INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – The number of foster care cases related to drugs is ballooning as use of heroin and other opioids soars across the U.S. New foster cases involving parents who are using drugs have hit the highest point in more than three decades of record-keeping. New federal statistics show some 92,000 children entered foster care…
As state legislators debate what changes will fix Kentucky’s debilitated pension system, state and local police are scrambling to recruit officers. Louisville Police Chief Steve Conrad said nearly 100 officers left LMPD this year. Sixty-three of those, he said, are officers who retired because of Kentucky’s looming pension reform, prompting him to try to recruit…
FRANKFORT, Ky. (Dec. 12, 2017) – Gov. Matt Bevin today made the following appointments to Kentucky boards and commissions: Cynthia Elaine Elliott has been appointed to the Statewide Advisory Council for Vocational Rehabilitation. Cynthia Elaine Elliott, of Frankfort, is an attorney and consumer ombudsman for the Kentucky Client Assistance Program. She will represent the Client Assistance…
FRANKFORT — An updated analysis of Kentucky’s poorly funded public pension systems by PEW Charitable Trust indicates previous reforms of the system enacted in 2013 put the systems “on track to full funding provided the state continues to stay on the course charted in 2013.” The report’s authors also express reservations about the short-term costs…
It appears that local legislators are not as high on the idea of medicinal marijuana as Kentucky’s Secretary of State. Alison Lundergan Grimes has recently made a push to legalize marijuana for the purposes of alleviating various health conditions, seeking to have it given the green light by next year. According to an article published…
Berea mayor Steve Connelly and representatives from Congressman Andy Barr’s office and Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office were among the dozens of people who gathered Wednesday morning to celebrate a recent expansion at Novelis, an aluminum recycling company in Berea. Despite the cold, attendees gathered outside the Berea plant as company representatives spoke of the company’s…
FRANKFORT – Kentucky’s ethics laws, passed in 2014, which states a member of the legislature can take nothing of value from a lobbyist, has been struck down as unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman, who ruled in June 2017 that the laws were too vague to be enforced and violated lobbyists’ freedom of speech, issued a…
Kentucky GOP House members are asking Republican Gov. Matt Bevin not to call a special legislative session on pension reform before the end of the year. The Courier Journal reports that a large majority of House Republicans sent a letter making the request Wednesday. House Speaker Pro Tem David Osborne said the letter expressed the lawmakers’…
Ashley Judd is featured on the cover of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for her role in the #MeToo movement. The actress, activist and University of Kentucky graduate is joined on the cover by software engineer Susan Fowler, lobbyist Adama Iwu, singer Taylor Swift and strawberry picker Isabel Pascual. The cover features the headline The Silence Breakers: the…
After slipping a bit in September, the housing market in Kentucky picked up in October following the national trend for the month. The number of homes sold in October rose 1.8 percent to 4,421 sold versus 4,342 sold in 2016. For the year, the number of homes sold jumped to 45,236, up from 43,905 in…
