Good News, Bad News

This Herald-Leader story sums up the good news and the bad news about the Casino Gambling Amendment.

There will be no casinos in Kentucky anytime soon.

Gov. Steve Beshear conceded on Thursday that his plan to solve the state's budget woes with tax revenue from casino gambling has no chance of passage in the legislative session that ends April 15, killing casinos until at least 2010.

Good News – the bill is dead in this session.

Bad News – We get to do this all over again in 2010. The General Assembly will continue to hope for pain free way of raising revenue. When I say pain free, I mean to pain free in the sense that they won’t have to explain why they raised taxes.

Our honorable leaders will now have another way of avoiding, for years, any meaningful revamping of the taxes in the Commonwealth.

Of course the fun part of this is waiting to see how Brereton Jones and the needy horse farmers will screw up lobbying the legislature next time.