Last week’s #KYGA Week 10 post from the Bluegrass Institute’s Government Affairs Director Sarah Durand included a quick mention that the Senate’s version of the state budget removed almost all of the general fund support for Kentucky Wired. We admit, we didn’t see this coming, especially from that end of the Capitol. Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, established himself early on as a legislative champion of the project. Kentucky Wired, however, also has long-time critics in the upper chamber, namely Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, chairman of the Senate Appropriations and R ..read more

This week, the Kentucky Senate passed its version of the state’s biennial budget which spends significantly less than the spending plan passed weeks ago by the House, despite adding $250 million more to the state's rainy day fund than the House’s proposal. Part of that savings comes from eliminating funding for full-day kindergarten, spending less than the House proposed on local school districts' transportation costs, decreasing inflated pension funding and removing over $80 million set aside for KentuckyWired, the state-run broadband boondoggle. Public employees at public postsecondary scho ..read more

Due to weather conditions, the fifth week of the 2022 legislative session wrapped up early Thursday afternoon so lawmakers could make it home safely before this week’s ice storm hit Frankfort. Still, quite a bit was accomplished. A House companion bill to Senate Bill 9 passed the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee and is scheduled for a full House vote on Monday. This bipartisan bill, sponsored primarily by Rep. James Tipton, R-Taylorsville, and Rep. Tina Bojanowski, D-Louisville, provides around $30 million in funding to improve how teachers approach reading instruction by emphasizin ..read more

The pandemic cursing our globe also reveals the fruit of tremendous blessings produced by the private sector’s $1.7 trillion investment in the nation’s broadband networks over the last 20 years, which US Telecom dramatically asserts has brought most Americans access to high-speed internet. Hundreds of millions of Americans were suddenly able to work and learn from home, visit their healthcare provider without going to a doctor’s office and video chat with family and friends across the globe. Critics of free-market broadband policy want to make the entire narrative about what remains undone. T ..read more

BluegrassBeaconLogo Both projects at the heart of this legislative edition of Liberty Boosters and Busters offer reminders of the costly, if unintended, consequences of government involvement in undertakings better left to the private sector. However, there’s at least an attempt to limit one project’s ability to undercut private-sector competition with a publicly subsidized product while costly political stubbornness is at the heart of the other. First, the good news. Rep. Phillip Pratt, R-Georgetown, offered liberty-boosting legislation that would limit the reach of Kentucky Wired’s failed v ..read more

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BluegrassBeaconLogo Editor’s note: The Bluegrass Beacon is a weekly syndicated statewide newspaper column posted on the Bluegrass Institute’s website after being released to and published by newspapers statewide. Progressives never count themselves satisfied with expanding government a single time in one lone area. Grotesque growth by government in one area like health insurance never stops do-gooders from trespassing on other private-sector property – such as getting into the high-speed broadband network business. We’ve seen such bloated expansion of government intrusion right before our eye ..read more

BluegrassBeaconLogo Supporters of the failed Kentucky Wired project along with those simply lacking the political will to pull the plug on this Utopian foray into the dreamy world of government-owned, run and controlled broadband try hard to convince themselves and others that the project is too big – and too far along – to fail. Some echo the argument carried like a disease into eastern Kentucky two years ago by Tom Wheeler, President Obama’s Federal Communications Chairman, who haughtily claimed at a Shaping our Appalachian Region conference in Pikeville that only government can get poor Ke ..read more

BIPPS Logo_pick For Immediate Release: Tuesday, March 27, 2018 (FRANKFORT, Ky.) –– The Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Kentucky’s first and only free-market think tank, commends the state Senate for doing its part to pull the plug on KentuckyWired, the creation of former Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear and big-spending Republican 5th District Congressman Hal Rogers. “We urge the Senate to hold firm on this position throughout the budget negotiations,” Bluegrass Institute president and CEO Jim Waters said today. “Right now, this project is a huge waste; pushing it forward by the ..read more

BluegrassBeaconLogo Editor’s note: The Bluegrass Beacon is a weekly syndicated statewide newspaper column posted on the Bluegrass Institute website after being released to and published by newspapers statewide. Considering Frankfort will soon be forced to pass a painful budget, it might be helpful for legislators to apply the Yellow Pages test, an analogy that, for the older set, hearkens back to giant paper phone books landing on your front porch containing listings for businesses by categories. The digital version has picked up where the printed version left off in helping connect customers ..read more