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The Courier-Journal
December 13, 2003
Cabinets streamlined
Fletcher says mergers will help save money, improve efficiency
FRANKFORT, Ky. — State government will no longer have separate cabinets
for environmental protection, labor and public protection. Instead they will
be combined into a single Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet as part
of Gov. Ernie Fletcher's first major move toward making state government more
efficient.
Fletcher's reorganization of the basic structure of state government includes
other mergers, which will reduce the number of cabinet secretaries who report
directly to the governor's office from 14 to eight.
"This is just the beginning," Fletcher said yesterday at a news conference
outside the Governor's Mansion. "This is not the major effort for savings.
This is to give us a structure to realize savings that will be thereafter."
But some advocates for various state programs and former top state officials
said some of the new, larger cabinets include too many agencies with disparate
responsibilities. Phillip Shepherd, who served as natural resources secretary
under Gov. Brereton Jones, said trying to manage the new Environmental and Public
Protection Cabinet struck him as "an administrative nightmare."
"I expect it will be an impossible task to perform meaningful oversight
over three such diverse cabinets," Shepherd said.
But Fletcher said the importance of various cabinets that have been merged
with others such as Labor and Natural Resources won't be diminished just because
they've been changed on his organizational chart.
He said the new secretary of the Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet,
Lajuana Wilcher, "has tremendous experience. I don't know that in recent
history that we've had anyone with as much experience as she has had in environmental
protection. And as we look at who will become commissioner of labor, I think
we will find that they have the system they need as well."
Fletcher said an agency's name and place on an organizational chart is not
as important as whether its duties are being carried out efficiently —
which he said his new structure will allow.
The new structure was the recommendation of a group called the Blue Ribbon
Commission, appointed by Fletcher soon after his election last month and chaired
by Bruce Lunsford, the Louisville businessman who ran for the Democratic nomination
for governor but withdrew days before the primary election.
While unveiled yesterday, Fletcher said the plan will be fine-tuned before
being officially implemented next week by executive order. Like all reorganizations,
this one ultimately will have to be approved by the General Assembly.
Besides combining the three cabinets into the broad Environmental and Public
Protection Cabinet, the new structure makes other major changes. It combines
the Families and Children Cabinet with the Health Services Cabinet. It takes
away certain arts and humanities functions from the Education Cabinet and puts
them with the former Tourism Cabinet in a new Commerce Cabinet.
The plan also puts the old Workforce Development Cabinet, the biggest agency,
under the Education Cabinet. And the plan merges the Finance and Revenue cabinets
into a new cabinet.
By eliminating jobs of six cabinet secretaries and their support staffs, Fletcher
said, "right off the bat there's a savings." But he acknowledged that
the savings will be modest and is being done only to achieve bigger savings
as agencies below the cabinet level are reorganized. The Blue Ribbon Commission
will be retained to recommend further changes.
Some observers said the bigger cabinets could be difficult to manage.
"This is just bureaucratic shifting that doesn't necessarily mean better
or worse services for the clients," said Debra Miller, executive director
of Kentucky Youth Advocates, a group that lobbies for the interests of children.
"But I would say that combining the Health Services and Families and Children
cabinets creates a huge new cabinet that would present a management challenge."
Shepherd commended Fletcher's appointment of Wilcher, but he said he did not
see how anyone could give proper attention to the needs of the three former
cabinets she will be administering.
"I think they'll find that day-to-day management will have to be abdicated
to the career employees at the middle and upper levels, or they will have to
hire a phalanx of deputy secretaries and commissioners to do the work. And that
would defeat the purpose of achieving efficiencies," Shepherd said.
Shepherd and Tom FitzGerald, director of the Kentucky Resources Council, both
said one secretary can hardly be expected to have the required expertise to
oversee environmental regulation and the complicated responsibilities formerly
given to the Public Protection Cabinet, whose many agencies include the Department
of Insurance, the Public Service Commission, the Department of Public Advocacy
and the Kentucky Racing Commission.
"I'm a little mystified by what is supposed to be gained by this other
than that it's a rearranging of the deck chairs," said FitzGerald. "Any
former natural resources secretary will tell you there were far more than enough
demands on their time. And this puts a tremendous strain on a new manager. One
can't help but view it as a de-emphasis on environmental protection and the
other responsibilities that have been combined."
Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky AFL-CIO, said the move means less
emphasis on protections for working men and women. "This action sends the
wrong message, at the wrong time, to workers who are struggling to make ends
meet and maintain a decent standard of living with health and safety on the
job."
Fletcher said he expected the Council on Postsecondary Education, a quasi-independent
agency created by the 1997 higher-education-reform law, to become part of the
new Education Cabinet.
Virginia Fox, Fletcher's education secretary, said combining the postsecondary
council, the education department and the workforce development cabinet into
a new Education Cabinet "gives us an opportunity to have all of education
at the same table."
Exactly how the new education structure affects policy creation is unclear.
State law gives the state board of education authority to set policy for schools
and gives the postsecondary council authority to set policy for higher education.
Lisa Gross, a spokeswoman for the education department, said the cabinet reorganization
is "a logical restructuring." But she said officials aren't clear
whether the administration will seek a greater role in education policy.
Also yesterday, Fletcher announced the appointment of Bob Ramsey as director
of personnel — a job in which he will report directly to the governor's
office. Ramsey has worked since 1996 for Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government
and is the former executive director of the nonprofit Community Venture Corp.
He is the first African American to be named to a top position in the Fletcher
administration.
The Cincinnati Enquirer
December 12, 2003
Do better or you don't get in
NKU no longer "Remedial U"
HIGHLAND HEIGHTS - Every year, about half the freshman class at Northern Kentucky
University is not completely ready for college. That's 950 students who must
take at least one remedial course without credit toward a degree.
Within a year, about 45 percent of them drop out, records show.
It's a national problem. High-schoolers misjudge the difficulty of college-level
work, studies show, and that has led to an epidemic of unpreparedness.
In 2000, about 35 percent of college freshmen nationwide spent their first
year repeating high-school material, says a just-released report from the National
Center for Education Statistics.
Better counseling and more rigorous course loads in high school are one proposed
solution.
Now NKU is gearing up to try another: Tough love. Starting next year, it will
begin turning away some students, and by 2005, it will likely require a minimum
score on the ACT and college-prep work in high school.
That's a big switch for a university long considered one of the most open in
the region. For years, Kentucky and Ohio students have counted on NKU as an
inexpensive, four-year campus they could attend regardless of their preparation.
Since 1984, its enrollment has doubled to 14,000 students.
Setting minimum standards "isn't fair to the less academic kid in school,"
says Josh Rogers, a senior at Dixie Heights High School in Edgewood, who cheerfully
describes himself as "not exactly a genius."
"That's what I relied on my whole life: If I don't do good in this school,
I can always go to NKU," Josh says.
Principals cringe when they hear such comments from students, which is often.
At Dixie Heights, 72 graduates entered NKU in 2002, records show.
"When I look at a kid and say, 'You don't want to fail that class, that'll
look bad on your transcript,' they say, 'It doesn't matter, I'm going to NKU,'"
says Kim Banta, principal of Dixie.
She's all for admissions standards at the university, figuring they will "force
kids to stop being lazy."
Principals also are reviewing their own requirements of students. At Boone
County High School, for instance, the site-based council this week voted to
make a fourth math course mandatory for graduation. As it stood before, students
could avoid taking math after sophomore year, which was hurting them in college,
Principal Peggy Brooks says.
Helping to motivate high-schoolers - and clearly communicating to them what's
expected of college freshmen - is one of NKU's goals.
NKU also hopes to raise the cachet of its degree and compete with surrounding
universities for the best students.
In addition, being upfront and realistic with those who are severely unprepared
is "almost a moral issue," says NKU Vice Provost Paul Reichardt.
Remedial courses cost about $390 apiece and cover subjects students should
have learned in high school. Of the students who need this help in every subject
(math, English and reading), only about 30 percent are still enrolled after
three years, NKU records show.
"To come to NKU, take on debt and then fail is really a sad state of affairs,"
Reichardt says.
It's also one that's on the rise nationwide. From 1995 to 2000, the percentage
of college students doing remedial work increased from 28 percent to 35 percent
at public, four-year universities, says the National Center for Education Statistics.
College is now marketed as the best path for almost everyone, including thousands
of students who wouldn't have considered it before. These young people tend
to arrive with academic weaknesses.
Next fall, NKU will likely decide how many remedial students it can effectively
serve and then steer the rest toward Gateway Community & Technical College
in Covington, with which it is closely working.
Since 2001, Gateway has offered two-year associate's degrees that are transferable
to NKU. This opened the door for NKU to stop being everything to everybody.
A recent event at the university illustrates how inclusive it has been. About
10 students in a remedial course had won awards for essay writing, and they
read aloud from their work in a special ceremony on Wednesday.
One student told about her drug-addicted father, another of her battle with
depression. An older woman wrote about her teenage son's lifelong health problems,
and a 23-year-old told of being a first-generation Cuban-American in Kentucky.
Gateway is probably a good alternative for some students, says Theresa Ramos,
the Cuban-American. But at the same time, they may lose something by not attending
NKU.
"Coming here helps you get focused on what you want to do, and you get
to interact with so many people on different levels - people getting their master's,
getting their bachelor's," Ramos says.
A transfer student from a community college in South Florida, Ramos is holding
down a job while attending her second year of remedial classes at NKU. She has
no intention of quitting.
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