QUICK Detour To Kentucky As Lexington Herald Leader Reminds Us That "Beshear Hires More Dem. Family And Friends."

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Beshear hires more Dem family and friends
By John Cheves

While Gov. Steve Beshear says the state faces a deficit, taxes must be raised and painful service cuts must be made, he continues to find room on the state payroll for Democratic Party family and friends.

Last month, two new Beshear appointees took patronage jobs with combined salaries of about $90,000. One is Kevin Hollenbach Holtz, the aunt of Democratic state Treasurer L.J. “Todd” Hollenbach. The other is Travis Scott, 27, who coordinated “Get Out The Vote” activities for Beshear’s 2007 campaign and has worked for the Kentucky Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee.

On Wednesday, critics said that Kentucky governors are entitled to hire thousands of political appointees at their pleasure — and Beshear has — but he either has to “stop with the gravy jobs” or else stop complaining that there isn’t enough money in his budget for social workers and school teachers.

“We’re talking about furloughs and wage freezes and possible layoffs for state workers, and yet the governor is still putting his cronies behind desks,” said Jim Waters, spokesman for the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, a free-market think tank in Bowling Green.

“It’s way past time for us to rein in state spending,” Waters said. “We need to examine every penny we’re spending, and if we did, neither one of these hires would have been approved as a critical public need.”

However, the Beshear administration said the jobs at issue were critical and the job-seekers were qualified. Beshear spokesman Jay Blanton dismissed the criticism as unrealistic.

“Are we not supposed to hire anybody in state government for the next two years?” Blanton said.

Under Beshear, the state government has slowed but not frozen hiring. For every person hired, a supervisor must certify on a form that the hire is crucial for that agency to perform its mission.

Holtz is a division director in the Cabinet for Health and Family Services’ Office of the Ombudsman, which is responsible for investigating consumer complaints. (Without citing a reason, Beshear fired the office’s leaders in December, creating several vacancies.) She makes $56,757 a year.

Holtz is a longtime Democratic Party donor and activist. She worked for Gov. Paul Patton in his Office of Constituent Services, which handled Democratic patronage at the county level. Her brother is a former judge-executive in Jefferson County.

Holtz declined to comment Wednesday. Her nephew, the state treasurer now serving his first term, did not return several calls seeking comment.

The Cabinet for Health and Family Services believes that Holtz is qualified not because of who her nephew is, but because of her past work in state government, particularly dealing with constituents, said Cabinet spokeswoman Gwenda Bond.

Scott is a special assistant in the Office of the Governor, assigned to work on adventure-tourism projects at the Department for Local Government, which awards coal-severance tax money to the coal counties. He is a graduate student in public administration at Eastern Kentucky University, making $31,000 a year at his state job.

Scott worked on the 2007 gubernatorial campaigns of Beshear and Jonathan Miller, who dropped out of the Democratic primary to endorse Beshear, later becoming Beshear’s finance and administration secretary. Scott has been a field director and campaign worker for the Democratic Party and various Democratic candidates, including Scott Alexander of Hazard, who Beshear unsuccessfully promoted for a state Senate seat last year.

In late 2006, as the Democratic primary for governor began to stir, Scott posted a comment on a popular political blog that mocked Democratic state Auditor Crit Luallen for her battle with cancer. Luallen had been discussed as one possible gubernatorial candidate.

“Luallen … apparently one of her selling points is that she survived cancer. So did I (I am a 21-year survivor of Acute Lymphablastic Leukemia). Does that qualify me to be governor? I was thinking I was going to have to accomplish something,” Scott wrote on the Bluegrass Report blog. “Can you pick up the sarcasm?”

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“By no means does our office disrespect Crit Luallen. But we’re not going to get into a blog post from three years ago,” Lanham said

“Travis Scott is more than qualified to perform his job duties, which range from assisting in the coordination of federal grants for land and water to working with the state’s Adventure Tourism initiative to compile a database of all trails in Kentucky,” Lanham added.