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| B- | Kentucky |
• Population (rank): 4,206,074 (26)
• Average per capita income (rank): $21,112 (41)
• Total state spending (rank): $21,992,340,000 (25)
• Spending per capita (rank): $5,229 (26)
• Governor: Steven L. Beshear (D)
• First elected: 11/2007
• Senate: 38 members: 15 D, 22 R, 1 I
• Term limits: None
• House: 100 members: 63 D, 37 R
• Term limits: None
Kentucky has been under heavy political stress for the past couple of years, struggling to cope with the fallout from a patronage scandal that brought indictments of several top state officials, including former Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher. In the midst of all this, an agency known as the Long-Term Policy Research Center was charged with the difficult job of focusing on the future while much of the political establishment was still trying to survive the present. The Policy Center has done pretty well, under the circumstances, in keeping the state's strategic direction from being derailed. Governed by a joint legislative-executive committee, it produces a biennial report outlining the state's progress toward meeting its long-term goals.
What Kentucky isn't doing particularly well right now is short-term planning. It's deficient in setting interim objectives for which leaders and managers can be held accountable. The new governor, Steve Beshear, has an opportunity to improve on this, but he has his work cut out for him. The state's budget is out of structural balance, there are huge unfunded pension liabilities, and Beshear made a campaign promise not to raise taxes. The fiscal burden is somewhat lighter than it might have been, however, because Kentucky has done relatively well at keeping Medicaid costs under control and modernized its tax system with a law passed in 2005.
When it comes to planning, Kentucky's Transportation Cabinet offers meaningful avenues for public input. But the process falls apart when it is time to decide what to build. "When we come down to actually putting together a plan," says one high-ranking transportation official, "we're very reluctant to have that be an open process, because you can imagine the hue and cry as people see their projects going in and out."
There is considerable room for improvement in workforce planning. The legislature has been pushing for years to cut the state workforce down to the statutory limit of 33,000, and it established retirement incentives for employees who retire between June 2008 and January 2009. What legislators didn't take into account was the interplay of that offer and the fact that a huge number of baby boomers will become eligible to retire during that same period: some 8,000 in all, out of 35,000 current state workers. It appears that large numbers of workers will take the incentive, picking up as much as $500 a month in the process. But the state could be left with a disproportionate number of empty slots to fill. The legislature is being urged to change the incentive so that eligible workers can cash in on it after January, but there's no guarantee that will happen.
The process of making improvements in workforce planning has been complicated by the patronage scandal in the Fletcher administration, in which partisan affiliation appeared to be the driving force behind hiring at all levels of government from top to bottom. "It just made the water so toxic," says former Personnel Cabinet Secretary Brian Crall. "It precluded our ability to drive workforce planning the way we wanted to."
But progress is being made at the agency level in Kentucky. The state Governmental Services Center put out a high-quality workforce-planning guide and is devoting much energy to assisting agencies with workforce-planning activities. Agencies are presented with different avenues for transferring and managing knowledge among employees.
According to Penny Armstrong, formerly the head of the Services Center, one problem for both the central government and the agencies is that data on employees aren't very reliable, particularly on turnover. Currently, the personnel administration's data system can't tell you who has put in enough time to retire because it can't keep track of complexities in the way years of service are calculated in the Kentucky Retirement System. So while managers should know ahead of time about retirements, that's not always the case.
For additional data and analysis, go to pewcenteronthestates.org/gpp.