cities didn’t get a return on that dramatic growth in KLC revenues. Instead of more services to cities or lower dues or insurance premiums, it paid for staff expenses in the Caribbean, in New York and in Europe, for expensive cars and fine dining. Does that say anything about the competence of the mayors and how they operate their own budgets?
Some concede the board became “complacent.” Obviously. Let’s hope they’re not quite so complacent or sanguine about expenses in their hometowns.
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There was another disturbing report this week which indicates a lot of young people will find coal in their stockings this year – the KIDS Count County Data Book shows Kentucky children are getting poorer, are at greater health risk, and are neglected and abused more frequently.
There are two things to remember about the timing of the report – the data were mostly collected BEFORE the recession began so the actual circumstances of Kentucky children are surely worse than the data show. And the news comes when the state budget is about to undergo serious reductions in funding of services for children and other vulnerable populations.
Since it’s Christmas, it might be wise for lawmakers and the governor to remember what Jesus said: Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do also to Him.
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.
