Word: tobacco
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...states' respective budget deficits continued to worsen with the bad economy, many states decided to use their tobacco payments as short-term financial fixes. Anything to avoid facing more painful budget cuts or, even worse, tax increases. By delving into the tobacco funds, they're breaking a promise to voters and guaranteeing they'll pay higher medical bills down the road...
...Making tobacco companies pay for the damage they inflicted on smokers was supposed to be a brilliant form of justice, but instead it's become a very familiar form of bureaucracy...
...after years of threatened suits, failed congressional bills and endless negotiations, 46 states signed onto a national settlement with the big tobacco corporations worth $206 billion. The money would be paid out over several years to the states, which had been forced to bear much of the health care costs of treating addicted smokers. In return, the tobacco companies were freed from the threat of endless, potentially bankrupting lawsuits. The states had sold the idea to voters with the understanding that this money would be used to care for ill smokers and prevent more kids from getting hooked...
...point: Ohio had a budget deficit last January, one of the first warning signs that the economy was slowing down. While trying to fill the hole, Governor Bob Taft and the state legislature held onto $240 million from the settlement that was supposed to go to the state's Tobacco Use Prevention and Cessation Foundation. The organization funds community, hospital and school programs to fight smoking, especially among kids - exactly what the tobacco money was supposed to being for. The foundation only spends interest from its fund, and it will still dole out $48 million from previous years' money...
...course, with the election season looming, no one wants to run as the guy who spent the rainy day savings account. But at least that would be spending money for its original purpose. Blowing 25 years of tobacco money on the first recession that comes along makes the entire settlement a lie. Tobacco companies misled smokers for years about the consequences of their products. The settlement freed them from the threat of devastating lawsuits, but with the understanding that their own money would be used to keep the next generation away from cigarettes. Now that's being abandoned in statehouses...