Health departments across Kentucky are facing cuts amid growing demand. Legislators just kind of roll their eyes at the situation. [Debby Yetter]

The long-term unemployment situation in America just got a lot worse. The maximum duration is dropping to 79 weeks. [HuffPo]

Yep, it’s about time for the presidential race to get all, well, racy. Because fat white guys are always this stupid. [Politico]

Woah, are we finally seeing proof that sex education fails in mouth-breather-dominated areas of the country? [MSNBC]

How likely is it that the filing deadline won’t be moved again? Highly unlikely. Since Frankfort is a literal disaster. [Kenny Coleslaw]

A new University of Kentucky report says that the Commonwealth should broaden its tax code to include services. [H-L]

Bill Adkins filed to run as a Democrat in the 4th Congressional district. Which means a Republican is still winning. [NKY Losing?]

Of course child abuse secrecy in Frankfort is only designed to protect officials appointed by Steve Beshear. [C-J/AKN]

Mouth-breathers in this country will never cease to amaze you. Now they’re trying to ban abortions based on race and gender. Because abortion is all they thing about. [Wonkette]

No only is Michele Bachmann clueless about being married to a gay guy… she believes she was the perfect candidate. [HuffPo]

SuperPACs are altering the dynamics of the presidential race and it is turning into a primary about money. [The Economist]

Of course congressional earmarks are sometimes used to fund projects near lawmakers’ properties. Like that airport Hal Rogers had built for himself that sits empty. [WaPo]

Have you seen this hilarity? Damon Thayer is attacking the Herald-Leader for “misleading” despite everything reported by John Cheves being 100% accurate. Damon IS refusing to release the identify of his horsey and gambling clients. So, naturally, he’s gotta queen out about being held to the same standards that everyone else is held to. [Twitter]

According to the latest polling, Binack Nobama wins against both Mittens and Toot. [Daily Kos]

While Chris Hightower had some problems in 2010 over MySpace, the postings weren’t his and Kenny Coleslaw’s decision not to include those details is unfortunate. While it really was stupid of Hightower to have left the comments made by others on his profile for as long as he did, that should be detailed in a mainstream story. The real issue is that Hightower was stupid enough to leave bait like that for me to find. The even more real issue is that Rand’s staff (David Adams, who later threw Hightower under the bus with me) was too inexperienced to vet everything. [WFPL]

Prosecutors are warning of layoffs and furloughs if budgets are cut again. So, of course, budgets will be cut again. This is why Kentucky can’t have nice things. [H-L]

This needs to happen to Kentucky’s fetal seance legislation! Hero Virginia state Senator Janet Howell responded to another one of these stoopid bills requiring women seeking an abortion to first undergo a medically pointless ultrasound with a very smart amendment: every man seeking treatment for erectile dysfunction would also by law have to undergo a rectal exam and heart test to get a Viagra prescription. [Wonkette]

Walter Blevins, Jr. and the Senate Democrats thought they were pulling a fast one. They’d planned for him to withdraw at the last minute so no one could get their ducks in a row to file for the spot. Now they’re complaining about making a mistake. [Ronnie Ellis]

Human services are in peril for elderly and disabled Kentuckians. Frankfort does not respect its elders. [Debby Yetter]

Your favorite mormon cultist, Mittens Romney, won the Floriduh primary last night. He’ll soon share details of the white salamander and the planet(s) he believes he will rule in the afterlife or whatever. [HuffPo]

Uh, this burglar was nude and had food rubbed all over his body when police arrived at the Food World in Neon. [WYMT]

A paramedic in Louisville is being ignored by Greg Fischer and most of his administration after an amputation. Meanwhile, the Parks director was allowed to keep his job after driving drunk in a city-owned vehicle, Metro Animal Services is killing more than ever before, the head of the Metro Sewer District was excoriated in an audit but allowed to keep a $200,000 bonus. You can see where their priorities are. [The 'Ville Voice]

Every time we mention Ruth Ann Palumbo and the lack of real legislative ethics in Kentucky, we get threatened. So we’re mentioning the mess again. If Ruth Ann lived in Indiana, she’d probably be facing indictment right now. [Page One]

Some old West Liberty man pleaded guilty to selling mountains of cocaine. Really. Cocaine. All over Eastern Kentucky. [H-L]

FRANKFORT – Each session has its own rhythm. But speaking generally, January has a quick burst of early legislative news, then lawmakers gear down for a long uphill grind that builds to a late-March/mid-April peak. The process takes a while, as it should.

With the unhappy terms of this year’s budget discussion now known, its own redistricting done (though the separate Congressional reapportionment remains hung up), and a still-unspecified proposal on gambling said near-ready for introduction in a show-me Senate, the Legislature settled into early-session get-the-process-moving mode this week, as committees started bills on the long road to becoming law.

A few bills have already trickled to the floor of each chamber for a vote. But, at this writing, only the aforementioned in-state redistricting bill has passed both, and been signed into law by the governor.

As January fades, and the one-quarter mark of the 60-day session passes and the one-third point approaches, here’s a snapshot – three snapshots, in fact — of where big things stand:

Read the rest – about the budget, redistricting and gambling – after the jump…

The budget: THE issue of this and every long session.

This week, the state budget director outlined for lawmakers the specifics of a tax-amnesty plan proposed by the governor in his Budget Address last week, amnesty is one leg of the administration’s four-legged stool, on which it looks to balance a budget it says starts out more than $700 million out of whack.

The amnesty program – which would remove penalties for tens of thousands of delinquent taxpayers, and also forgive half the interest on what they owe if they come forward now and settle up — could raise $61.2 million over the next two years, the administration says (with historical justification).

Statewide amnesty was last offered ten years ago, and took in $40 million. An earlier and even more successful program in 1988 netted over $60 million. Delinquent taxpayers would have an added incentive to take advantage of this year’s offer – there’d be higher penalties and interest on those who don’t.

The governor’s budget-balancing plan also includes taking $102 million from the state’s Rainy Day Fund, $245 million in other fund transfers, and 8.4 percent in agency spending cuts across a broad swath of state government, with some few areas (like SEEK school funding, Corrections and Medicaid) exempted.

Redistricting: House and Senate reapportionment is done, now signed law.

But House Republicans have challenged that plan in Court, unhappy that it forces at least a half-dozen GOP incumbents to run against each other, should all decide to seek re-election. The House-passed, Senate-approved, gubernatorially signed plan also pits a third-year Republican incumbent against the Democratic Majority Floor Leader (a 25-year veteran). One of the main Republican technical objections is what they call excessive splitting of counties.

Democrat leaders insist the new lines meet all Constitutional requirements; Republicans say they don’t, and let’s let the courts decide if that’s true.

Such minority-party challenges are not uncommon in redistricting battles, the most partisan and (if you find yourself in the crosshairs) personally wounding issue any Legislature ever takes up.

Meanwhile, the two chambers remain at odds on Congressional redistricting, which didn’t fall under their ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ to pass without objection the other chamber’s plan for itself.

Lawmakers came to Frankfort with a felt need to wrap up redistricting quickly, before next week’s filing deadline for the November elections. But that’s a practical and political concern, not a legal one. A plan emerged at mid-week to possibly move the Congressional filing deadline back, as a House-Senate conference committee works toward compromise.

Gambling: Historically, pretty clear lines have been drawn. This governor has wanted expanded gaming. The Legislature has not fully bought into the idea, not in the majorities needed to pass both chambers.

This year, the governor has proposed casino gambling, in the form of a constitutional amendment submitted to the voters for an up-or-down vote. Actual details have been vague. But the news this week was that language for such a bill had been settled on, for possible introduction in the Senate soon.

Like so many issues at this point in the session, this one is still developing.

During debate over the new health care law, concerns were raised about a wide variety of provisions in the bill, but few provisions raised quite as many eyebrows as the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) program. CLASS established a new federal long-term care insurance entitlement program. Despite bipartisan warnings that the CLASS program was financially unsustainable and a budget gimmick, the program was included anyway to help “pay for” the health care bill.

According to Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND), the CLASS program was “A Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing Bernie Madoff would be proud of.” The program was set to start collecting premiums for eight years of the ten year budget window (at the time, 2010-2019), but not pay any benefits until 2017. This rigging of the delayed payment of benefits allowed Democrats to claim the bill reduced the deficit by $70 billion by counting CLASS program enrollees’ premiums as “revenue.”

Beyond the budget gimmicks used to sell the health care law, many people raised serious concerns about the structure and viability of the CLASS program itself.

Fortunately, a provision was included in the law that required the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to certify that the program would be solvent for seventy-five years before it could be implemented.

Click here to read his entire column.

If the poet was right when he said, ‘In my beginning is my end,’ the 2012 legislative session began this winter with intimations of a difficult end in spring, forced by hard reality to adjourn in mid-April with a budget leaving deep scars across the face of state government.

That prospect was outlined in two sobering early-session speeches by a governor who used language striking enough to give pause.

In his State of the Commonwealth Address to a joint session of the House and Senate on the session’s second night, Gov. Steve Beshear called Kentucky’s budget situation (unspecifically but vividly) ‘wretched.’

This week’s follow-up Budget Address was more specific. It was the message of a governor whose budget writers – after 10 previous rounds of cuts since 2007, with some agencies seeing cuts totaling 38 percent — have run out of rabbits to pull from their hat.

Basically, Beshear was passing that empty hat to lawmakers. It felt like a night of reckoning.

Read the rest after the jump – it’s super-long…

He outlined shortfalls so vast in the cumulative scheme of recent years, with cumulative cutting now so deep, that the budget he proposed was, he said, ‘inadequate for the needs of our people.’ It was another sobering phrase. Newspapers headlined it.

Kentucky’s two-year, $19.5 billion General Fund budget is once again back to basics. Federal stimulus money, which flowed so generously the past two years, is gone to come no more. Fund transfers, the obvious cutting of fat, the easy efficiencies and economies, accounting tricks like delayed debt payments — those are mostly used up, or even worse, as in the latter instance, coming back around and coming due.

In the deep trough of a Great Recession, they were just patches. They combined in recent years to account for about $3 billion in non-recurring dollars. That string, though, has about run out.

Three one-time moves involving big money were still left to the administration, and all three are played in the budget proposal. Some $103 million is taken from the state’s $122-million Rainy Day Fund. A tax amnesty program is proposed that could, with any luck, bring in $61 million. And a budget summary handed out later shows $245 million in proposed fund transfers. The summary posits a $742 million gap, all told, between ongoing revenues and base spending.

Bottom line: Even with those one-time millions, it’s a budget that comes up $286 million short, and envisions new cuts of 8.4 percent across much of state government, with some few exceptions.

Taking the full hit would be the governor’s office along with all other constitutional officers, plus the cabinets of Economic Development, Finance, Energy and Environment, Labor, Public Protection and Tourism.

Some legislative leaders said, given revenues and needs, they saw little room for much change in the overall stringency of the administration’s plan. Still, legislative spending priorities will almost certainly prove somewhat different than the administration’s. The question is, how much and what way?

Only the Legislature can pass a state budget. It will be the Legislature, over the next three months that writes the line-by-line particulars of the budget. The governor can only propose. And while what he proposed for much of state government was pain, it wasn’t all bad news and cuts.

The administration did find money for a few spending increases, including $21 million to reduce the backbreaking caseload of social workers, an issue much in the headlines lately. The money would enable 300 new social-services workers to be hired, at least 100 of them frontline door-knockers.

Another recent page-one concern – the struggle against prescription drug abuse – would get new money too, with $4 million to expand the state’s tracking program to fight it. Substance-abuse treatment for adults and teenagers in the Medicaid program would get $8 million. That’s new. Such treatment is not now available in the state-federal health-coverage plan for low-income Kentuckians.

Some key areas would be spared the full 8.4-percent cuts. State universities would be cut by ‘only’ 6.4 percent next year, and Kentucky State Police and most public safety agencies by 2.2 percent.

Some few chosen areas – albeit admittedly among the state’s most costly — would escape the knife altogether. Exempted from cuts would be Medicaid, basic SEEK funding for grades K-12, preschool programs, Corrections, veterans’ affairs, child and adult protection, mental health, public defenders, student financial aid, mine permitting, and strip-mine reclamation.

While all would be spared actual cuts, in most cases inflation and rising costs would inevitably take their toll. Most notably: While SEEK funding for elementary and secondary education wouldn’t be reduced, it is essentially frozen at its current level – so anticipated increases in student population mean per-pupil expenditures would in fact drop back to 2008 levels.

Other education-related programs do face actual cuts. Key support programs like after-school initiatives and family resource and youth-service centers would be cut by 4.5 percent.

But in positive news, the stand-alone state Road Fund is doing well, riding the back of higher gas prices. Several major road projects (paid for specifically from that fund) will, the governor says, proceed. His proposed budget includes $100 million for Louisville’s Ohio River bridges project in the next two years, plus $236 million in previously approved bonds for that project. The bonds would be paid off later out of the Road Fund.

The budget also sets aside $143 million to continue widening a dangerous stretch of Interstate 65 north of Bowling Green, where major wrecks seem almost daily and too often deadly.

Other light in the tunnel: General Fund revenue is growing again, too, as Kentucky’s economy continues its slow but steady recovery.

That welcome growth is projected to increase modestly throughout the two-year budget. But even the most optimistic hoped-for growth falls far short of replacing the one-time federal stimulus funds that shored up the state budget during the worst of the recession.

The absence of stimulus money explains a widespead public disconnect out there, with folks wondering: Why do we hear about revenues improving, yet also that deep cuts are needed? The answer is ‘structural imbalance’ – using one-time money to plug revenue gaps to meet ongoing

Along those lines – and to address that situation –the governor used his Budget Address to once again pitch his signature issue, expanded gambling in Kentucky. He called on the House and Senate to pass and send to the voters a constitutional amendment to allow casinos in Kentucky. He contended that casinos at the state’s racetracks alone would dump one-time license fees of $266 million into the Treasury, and thereafter pump $377 million yearly into the General Fund.

So far, no expanded gambling proposal in recent years has gained sufficient legislative traction to even approach two-chamber passage. How – or even if – the issue unfolds this session remains unknowable, and unknown. But legislative response so far has been muted, at best.

Meanwhile, the other immediately compelling issue of the session’s first month – state, federal and judicial redistricting – proceeded on pace, with the Senate signing off on a reapportionment plan the House passed for itself earlier, while adding its own for itself.

The two chambers had jointly unfurled white flags on drawing new district lines, agreeing not to interfere in the other body’s determination of its own makeup.

As in the House plan passed last week, where majority Democrats drew districts that in several cases pit incumbent Republicans against each other and create electoral difficulties – if not impossibilities — for other minority Republicans, so did majority Republicans in the Senate draw lines that in several cases pit incumbent Democrats against each other and create electoral difficulties – if not impossibilities — for other minority Democrats. Such is the nature of redistricting, always the most bruising, political, and personal process any legislative body undertakes.

With no prior gentlemen’s agreement, however, Congressional redistricting is up in the air. The chambers passed substantially different plans that will need a conference committee to resolve. Work on that was scheduled to resume Friday, at this writing.

Redistricting of House, Senate and Congressional districts is a once-a-decade Constitutional requirement. States must adjust district lines to account for population changes or shifts identified by the most recent U.S. Census. It’s a legally and technically tough job, easy to find fault with, and certain to caused bruised feelings. But it’s ultimately central to good representative government, necessary under our system — and something every Legislature is glad to see in its rearview mirror.

So, who wants to help Kathy start castrating people for trying to get rid of her State Senate district? [H-L]

Yep, this is how campaign finance works and it’s part of the reason the loopholes ruin politics nationwide. Stewart & Colbert illustrating the coordination loopholes is just icing on the cake. [HuffPo]

Eastern Kentucky is abuzz with news from Papaw Beshear that he’s including $35 million in his budget to deal with Maxey Flats. [Ledger Independent]

Now the University of Pikeville talking point is that making it a state school will create jobs. [WYMT]

The State House approved a bill allowing advertisements on the side of school buses. Will it float? [C-J/AKN]

Kentucky child-protection workers describe hostile work environment. Imagine that. [H-L]

Oh, oh, wait for this! Rick Santorum created something called the “Creamcup Trust” with a male friend. [Wonkette]

Lexington is still burning to the ground. Literally everything is on fire or will be on fire. [WLEX18]

ABC News is set to air a “bombshell” interview with the ex-wife of Newt Gingrich. This could get pretty exciting. [HuffPo]

Smart ammunition is about to make things a lot more dangerous for guerrillas fighting regular troops. [The Economist]

Let’s see how high college tuition can get as presidents and college executives continue to pocket monstrous, multi-million dollar pay raises. [WFPL]

Remember the woman that crazy ass constable shot at a Walmart location? She’s been arrested for allegedly shoplifting at Kmart. [FOX41]

Yesterday, former prosecutor Carol Cobb filed to run for Commonwealth’s Attorney in Jefferson County. [Press Release]

Did you see Kelly Flood text messaging during the prayer/invocation at the budget address last night? [Funny How That Works]

Last night, Papaw Beshear gave his annual budget address. If you want to skim over it, click the clicky. There are no surprises. [Click the Clicky]

Beshear’s decision to maintain funding for the prison system while cutting funds for the already struggling Kentucky State Police, prosecutors and Administrative Office of the Courts is shortsighted and, frankly, dumb as hell. [H-L]

Who’ll replace Danny Ford now that he’s retiring from the State House? [Press Release]

Here’s more on Ford’s retirement. After 7,000 years in the state legislature. He’s apparently being shipped off to a rest home somewhere. We’ll try to find out when visiting hours are. [WKYT]

Chuck Schumer’s brother gave Mitch McConnell $1,000 last fall and that is apparently a big deal. It’s apparently shocking to find out that Warshington insiders play pat-a-cake with each other. [Politico]

Here they go trying to make the University of Pikeville a public university without any sort of study or solid proof that it’s worth it. Common sense, as an Eastern Kentuckian, says it’s not. [C-J/AKN]

Maybe you should take a look at the latest Big Mac Index. Sometimes it’s an eye-opener when it comes to economic realities. [The Economist]

Seriously, what the hell is in the water in Laurel County? Is it trying to turn into the new Clay County? [WLEX18]

Don’t forget that bourbon legend Joy Perrine was on a fancy drinking show and you should watch it. [Page One]

A year later, it looks like voters’ views of Republicans are dimming. Favorability was 36-51 last year. Now it’s 29-58. [Daily Kos]

It’s worth a read:

FRANKFORT – Nearly two weeks in, the 2012 General Assembly seemed slow coming together. Its first and most immediate challenge – state-level redistricting – was reported bogged down in predictable political concerns. Deeply ominous but deeply vague early warnings from the Beshear administration about the budget situation left lawmakers pensive, waiting for specifics in the governor’s Budget Address. Anything but speculation on the much-trumpeted casino-gambling proposal was hard to come by.

The big engine of a full 60-day Legislature idled.

But the session suddenly lit up in near late-session mode this week when a House committee — and quickly, the next day, the full House — passed a reapportionment plan for itself that would (among other surprises) force at least a half-dozen Republican incumbents to run against each other, should they all survey the redrawn electoral landscape and seek re-election.

The House plan would also create seven open seats, and pit a second-term Republican incumbent against the Democratic Majority Floor Leader (a 25-year veteran) in a redrawn home-district reelection battle.

Republican House leaders protested. Democrat House leaders pled demographic necessity. A court challenge – not uncommon in redistricting disputes – was immediately mentioned, and is now being explored. But the proposal passed 63-34, on a mostly party-line vote. Five Republicans voted for it. No Democrat voted against it.

The bill went on to the Senate, where passage at this point seems likely under a House-Senate white flag, an agreement to not tinker with each other’s reapportionment maps.

You’ll want to read the rest after the jump…

Redistricting of House, Senate and Congressional districts is a once-a-decade Constitutional requirement. States must adjust district lines to account for population changes or shifts identified by the most recent U.S. Census.

Redistricting, always, is a blistering process for any legislature, anywhere. Political futures are on the line and sometimes ended, old district friendships and allegiances are riven, long-term lawmaker-constituent relationships are torn asunder. There’s rarely if ever a painless reapportionment. And it’s not simply party-vs.-party strife. Even within majority caucuses who control the process, members can be deeply divided when the knife falls on home turf.

All this is especially true in the Kentucky House. Its districts, being much the state’s smallest, (with only about 42,000 people as opposed to well over twice that in a Senate district and over 723,000 in a Congressional district) tend to be the most interpersonally connected.

But large district or small, there’s one axiomatic truth. If, as Tip O’Neill said, ‘All politics is local,’ you could add a close corollary: ‘All redistricting is personal.’

Nor is it easy to meet the strict legal requirements for successful remapping. Not infrequently, court challenges are filed, legal problems are found, and plans must be redone. It’s gritty, unpleasant and plain hard work. But it’s also central to good representative government.

The end goal is to draw cohesive and population-balanced districts so every Kentuckian has equal representation in Frankfort and in Washington. True North in the process is, always, the insistent, longstanding Supreme Court mantra: One person, one vote.

Coming into the session, there was a felt need to accomplish redistricting quickly, before the filing deadline for the November elections at the end of this month — although that’s a practical and political concern, not a legal one. The Senate is expected to take up its own redistricting plan shortly, and, as mentioned, there seems to be agreement between chambers to accept each other’s new self-drawn maps without objection.

The same can’t be said about a Congressional reapportionment plan passed by the House earlier this week that generated no detectable enthusiasm among Senate leaders. Therein might lie the most bruising redistricting struggle of this year’s session. News yet to come on that front.

Meanwhile, the ‘wretched’ budget situation outlined glumly but in no real detail by the governor in his State of the Commonwealth speech last week means almost any action needing money is on hold till the governor submits his budget proposal next week.

At that time, with all cards turned up and all chips on the table, the Legislature’s budget-writing subcommittees can begin work in earnest, and the session will gear down to its core winter’s work. Writing a two-year state spending plan is the central chore of a 60-day session.

Speaking of which, there was a bit of good money news last week. This year’s state revenues are up over last year, and on track to meet projections. It seems likely the Legislature will avoid the double whammy of dealing with a current budget shortfall while looking down the barrel of major shortfalls in the budget it’s writing for the next two years.

Kentucky’s general fund grew by 6.9 percent last month over December a year ago, the state Budget Director reported. This was seen as a nice turnaround after two consecutive anemic-growth months for state revenues.

Through the first six months of the current fiscal year, general fund revenues have grown by 3.1 percent over the same period last year. Revenues must grow by 2.8 percent over the full 12 months to meet revenues assumed in the current state budget. That means incoming receipts need to grow by 2.6 percent in the remaining six months to pay for what’s budgeted, a number that now seems doable.

Also in December, revenues into the state Road Fund grew by 13.3 percent compared to the same period last year. This in part reflects higher gasoline prices, but it’s good news nonetheless. Anything on the plus side is, as digging out of the Great Recession continues.

The General Assembly and its administrative arm the Legislative Research Commission encourage citizen involvement in the workings of their branch of government, and maintain several means for them to do so.

The Legislature’s website — www.lrc.ky.gov – includes comprehensive information about legislators, the legislative process, and the progress of work during the session. Contact numbers, daily meeting schedules, bill summaries and full texts, bill status information, and other information to get you involved are all posted there.

You’ll pee a little bit when you see this ‘Mitt Romney is a serial killer’ ad from Stephen Colbert’s Super PAC. It’s narrated by John Lithgow. Truly pee-worthy. [Wonkette]

Wondering why Greg Fischer gets away with nearly everything he bungles? Because 90% of people are likely as out-of-touch with reality as this individual who doesn’t think it’s a big deal to charge $20 to hear a mayor’s annual State of the City Address. [The 'Ville Voice]

Interesting to watch the Republican presidential candidates foam at the mouth about how wrong extended unemployment benefits are. [HuffPo]

How you gonna write a story about Justified and not mention that Kentuckian William Mapother is appearing in the show? And a pro-tip: the show isn’t filmed in California for financial reasons – because Kentucky has a tax credit program that more than makes up for any savings. It’s filmed in California because these folks are afraid to work in Eastern Kentucky. [H-L]

This isn’t just specific to the gays. Society doesn’t care as much about its seniors as it does its youth. [David Mixner]

The United States Department of Agriculture is considering closing 131 Farm Service Agency offices around the country, and five Kentucky counties could be affected. They are: Bullitt, Green, Jackson, Lee, Whitley. [WFPL]

Papaw Beshear’s budget address tonight and you can bet he’ll have to backtrack on everything he said during the campaign about Kentucky’s economy being puppies and rainbows. [WTVQ]

Folks in Bowling Green are paying close attention. Because you can also bet a lot’s going to have to be done in that part of the state over redistricting to make the budgetary changes feel like less of an eff you. [BGDN]

Any predictions on how many times casino gambling will be mentioned tonight? Because Tom Loftus paints a pretty bleak picture. [C-J/AKN]

Economists are right. Casinos are not a cure-all for state budget nightmares. They’re just a bit of a needed boost. [Bluegrass Politics]

The Ernie Fletcher pardoning that so rocked this Commonwealth just a few years ago has reared its ugly head again in this Haley Barbour story. [TIME]

It’s only a matter of time until sponsors of Kentucky’s welfare drug testing bill get arrested for DUI or for snorting coke off a prostitute’s butt. Right? Because we’re back in the good ole boy days again. Right? [HuffPo]

So let’s dig right in to this week’s piece:

When the 2012 General Assembly convened here Tuesday, three major issues – redistricting, the budget, and a gubernatorial push for expanded gambling – dominated early-session conversations.

Other near-certain issues (prescription-drug abuse, raising the high-school dropout age, child protection in the face of recent deaths, nascent moves toward comprehensive tax reform, among others) had their mentions in the Capitol hallways too, as everyone settled in for a long winter.

They were the focus. But sure as sunrise, some unheralded bill or bills will catch sudden fire and blaze across the headlines and airwaves as this year’s 60 working days unfold. That’s the nervous charm of a young session – wondering about the unexpected, awaiting the unknown.

But for this week at least, the main focus was on the known, and a lot of what seems known sounds troubling.

Troubling, indeed!

Be sure to read the rest after the jump…

Virtually all things governmental flow from the state budget. And when the governor delivered his State of the Commonwealth Address to a joint session in the House Chamber Wednesday night, he served fair warning that the budget he’ll submit with his Budget Address Jan. 17 will come as a slapped-down, sobering challenge to the Legislature’s best budget minds, with deep cuts on the table.

By some reports, state agencies have been asked to prepare budget requests between 7 percent and 9 percent below current funding levels.

Those jarring reductions would come on top of no fewer than 10 rounds of budget cutting in the past four years, some $1.3 billion all told. But here’s a more startling and telling figure: Close to $3 billion in federal stimulus money was infused into Kentucky’s budget over the past three years. That money is gone. In all probability, nothing approaching it will come this way again.

That partially explains something some might find puzzling: Why the budget situation yet again looks desperate, despite reports all year that state revenues were on a nice uptick after bottoming out scarily in the Great Recession. The down-and-dirty explanation is, with no federal help, Kentucky is on its own again. And once again this year, the word ‘shortfall’ is in the air, to the tune of more than $300 million – with one recent estimate as high as $461 million-plus.

That’s not to mention the serious concerns that remain — and grow — about Kentucky’s unemployment-insurance fund and the state-employee pension fund. Those two elephants in the room compound the overall sour fiscal outlook outlined by the governor in his speech. And pension-fund woes, specifically, aren’t measured in hundreds of millions of dollars – they’re measured in billions, by some estimates somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 billion or even more.

Those billions aren’t all due tomorrow or next year, but they represent a massive unfunded long-term liability that underscores the dire straits Kentucky finds itself in fiscally, and the hard job the Legislature faces in navigating the Commonwealth out.

To help shore up future state finances, the governor urged upon lawmaker a two-flank attack. He proposed they submit to voters a constitutional amendment to authorize casino gambling — at as many as nine casinos statewide, by some reports — to generate revenues not only for the state Treasury but also to help Kentucky’s troubled horse-racing industry.

Beyond that, he proposed they establish a mechanism for arriving at some consensus on comprehensive tax-code reform, with the substantive work on that effort most likely beginning after this session ends.

Tax reform is an idea that has gained legislative traction in recent years, with some lawmakers saying Kentucky’s tax code is antiquated and unreflective of 21st Century economic reality. The last top-to-bottom reform came in the 1950s. It’s been patchwork since.

But casino-gambling legislation has had a uniformly tough go in the Legislature, never coming anywhere close to passing both chambers, though the governor featured expanded gaming as a main plank in his election campaign of 2007.

Key lawmakers say they’re taking a wait-and-see attitude this time around, until they get a look at the details and proposed wording of whatever amendment the governor sends up to them. Under the constitutional-amendment approach, once passed and if passed by the Legislature, voters themselves would have the final yay-or-nay on casinos at the ballot box, in a statewide referendum on Election Day this coming November.

More immediately, however, the Legislature is diving right into work on one of the first items on its agenda: Redistricting of House, Senate and Congressional districts. States must adjust district lines every decade to account for population changes or shifts identified by the most recent Census.

Redistricting can be – and frequently is — a highly charged political and personal issue for lawmakers, especially those who have served certain folks for years only to see lines redrawn so they lose that longstanding personal connection. Inevitably, when lines are redrawn every 10 years, some lawmakers and constituents feel that pain.

The end goal (a strict legal requirement) is to draw cohesive and population-balanced districts so every Kentuckian has equal representation in Frankfort and in Washington. In a perfect world, this needs to be accomplished quickly, before the filing deadline for the November elections, at the end of this month.

The General Assembly and its administrative arm the Legislative Research Commission encourage citizen involvement in the workings of their branch of government, and offer several means for them to do so.