FLETCHER BUDGET BENEFITS STUMBO

Attorney General Defers Plan For New Drug-Crime Bureau

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- Gov. Ernie Fletcher's proposed budget for the next two
years would restore cuts that Fletcher made in this year's budgets of local
prosecutors and Attorney General Greg Stumbo, and Stumbo has agreed to
defer his plan for a Kentucky Bureau of Investigation.

Stumbo said his willingness to shelve creation of the bureau, his major
campaign promise, wasn't "the critical part" of getting the funding
restored and some more money added, but "I'm sure it didn't hurt."

Stumbo had said during his campaign that drug crime would be the bureau's
main focus. But yesterday he said he had no problem letting Lt. Gov. Steve
Pence, who also is Fletcher's justice secretary, take the lead on drug
enforcement.

Pence is leading an assessment of strategy for combating illegal drug use,
and Stumbo said that's "a very logical and rational way to begin attacking
the problem."

Fletcher, asked if Stumbo's decision to back off on the bureau idea entered
into his decision about Stumbo's budget, said, "What entered in is that
Greg is very willing to work with us in a bipartisan way to take the
politics out of the attorney general's office. That office did not have the
attention or the resources needed to do its job."

The agreement puts to rest what had become a significant financial and
policy dispute between Fletcher, the top Republican in Frankfort, and
Stumbo, the top Democrat. "When the campaign's over, we've got to be
statesmen," Fletcher said.

The lack of a new investigative bureau, meantime, won't affect the job of
David James, the former Louisville Fraternal Order of Police president
hired by Stumbo to eventually lead the bureau.

Stumbo spokeswoman Vicki Glass said James was hired to lead investigators
who already work for the office and will keep the title of director of
investigations. "He is the head person of whatever investigative entity we
(have), whether we call it the KBI or something else," she said.

Fletcher said he knew much about the operation of the attorney general's
office because his campaign had researched the record of his Democratic
opponent, Ben Chandler, who was Stumbo's predecessor.

IN ADDITION to giving Stumbo and prosecutors the budgets they wanted,
Fletcher also is giving Stumbo the funding to deal with some issues left
over from Chandler's eight years in the office.

The chief example is a personnel lawsuit in which two courts said
Chandler's office used a "seemingly fraudulent" practice to pay a new
employee what she wanted without having to give her peers a raise.

If the attorney general's office loses its appeal of the case to the state
Supreme Court, the back pay for the employees involved would be $1.4
million, plus $400,000 in raises over the next two-year budget. Fletcher
agreed the state would pay the judgment out of a fund set aside for such
purposes -- not take it from the attorney general's budget.

Fletcher also agreed to let Stumbo use funds generated by his office, such
as settlements in lawsuits, to raise the pay of its civil-service lawyers
to the same level as their counterparts in the Department of Public
Advocacy, against whom Stumbo's criminal appellate lawyers practice.

AS ATTORNEY general, Chandler originally endorsed such a raise, but as the
legislature prepared to grant it in 2002 he asked that it not be granted,
saying he didn't think it was appropriate to give a 10 percent to 11
percent pay raise to one group of employees when all other state workers
were getting 2.7 percent.

During the governor's race, Fletcher criticized Chandler for not acting to
collect debts owed the state, which the office is authorized to do but had
largely left to other agencies in recent years.

Stumbo made debt collection part of his budget request for extra staff that
would work mainly on lawsuits against drug manufacturers for allegedly
overcharging the Medicaid program.

Fletcher granted the request for five lawyers and two paralegals.

"You've got to make enough investment in personnel to do your job,"
Fletcher said. "I felt like he had a very legitimate case."

Fletcher had cut $390,000 from Stumbo's budget for the current year, money
left unspent when Chandler didn't fill several vacancies in top management
positions. Commonwealth's attorneys and county attorneys, who are part of
the prosecutorial system headed by the attorney general, suffered a similar
cut.

Fletcher's proposed budget generally continues such cuts for most agencies,
but not for the attorney general's office or local prosecutors, who had
warned that such cuts would force them to plea-bargain more cases instead
of taking them to trial.

"WE REALIZED that's a cut for the safety of communities," Fletcher said.

The governor's general counsel, John Roach, said Stumbo had "a very strong
point" that without restoration of the $390,000 in the office's baseline
budget, Stumbo wouldn't be able to hire the top managers he wants and would
have to use career employees who already have plenty of work.

Chandler is running for Fletcher's old 6th District congressional seat, but
Stumbo said he didn't think Fletcher was using the budget to highlight
issues in Chandler's past. "I don't believe that politics was the
governor's motive in helping with our budget concerns," Stumbo said.

Some Democrats consider Stumbo a possible challenger to Fletcher's
re-election in 2007. "I don't have any plans" to do that, said Stumbo, who
also can seek re-election as attorney general.