State officials with long experience in Frankfort say the commonwealth is entering 2008 with its worst budget shortfall in at least 25 years. A state that relies on an outmoded system of taxation, Kentucky is failing to produce anything close to the revenues required to meet soaring demands on state and local government services. Despite these twin ongoing emergencies, however, at least two members of the General Assembly seem to have the time and energy to work against the economic development it takes to generate those desperately needed revenues. And in the bargain, they are exacerbating an already contentious and damaging division between urban and rural interests in Kentucky.
The 2008 session of the General Assembly has on its agenda a proposal by Reps. Richard Henderson (D-Jeffersonville) and Ancel Smith (D-Leburn) to prevent Kentucky's public universities from providing access to health benefits to employees' unmarried, live-in partners. Repeat: access, not tax-funded subsidies. While this strategy may resonate to fears and prejudices in some of the commonwealth's poorest districts, Kentucky already ranks as among the poorest, most backward states in the nation, and this effort by Henderson and Smith only reinforces the likelihood that it will remain so.
These two rural legislators should take a long, hard look at the economics of their own districts compared with those of Lexington and Louisville. These major urban economic engines are pouring dollars into a state treasury that then redistributes much of those revenues to impoverished rural districts, such as those represented by Henderson and Smith. Instead of acting to impede progress, Henderson and Smith probably should hope that UK and UL continue to fuel that gravy train with the fruits of research and the development of talent and skills. And they should respect the 21st century fact of life that this year, for the first time, more of the earth's population will live in cities than in rural areas. Cities are where jobs and youth gather, where energy multiplies, where talent masses and interacts.
Rural Kentucky needs urban Kentucky. Employers in today's knowledge-based American economy, those who enjoy survival, have no choice but to be as competitive as possible in attracting talent. This evidently is a news flash only in some corners of Kentucky. Domestic partner benefits are offered by 303 colleges and universities; 9,379 employers ó including 79 Fortune 100 companies and 266 of Fortune's top 500 ó as well as 8,662 private companies; 13 state governments; and 145 city and county governments. Four progressive multinationals with close Kentucky ties all provide domestic partner benefits (Toyota, Ford, UPS and Lexmark.)
It borders on lunacy when a state establishes a deadline for a mandate compelling its leading universities to aggressively position themselves among the nation's top 20 research institutions while simultaneously acting to leave Kentucky unattractive to the talent it takes to meet that goal.
While researching for his bestseller, The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida discovered that heterosexual employees ó including those without domestic partners ó often view domestic partner benefits as an indication of an employer that understands the value of diversity, inclusiveness and creativity. "If you want to grow, you have to be diverse," Florida said in response to an e-mail query for a commentary on this subject published on these pages last May. "Creativity is brutal; it does not conform to any of the social categories we have imposed on ourselves.
In a statement contained in that same commentary