Bevin focuses on pension reform, health care issues during local campaign stops

Republican candidate for Kenutcky governor, Matt Bevin, spoke last week to Rotary Club members in Corbin. He also made a campaign stop in Williamsburg.

Kentucky’s $9.1 billion state pension shortfall is the main reason Republican candidate for governor Matt Bevin said he got into the race to begin with.

And, if elected, he said he plans to do something about it.

Bevin did what many politicians rarely do while campaigning for office. He gave specifics while speaking to the Corbin Rotary Club last Thursday during a campaign swing through the area. He also spoke at a meeting at Williamsburg city hall.
The situation, he said, is to grave to engage in anything other than straight talk.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m the next governor or not, this has to happen. It has got to happen! It is unsustainable,” Bevin said during the speech.

“If there is any single thing we should be concerned about … it is this unfunded pension liability,” he said. “Every pothole that needs to be filled, every police force than needs to be reequipped, every teacher than needs supplies is not going to be able to have those dollars if every dollar we have is going to fund these unfunded pension liabilities.”

Bevin said that only about 61 cents of every dollar allocated in Kentucky’s budget to state agencies and other entities is being spent on things the directly benefit citizens. The rest, 39 percent, goes to unfunded pension liabilities. That’s getting ready to jump to 47 percent if something isn’t done soon.

Bevin said there were about 750 ideas bandied about in the last session of the General Assembly to fix the problem. About 200 of those ideas got out of committees. None of them, he claims, seriously addresses the problem.

Bevin proposes moving to a “defined contribution plan,” much like the 401k accounts employees at many private companies have.

“It has to be done for every new hire. Period,” Bevin said.

“We have a moral and legal obligation to meet the promises we made to our retirees. The only way we can do it is to stop digging deeper into the hole.”

Bevin said several things have contributed to the problem. First, the current retirement system is too generous. Also, employees are living longer and getting benefits for longer stretches of time during retirement. And, he said, the old ratio of seven workers for every one retiree in the state has shrunken to unsustainable levels.

In tandem with forcing new employees to be responsible for saving for their own retirement, Bevin said incentives might be offered to younger current employees allowing them to take a lump sum of their future retirement now in exchange for them agreeing to go into a defined contribution plan. The move might cost the state some up front, but it would save money down the road, he argued.

Bevin said he has a thorough understanding of the pension problem, pointing out that he owns 10 different companies, one of which deals with financing and pensions.

The Louisville resident introduced himself to Rotarians as a product of the “American Dream,” and provided a brief biography of his life.

Bevin said he owns companies that make LED signs, composite decking and railing systems, a pharmaceutical company, a medical device company that recent got a patent for a device to help with the early detection of Alzheimer’s Disease, an investment management firm, a software company and even a small bell manufacturer.

That last company, he said, has been used by his Democratic opponent in television advertisements to criticize him for not paying his taxes on time.

Bevin explained that the bell company, which now employs about 20 people, was started by his great-great-great grandfather and was in bankruptcy, about ready to be closed by his uncle, when he bought it and rescued it.

“It’s all related to this poor little bell company that was tax delinquent and had issues and had all kinds of problems, which is why I got involved,” Bevin said.

He noted that the company used to make bells for Rotary Clubs nationwide.

Bevin claimed he abhorred dirty politics and said people shouldn’t “celebrate” them as “part of what is becoming a political expectation.”

“We deserve better than this,” he said.

He said government should be run by citizen legislators that are in office for a while, and then step aside to let someone else be in charge.

“This is how our nation was intended to be run. This is the very platform from which our nation became great. We run the risk of losing that if we become celebrators of that which divides us,” Bevin said. “There are 90 things out of 100 that unite us … that we agree on. Don’t let us celebrate and focus on the less than 10 percent of things that divide us.”

Bevin said Kentucky is a “shadow” of the state it could be, noting it’s blessed with an advantageous geographic position, four mild seasons, a good road and river network and an abundance of natural resources. He said the state has been held back on one front in particular; coal, because of federal regulations.

“This is a region that is suffering for really no good reason other than the fact that we are being overregulated. We are being suffocated not by legal mandates, but frankly by edicts that are coming down at the bequest of our president that there is no binding authority for.”

Bevin said the last line of defense against federal government regulations are governors.

He addressed the issue of the Affordable Care Act by noting that Kentucky’s Medicaid population currently stands at over 25 percent. He said the expansion brought on by the law would be too costly in future years. He proposed getting an exemption from the program and crafting another health care system for the state that is specifically molded for Kentucky’s needs, but that is also affordable.

“The best steward of the dollar is the local steward of the dollar,” he said. “As a state I truly believe we can craft a program that creates better access to health care.”

Bevin won a tight primary race over Agriculture Commissioner James Comer by just 83 votes. He’s facing current Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway in November’s General Election.