Pandering to the Freakazoids Will Cost Kentucky $42 million

UPDATE Below

In the middle of struggling to fill a $150 Billion hole in the state budget, while scrambling to find every available dime in the sofa cushions, the Kentucky General Assembly is getting ready to throw away $42 million in federal transportation funds.

Because it would rather protect an idiotic, unconstitutional promotion of superstition.

John Cheves in the Herald-Leaders:

Kentucky risks losing $42 million a year in federal transportation funds if lawmakers approve a billboard deregulation bill aimed at saving a “Hell is real” sign along Interstate 65, according to federal officials.

The state House approved House Bill 536, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Johnny Bell of Glasgow, earlier this week and the proposal has already received one of three required readings in the Senate.

The bill would exempt non-commercial billboards — defined as those that don’t advertise products or services — that are on private property from the state Transportation Cabinet’s permitting process.

Bell has said he is defending a LaRue County billboard declaring “Hell is real,” which stands across I-65 from a billboard advertising an adult bookstore in Upton. A judge ruled the billboard to be advertising and therefore subject to laws restricting the sign’s location and size. Bell said he disagreed with the judge.

However, the Federal Highway Administration sent a warning letter last week to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.

Under the federal Highway Beautification Act, Kentucky must keep “effective control of outdoor advertisements” or risk, as a penalty, losing some federal funds for a half-dozen transportation-related programs, wrote Jose Sepulveda, administrator of the Federal Highway Administration’s Kentucky division.

SNIP

Kentucky’s share of the funds would be given to other states, he wrote. It would come from programs paying for road construction and maintenance, safety improvements, public transit and hiking and biking trails, he wrote.

The Federal Highway Administration in 1996 successfully discouraged California from a similar effort to exempt billboards that held non-commercial speech, he added.

Having been warned, the Transportation Cabinet opposes the bill and has forwarded the federal government’s concerns to the Senate, where the bill awaits committee action, cabinet spokesman Chuck Wolfe said Thursday.

“At a time when we’re cutting back on road maintenance because of the budget, we simply cannot afford to lose more than $40 million in federal funds,” Wolfe said.

I wrote back in February:

The biggest problem with the freakazoids has always been not their ridiculous belief in an invisible sky god, but their insistence that such belief exempts them from obeying secular laws.

"Religious freedom" means you get to believe whatever idiocy you want to believe, and reveal your idiocy at the top of your lungs if you insist. It does not mean your idiocy entitles you to special privileges or exemption from the laws.

Magnifying the crime five-fold is a state "legislature" eager to pander to the freakazoids, no matter what the cost to taxpayers.

UPDATE, 8 a.m. March 27: In a bizarre and momentary attack of reality, the Kentucky Senate chooses $42 million over godbothering. David Williams made baby jeebus cry.