Lois Thompson says her new house's porch is "out of this world." She moved into the "net zero" home in late August. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer).

WHITESBURG — In her old house — built more than 100 years ago by a coal company — Lois Thompson says she couldn’t afford to run the heat pump on her fixed income.?

When winter cold seeped through the walls, Thompson, 76, sectioned off a room by hanging up her son’s $10 childhood quilt; she would sit by a propane heater until the heat drove her into the cold kitchen.

“They’ll freeze you to death in the winter,” she said of her house and others like it that were built to be heated by a coal stove. “For the people like me that don’t have the money, you’re living in a drafty house. … You can’t insulate it. You don’t have the money for that.”

The propane heater, the house and the cold are now memories.?

Thanks to a local housing nonprofit, Thompson moved into a new house in August on the site where her old home, damaged by flooding in 2022, had stood. Also gone are her fears of high electricity bills. She paid just $21.61 in October, slightly above the minimum charge for utility customers in her community.

“It still don’t seem real, and I’m living in it,” she said. “I say, ‘Lord, I thank you.’ That’s all I can do.”?

The reason behind her rock-bottom power bill: a years-long effort by Whitesburg-based HOMES Inc. to build “net zero” homes. That is, houses with zero monthly electrical costs because of their energy-efficient construction and rooftop solar panels that generate power.?

For years, the? nonprofit — its full name is Housing Oriented Ministries Established for Service Inc. — had been grappling with the challenge of responding to some of Kentucky’s highest electricity costs in a region where incomes are low.

The devastating floods that overwhelmed Eastern Kentucky in 2022 wiped out thousands of homes and also brought new resources for housing, allowing HOMES Inc. to look toward the power of the sun. The nonprofit has built five “net zero” homes including Thompson’s and is now working on a new housing development for flood survivors that will have eight “net zero” homes.

In a region built on coal, the pressure of soaring utility bills and the need for housing are driving a new vision of what the energy future could be.

“In our climate today, everything gets political. This doesn’t have to be about left or right. This doesn’t have to be about coal or solar. It can be about common sense, too,” said Seth Long, the executive director of HOMES Inc. “As coal built this country with energy in the past, we need to pivot. And I think solar can play a part in that pivoting to something else.”?

Solar skeptic to solar advocate

Long wasn’t always a believer. He recognized that solar panels on rooftops saved electricity but didn’t think they made sense economically without subsidies because of their upfront costs.

The numbers on a spreadsheet presented by Josh Bills, an energy specialist from the economic development organization Mountain Association, convinced him otherwise. HOMES Inc. could install rooftop solar on its office in Whitesburg and be financially ahead, even if it borrowed the entire cost of the solar system. The price of rooftop solar panels has halved over the past decade.

Long had been looking for a way from under his nonprofit’s high electricity bills. Despite adding energy efficiency measures to the office such as air sealing and? efficient light bulbs, the bills from Kentucky Power were still too high — up to $1,600 a month, something that wasn’t sustainable.?

“The spreadsheet said that that would work, and I kept doubting and kept wondering.”? Long finally said, “Why don’t we borrow $70,000 and put the system on and see if this will work?”

So, they borrowed the money and installed the solar system. It’s paid off every month since, performing better than the projections.?

“We came out ahead financially, way ahead. Some of our electric bills since then have been as low as $53 a month,” Long said. “It was eye opening to me.”

Long’s horizons of what’s possible began to expand. He added solar to his maple syrup farm to save money there. He knew small businesses in Eastern Kentucky also struggled with older, energy inefficient buildings and high electricity bills, and most of the funding opportunities, such as the Rural Energy for America Program, were aimed at commercial spaces.

Fewer resources were available for working solar onto affordable housing. As tragic and terrible as the 2022 floods were, he said, there are now “resources and support in ways that we haven’t seen” for that sort of work.?

Ratepayers in the 20 Eastern Kentucky counties served by investor-owned Kentucky Power have struggled for years with high electricity costs. The utility’s residential customers paid the highest average monthly bill in the state at $187.56 according to a 2023 state report, and that was before a controversial 5% rate increase was approved last year.?

Power bills can soar above that average during the winter. Kentucky Power data show its? poorest Kentucky ratepayers have the highest bills. That’s in part, Kentucky Power executives say, because of high electric heating costs during the winter. Poor insulation and energy inefficient electric heating cause bills to reach north of $400 a month when it’s cold.?

Thompson said she sees Facebook posts during the winter by people “just about in tears” because “the electric bills are so high,” forcing them to decide whether to buy food or pay Kentucky Power.?

That’s where the potential of “net zero” homes comes in.

“A lot of people in our area are living in houses that were designed for coal heat, and, you know, not so much heat pumps. But everybody switched from coal to electric heat, and it’s just — it’s so expensive for them,” Long said. “The flood has given us opportunities to tear down older homes and replace them with new energy efficient homes and even ‘net zero’ houses.”?

HOMES Inc. has? built five “net zero” homes so far, constructing an energy-efficient “envelope” around the structure and then letting? the power of rooftop solar take the home all the way to “net zero.”?

Their efforts have been recognized by a national nonprofit that scores energy efficiency. The HERS index compares a home’s energy efficiency to a home built by average standards, which would score 100 on the index. A home with a HERS score of 70, for example, would be 30% more energy efficient than the average home. A score of 50 would be 50% more energy efficient.?

Long said Lois Thompson’s “net zero” home scored a negative 17 on the index, meaning it generates more electricity than it uses. And the nonprofit doesn’t plan to stop there.

A new future out of the floodplain

Up a gravel road on a hill just outside of Whitesburg, hopes for the future and current frustrations meet.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency had originally planned to put small cottages there in? a development known as Thompson Branch. When those plans didn’t work out, state officials asked HOMES Inc. for its ideas. The answer as seen on a cool afternoon earlier this month: eight soon-to-be “net zero” homes.

Over the rumble of a truck dumping cement for a new sidewalk, Joe Oliver, an assistant construction manager, explained how they’ve made it work: using smaller, affordable solar systems, only what’s needed to get to a “net zero” rating; building and designing homes ready for rooftop solar; and having an in-house solar installer to reduce costs. An average solar system runs the nonprofit around $15,000.

“The more that we can make things affordable, I think the better off everyone is everywhere,” Oliver said. “If you could generate enough money, say, to pay for the [solar] system, why wouldn’t you?”

Their in-house solar installer, Clayton “Fuzz” Johnson, a bearded 29-year-old, went to school to become a master electrician and learn how to install solar panels. Johnson said electricians are few and far between in Eastern Kentucky, let alone those who know how to install solar.

Johnson says solar is becoming more appealing in light of the rising costs Eastern Kentuckians are facing for groceries, taxes and electricity.?

With the decline of coal mining and other heavy industry and the coinciding loss of population in Kentucky Power’s territory, more and more of the burden of paying for electricity has fallen on fewer and fewer people, leaving Johnson, Oliver and others voicing frustration with the situation.?

““They’re going to get their return on investment,” Johnson said of Kentucky Power.

Johnson believes that with people already leaving instead of rebuilding after the floods, high power bills will only increase the outmigration.

Johnson, standing inside the frame of a “net zero” home, wondered if batteries could be hooked up to store electricity from solar from the rooftop panels. HOMES Inc. has yet to try adding home battery systems with the rooftop solar because the nonprofit considers the added cost to still be too much. The cost of batteries has plummeted in recent years due to a boost in electric vehicle production.??

Some renewable energy advocates envision a virtual power plant; excess power from solar panels on homes and businesses and from electric vehicles would be pulled onto the grid to power communities as an alternative to centralized power plants.

The need and potential for home energy efficiency upgrades in the region are immense, according to HOMES Inc. and other nonprofits.

Long and others, including the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, are pushing Kentucky Power to do more than it’s? currently proposing to support energy efficiency, noting the challenges of upgrading mobile homes and older homes that disproportionately make up the region’s housing stock. The utility should support energy efficiency programs for new home construction as well, the nonprofits have proposed.?

Also, the utility “has a clear duty to its customers to help them limit their energy usage,” Long has written, “not only for cost savings at the household level but also in order to reduce the overall energy production needs of the region.”

Kentucky Power has argued the costs of what they’re proposing would be too high.

Johnson wants to show what’s possible with the “net zero” homes and that people don’t have to spend most of their paycheck on electricity. Letcher County is still a coal community, he said, and his father works at a coal mine, but high utility bills are melting skepticism toward solar.?

“Everybody is on the same team just trying to get lower utility costs. Like, whatever it takes. We’re all in it together,” Johnson said. “Coal has its purpose, and so does solar. But I think it’s just to a point of trying to live and be sustainable.”?

This story was updated to note Thompson’s home was damaged by flooding in 2022.

East Kentucky Power Cooperative, which distributes electricity to 16 cooperatives, plans to add solar installations generating 757 megawatts of power and expand transmission infrastructure. (Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — A federal investment of up to $1.4 billion to expand renewable energy will help transform how a Kentucky utility serves future generations, its CEO said Monday.?

Officials from East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture joined Gov. Andy Beshear at the state Capitol Monday morning to tout funding that will build solar installations producing 757 megawatts of electricity and improve transmission infrastructure.

EKPC President and CEO Tony Campbell said the funding, which could consist of grants or subsidized loans, was a “defining moment” for the nonprofit utility that generates electricity for 16 power distribution cooperatives across the state. The USDA announced the funding last month.

“We will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and operate with less carbon intensity, while maintaining reliability service and competitive rates,” Campbell said. “East Kentucky Power Cooperative is doing our part to help address global greenhouse gas emissions and slow the impact of climate change. We are boldly planning for Kentucky’s energy future.”

The funding comes from the Empowering Rural America program (New ERA), monies made available through the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act opposed by all of the Republicans in Kentucky’s congressional delegation.

Administrator of the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service Andy Burke also said EKPC will receive additional funding in the form of tax credits on top of the $1.4 billion from the New ERA program.?

The USDA received 157 proposals for clean energy projects, and so far the federal department has awarded funding for nearly two dozen of those proposals including to EKPC.?

Beshear called the announcement one of the biggest investments in the state’s electric infrastructure since the New Deal, saying the funding would help with economic development for companies that want renewable energy.?

“Just about every company asks what energy portfolio we can bring to them. It’s either commitments to sustainability they’ve made,or they’ve been demanded by their downstream customers,” Beshear said. “The answer has always been, ‘We’ll get there, and we’re working on it.’ We’ve got a very big answer today with about $1.4 billion.”

Campbell told reporters EKPC intends to build solar installations itself instead of purchasing solar power from private solar developers, known as power purchase agreements. He said the solar installations have to be “on the ground” by Sept. 30, 2031 to comply with a federal deadline.

Roughly 40 transmission projects are also being planned, he said, for “both reliability and to allow more renewables to flow” to homes and businesses. Earlier this year, EKPC proposed to build two solar installations in Fayette and Marion counties generating a combined 136 megawatts of electricity.

Like other electric utilities in Kentucky, EKPC generates the majority of its power from burning coal, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses contributing to climate change among electricity sources. Environmental advocates have previously lauded New ERA funding but argue more needs to be done to move utilities from fossil fuels to clean energy sources.?

EKPC is supporting a lawsuit to federal regulations that would require utilities to curb nearly all greenhouse gas emissions by 2032 from new natural gas-fired power plants and existing coal-fired power plants. Campbell said the New ERA funding would help the utility “go down the path to start decarbonizing our generation portfolio” while not harming the reliability of the power supply.?

The leader of the United Nations last year called for developed nations to have carbon-free electricity generation by 2035 and a phase out of coal-fired power by 2030 in order to avoid the worst harms from climate change. A United Nations report last week found the world was on track for catastrophic warming by the end of the century because of the unabated burning of fossil fuels.?

When asked about the call for action from the United Nations’ leader, Campbell said renewable energy paired with battery storage systems hadn’t “evolved enough” to “totally run the country on that.”?

“We have to have reliable power plus decarbonize,” Campbell said.

Other utilities across the country are investing significantly in solar installations and battery storage systems, and the International Energy Agency considers solar and wind power to be the cheapest form of electricity in most of the world.?

Burke, the USDA official, said the decreasing cost of renewables and battery storage systems is “going to build that clean energy future we need.”?

“But we need to do it in a reliable way that makes sense to the person who still has to pay that utility bill at the end of every month,” Burke said.

E.W. Brown solar array at Kentucky Utilities Mercer County plant. (Photo courtesy of LG&E/KU)

Power-intensive data centers will drive growth in electricity demand in the near future, says the utility serving the most Kentuckians. It plans to meet that demand by continuing to replace coal-fired power with natural gas while potentially adding up to 1,000 megawatts of solar power by 2035.

Investor-owned Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities (LG&E and KU) outlined those steps and others in an integrated resource plan filed Oct. 18 before the Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC), the state’s utility regulator. Kentucky utilities are required every three years to file plans for how they will meet demand at the “lowest possible cost,” although they are not bound to follow them.

The new plan anticipates adding no new coal-fired generation while building as many as four new natural gas-fired plants plus battery storage systems for solar energy — in addition to a natural gas plant already slated for construction.?

‘Panicked rush to gas’ could hike energy costs, report warns regulators

The PSC will consider the new plan as environmentalists in Kentucky push for a faster pivot to renewables and amid urgent calls from climate scientists to halt the burning of fossil fuels to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.?

There’s also uncertainty over whether new Biden administration regulations that seek to curb nearly all heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions from power plants will withstand court challenges from utilities, coal advocates and Republican attorneys general including Kentucky’s Russell Coleman.?

Data center growth reflects nationwide boom

The utility’s plan says Kentucky is “well-positioned” to participate in the nationwide boom in data centers thanks to a lower risk of severe weather, available telecommunications infrastructure and water to cool equipment, as well as “favorable tax incentives.”?

Data centers are essentially computer hubs that power the internet, ranging from storing data on the “cloud” to processing credit card transactions and the surge of artificial intelligence services. They need a tremendous amount of electricity, sometimes on par with what an entire coal-fired power plant produces. The Lantern previously reported the parent company of LG&E and KU was in talks with data centers interested in locating to Kentucky, and Kentucky lawmakers passed tax breaks this year to incentivize data centers to locate in Jefferson County.?

Driving surge in demand for power, data centers eye Kentucky

“The Companies’ Economic Development team is working with a growing number of data center projects that vary in stages of development, but which mostly have very large power requirements,” the utility states in its planning documents.?

The utility currently needs about? 30,000 megawatts of electricity a year. Models forecast that could increase by 30% to 60% by the early 2030s.?

Data centers could increase the utility’s load by 1,050-1,750 megawatts, according to the utility’s modeling. For reference, its forecast peak load in the summer of 2024 was 6,115 megawatts.?

Seeking more natural gas and no new coal?

Burning coal generated 68% of Kentucky’s electricity in 2023, down from more than 90% a decade earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Only two other states, West Virginia and Wyoming, were as reliant as Kentucky on coal for power generation, making Kentucky an outlier in a nation that has generally transitioned to lower-cost natural gas and renewable energy.?

LG&E and KU coal-fired power plants make up over 60% of the utility’s capacity during the summer. The utility anticipates moving away from coal-fired power in favor of new natural gas-fired combined cycle plants.?

Depending on future demand, the utility foresees building two or three new natural gas-fired combined cycle plants to be paired with several utility-scale battery storage systems between 2028 to 2035. The natural gas plants would generate about 1,935 megawatts of summertime load — energy needed to meet demand at a given time — by the early 2030s. ?That includes power from another natural gas-fired combined cycle plant the utility already is slated to construct by 2027 after receiving permission from the PSC.?

That new natural gas-fired plant was opposed last year by environmentalists as a costly investment that would lock in ratepayers to decades of fossil fuel instead of pivoting to renewables that don’t create greenhouse gas emissions. Similar opposition has met other utilities’ plans to build natural gas-fired plants including the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The Kentucky utility’s plans for investing in natural gas-fired plants conflict with a call last year by the leader of the United Nations for carbon-free electricity generation in developed nations by 2035 and a phase out of coal-fired power by 2030 in order to prevent the worst harms from climate change. The call was based on research from climate scientists including U.S. institutions such as NASA. LG&E and KU has previously pointed to goals set by its parent company to have net-zero emissions by 2050.?

Burning natural gas, which consists primarily of the potent greenhouse gas methane, for electricity is considered to release less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere compared to the burning of coal, but environmental advocates have raised concerns that methane leaks during production and transportation of natural gas are wiping out progress made by the United States on curbing greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out coal-fired power.?

LG&E and KU already has approval to retire one of four coal-fired units at its Mill Creek Generating Station in Jefferson County by the end of this year and another coal-fired unit at Mill Creek in 2027. The utility estimates that retiring the first Mill Creek unit will shave some pennies from ratepayers’ bills starting in March.

LG&E and KU projections call for retiring the other two units at Mill Creek and a single remaining coal-fired unit at E.W. Brown Generating Station in 2035.?

Utilities that opposed Kentucky’s new energy planning commission are now part of it

That would leave Ghent and Trimble County generating stations as its only operating coal-fired plants by 2035. According to the utility, both of those plants would need upgrades to meet existing or anticipated federal regulations on ozone-producing nitrogen oxide emissions and water pollution. LG&E and KU stated it isn’t considering building any new coal-fired power plants because of “the high cost and environmental risk.”

More solar expected, but not until 2028

LG&E and KU’s plans also include more investments in utility-scale solar, potentially adding 500-1,000 megawatts, though the soonest it expects it could add more solar is 2028. The utility is currently planning to build two 120-megawatt solar installations in Mercer and Marion counties; it already has a solar installation in Mercer County at its E.W. Brown Generating Station.

The utility said its agreements to purchase solar power from private companies don’t appear to be moving forward due to issues with getting solar connected to the power grid and cost increases, though adding hundreds of megawatts of new battery storage “could help pave the way for additional new renewable resources in the future.”?

Other utilities across the country are investing heavily in solar installations and battery storage systems, with the Energy Information Administration estimating 58% of all power-generating capacity planned to be installed in 2024 to be solar power. The International Energy Agency considers solar and wind power to be the cheapest form of electricity in most markets in the world.?

Solar power is considered “intermittent,” meaning it produces electricity only during a portion of the day — such as when the sun is shining. But renewable energy advocates have touted battery storage systems paired with solar installations as a way to make the renewable power “dispatchable” and available around the clock.? Solar installations can charge batteries during the day to be used at night.

But LG&E and KU argued that pairing solar with battery systems would be a costly replacement for a“dispatchable” around-the-clock energy source such as coal-fired power. Thousands of megawatts of solar and battery storage would be needed to replace Mill Creek’s 391 megawatts of coal-fired power, the utility’s analysis said.

Advocates and the former PSC chair have expressed concern utilities aren’t able to be held accountable to follow the plans they outline. The last time LG&E and KU presented an integrated resource plan to the PSC, it was chastised by the regulator for not presenting plans that were “actionable” for the future.

LG&E and KU in its latest IRP filing writes the documents are a “snapshot of an ongoing resource planning process” that is “constantly evolving.””

Skepticism about carbon capture, future of greenhouse gas regulations

Looming over LG&E and KU and other coal-reliant utilities are new regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that require coal-fired power plants and new natural gas-fired power plants to curb 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2032 if utilities plan to operate them past 2039.?

Challengers are arguing in court that the technology proposed to comply with the regulation isn’t yet commercially viable at a utility scale. Carbon capture and sequestration is a controversial technology that tries to capture carbon dioxide emissions from power plants to prevent release into the atmosphere. LG&E and KU is planning to install and test a carbon capture system on an existing natural gas-fired plant.?

LG&E and KU in its planning documents wrote that implementing carbon dioxide transport and storage “is not achievable” in the timeline set by the EPA. The utility also wrote that converting coal-fired power plants into burning natural gas is also “questionable” because of the time it would take to establish gas pipelines. Retiring coal-fired power plants by 2032 is an option for compliance, LG&E and KU stated, but “retirements require reliable replacement capacity.”?

“Replacing generation at the scale necessary for compliance is not reasonable” under the EPA’s timeline for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the utility wrote.

LG&E and KU’s integrated resource plan will likely come under scrutiny from a range of stakeholders during PSC review — the attorney general, renewable energy advocates, advocates for industrial and residential ratepayers and local governments in the utility’s territory covering Lexington, Louisville and parts of Eastern and Western Kentucky.

The logo of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

FRANKFORT — The board overseeing Kentucky’s fish and wildlife agency voted Tuesday to establish a three-county surveillance zone after chronic wasting disease (CWD) was found earlier this month on a deer farm in Breckinridge County.

The Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission also for the second time approved a four-year contract for Commissioner Rich Storm following a complaint that the first approval had violated the state Open Meetings Act.?

Meade, Breckinridge and Hardin Counties are in the surveillance zone where the baiting and feeding of deer are now banned to prevent the animals from congregating and potentially spreading CWD. The commission also banned taking deer carcasses and high-risk parts such as heads out of the three counties and taking care of or rehabilitating injured deer in the zone.?

CWD is a fatal neurological disease that affects elk, deer and other species in the cervid family and has been found in dozens of states and a couple of Canadian provinces. The department established a surveillance zone in West Kentucky after CWD was detected in a wild deer in Ballard County last year, the first ever case in the state.?

Ben Robinson, the director of wildlife at the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR), told the commission at the special-called meeting the department was hoping to collect as many samples as possible from wild deer in the three-county zone given evidence that wild deer had interacted in the past with deer in the Breckinridge County deer farm where the disease was detected.?

Robinson said the department also wanted to better understand where deer on the Breckinridge County farm had been transported to other “captive cervid” facilities around the state.?

“Our main goal is to collect as many CWD samples from wild deer as possible, because our goal is to determine if this has spread outside of the fence of this facility,” Robinson said. “Deer are regularly moved around facilities within the state.”?

Unlike the surveillance zone in West Kentucky, the department will not require hunters in the new three-county zone to bring harvested deer to stations to test for CWD. Because deer hunters harvest a high number of deer in the three counties, Robinson told the commission, the department hopes to get deer samples to test for CWD through other voluntary methods.?

Board again approves contract for department chief following complaint

Before voting on the surveillance zone, the commission also unanimously voted with no discussion to approve a new four-year contract for the department’s chief executive Storm for a second time in as many meetings. The action followed a complaint from a sportsman alleging the first time the commission approved the contract in August violated the state Open Meetings Act.?

The vote to approve Storm’s personal service contract took place after the commission met for a little over 15 minutes in executive session closed to the public to discuss the contract.?

The commission during a regular meeting in August had unanimously approved a motion without mentioning Storm’s name to give him another four-year contract, sparking a complaint that the vagueness of the motion violated the state Open Meetings Act. Brian Mackey, a Hardin County farmer, sportsman and former member of the nine-member commission, alleged in his complaint to the commission that the board also erroneously used an exception in the Open Meetings Act to discuss Storm’s contract in closed session.?

An opinion from the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office said the department didn’t violate the Open Meetings Act by using the exception and that the AG had been informed the commission planned to clarify the “somewhat ambiguous” August motion in its next meeting.

KDFWR spokesperson Lisa Jackson in an email said along with making a change to the contract regarding Storm’s health insurance, the commission’s approval Tuesday “clarified their intent to approve the contract and reappoint Commissioner Storm.”?

“Some constituents were confused by the wording of the prior motion on the contract,” Jackson said.

Mackey in a Lantern interview said he was disappointed in the opinion from the attorney general’s office, arguing the department needed to be transparent “because that’s one of the issues this agency’s had for some time.”?

“And to keep all this stuff in the dark is not how you clean up transparency,” Mackey said.

Who serves on the nine-member commission, which has the power to hire or fire a KDFWR commissioner, had been a point of contention between some sportsmen and the GOP-controlled Kentucky Senate. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Storm have previously clashed on a number of issues, including the length of Storm’s contract and executive branch oversight of procurement and conservation easements at the department.

Beshear told reporters in March that state senators — who can confirm or deny appointments made by the governor to the commission —? had to “stop protecting leadership of what I think is the most corrupt part of state government.”

Storm on Tuesday told the Lantern he wished Beshear “had a greater love for what we do here” but that he did not have “any ill feelings toward him.”?

“It’s a tough job that I have, and to coexist sometimes there’s difficulty, but I think we can move on. And we have,” Storm said. “I’d like to hope that in the future that you know his comments are about other entities that aren’t doing good work, because I really do believe in what we’re doing here.”?

“The department’s far bigger than any commissioner, and so a lot of times when you have a successful run, it’s because people are doing good work,” Storm said.?

Flash flooding inundated much of Southeastern Kentucky in July 2022, including Breathitt County, above. (Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

Researchers at public universities in Kentucky and West Virginia are planning to collaborate alongside local residents on a four-year project to better understand, predict and prepare for flash flooding in Appalachia and climate change’s impacts on it.?

Surface coal mining worsened deadly Eastern Kentucky floods in July 2022, study shows

A nearly $1.1 million award from the U.S. National Science Foundation will bring together civil engineers and scientists from environmental and social fields to study a range of topics, including soil moisture’s impact on flash flooding. Researchers also will gauge monitors installed in waterways to help tailor flooding solutions “to community goals, serving as a model for resilience planning in vulnerable communities across the U.S.,” according to the project’s description.?

Researchers will analyze decades of precipitation and streamflow data from the University of Kentucky’s Robinson Forest in Breathitt County and install soil moisture sensors throughout the research forest to better understand flooding in headwater streams.?

Christopher Barton, a University of Kentucky professor of forest hydrology and watershed management and principal investigator for the project, in a statement said researchers want to do everything they can “to build up the infrastructure to understand, predict and prepare for flash floods in this region.”?

“To best help, we also must understand how climate change and landscape alterations affect flash floods,” Barton said.?

The “novel collaboration” is also funding researchers from the University of Louisville, Eastern Kentucky University, West Virginia University and Marshall University. A main goal of the collaboration is developing improved early warning systems to alert communities when flash floods are worsening.

Eastern Kentucky University will also be using the funding to aid high school and middle school teachers develop science education programming and plant trees as a part of reforestation efforts to mitigate flash floods.

The need for a new area code isn’t necessarily driven by population but associated with the multiple numbers each person may be using.?The supply of 502 area code phone number prefixes, the three digits following an area code in a phone number, is expected to be exhausted by the end of 2027. (Getty Images)

A national organization overseeing the supply of phone numbers on behalf of phone carriers is asking a Kentucky regulator to establish a new area code in response to a dwindling supply of available 502 area code numbers covering Louisville, Frankfort and nearby counties.

The application filed with the Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC) on Monday by the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) states the supply of 502 area code phone number prefixes, the three digits following an area code in a phone number, is expected to be exhausted by the end of 2027. Florence Weber, a NANPA vice president, wrote in the application that representatives of the telecommunications industry consulted by NANPA decided adding a new area code would be the best way forward.

That would work by overlaying a new area code onto the geographic area serviced by the existing 502 area code. New phone numbers added in the area would have the new area code available while those with phone numbers with the previous 502 area code would be able to keep their numbers.

Heidi Wayman, a data manager for NANPA, told the Lantern the need for a new area code isn’t necessarily driven by population but associated with the multiple numbers each person may be using.?

“You may have devices as well with numbers, tablets, watches, etc. So you may have multiple phone numbers even assigned to you,” Wayman said. “We need available prefixes to assign out to the carriers.”

Weber wrote phone numbers with the new area code would be available once the supply of 502 area code numbers had been exhausted, and the supply of numbers with the new area code would last an estimated 30 years. The consensus of telecommunications providers, according to the application, is that? layering a new code onto the current 502 region would be easier to implement and reduce confusion compared to other options.

Industry representatives — which include AT&T, T-Mobile, Charter Communications, Verizon and Boost Mobile — also considered splitting the 502 area code geographic region into two distinct areas, one keeping 502 and another getting a new area code. Other options considered included eliminating the geographic boundaries for area codes in Kentucky including boundaries involving the 270 area code, 606 area code and 859 area code.?

This wouldn’t be the first time Kentucky received a new area code this century. Following a request from NANPA, the PSC in 2014 established the new area code 364 to be overlaid on the 270 area code to increase the supply of phone numbers in Western Kentucky.?

NANPA is requesting the PSC, which regulates utilities in the state, issue a decision on how to move forward by July 31, 2025. Once a decision has been issued, NANPA plans to roll out a 13-month timeline for establishing the new area code. NANPA is run by the New Jersey-based data management company SOMOS through a contract with the Federal Communications Commission.

The Elkhorn Lake dam in Letcher County in late September after rains brought on by Hurricane Helene. It was ranked as the state's top priority for repairs in a recent report to the Kentucky legislature. (Photo courtesy of Jenkins Mayor Todd DePriest)

FRANKFORT — Whenever a heavy rain falls, Jenkins Mayor Todd DePriest can’t help but think back to a deadly disaster as he drives around his small, mountain town checking on its aging dam and bridges.?

The dam that created Elkhorn Lake, known locally as Jenkins Lake, was built 112 years ago to provide hydropower to nearby coal mines. It still provides Jenkins with water and is a popular fishing spot. The dam’s concrete slope is rocky and worn down exposing rusty steel rebar in places.?

When state inspectors looked it over in May 2023, they found water seeping through in spots and rated the dam in “unsatisfactory” condition, the worst rating, meaning it is considered unsafe and has issues that need an immediate fix.?

The mayor and other community members have been acutely aware of the dam’s deteriorating condition for years. DePriest’s concerns about the dam trace back to the Buffalo Creek mine disaster of 1972 when three coal slurry dams failed in West Virginia; the rush of more than 130 million gallons of black water destroyed hundreds of homes, killing 125 people and leaving thousands homeless.

“That’s always on my mind. Anytime we have a big rain or some big event,” DePriest said. “How do we make sure we’re not in that situation one day?”

Located in Southeastern Kentucky in Letcher County, the Elkhorn Lake dam is also considered a high hazard dam by state dam inspectors, meaning its failure could kill people or seriously damage homes, businesses and infrastructure downstream. In Jenkins, that would include the city’s water treatment plant, homes, a church and the post office.?

The Elkhorn Lake dam isn’t the only dam state officials say needs attention. Kentucky has dozens of high hazard dams in poor or worse condition needing repairs and rehabilitation, according to a list sent by the state Department for Environmental Protection to the Legislative Research Commission in late August. The Lantern obtained the letter through the Open Records Act. The Elkhorn Lake dam ranked as the highest priority.

While a few of the 71 high hazard dams listed in the report are owned by state agencies, most are owned by smaller cities, county fiscal courts, soil and water conservation districts and private organizations and individuals. One high hazard dam considered to be unsafe by dam inspectors is in a Boone County suburb, homes directly abutting it. Others serve as drinking water supplies or for recreational purposes. All the dams on the list are in at least poor condition.

Local officials who spoke with the Lantern say their governments don’t have near the funds to make needed repairs, often $1 million or more. And that’s after paying for engineers.

Another challenge is even finding a dam owner to hold responsible, something that’s sometimes turned into a legal ordeal for state officials.?

DePriest hopes grants from the state or federal governments will repair the dam in Jenkins, given the financial burden his city of fewer than 2,000 would face trying to handle it alone. A dam safety organization warns those grants can be hard to come by given the need to repair dams across the country. “How do you put pieces together from these different agencies in a way that gives you a goal of making it safe and still usable for what we need it for?” DePriest said.

‘Non-cooperative owners, incapable owners, and non-existent owners’

Dam inspectors in the Department for Environmental Protection have watched a number of high hazard dams deteriorate for years, conducting annual inspections, issuing notices of violations when owners haven’t fixed previously cited issues. When little to no action is taken, the Energy and Environment Cabinet has resorted to issuing fines and filing lawsuits.??

Cabinet spokesperson Robin Hartman in a statement said the cabinet pursues litigation only after “all administrative enforcement options are exhausted.”?

“This authority includes administrative enforcement action, litigation, and emergency authority to take control of structures and take whatever action necessary to render a dam safe from loss of life and property,” Hartman said. “Challenges to enforcing the dam safety requirements include non-cooperative owners, incapable owners, and non-existent owners.”?

One city hadn’t communicated with the cabinet for years about its high hazard dam in unsafe condition, despite state inspectors’ concerns.?The cabinet sent a letter to the mayor of Stanford, the Lincoln County seat, on Aug. 13 fining the city $5,500 and directing the city to drain Rice Lake. The reservoir created by Stanford’s high hazard dam is one of three lakes supplying the city’s water, according to the city.

Yearslong issues cited by inspectors, including a part of the earthen dam sliding down its slope, had gone unrepaired. The city hadn’t responded since February 2022 to cabinet enforcement officials with updates on how an agreed plan to fix the dam was progressing.?

Stanford Mayor Dalton Miller told the Lantern he wasn’t aware of the status of the dam, directing inquiries to Stanford’s drinking water utility director who didn’t respond to requests for comment Friday. A cabinet spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment about the Rice Lake dam.?

In another case, the cabinet sued a private dam owner in Boyle County over failing to finalize an action plan to fix a dam with seepage issues that had been “deteriorating for many years.” Overgrowth of weeds and other plants at the Tank Pond dam had prevented inspectors from determining its stability with dozens of residences potentially threatened downstream, according to a lawsuit complaint.?

A Boyle Circuit Court judge ruled in favor of the cabinet in March because the dam owner failed to respond to the lawsuit, ordering the private dam owner to remove the Tank Pond dam and return the waterway to its original flow by the end of the year.

In Hopkins County, a court battle over who owns and has responsibility for another high hazard dam in unsafe condition has dragged on for over a year. A housing development? had been built in the 1980s around Otter Lake, but the dam holding back the lake hasn’t been properly maintained. The Energy and Environment Cabinet sued the county fiscal court and property owners near the dam in December 2022 seeking to determine ownership of the dam and get it repaired.?

The cabinet’s complaint states multiple property owners and interests have disputed their ownership of the dam for decades while its condition has worsened, spurring one home owner to sue an Owensboro couple for not disclosing the dam’s condition or disclosing responsibilities to maintain the dam.?

A judge ruled last year the Hopkins County Fiscal Court has at least partial ownership of the dam because of a nearby road, and the telecommunications company AT&T has also been looped in as a defendant because of alleged buried telecommunications lines nearby.?

Significant costs to prevent potential dam failures

The report on high hazard dams sent to the legislature acknowledges the high cost of repair and rehabilitation. Sarah Gaddis, director of the Kentucky Division of Water, writes that “engineering expertise, materials, and other items required for dam repair are extremely expensive.”?

The report notes that $25 million in state funds has been used to reconstruct two state-owned dams, the Bullock Pen Lake Dam in Boone County and the Scenic Lake Dam in Henderson County with two other state-funded dam repair projects in the works having price tags of $15 million to $30 million each.?

The report also noted only four of the 71 high hazard dams listed are eligible for an existing state-funded dam repair program. For dams owned by local governments and organizations or private individuals, the report stated,? other funding mechanisms include federal grant programs or local monies and state earmarks.?

Robin Hartman, the cabinet spokesperson, in a statement said civil works projects like dams are “inherently expensive” and require specific expertise in design and construction methods. She said dam owners are required to bring on the needed engineers themselves.?

“Construction and design of dams also carry significant risk and liability due the inherent risk of impounding water,” Hartman said.” This elevated liability and risk command higher design standards and tightly controlled construction processes, which in turn increase construction costs.”

Katelyn Riley, the communications director for the Lexington-based Association of Dam Safety Officials, in a statement said the millions of dollars of costs fall on dam owners that either can’t afford them or may not qualify for grants or loans. While $2.15 billion has been made available for dam repair through the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, she said, it is “a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed.”

“Lack of funding for dam rehabilitation is a serious problem nationally and in Kentucky.” Riley said. “The likelihood of failure can be mitigated by keeping a dam well maintained and, for older dams, upgrading them to meet current engineering design standards.”?

The Association of Dam Safety Officials in a 2023 report estimated the cost to repair and rehabilitate Kentucky’s more than 1,000 dams at $2.91 billion, with the cost to rehabilitate just the state’s high hazard dams estimated at $1.19 billion.?

As dams have deteriorated, so has Kentucky’s inspection force. The state employs fewer staff with less allocated resources to oversee dam inspections than in 1999, according to another report by the dam safety association.?

But Kentucky isn’t the only state with a growing dam problem. Nine other states had estimates over $1 billion to repair high hazard dams. That includes North Carolina, where dams were feared to be close to failure after rainfall from Hurricane Helene inundated Appalachian communities.?

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has funded hundreds of millions of dollars more in grants to repair dams through U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) programs, though only a small number of dams in Kentucky so far have benefited. State lawmakers in the 2022 executive branch budget allocated $5 million for matching funds for the USDA’s Watershed Rehabilitation Program.

Riley said some states offer financial assistance to dam owners for repair, rehabilitation or removal, something that could “directly improve the safety of dams in the state” along with investing more in the state’s dam safety regulators.?

Two key Republican legislative committee chairs didn’t commit to the idea of state earmarks for local dam repairs when asked recently about the idea. But the chairman of the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee Rep. Jim Gooch, R-Providence, told the Lantern he’d be willing to work with the cabinet on solutions.?

“I think we agree that we need to be proactive,” Gooch said. “We don’t do enough planning in advance sometimes to keep, prevent problems like this from happening.”?

Keeping a community’s identity

For the mayor of a small Western Kentucky city, trying to save the Loch Mary Reservoir is about protecting a community space he grew up with.?

Facing pressure from state officials to deal with the high hazard dam that inspectors considered unsafe, Earlington’s city council voted in June 2023 to allow Mayor Albert Jackson to pursue grants and other opportunities to repair the concrete and earthen dam.

The reservoir, adjacent to rows of homes, had cracks and seepage in its concrete and was deemed not hydraulically sound, meaning there’s a problem with its ability to hold or release water.?

But Jackson, 36, didn’t want to consider draining the lake. Working with its area development district, the city received a $490,000 grant from FEMA to begin design work on a reconstructed dam.?

Jackson said the effort would be “absolutely impossible” for his city of 1,200 to do on its own.

“It fell in our favor to get the grant money, but I feel for a lot of communities that aren’t able to secure grant money or grant funding,” Jackson said. “If you’re a small town there’s no way that you can, you know — $1.5 million, $2 million, $3 million for some places, there’s no way that you can come up with that money in 12 months.”?

Jackson argued that because the state government is flush with cash, lawmakers should invest more in repairing infrastructure, like local dams, while the money is there.?

“It’s important for us to maintain those things, maintain our natural resources, especially in a state like Kentucky, because if we don’t we lose a part of our identity,” Jackson said.

Mountains near Cumberland in Harlan County bear the scars of mining after the coal was stripped, August 24, 2019. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Kentucky’s Republican attorney general citing concerns from Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration is trying to block a revamped federal complaint system that citizens have used for decades to report suspected dangers and hazards from the strip mining of coal.?

The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, delegated authority to two dozen states including Kentucky to regulate the environmental impacts of mining and mine reclamation.?

The law gave citizens the right to report suspected violations not addressed by state authorities directly to the federal Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement (OSMRE) to investigate.?

Federal regulators can then issue a notice with a 10-day deadline to state regulators to either fix the issue or explain why it hasn’t been fixed. After the 10-day deadline, federal regulators can order an inspection of the mine site if they’re not satisfied with the state’s response.?

But a Trump administration rule change in 2020 required federal regulators to gather additional evidence from state agencies before issuing a 10-day notice, something environmental advocates say has bogged down the process and significantly reduced the effectiveness of the oversight mechanism.?

The Biden administration is now seeking to largely restore the original system that allows OSMRE to issue notices without having to gather state input beforehand, a requirement that OSMRE said creates “undue delays.” Under the Biden rule, state feedback would be incorporated into the federal investigation after the 10-day notice has been issued.?

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman and other Republican attorneys general have sued to block the revamped system, ?and a federal judge recently allowed advocacy groups that have utilized the complaint system to intervene in the case.

The Republican attorneys general cited in part concerns from Kentucky Department for Natural Resources Commissioner Gordon Slone, who wrote in a June 2023 public comment that records from federal regulators in determining whether to issue a 10-day notice were “insufficient” compared to records from state authorities.?

“[The department] believes that the OSMRE’s goal should be to ensure that [10-day notices] are only issued when available information — including information that the State regulator can easily provide upon request —? supports the existence of a violation,” Slone wrote.?

Slone also said his department received an average of nearly nine 10-day notices each year between 2010 and 2019. Under the Trump administration system, the number of annually issued notices “plummeted” to 0.6 notices a year.?

Slone argued increased collaboration and communication between federal and state regulators led to fewer notices issued, compared to the increased “administrative burden” he said states would face by having to deal with more 10-day notices under the Biden administration’s action.?

Willie Dodson, the coal impacts program coordinator for Appalachian Voices, one of the advocacy groups intervening in the case, isn’t convinced by those arguments.?

Dodson said he’s used the complaint system in recent years to get Kentucky regulators to address pollution by an Eastern Kentucky surface mine of a waterway that’s home to endangered or threatened aquatic life.?

He said federal regulators can choose not to issue a notice in response to a complaint. He asserted arguments opposing the Biden administration’s revamped system are “just a thinly veiled way of saying that the feds should let us do whatever we want.”

“It doesn’t in any way take away the fact that Kentucky is the primary organization issuing permits, issuing enforcement actions,” Dodson said. “If Kentucky fails to issue enforcement actions that they should be issuing and the community member catches that, the community member can bring the information to OSMRE who then has an oversight role.”?

Tom FitzGerald, counsel for the environmental legal group Kentucky Resources Council that’s representing the intervening advocacy groups in the court case, pointed to another example decades ago for why a robust complaint system is needed.?

In the 1980s, FitzGerald represented a retired Perry County educator who, the way he described it, worried about a hazardous sediment pond built above her home.?

Before Muriel Smith finalized a divorce in 1981 and took sole ownership of her property, her husband waived the law’s 300-foot buffer requirement and gave written permission to a coal company to conduct “surface mining operations” nearby. But she personally didn’t consent to it, and state coal mine regulators gave the coal company a permit for the pond. The company built it the following year less than a football field from her home.?

When she appealed to Kentucky regulators saying state law had been violated because the pond was built too near to her home and without her permission as the now-sole homeowner, they dismissed it as a “property rights” dispute. So, she turned to the federal complaint system established through SMCRA and appealed to OSMRE.

FitzGerald wrote in a Sept. 13 filing that without the federal? action in response to the complaint system, Smith would have endured years of “living directly below a high-hazard embankment sediment structure illegally located immediately uphill from her home, with the attendant risk of wash out or catastrophic failure of the structure, and the impairment of value and use of her land.”?

The Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled in 1986 that the state’s “hands off” approach toward Smith’s request for help was “seriously flawed” and ruled in her favor.?

Shawn "Mickey" Stines has resigned as Letcher County sheriff and faces a murder charge. (Leslie County Detention Center)

An Eastern Kentucky sheriff charged with murdering a judge earlier in September has retired from his elected office following a request from the governor to step down.

Letcher County Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines, 43, resigned effective Monday, according to a letter from? Somerset attorney Jeremy Bartley to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s office.

The letter said Stines “had made the difficult decision to effect his retirement” but not as the result “of any ultimatum or in any way as a concession to any allegations” made by prosecutors.

“Rather, Sheriff Stines has made this decision to allow for a successor to continue to protect his beloved constituents while he addresses the legal process ahead of him,” Bartley wrote.?

An attorney for the governor’s office had sent Stines a letter requesting he step down from his elected office by Friday, Sept. 27, or face removal through a Kentucky law.?

Stines pleaded not guilty last week to a charge of murder for allegedly shooting and killing 54-year-old Letcher District Court Judge Kevin Mullins in the Letcher County courthouse.?

Helene is expected to stall out over Kentucky this weekend as a post-tropical depression.?(NOAA satellite image)

Gov. Andy Beshear warned Kentuckians to avoid traveling on roads Friday and to be ready for a risk of flooding and power outages as remnants of Hurricane Helene impact Kentucky.?

Beshear said in a Friday morning briefing that state employees were being sent home early to get ahead of expected peak wind gusts from the storm’s remnants expected to be 40- 60 miles per hour throughout much of Central and Eastern Kentucky, according to the National Weather Service.?

The governor said such wind gusts, expected to pick up in most of the state starting around noon Eastern Time, could make driving in higher profile vehicles including tractor trailers more hazardous, especially on roads that run north to south.?

“If you’re out in the middle of this, we need your 100% attention while you’re driving for your safety and for the safety of those around you,” Beshear said. “Certainly a chance for some minor flooding, a chance that we lose power, a chance that we have trees fall over roadways and create treacherous conditions.”?

He said the number of Kentuckians without power is expected to fluctuate throughout the day. Tens of thousands of people mostly in Eastern Kentucky are without power as of Friday morning, according to a website that tracks and compiles power outage numbers from utilities.

Most of Kentucky is also under a flood watch and has a slight risk for excessive rainfall leading to flash flooding. The National Weather Service in Jackson, Kentucky is warning that because soil is already saturated from previous rainfall, the incoming rain could runoff quickly.?

The National Hurricane Center’s latest report states Tropical Storm Helene is currently located over western North Carolina as of Friday morning and is expected to stall out over Kentucky this weekend as a post-tropical depression.?

“This is the remnants of a hurricane that’s hitting us, and I believe that we all ought to be humble enough to know that this forecast can change and that we may need to get additional information out there as it goes,” Beshear said.?

Shawn "Mickey" Stines has resigned as Letcher County sheriff and faces a murder charge. (Leslie County Detention Center)

Letcher County Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines, charged with murdering a judge in his chambers last week, will face arraignment Wednesday morning in Carter County.

Stines is jailed in the Leslie County Detention Center.

And he’s still sheriff of Letcher County.

“He still is the sheriff until he would actually resign or be removed,”? said Jerry Wagner, executive director of the Kentucky Sheriffs’ Association. “Once you’re elected, you are elected through an election cycle.”?

Wagner said the situation facing Letcher County is unlike any he’s seen.

County sheriffs in Kentucky have wide-ranging powers to enforce the laws of the state along with carrying out a number of lesser-known but important duties, including tax collection, vehicle inspections and providing security for local court proceedings.?

Wagner, who served as Fleming County sheriff for nearly 20 years, said it was customary for a chief deputy to take over his duties when he was unable to perform them.

WHJL in Johnson City, Tennessee, reported a sign on the door of the Letcher County sheriff’s office said it would be closed until Oct. 1. The police chief for the county seat of Whitesburg told the TV station local law enforcement and Kentucky State Police were taking calls and responding to emergencies.

The Letcher County clerk’s office is open. The courts are set to reopen Monday, Sept. 30, with all court proceedings being rescheduled.?

Kentucky State Police Trooper Matt Gayheart, public affairs officer for KSP Post 13 which serves Letcher County, told the Lantern it’s his understanding the Letcher County Sheriff’s Office is planning to install an interim head, though he didn’t know if an interim leader has been named. Attempts by the Lantern to reach the Letcher County Sheriff’s Office were unsuccessful.?

Asked what power Stines has as sheriff while in custody, Gayheart said it’s a hard question to answer. “His involvement with the actual office itself, I don’t know how much control or the influence he would have on them,” Gayheart said.

Stines, 43, will be arraigned remotely Wednesday.

He is charged with firing multiple shots and killing Letcher County District Court Judge Kevin Mullins, 54, after an argument at the Letcher County Courthouse on Sept. 19. Stines surrendered without incident at the courthouse. The Mountain Eagle of Whitesburg has reported the shooting was recorded on video in the judge’s office.

Chief Regional Judge Rupert Wilhoit of Grayson was appointed as a special judge in the case by Supreme Court Chief Justice Laurance VanMeter. Wilhoit’s court is more than 100 miles north of Whitesburg.

Under Kentucky law, Gov. Andy Beshear has the power to remove a peace officer for “neglect of duty.” Alternatively, the Kentucky legislature has the power to impeach and convict elected officials to remove an official from office, which lawmakers did in 2023 with a former commonwealth’s attorney.?

Days before the alleged shooting, Stines gave an eight-hour deposition in a federal court case alleging a former Letcher County deputy forced a woman to have sex in lieu of paying court fees the woman couldn’t afford. Stines is a defendant in the suit for allegedly failing to properly supervise the deputy. It has been stayed in light of the criminal charge against Stines.?

A fire in April 2023 at Natural Bridge State Park closed trails. (Photo by Middlefork Fire/Rescue, Facebook)

State environmental officials have declared a drought across all counties in Kentucky as the state has seen significantly less rainfall than usual in recent weeks.?

The Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, coordinating with a drought monitoring team representing various agencies, declared Monday a Level 1 drought impacting vegetation health and soil moisture with the biggest impacts in Central and Western Kentucky. More than two dozen counties in the state have burn bans in place according to state officials.?

A cabinet release Monday states the drought in some areas has increased agricultural water needs and increased wildfire risk. A Level 1 drought can be declared if certain conditions — such as low rainfall, streamflows in waterways and drier soil —? are met. Three levels of drought can be declared by state officials. The U.S. Drought Monitor, a group of governmental weather experts tracking drought, has much of Kentucky in either moderate or severe drought conditions.?

Matthew Dixon, a senior meteorologist with the University of Kentucky Agricultural Weather Center, in a statement said the state has had over 1.5 inches of rain less than what’s normal over the past 30 days.?

“Despite severe dryness that began in mid-June, most rivers are flowing at the lower end of a normal range for this time of year. In some rivers and their tributaries, however, moderate hydrologic drought is developing, including the lower Green, lower Kentucky and Licking River basins,” Dixon said. “Most drinking water supplies across Kentucky have held up well, however in areas with moderate to severe drought, there is an increasing likelihood of water shortages developing in rivers and small water supply lakes.”

Jerry Brotzge, the state climatologist and director of the Kentucky Mesonet and Kentucky Climate Center, in a statement said drought conditions are likely to continue into the near future. Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet Secretary Rebecca Goodman is encouraging Kentuckians to conserve water through small practices at home.

Kentucky’s chief medical examiner and state crime lab staff have confirmed through a DNA analysis the body found near the site of the Interstate 75 shootings in Laurel County is the shooting suspect Joseph Couch.?

Chief Medical Examiner Bill Ralston in a Friday statement said DNA testing of the body’s soft tissue was inconclusive because of “extreme decomposition of the body,” but further tests of the body’s bone confirmed it was Couch. Ralston previously said the cause of death was consistent with a gunshot wound to the head. The official autopsy won’t be available until toxicology tests are finished.?

“I want to recognize the medical examiner’s office and KSP crime lab for working together and being diligent in obtaining positive identification so the commonwealth can move forward from this tragic situation,” Ralston said in his statement.?

The shooting along Interstate 75 in Laurel County wounded five people, who all survived their injuries, and led more than a dozen law enforcement agencies on a manhunt through rugged terrain that lasted nearly two weeks searching for Couch. A couple searching for Couch while live streaming on YouTube had originally found Couch’s body near the vicinity of the shooting.??

Gov. Andy Beshear, center, speaks to Ascend Elements CEO Michael O’Kronley after a ground-breaking ceremony at Commerce Park II in Hopkinsville in October 2022. (Hoptown Chronicle photo by Jennifer P. Brown)

The company behind a planned battery recycling plant in Western Kentucky is receiving another $125 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as a part of a broader federal effort to boost battery production and recycling for electric vehicles (EVs) and the electric grid.?

Massachusetts-based Ascend Elements is receiving the federal award for a new battery recycling process at planned facilities in Hopkinsville in partnership with the Mexican company Orbia.?The companies plan to extract graphite from the recycled batteries, have it further processed and enhanced at a separate Louisiana facility owned by Orbia and then sell the new battery-grade graphite. The DOE is describing the effort as a “first-of-its-kind recycled graphite production” process.

White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi in a statement Friday about the funding — which awarded more than $3 billion to 25 battery-related projects across the country — said the funding is “helping support the technologies that we need in the market today, the components that we will need in the near future, and the innovative technologies we need to advance our vision for a circular domestic battery supply chain that positions the United States to continue leading the global effort on clean energy.”???

This latest funding for graphite recycling in Hopkinsville follows earlier large federal investments in other Ascend Elements manufacturing plants in the Western Kentucky city. Ascend Elements in partnership with South Korea-based SK ecoplant announced last year?a planned $65 million lithium-ion battery recycling plant, which would shred and recycle. 24,000 metric tons of EV batteries annually. Ascend Elements had previously stated the construction of that plant should be completed by January 2025.?

The Hoptown Chronicle has previously reported the recycled batteries will help supply another planned Ascend Elements plant, dubbed Apex 1, creating cathode active materials that constitute battery cells. The DOE has invested more than $480 million into the Apex 1 projects.?

Correction: This story previously misstated the $125 million in federal funding was for a planned battery recycling plant sponsored by SK ecoplant and Ascend Elements. The funding is instead for a new, separate effort in Hopkinsville to recycle graphite from batteries sponsored by Orbia and Ascend Elements.

District Judge Kevin Mullins was pronounced dead at the courthouse in Whitesburg. (Kentucky Court of Justice photo)

A sheriff in Eastern Kentucky has been charged with murder after allegedly shooting a district court judge Thursday at the Letcher County Courthouse in Whitesburg.?

Kentucky State Police said District Judge Kevin Mullins, 54, was pronounced dead at the scene with multiple gunshot wounds.

Letcher County Sheriff Shawn M. “Mickey” Stines, 43, was charged with one count of murder in the first degree, according to a news release by state police Thursday night.

Stines ??fatally shot Mullins following an argument inside the courthouse, state police said, and Stines was taken into custody at the scene without incident.?

The Mountain Eagle reported Thursday reported that Stines had “allegedly walked into the judge’s outer office, told court employees and others gathered there that he needed to speak with Mullins alone. The two then went into the inner office, closed the door and those outside heard shots. Stines walked out with his hands up and surrendered to police.” The newspaper reported that Stines had been seen handcuffed in the courthouse foyer.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear in a social media post? wrote that he’d been informed a Letcher County district judge had been shot and killed in his chambers. “There is far too much violence in this world, and I pray there is a path to a better tomorrow,” Beshear wrote on social media.

On Friday morning, Beshear, answering questions during a news briefing, said it would be inappropriate for him to comment on the investigation and appeared to allude to rumors circulating about motive. “I know there’s a whole lot that’s out there on the internet and elsewhere. This is an active, ongoing investigation,” Beshear said. As a former prosecutor and the former AG, I’m not going to comment on any pieces of it to make sure that the state police can continue that investigation. They will follow the evidence. When they have it, they will comment on motive, and then it will be prosecuted by the Commonwealth attorney, Jackie Steele.”

Letcher County Schools posted on social media that Kentucky State Police had advised them to go into lockdown Thursday because of the shooting.?

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman in a social media post wrote he and 27th Judicial Circuit Commonwealth’s Attorney Jackie Steele, who serves Knox and Laurel counties, would collaborate as special prosecutors in the case involving the “deadly shooting” and that the two would “fully investigate and pursue justice.”

Kentucky Chief Justice Laurance VanMeter in a statement Thursday night expressed shock “at this act of violence” and said the court system is shaken by the news. He said his prayers are with Mullins’ “family and the Letcher County community as they try to process and mourn this tragic loss. I ask for respect and privacy on their behalf.

“We will continue to monitor this situation. Out of respect for the ongoing investigation, we are unable to share further details. We are committed to supporting law enforcement in their efforts and will avoid any actions that could impede their important work. Our priority at this time is the well-being and safety of the Kentucky Court of Justice family.”

Mullins, of Jackhorn, was an assistant commonwealth’s attorney before being appointed district judge in 2009. He won election to the office in 2010. He is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and University of Louisville law school.

Stines, of McRoberts, was elected sheriff in 2018 and reelected in 2022. The Mountain Eagle reported in 2019 that Stines worked briefly as a Neon police officer and for the Letcher County sheriff and then worked for six years as a court bailiff in Letcher County until becoming sheriff.

Portion of a flyer issued by law enforcement on Sept. 8, the day after the shootings. (Source: FBI)

Law enforcement officials in a Wednesday evening news conference said they think a body found near where five people were shot on Interstate 75 in Laurel County is the alleged shooter.?

Kentucky State Police Commissioner Phillip Burnett Jr. said confirmation that the body was Joseph Couch, 32, would have to await an autopsy Thursday in Frankfort. Burnett said a weapon was found near the body but did not offer details on how long officials think the body had been there or how Couch died.?

“Sometimes these things take time, and that’s what this one did. But this was about perseverance, that we did not give up,” Burnett said. “We brought it to a successful conclusion.”?

WKYT in Lexington reported that a couple who had been hunting for Couch, Fred and Sheila McCoy, said they found the body Wednesday after observing an increase in vultures near the area. They told WKYT that they began looking for Couch in the dense woods as a “date night” idea and have been live-streaming their searches on a YouTube channel called “Hatfields and McCoys Museum Adventures.”

Fred McCoy told WKYT they were hoping to claim the $35,000 reward offered for information leading to Couch’s arrest but also wanted to help restore normalcy to shaken residents. Schools in southern Kentucky had canceled classes and football games in response to Couch’s disappearance after the shootings.?

Burnett said the couple who had found the body would be receiving $15,000 from the Laurel County Crime Stoppers and another $10,000 from a private donation.?

Laurel County Sheriff John Root said he wanted prayers for the victims of the shooting along with prayers for Couch’s family.?

“He’s a human being, and I wish we could have took him alive. It just so happened that we didn’t,” Root said.?

Couch is charged with attempted murder and assault for allegedly shooting at cars from a ledge overlooking I-75, shutting down the interstate for hours on the evening of Sept. 7. All five people who were wounded in the shooting have been released from hospitals.?

Couch left behind a car and an AR-15 rifle he had legally purchased the day of the shooting. He texted his ex-wife that he was “going to kill a lot of people” and then himself.

The shooting set off a manhunt over 28,000 acres that employed state and federal law enforcement, dogs, drones, a National Guard Black Hawk helicopter and surveillance cameras. On Tuesday, officials announced a shift in the focus of the search to increasing police presence in nearby communities.

Growth in clean vehicle jobs made up approximately 45% of Kentucky’s overall clean energy job growth of 2,389 jobs added last year, the report says.?(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Kentucky for the second straight year had the nation’s second fastest growth in clean energy jobs, though the state still lags in the actual number of such jobs, according to an annual report that focuses on economic development and energy.

The report from E2, which describes itself as a nonpartisan business group that advocates “for smart policies that are good for the economy and good for the environment,” found Kentucky’s 6.5% increase in clean energy jobs tied with Texas and was behind only Alabama. Nationwide clean energy employment grew 4.5% and added nearly 150,000 jobs, with the South outpacing the rest of the country.

The group’s definition of clean energy employment is broad, including jobs created through renewable energy industries, modernizing the electric grid and improving home and business energy efficiency. The definition of clean energy jobs also includes jobs generated through clean vehicles, ranging from hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, hybrid plug-in vehicles to fully electric vehicles (EVs). Growth in clean vehicle jobs made up approximately 45% of Kentucky’s overall clean energy job growth of 2,389 jobs added last year.?

Despite the growth in clean energy jobs, Kentucky had significantly fewer of them overall at the beginning of this year than all of its neighbors except West Virginia. The per capita rate of clean energy jobs is also lower in Kentucky than surrounding states except West Virginia.?

• Kentucky: 39,639 clean energy jobs and 19.8 clean jobs per capita.
• Illinois: 129,282 clean energy jobs and 21.4 clean energy jobs per capita.
• Indiana: 90,155 clean energy jobs and 28.3 clean energy jobs per capita.
• Ohio: 119,575 clean energy jobs and 21.7 clean energy jobs per capita.
• Missouri: 58,836 clean energy jobs and 20.2 clean energy jobs per capita.
• Tennessee: 86,656 clean energy jobs and 26.4 clean energy jobs per capita.
• Virginia: 99,774 clean energy jobs and 24.4 clean energy jobs per capita.
• West Virginia: 10,394 clean energy jobs and 15 clean energy jobs per capita.

The report found that 1 in 16 new jobs nationwide, or 6.4%, were in clean energy. In Kentucky, 6.7% of new jobs were in clean energy.?Nearly half of the country’s approximately 3.4 million clean energy jobs came from construction, according to the E2 report.

Mike Proctor, the publicity chair for the EV advocacy group Evolve KY, pointed to EV manufacturing announcements in Kentucky — such as the massive BlueOval SK EV battery factories under construction in Glendale and a potential EV-focused plant in Shelby County. Gov. Andy Beshear has said the Ford project requires almost 2,600 construction workers. Proctor said the large projects will also have an economic multiplier effect, creating jobs in other industries beyond the plants, from companies that support the EV supply chain to restaurants that feed the workers.

“Every one of those things are going to have, you know, a support structure to provide parts and what not. I’m sure a number of those vendors will be Kentucky based as well,” Proctor said. “Even a hot dog stand outside the Glendale plant, I’m sure they’re doing a bang-up business for lunch.”?

Most of Kentucky’s clean energy jobs come from work in vehicles and energy efficiency, including efficient HVAC systems,? lighting and appliances.

E2, which has been tracking clean energy jobs since 2015, also ranked Kentucky as the second fastest growing state for clean energy employment in its 2023 report.?

E2 Executive Director Bob Keefe in a statement credited Congress’? passage of the “game-changing” Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its clean energy incentives for an increase last year of almost 150,000 clean energy jobs nationwide — up 4.5% from the year before.

“But we’re just getting started,” Keefe said in his statement. “The biggest threats to this unprecedented progress are misguided efforts to repeal or rollback parts of the IRA, despite the law’s clear benefits both to American workers and the communities where they live.”

No Republican on Capitol Hill voted for the passage of the IRA in 2022, decrying the hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for electric vehicles and renewable energy as something that could drive up prices and warp markets. Republicans may soon decide whether to repeal some parts of the law. E2 in a separate report published in August found nearly 60% of announced clean vehicle and clean energy projects since the passage of the IRA have been in Republican-represented congressional districts, representing 85% of total investment tracked by the group.?

Andy McDonald, a Frankfort-based clean energy advocate and energy policy analyst, told the Lantern that at least two renewable energy projects in Franklin County can be attributed to incentives provided through the IRA: The county extension office added solar panels and a battery system.? Frankfort’s municipal utility is considering expanding its community solar installation.?

“The municipal utility provides electricity to local people, and so reducing their cost of electricity with clean energy should produce less pressure on rates for all of their customers,” McDonald said.

Record rainfall — at times more than 4 inches in an hour — in late July 2022 produced widespread flash floods in southeastern Kentucky, killing 45 people. Command Sergeant Major Tim Lewis of the Kentucky National Guard secures Candace Spencer, 24, while she holds her son Wyatt Spencer, 1, after being airlifted on July 30, 2022 from South Fork in Breathitt County. (Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

Lauren Cagle wants to make something clear. Despite popular assumptions about Kentuckians’ priorities and politics, they do care about climate change.

Cagle, a University of Kentucky professor of writing, rhetoric and digital studies, told the Lantern despite narratives that “red states have a certain point of view on climate change,” the reality of what’s happening in communities across the state is much different.?

“There’s so much work happening around climate, and when we put all those people in a room together, that becomes visible in a way that’s undeniable,” Cagle said.?

An event at the University of Kentucky later this month will do that by bringing together Kentuckians from a wide range of fields including researchers, grassroots organizers and government employees and leaders to share insights and spark collaboration on dealing with the increasing threat of climate change.?

Speakers at the Kentucky Climate Symposium on Sept. 26 will include nonprofit housing developers in Eastern Kentucky, a representative from the Kentucky Division for Air Quality, and former Kentucky Poet Laureate Silas House, who will be one of those giving opening remarks at the event.?

Cagle also leads the Kentucky Climate Consortium, a network of higher education researchers that organized the day-long event. She hopes sessions and speakers on disaster preparedness and public health can build a broader network of Kentuckians focused on climate change.?

“There are so many ways that we can partner with people that we don’t see eye to eye with on every issue and still make progress heading in a direction that we all like,” Cagle said. “That is an approach to climate solutions that we have seen be successful in other places, and it can be successful here in Kentucky.”?

Speakers come from a variety of backgrounds including:

• ?Michael Borchers, the hydrology and hydraulics section chief at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Louisville District.
• Scott McReynolds, the executive director of the Housing Development Alliance in Eastern Kentucky.
• Jerry Brotzge, the Kentucky state climatologist at Western Kentucky University.
• Misty Skaggs, a co-founder of EKY Mutual Aid, a network of volunteers providing financial assistance and other support to Eastern Kentuckians.?
• Steve Velasco III, the Kentucky state veterinarian
• Eboni Cochran, co-director of Rubbertown Emergency ACTion (REACT), a grassroots organization trying to protect Louisville residents from air pollution coming from Rubbertown, the name for a collection of industrial and chemical plants along the Ohio River.?

Cochran, the co-director of REACT, told the Lantern she wants to make sure the discussion goes beyond conversations about reducing greenhouse gas emissions to also look at climate change? through an environmental justice lens and how it directly impacts Kentucky.

In Louisville’s Rubbertown, she said, more storms, flooding and higher risks of tornadoes from climate change could expose residents to chemical leaks from nearby chemical and other industrial plants.

“How do chemical facilities fortify their facilities to make sure that when their power goes out, or if there’s flooding, that we don’t have adverse impacts in our neighborhoods where we either have to evacuate, or we just have to shelter in place or we just have to breathe it in — all of that,” Cochran said.?

Cochran said she’s looking forward to dialogue at the symposium between government leaders and grassroots organizers and hearing about each other’s work. How to fortify people living in impacted neighborhoods is a critical part of that conversation for her.?

Cagle believes finding common ground on solutions for climate change in Kentucky is possible, despite sometimes conflicting stances among the expected attendees. For example, she said nonprofit electric utility East Kentucky Power Cooperative is sending representatives to the symposium. The utility has welcomed major federal funding to add renewable energy while also fighting federal regulations seeking to curb greenhouse gas emissions from its fossil fuel-fired power plants. An East Kentucky Power spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment asking about their attendance.?

The only baseline attendees should have in the room, Cagle said, is that “everyone agrees climate change is happening.”?

According to December 2023 estimates from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 62% of Kentuckians think global warming is happening, below the national average of 72%. Among Kentuckians, 48% think global warming is caused mostly by human activity, below the national average of 58%.?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body of the world’s leading climate scientists, in its latest synthesis report found human activities primarily from greenhouse gas emissions have “unequivocally” caused global warming with impacts to ecosystems on land and water, increases in extreme heat events and sea level rises likely attributed to climate change.?

“Obviously, we’re going to have disagreements. That’s healthy,” Cagle said. “We need to create spaces where we can have those conversations and where we can get out of the trap of just constantly talking about, ‘is it happening or not.’”?

The Kentucky Public Service Commission regulates the rates and services of more than 1,100 utilities, ranging from large investor-owned electric providers like Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities to small water districts that provide drinking water to rural communities.?(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

A former elected official from Eastern Kentucky who was part of Democratic leadership in the Kentucky House has been appointed to a powerful board regulating Kentucky utilities.??

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear named John Will Stacy of West Liberty, a state representative from 1993 to 2015, to the three-member Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC).

Stacy was House majority whip serving alongside then-House Speaker Greg Stumbo and then-House Majority Leader Rocky Adkins, who is now a senior advisor to Beshear.

?A spokesperson for Beshear’s office did not immediately respond to questions about why Stacy was appointed and what experience he has in utility regulation.

Stacy replaces Kent Chandler, the former chair and leader of the commission. Chandler resigned from his post in June to the dismay of some consumer advocates and told the Lantern he had no indication or confidence he would have been reappointed by Beshear. Beshear earlier this year made PSC commissioner Angie Hatton, another former Democratic state representative from Eastern Kentucky, the new chair of the commission.?

Stacy served on the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee, shaping state budgets during his time as a lawmaker. He supported the construction of a prospective natural gas pipeline that had some landowners worried over the potential use of eminent domain. After deciding not to seek reelection in 2014, Stacy worked as an economic development director at Morehead State University and also served as Morgan County judge executive from 2019 to 2023. He earned an undergraduate degree from Morehead and a law degree from Northern Kentucky University.

The PSC regulates the rates and services of more than 1,100 utilities, ranging from large investor-owned electric providers like Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities to small water districts that provide drinking water to rural communities.?

The quasi-judicial state agency hears requests from utilities to retire or build new facilities, including solar installations that want to establish in Kentucky. The agency also fields complaints from Kentuckians about service and rates. The commission will have to work with a new board created by the legislature to slow the retirement of fossil fuel-fired power plants in the state.?

Stacy will require confirmation by the GOP-dominated Kentucky Senate during next year’s legislative session to remain in his position, something that hasn’t been a guarantee. Amy Cubbage, an attorney who formerly served as Beshear’s general counsel among other roles in his administration, wasn’t confirmed by the Senate to the PSC in 2022.

Children play football in the Delafield area of Bowling Green on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024. The neighborhood is in line for 350 new trees. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

It began with the smell. Joyce Tann, 75, had lived in her Bowling Green neighborhood of Delafield for close to a decade when she started conversations on her front porch with women from a local nonprofit trying to solve neighborhood problems:

The loud truck traffic rumbling past. Landlords who have let properties become “rundown.” And the “horrible” smells wafting over from the city’s wastewater treatment plant.?

Delafield, a historically blue collar and diverse neighborhood across the railroad tracks from downtown Bowling Green and Western Kentucky University, had been “neglected” in the past, Tann said, compared to other parts of the college town.?

“We’re working on things, you know, to make it a lot better.”

Tann now leads the Delafield Neighborhood Group which aims to build bonds among neighbors and tackle challenges facing the community; already, changes made at the treatment plant in response to the neighbors’ complaints and advocacy have provided a lot of relief from the odor. She’s worked alongside the nonprofit that had first approached her, Hotel Inc., which also launched a neighborhood grocery co-op in 2022 to fill the gap from a local grocery closing about a decade ago.?

Tann is excited about the next improvement coming to Delafield: hundreds of new trees.

Grants will promote greener communities

Through a nearly $150,000 grant, local nonprofits will be planting about 350 trees in Delafield and nearby areas including 30 trees at Parker-Bennett-Curry Elementary, a neighborhood school, starting as early as October.

It’s? part of federal funding coming to 16 communities across Kentucky to plant trees, launch education programs and promote greener communities. It’s part of a federal push to increase communities’ resilience to climate change impacts. Increased tree canopy, for example, provides cooling? and respite from extreme heat.?

“They are a protection, really, from the wind. They’re so colorful, and they’re nice — the shade that they give you,” Tann said. “We want people to be able to come over in this area and enjoy being over here.”?

Tann said along with sizable Black and Latino populations, Delafield is also home to immigrants. The International Center of Kentucky in Bowling Green has resettled families from all across the world. At Parker-Bennett-Curry Elementary, 68% of students are multilingual with 21 different home languages spoken, according to a local school district spokesperson.?

Melanie Lawrence, the executive director of Operation PRIDE, the nonprofit seeking to beautify Bowling Green that received the federal grant, said the trees will be planted in tandem with efforts to build sidewalks in the neighborhood and extend a greenway into the area.?

The trees could cleanse the air of odors from the treatment plant and nearby industry, provide shade and cooler temperatures along the streets and improve the wellbeing of local residents. University of Louisville research recently found the planting of thousands of trees and greenery across a Louisville neighborhood equated to “medicine,” improving inflammation biomarkers for local residents.?

“We thought this would be complementary because walking down a sidewalk with no trees gets pretty warm,” Lawrence said. “I have everybody on board. We’re ready to hit the ground running.”

Volunteers from another nonprofit Re-Tree BG, seeking to expand tree canopy in Bowling Green, will also be launching a tree education program at Parker-Bennett-Curry Elementary for students.?

The Bowling Green project is one of more than a dozen funded by grants through a partnership between the Kentucky Division of Forestry and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Urban and Community Forestry Program. The funding, made possible through the? federal Inflation Reduction Act, is going towards tree planting efforts ranging from schools in Lexington to replacing trees lost to tornadoes in Western Kentucky.?

Succeeding lost giants in Ludlow

The Ohio River-bound city of Ludlow in Northern Kentucky is using almost $79,000 to conduct a survey of existing tree canopy, establish a tree ordinance regulating and protecting tree canopy, along with planting an additional 80 trees.?

Shane Hamant, the public works director for Ludlow, pointed to the riverfront city park where the tree canopy is “sparse.” “Just the beautification of the city itself, it reduces heat,” Hamant said, mentioning the city has lost “huge” oak and maple trees at the park in recent years.?

According to a release from state officials, the projects will plant 3,338 trees, create 34 tree wells or soil cells which protect trees especially in cityscapes, remove 50 declining or hazardous trees, create nine urban forestry or greenspace plans covering over 2,302 acres, launch hundreds of educational and community events and create or support 55 jobs.?

For Lawrence, the Operation PRIDE director in Bowling Green, the tree planting effort in the Delafield area is a part of a larger goal to give neighborhoods that have been ignored in the past proper attention and care.?

“The railroad tracks divided this town as it has many other towns,” Lawrence said. “We have a strong belief that everybody deserves beauty and respect.”?

Kentucky’s 2024 Urban and Community Forestry Assistance Grants

East Kentucky Power Cooperative, which distributes electricity to 16 cooperatives, plans to add solar installations generating 757 megawatts of power and expand transmission infrastructure. (Getty Images)

A Kentucky electric utility serving more than 570,000 homes, farms and businesses across 89 counties is getting a federal funding boost to invest in renewable energy.?

East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC), based in Winchester, is one of 16 rural electric utilities across the country selected to receive a portion of $7.3 billion through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Empowering Rural America program (New ERA), made possible through the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.?

EKPC spokesperson Nick Comer in a statement said the nonprofit utility is finalizing a funding agreement with the USDA. Neither USDA or EKPC said how much financing the utility is in line to receive. Comer said most of the energy projects in the agreement will require approval by the Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC), the state’s utility regulator.

“Federal New ERA funding will provide a major boost for EKPC to add renewable resources and reduce carbon dioxide emissions while keeping costs competitive for rural Kentucky residents,” Comer said.?

President Joe Biden announced the funding during a visit to Wisconsin Thursday with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The program specifically targets rural member-owned electric cooperatives, and EKPC provides electricity to 16 electric cooperatives in the state. A USDA press release states EKPC will use the funding, the amount yet to be finalized, to “construct or procure” 757 megawatts of renewable electricity along with improving “the regional transmission grid to support renewable projects and increase energy efficiency.”?

The USDA release states the investment will reduce pollution, including carbon dioxide emissions, by 2.3 million tons every year, equating to the pollution from 554,000 gasoline-powered cars annually.

EKPC proposed earlier this year to build two solar installations in Fayette and Marion counties generating a combined 136 megawatts of electricity, and it’s not immediately clear if New ERA program funding would be used for the installations. New ERA program applicants can seek grants, loans or a combination of the two with the award not to exceed $970 million for each applicant.?

According to documents filed in April with the PSC, the two solar installations are set to be funded by both private and public bonds. Tom Stachnik, EKPC vice president of finance, in written testimony said the utility at that time was applying for New ERA program funding that “could result in additional favorable financing options.”?

While EKPC has taken advantage of funding that federal officials say will result in a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change, the utility is also supporting a legal challenge to federal regulations that seek to curb nearly all greenhouse gas emissions by 2032 from existing coal-fired power plants and new natural gas-fired power plants. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is among a number of plaintiffs including Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman that are challenging the regulations.?

According to the utility’s annual report in 2023, EKPC sourced 59% of its electricity from burning coal. Coal is considered to be the worst emitter of greenhouse gasses compared to other electricity sources.

Appalachian Voices, an advocacy group pushing for clean energy and environmental protection across Appalachia, lauded the investments made through the New ERA program. But a representative of the group argued more needs to be done to move rural electric cooperatives away from fossil fuels.?

“Rural electric cooperatives still rely heavily on inefficient, expensive fossil fuels that create pollution and harmful waste,” said Bri Knisley, director of public power campaigns at Appalachian Voices. “Even with this enormous investment, rural electric cooperatives still have tens of billions of dollars in need to help retire fossil fuel-based facilities and replace them with clean, sustainable energy.”

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman (Kentucky Lantern photo by Mathew Mueller)

The manufacturer of a so-called “risk-free” gaming machine is hitting the pause button in Kentucky after Attorney General Russell Coleman said the machines are illegal under a ban passed by lawmakers last year.?

Bob Heleringer, an attorney for Prominent Technologies, told the Lantern the company strongly disagrees with Coleman’s advisory but is directing businesses with the “risk free” machines to turn them off while a legal challenge to the ban continues.?

The slot-style gaming devices? — dubbed “gray machines” because of their murky legal status — were found in many bars and gas stations around the state; the legislature outlawed them in 2023 in a bill signed by Gov. Andy Beshear.?

Opponents argue the machines are illegal gambling, while proponents refer to the machines as “skill games.”?

Louisville Public Media reported earlier this year that manufacturer Prominent Technologies said their machines had been changed to become “no risk” games that comply with the ban. The machines tell the user whether their next game will win money or lose money, which the company argues removes the risk from using the machines.?

But Coleman in an advisory released Tuesday wrote such games are illegal because the user still will not know the outcome of future games beyond the next one. “Thus, the game lures the player into continuing to play on the chance that the next game play will result in a win worth more than he will have to pay for the current play,” Coleman wrote. “This hope that the subsequent game play will be a winner is the ‘element of chance’ that makes these so-called ‘Risk-Free Plays’ games illegal gambling devices. There is no safe harbor in Kentucky’s gambling laws for this kind of game.”?

Coleman in his advisory wrote that with a Franklin Circuit Court ruling upholding the “gray machines” ban, local prosecutors are “free to investigate and prosecute any violations of the Commonwealth’s gambling laws, including the laws related to ‘gray machines.’” That ruling is being appealed by plaintiffs including the company Pace-O-Matic, a competitor to Prominent Technologies.?

Heleringer, the lawyer for Prominent Technologies, said the company notified Coleman’s office in January that it was installing “risk free” games and attorneys for the company met with staff from Coleman’s office in August. He said that despite the two sides’ disagreement, the company would resolve matters in the “legal arena.”?

Heleringer derided Coleman’s use in the advisory of a court decision from 1918, in which Coleman compared the “risk free” game machines to slot-style machines that offered users “redeemable chips.”?

“No one is lured into anything,” Heleringer said. “If they make a conscious decision as an adult to play a game and that game tells them the next play is not a winning game, not a winning move, they can elect at that point to get their money back.”?

Rich Storm oversees a $100 million budget as commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. He was just reappointed to another four-year contract. (KDFWR photo)

The board overseeing Kentucky’s wildlife management agency has reappointed its chief executive Rich Storm, including board members appointed by Gov. Andy Beshear who in the past has clashed with Storm and the department.

With no discussion, the state Fish and Wildlife Commission voted unanimously on Aug. 30 to give Storm a new four-year contract as commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR).?

The new contract begins July 1, 2025. Storm’s current base salary of $155,820.48 will remain the same. No other details from the contract were available. A KDFWR spokesperson said the contract is still being finalized and will have to be approved by the legislature’s Government Contract Review Committee

Storm’s salary is slightly higher than statewide Republican constitutional officers ($152,551.92) but less than Cabinet for Health and Family Services Secretary Eric Friedlander ($160,364.16) and Beshear ($179,442.96), according to the state’s salary database.?

The commission by law is made up of nine volunteer hunters and anglers and directed to keep a “watchful eye” over an agency whose wide ranging duties include enforcing hunting and wildlife regulations. KDFWR manages a $100 million annual operating budget with revenue coming fromhunting and fishing license fees, boat registration fees and federal grants.

The commission met behind closed doors for almost two hours in executive session to discuss Storm’s contract and some land purchases. Back in open session, commission members didn’t mention Storm by name or discuss his reappointment. Commission members contacted by the Lantern said they decided to renew Storm’s contract because he has been a good leader for the department. They declined to talk or offered few details about the discussions in the executive session.?

Lisa Jackson, a KDFWR spokesperson, in a statement said Storm was “honored to be reappointed and entrusted with continued leadership.” Contract negotiations began in March, Jackson said. “The negotiations were productive and he looks forward to continuing his public service on behalf of the sportsmen and sportswomen of the Commonwealth and to help the Department achieve its mission,” Jackson said.?

Robin Floyd, the 1st District commission member representing Western Kentucky and a Beshear appointee, told the Lantern that Storm had a “rough start,” referencing how Storm became the department’s chief executive.

Politics swirl around who will oversee Kentucky Fish and Wildlife

In 2019, the commission controversially hired Storm when he was serving as chair of the commission which had already interviewed eight candidates for the top post, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. Storm asked to be considered for the job after the commission named three finalists and recused himself as chair. The newspaper reported Storm wasn’t on the search committee seeking a commissioner, according to the department’s human resources director.

But Floyd said Storm has done an “exemplary job” since then with duties that go beyond “just fish and wildlife.”?

“You need somebody that actually is pretty good at business, someone that’s really good at interacting with the legislature, and Commissioner Storm just checked all the boxes,” Floyd said. “That’s why you saw a unanimous vote to reappoint him.”?

Under Storm, the KDFWR and the Beshear administration have clashed numerous times, including over the length of Storm’s contract and executive branch oversight of procurement and conservation easements. Storm has powerful allies in the Republican-controlled legislature. And this year, the Democratic governor pushed back against the state Senate’s failure in recent years to hold confirmation votes on his appointments to the commission. Beshear also criticized an unsuccessful bill that would have given the governor’s power to appoint Fish and Wildlife Commission members to the agriculture commissioner and administratively attach the KDFWR to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.?

Kentucky hunters, anglers decry proposal to put Fish and Wildlife under agriculture department

Beshear told reporters in March that senators had to “stop protecting leadership of what I think is the most corrupt part of state government.” When a Lantern reporter asked Beshear to explain his comments later that month, the governor pointed to the controversial way that Storm was hired and also cited a 2018 special examination from then-Auditor Mike Harmon, a Republican, who called for a “change in culture” at the agency when Storm was a member of the commission.?

Beshear’s criticism of the Senate for rejecting commission appointments echoed concerns from some hunters and anglers including the Kentucky League of Sportsmen, an organization representing thousands of hunters around the state.?

Adam Mullins, president of the League of Sportsmen, told the Lantern the organization didn’t have an immediate statement on Storm’s reappointment.?

The Senate ultimately confirmed nearly all of Beshear’s appointments to the commission this year. Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, told the Lantern the appointments were confirmed after “lots of discussion, lots of review, lots of research.” Protecting Storm, who was doing a “really good job” he said, from a “type of retaliatory appointment” that would remove the commissioner was a priority.?

Those appointment confirmations left one vacancy on the commission. The rest of the commission seats are filled by Beshear appointments including Floyd, who joined the board in 2021.??

“If you’re in a position like Mr. Storm is, you have to work with everyone. And I think he does a good job of that,” Floyd said.?

The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment asking about the reappointment of Storm.?

The Kentucky Public Service Commission regulates the rates and services of more than 1,100 utilities, ranging from large investor-owned electric providers like Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities to small water districts that provide drinking water to rural communities.?(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Gov. Andy Beshear has filled two seats on a new energy planning commission with utility executives who, like Beshear, opposed the commission’s creation.

Kentucky lawmakers earlier this year created the Energy Planning and Inventory Commission (EPIC) to slow the retirement of power plants fueled by coal and natural gas.

Investor-owned utilities and environmentalists opposed the legislation which Beshear vetoed, calling it unconstitutional for “numerous reasons.” The new law also was opposed by the United Way of Kentucky, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and chambers of commerce around the state. The Republican-controlled legislature easily overrode Beshear’s veto.?

Among Beshear’s first eight appointees to the 18-member board are Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities CEO and President John Crockett and Duke Energy senior vice president Brian Weisker. The law requires that one of the governor’s appointees represent?a Kentucky investor-owned utility.

Weisker in a statement to the Lantern said he agreed to serve despite opposing Senate Bill 349 which created EPIC because it’s “vital that Duke Energy continues to have a voice in securing Kentucky’s energy future.”?

In March, Crockett told state lawmakers EPIC would be an “inherently political body” and that he feared it would be “just another layer of bureaucracy.” Crockett also has pushed back against Senate President Robert Stivers’ assertion that the state is “facing an electric reliability crisis.” LG&E and KU spokesperson Liz Pratt said Crockett agreed to serve on EPIC to “allow us to be part of the evaluation process and help responsibly shape the future of energy” while providing insights to “the long-term energy solutions proposed for the communities we serve and for Kentucky.”?

“As regulated utilities, we must make decisions in the best interests of all of our customers and continue providing safe, reliable and affordable energy,” Pratt said.?

Beshear also appointed Jeffrey Brock, an executive for Kentucky’s largest coal producer Alliance Resource Partners. Alliance’s CEO is Joe Craft, a prominent donor in Republican politics along with his wife and former candidate for Kentucky governor Kelly Craft. Brock serves on the Kentucky Coal Association’s board of directors.?

Under the new law, most of EPIC’s decision-making power will be vested in a five-person executive committee. Beshear appointed Eston Glover to represent utilities on the executive committee. Glover is the former president and CEO of Pennyrile Rural Electric Cooperative and chair of the Pennyrile Regional Energy Agency that’s trying to build a natural gas pipeline in Western Kentucky.?

Glover told the Lantern he had received a call asking about his interest in serving on EPIC but hadn’t spoken with the governor personally. He said he wanted to learn more about EPIC and its duties before commenting. “I’m interested in energy. I’m interested in making our community better and our region better and this state better,” Glover said.?

The new law puts the director of the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research, Rodney Andrews, on the executive committee. Andrews testified before lawmakers last week he is doing the “very early” work of understanding EPIC’s scope. Andrews would serve as EPIC’s executive director unless the executive committee chooses someone else.?

Beshear still has to appoint a third executive committee member who has experience serving as a CEO or board member “of a company engaged in the production of coal.” The full board will choose the final two members of the executive committee.?

The new law set a July 1 deadline for Beshear to appoint EPIC members. He still has multiple appointments to make from nominations by industry groups such as the Kentucky Oil and Gas Association, Kentucky Association of Electric Cooperatives and Kentucky Industrial Utility Customers. The law reserves one seat for an appointee representing residential electricity consumers.

The law also requires EPIC to submit a study of the state’s electricity supply and the impact of federal policies on it by Dec. 1.?

Another of Beshear’s appointees, Mark Gooch, an executive of Community Trust Bank, has connections to One East Kentucky, an economic development nonprofit that opposed EPIC’s creation.??

Colby Kirk, CEO and president of One East Kentucky, told the Lantern that Gooch served on One East Kentucky’s board until 2023 and was board chair when Kirk was hired. Kirk emphasized Gooch wasn’t involved with the decision to oppose SB 349 this year. Gooch didn’t return emails or a message at his office requesting an interview.

Kirk said One East Kentucky’s decision to oppose the creation of EPIC was spurred by their local investor-owned utility Kentucky Power. Kentucky Power’s COO and president Cynthia Wiseman serves as the current board chair of One East Kentucky, and Community Trust Bank has membership on the board.?

“I felt that it’s just another, I would think, unnecessary barrier or layer of red tape,” Kirk said of EPIC. “We already have a Public Service Commission, and we already have an Office of Energy Policy. You know, what’s the real function of this?”

Christina Lee Brown, a philanthropist and supporter of the University of Louisville Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute, was described as a driver in getting the tree project off the ground. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

LOUISVILLE — A research project years in the making through the University of Louisville, The Nature Conservancy and other partners has found planting thousands of trees and shrubs in a south Louisville neighborhood has improved the health of hundreds of residents.?

The University of Louisville’s Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute launched the Green Heart Louisville Project in 2018. It has planted more than 8,000 large trees and shrubs across a four-mile area and studied the health of 745 nearby residents before and after the trees were planted.?

The researchers took blood, urine, hair and nail samples to collect health data from residents while also measuring tree coverage and air pollution levels in the area. The researchers then compared the collected data to city residents outside the research area.?

The results, announced before a crowd of supporters Tuesday in Wyandotte Park in south Louisville, showed residents living in the greener area had 13% to 20% lower levels of biomarkers for general inflammation.

Trees along a walking path in Wyandotte Park are among the thousands planted in neighborhoods and along the nearby highway corridor. “You all see those beautiful trees that are behind me? Well, they are more than beautiful. They are medicine,” said University of Louisville President Kim Schatzel to the crowd of supporters. “They are part of the revolutionary project to document and understand how trees affect the health of people living around them.”?

The biomarkers measured are called high-sensitivity C-reactive proteins, and higher levels of those proteins are strongly connected to cardiovascular disease and, according to a University of Louisville release, are “an even stronger indicator of heart attack than cholesterol levels.” Higher levels of the proteins are also connected to increased risk for diabetes and some cancers.?

Aruni Bhatnagar, the director of the Christiana Lee Brown Envirome Institute, framed the research as having the potential to significantly reduce heart attacks among Louisivillians.?

“We have over 1,800 to 2,000 heart attacks in Louisville every year, and if you can even decrease 10%? — that’s 200 lesser heart attacks,” Bhatnagar said. “If we can work on the scale that we’ve done here for the entire city, there will be a huge benefit. We can only think what it would be for the entire country.”?

Bhatnagar said while past research has shown that people living in “green communities” have a lower rate of mortality, he wasn’t aware of research like the University of Louisville project that compared the health effects of greenery added to a community.?

Toni Smith, 71, is one of the study’s participants and has lived across the highway from Wyandotte Park for the past 17 years. She said the added trees have helped beautify her neighborhood along with block some of the air and noise pollution coming from the highway.?

Smith, sitting under the shade of a tree in the park, said there’s a “certain calming aspect” to tree coverage, especially for those who love the outdoors. She said she’s a big advocate of anything that can help improve the environment and health of her neighborhood, mentioning the study has also served as a helpful health screening for participants.?

She would have had researchers plant a tree in her own yard, but there wasn’t room.?

“Because of my love of nature, I didn’t have a square inch to plant a tree, or I definitely would have had them come,” Smith said.

Rodney Andrews (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

FRANKFORT — The director of an energy research center at the University of Kentucky told state lawmakers Friday it’s not likely a nuclear power plant will be built in Kentucky over the next 10 years, though some nuclear energy companies are interested in moving to the state.?

A new state law passed by the GOP-dominated legislature this year will make Rodney Andrews, the director of the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research, the chair of a new research authority aiming to research and promote nuclear energy. The authority, administratively attached to the research center, is required by state law to present a study on workforce and education needs for nuclear energy by December, along with presenting another study by the end of 2025 determining the best locations for nuclear facilities.?

Andrews updated the Interim Natural Resources and Energy Committee on efforts to form the nuclear energy research authority along with another new commission established by lawmakers that creates new barriers to retiring a a fossil fuel-fired power plant. Both the nuclear authority and the power plant retirement review commission are administratively housed at the University of Kentucky’s research center.??

Andrews told lawmakers the state would be “extremely lucky” to see nuclear power within its borders in the next ten years, citing long permitting delays to build new nuclear power plants. Newer nuclear technology such as smaller, modular nuclear power plants have people “very excited,” he said, but no such modular reactors have been built yet.?

He said while the nuclear energy research authority isn’t fully operational yet, conversations have already started with a company that’s interested in locating a “nuclear facility” in Paducah.

“We’re also working with several companies that have expressed a strong interest in exploring bringing nuclear power to the state,” Andrews said. “There’s a great deal of interest among the utilities, but there is also significant interest from some of our largest power consumers.”?

WKMS, the public radio station in Murray, reported earlier this year a land deal was struck in McCracken County for a company seeking to use lasers to recycle depleted uranium stores, including uranium “tails” at the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in West Kentucky. Andrews declined to offer more details to the Lantern about the company interested in moving to Paducah.?

Kentucky has never had a nuclear power plant. But the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in West Kentucky produced enriched uranium for the country’s nuclear weapons program and later for commercial nuclear power plants. Maxey Flats in northeastern Kentucky served as a disposal site for low-level radioactive waste during the 20th century. Both installations contaminated surrounding soil and water and required extensive remediation.

Nuclear reactors don’t produce direct greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. But energy analysts are divided on whether nuclear energy can be developed quickly enough to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Appointment delays for board creating fossil fuel retirement barriers

Andrews also updated lawmakers on efforts to form the Energy Inventory and Planning Commission, or EPIC, a new agency that utilities would have to come to first when requesting to retire a fossil fuel-fired power plant in the state, such as plants using coal or natural gas.?

Utilities and environmentalists decried the bill establishing EPIC, saying it would result in ratepayers bearing the costs of keeping aging, uneconomical coal-fired power plants on the grid when lower-cost alternatives are available. Critics also said the board’s statutory makeup had pro-industry and pro-fossil fuel biases with little representation for the interests of ratepayers. Proponents of the bill, including Senate President Robert Stivers, argued EPIC was needed to make sure the state’s energy capacity was secure in the face of rising energy demands.?

Andrews, as director of the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research, would be a part of a five-member executive committee for EPIC alongside members representing utilities and the coal industry. Utilities would have to approach this committee and have a request to retire a fossil fuel-fired power plant analyzed before requesting the retirement before the Kentucky Public Service Commission, the state’s utility regulator that has traditionally analyzed and approved or denied power plant retirements.?

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear — who echoed the concerns of utilities in vetoing the bill and calling it unconstitutional — is over a month overdue in making appointments to EPIC. The? statutory deadline was July 1.

Sen. Robby Mills, R-Henderson, asked Andrews if the appointments to EPIC were forthcoming or if he was aware of anything that was “holding up” Beshear’s? appointments. Andrews replied the governor’s office had “gotten recommendations” and that the appointments would happen “very quickly.”?

Crystal Staley, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, in a statement to the Lantern in early July said the office was “working on a process that is legal under the Kentucky Constitution” to make the appointments, and that letters seeking nominations had been sent.?

Andrews, speaking with the Lantern after his presentation to lawmakers, said the research center can provide expertise to make sure the “work product is as technically sound as possible” for both the nuclear research authority and the fossil fuel retirement review commission.?

He told lawmakers he was in the “very early” work of building the scope of how EPIC would operate, which includes considering the state’s future power needs, including possibly? trying to attract large energy consumers such as data centers.

One of the slides from the presentation by Patrick Bowen, showing the number of needed housing units in each county as a percentage of the existing housing units. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer).

LOUISVILLE — A leader of a national real estate research firm says if no action is taken over the next five years on Kentucky’s housing shortage, more Kentuckians could be forced to live in substandard housing, live with family or friends in crowded spaces, deal with severe housing costs or become homeless.

Patrick Bowen, the president of Ohio-based Bowen National Research which conducts housing market research across the country, presented findings Wednesday at an affordable housing conference. Bowen’s report is part of a housing gap study commissioned by the Kentucky Housing Corp., the state’s independent public corporation that invests in housing projects. It? compared Kentucky’s current housing needs to projected needs in five years.?

Kentucky currently needs about 206,000 housing units, including rentals and homes for sale. Without a push to build or repair more housing, that number is projected to increase by more than 80,000 by 2029 to 287,000-plus housing units, driven significantly by the need for lower-income rentals and higher-income homes for sale.?

“It can be daunting. You can make it feel like the mountain is so high. How are you going to address this?” Bowen said. “But Kentucky, you’re not alone, right? This is a national crisis we’re going through.”

The estimate of housing needed takes into account what’s needed for a healthy housing market, to meet economic growth and to move Kentuckians out of poor-quality housing or from under? severe housing cost burdens, meaning they pay 50% or more of their income on housing.?

“If you care about the economy, care about jobs, when people spend over 50% of their income towards their housing costs, they’re not spending — they don’t have disposable income,” Bowen said.?

Bowen said while the highest need? is in the state’s largest population centers of Louisville, Lexington and Northern Kentucky, rural counties could face a similar housing supply crunch by 2029. The consultant presented a map showing the number of housing units needed in each county as a percentage of the overall number of housing units in the county.?

By 2029, the study projected the? housing gap in numerous rural counties will rise to more than 18% of their existing housing units. Simpson, Breathitt, Boyle and Carroll counties would all have a housing gap to existing households of more than 20%. Bowen said Carroll County is projected to? need only 866 housing units by 2029, but proportionally the county is “feeling this impact of the housing gap” just as much as other counties.?

“Employers are feeling it, the citizens are feeling it, and it’s true for these bigger parts of the state, but rural Kentucky shouldn’t be forgotten,” Bowen told the audience.

The increasing housing gap for low-income Kentuckians, particularly renters, is projected to substantially worsen across the state. The number of rental housing units needed in each county as a percentage of the county’s total existing rental housing units is expected to be more than 30% in nine counties by 2029 including Franklin, Breathitt, Powell, Boone and Boyle counties. The rental housing gap in Simpson County is projected to be 46.5% of its total rental housing stock by that year.?

Bowen’s firm found rental housing demand rising across all income levels but most significantly among households earning at or below 30% of an area’s median income. The gap in rental units, the study detailed, was equally driven by the growth in number of households along with those living under severe housing costs.?

A look at how federal plans could make the costs of housing more affordable?

Bowen told the Lantern that while more housing units need to be built in Kentucky, other solutions such as weatherizing and repairing existing homes or providing financial assistance to those facing severe housing costs could help reduce the housing gap as well. He said encouraging housing developments of all kinds, especially affordable housing, is key.?

“I think there should be a broad plan that allows people to stay in their homes if that’s what they want to do,” Bowen said.?

The state’s housing gap, if left unchecked, could worsen the living situations of manyKentuckians, Bowen said. More people could be forced to move into living spaces with family and could be facing severe housing costs.

“Some of these people are going to become homeless,” Bowen told the Lantern.?

Wendy Smith, deputy executive director of the Kentucky Housing Corporation, said the second phase of the corporation’s housing gap analysis should be made publicly available in September. Smith recently presented the first phase of the corporation’s analysis before a task force of lawmakers.

The Budget Reserve Trust Fund is projected at $3.5 billion by the end of fiscal 2026 — about 21.9% of General Fund revenues. (Getty Images)

Kentucky’s state budget director told lawmakers Wednesday that fiscal thresholds established by the GOP-dominated legislature before the state income tax can be lowered have been met at the end of this fiscal year.?

That means Kentucky lawmakers are likely to vote to reduce the state’s income tax rate by another half-percentage point to 3.5% during the 2025 legislative session, which would then go into effect at the start of 2026. That anticipated income tax cut is a part of a series of pending income tax cuts of a half percent set in motion by landmark tax legislation passed by state lawmakers in 2022.?

Kentucky Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee Chair Chris McDaniel told the Lantern that lawmakers have “worked diligently” toward hitting the fiscal triggers to lower the income tax.?

“The receipts were great last year and the spending was restrained, which is the combo that we were looking for back in the day when we wanted to go with this trigger scenario,” McDaniel said.?

Democrats and a coalition of advocacy groups have previously pushed against Republican-led efforts to lower the state’s income tax eventually to zero, a goal backed by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. But Republican legislative leadership told the Lexington Herald-Leader earlier this summer the state’s income tax rate may not reach lower than 3%. Kentucky House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, told the newspaper in May the state could have to significantly restructure taxes — such as by raising the sales tax — to go lower than a 3% rate.

One of the two fiscal triggers to lower the income tax rate was not met at the end of the previous fiscal year, meaning the legislature could not lower the income tax rate during this year’s regular session. At that time, McDaniel said a “successful implementation of policy” had balanced a desire to lower the income tax with recognizing the need to fund government services.?

The two fiscal triggers established by the legislature to lower the income tax rate are based on revenue going into the Budget Reserve Trust Fund, known as the “rainy day” fund, and revenue going into General Fund revenues:

• The rainy day fund balance must be at least 10% of what total General Fund receipts were in the fiscal year that just ended.?
• Total General Fund receipts for the year just ended must have exceeded General Fund spending by at least the amount that it would cost to cut the income tax rate by one full percentage point.?

In this year’s legislative session, researchers with the left-leaning think tank Kentucky Center for Economic Policy said state lawmakers moved the goalposts of the landmark tax law establishing the income tax cut triggers, thereby making it easier for the income tax rate to be lowered. These researchers say lawmakers did so by making sure billions of dollars in spending from the Budget Reserve Trust Fund didn’t count toward General Fund receipts that could have blocked another income tax cut.

Jason Bailey, executive director of KCEP, told the Lantern on Wednesday that while he appreciates hearing Republican leadership potentially reconsidering eliminating the income tax, any income tax cut is concerning because of its significance as a revenue source. If the relatively strong economy turns south, he said, that could potentially mean budget problems with a reduced income tax to rely on.?

“Each time they cut a [percentage] point, it raises questions about, ‘How are we going to pay for that?’” Bailey said.? “In addition to the economy being strong overall, the national economy and still seeing the pandemic spending flow through … some other unique characteristics … led to a lot of revenue this year, but doesn’t necessarily mean moving forward (revenue) will continue to be as strong.”?

McDaniel said funding used from the Budget Reserve Trust Fund was “never contemplated as being expenditures that otherwise count against these triggers,” saying monies from the fund were specifically one-time spending and not recurring expenditures.?

“We just had to clean up definitional items to allow it to be used in that way,” McDaniel said, characterizing the think tank as “grasping at straws.”?

The Republican state senator added he shared Osborne’s sentiment that additional income tax cuts below a 3% rate would be more difficult, but he believes lowering the income tax further wouldn’t be impossible.?

“As we see the final impact of these actions, which are still years away, we’ll really begin to make those assessments and have the conversations at that time,” McDaniel said.?

Budget Director John Hicks in his presentation to the Interim Appropriations and Revenue Committee said the Budget Reserve Trust Fund is anticipated to sit at approximately $3.5 billion by the end of fiscal year 2026 given monies lawmakers have budgeted into the fund and one-time allocations out of the fund. That amount would be about 21.9% of General Fund revenues for fiscal year 2026.?

Hicks pointed out for fiscal year 2024, revenue from individual income taxes and revenue from sales and use taxes were about the same for the first time at about $5.8 billion. Income tax revenue had declined 0.6%, and sales tax revenue had increased by 4.1% after three consecutive fiscal years of double-digit increases in sales tax revenue. The income tax and sales tax each made up approximately 37.3% of General Fund revenues, making the two revenue sources nearly three-fourths of the General Fund revenues.

“The cheapest kilowatt hour is the one you don't have to produce in the first place,” said Byron Gary, a Kentucky Resources Council attorney. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Investor-owned Kentucky Power faced strong criticism last year when it asked to increase its electricity rates in response to “historic” economic decline among the 20 Eastern Kentucky counties it serves.?

The Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC) ultimately slashed the proposed rate hike by over two-thirds, approving a 5.66% increase in residential bills. But as part of that decision, Kentucky Power agreed to collaborate with a coalition of consumer and renewable energy advocacy groups on ways to help ratepayers reduce their electricity bills by making their homes more energy efficient.

Kentucky Power ratepayers already paid the state’s highest average residential electricity bill at $187 a month before last year’s rate increase, and the area the utility serves includes some of the poorest communities in the state and the entire country.?

Advocates and the utility met over recent months, but the coalition of groups is disappointed in what Kentucky Power has proposed and plans to urge the PSC to push the utility to be more ambitious with its energy efficiency offerings. These groups say energy efficiency programs could offer home upgrades that households could repay through monthly utility bills while they save electricity and money.?

Byron Gary, a Kentucky Resources Council attorney representing the groups, said much more could be done “to cut down on the suffering of folks in Eastern Kentucky as well as the continued reliance on fossil fuels.”?

He said the groups hope robust energy efficiency offerings could also reduce the utility’s power demand and, the groups hope, dissuade the utility from building a new natural gas-fired power plant that ratepayers would bear the costs of.?

“The cheapest kilowatt hour is the one you don’t have to produce in the first place,” Gary said.?

Kentucky Power spokesperson Sarah Nusbaum in a statement said the utility is surprised and disappointed by the criticism “especially from groups we would have expected to support energy efficiency programs.” Nusbaum said the utility’s goal is to gauge interest from ratepayers in the new program offerings that could then lead to those programs being ramped up and expanded.

The ratepayers who pay the highest bills

During a hearing over Kentucky Power’s rate case last year, then-PSC Chairman Kent Chandler honed in on data provided by the utility that showed Kentucky Power’s poorest ratepayers had, on average, the highest electricity usage compared to the utility’s average residential customer. That high usage leads to high bills.

“Those customers that are likely least able to afford their bill, relative to the average residential customer, have the highest bill, is that right?” Chandler asked Kentucky Power President Cynthia Wiseman during the hearing.?

“I would presume that’s true,” Wiseman replied.?

Bills are significantly higher for those whose incomes are low enough to qualify for federal assistance through the Low Income Home Energy Program (LIHEAP), a federally funded program that helps low-income people afford utility bills.

The average monthly electricity consumption for all Kentucky residential ratepayers in 2022 was 1,094 kilowatt-hours, according to the Energy Information Administration. But the data presented by Chandler showed electricity consumption for Kentucky Power ratepayers was higher than that average — significantly higher for those receiving LIHEAP assistance.?

During the winter months when electricity consumption peaks for Kentucky Power, the Eastern Kentucky utility’s ratepayers who take part in LIHEAP on average use more than 2,500 kilowatt-hours per month. Multiply that consumption by Kentucky Power’s average residential rate? — approximately 16 cents per kilowatt in 2022, among the highest in the state? — and you get monthly electricity costs north of $400. During some months the past three winters, roughly 20% of Kentucky Power ratepayers who take part in LIHEAP have used more than 4,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, according to Kentucky Power data provided to the PSC. Wiseman during a November 2023 PSC hearing mentioned some ratepayers’ monthly electricity usage has gone as high as 6,000 kilowatt-hours.?

A major reason cited by Kentucky Power leadership for such high electricity consumption: Many homes need better insulation and better, more efficient heating sources.?

Disagreement after a collaboration

That’s where energy efficiency programs and “weatherizing” a home can play a role in reducing electricity usage and electricity bills. Chris Woolery, a residential energy coordinator for the nonprofit Mountain Association supporting economic development in Eastern Kentucky, said that kind of work can include better insulation, air sealing a home and installing energy-efficient heat pumps to warm a household.?

Many Kentuckians, Woolery said, have types of resistance heat such as electric furnaces and baseboard heaters, or they use space heaters.?

“That is some of the most expensive and inefficient heat that you can buy,” Woolery said, saying switching people to use heat pumps is key. “When a utility can invest in getting people off of resistance heat, they can often save so much money in peak demand, generation or power purchase costs that it offsets the investment.”

A focus on improving Kentucky Power’s energy efficiency programs is something that state government officials, nonprofit housing builders, consumer advocacy and renewable energy groups and Kentucky Power all collaborated on in a series of stakeholder meetings.?

The meetings were characterized as “mutually beneficial” by Barry Nolen, a customer and distribution services manager with Kentucky Power, in testimony filed before the PSC.?

Kentucky Power is proposing to add additional funding for an existing program that helps ratepayers get energy efficiency upgrades through home air sealing, new insulation, new doors, new windows and new lighting. The federal Weatherization Assistance Program is what facilitates those upgrades, but oftentimes homeowners who need that help are deferred or denied it because of damage or structural issues to a home.?

If there’s a roof leak, for example, newly installed insulation could be destroyed by water damage. That’s where the federal Weatherization Readiness Fund comes in to support ratepayers making home repairs necessary before making energy efficiency improvements. Kentucky Power is also offering additional funding for a federal fund, up to $1,000 for 60 homes over three years.

But advocates that collaborated with Kentucky Power say while the new investments are appreciated, they still don't meet the scale of the need among Kentucky Power’s ratepayers.?

“It must be in the thousands, if not the tens of thousands of homes that need improvements in Kentucky Power’s territory,” said Andy McDonald, vice-chair of the solar energy advocacy group Kentucky Solar Energy Society. “We appreciate that Kentucky Power is aware of this issue and concerned about it” but that the program “is not in proportion to the need.”

The groups also see potential for going further with new programs the utility could offer. The groups point to a type of program called Inclusive Utility Investment (IUI) where individual households could receive energy efficiency upgrades to their home in exchange for a charge on their bill, potentially saving money on their bill while the utility still recoups their investment. They also point to the potential of replicating a program offering home battery storage systems.

McDonald shared with the Lantern a consultant report from the Vermont-based consulting firm Energy Futures Group that showed the amount of investment in energy efficiency programs Kentucky Power would be proposing is much lower than what other utilities offer and lower than what Kentucky Power itself has invested in the past. The PSC in 2018 scrapped almost all of Kentucky Power’s energy efficiency programs stating the “high levels of spending” on the programs couldn’t be justified.??

Nusbaum, the Kentucky Power spokesperson, said in her statement the utility was focused on programs that were “proven and cost-effective to customers” and that the utility didn’t believe an IUI program “would provide benefits that would outweigh the cost to our customers.”?

Nusbaum also said they determined the amount of funding for the Weatherization Readiness Fund through consultation with community action agencies in the state that administer such help, an investment level the utility believes is “impactful for customers” while also being mindful of what ratepayers will have to pay on their bills to implement such programs.?

“We worked hard to develop this proposal to help our customers,” Nusbaum said. “Some of the good work we felt was accomplished to make this happen, we did with some of the groups criticizing the current proposal. It’s disappointing to hear negative feedback and opposition from these stakeholders, especially since this opposition can delay or even prevent the important [demand side management] benefits these programs will provide for our most vulnerable customers.”

Worries over fossil fuels

These disagreements over energy efficiency come as Kentucky Power is seeking more power generation, some of it potentially through additional fossil fuels. The prospect concerns advocacy groups that the cost of building, for example, a new natural gas-fired power plant would fall on ratepayers.?

“We're really excited that they're starting new programs, but we're just disappointed that the scale is not enough to affect that [natural gas] peaker plant that's proposed,” Woolery said. “Every one of those investments is so meaningful to the families that received them, but in the grand scheme it’s going to take a whole lot more to offset the need, right?”

Kentucky Power currently only has one natural gas-fired power plant and it’s unclear if the utility will have access to electricity generation from a West Virginia coal-fired power plant beyond 2028. Kentucky Power is a subsidiary of American Electric Power based Columbus, Ohio.

As of now, that leaves the utility having to purchase the rest of its power from the regional electricity grid operator PJM, which can expose the utility to potentially paying higher power prices compared to producing it on its own. The PSC scolded Kentucky Power last year for having insufficient in-house power generation available during a December 2022 winter storm, forcing the utility to pay exorbitantly high electricity prices from PJM as much of the South and Midwest faced a power demand crunch.

Kentucky Power leadership in an energy planning document filed to the PSC last year wrote its “preferred plan” for the future was to add to its energy portfolio a 480-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant along with 700 megawatts of new wind power, 800 megawatts of new solar power and 50 megawatts of electricity battery storage. The utility also put out requests to purchase up to 1,800 megawatts of fossil fuel-fired and renewable energy last year.?

Nusbaum, the utility spokesperson, in her statement said while energy efficiency programs are an important part of addressing future energy needs, it can not “alone cannot fully address all of them.”?

Woolery framed the energy efficiency programs as a choice Kentucky Power has to make: invest in a “really risky path” of adding a natural gas-fired power plant amid uncertainty over how greenhouse gas emissions will be regulated, or invest in a “virtual power plant.” He said that means investing in energy efficiency in homes, rooftop solar, household battery storage that can reduce the future energy demand — and the potential for a new natural gas fuel-fired power plant — the utility is considering.

“It just seems like the smart play, the play that's going to make more jobs, going to save more money, going to create less risk and uncertainty is to invest in ourselves, to invest in our communities,” Woolery said.

Leaders of Kentucky's Transportation Cabinet told lawmakers they were working to improve the bidding process for roadwork to encourage more competition. (Photo by Luke Sharrett/Getty Images)

New findings from Kentucky legislative researchers show the state awards significantly more road paving contracts to a single bidder than other nearby states, generally driving up the overall costs of the contracts.?

Legislative Research Commission staff presented the new findings to a committee of lawmakers Aug. 15 as a part of releasing an LRC report.

That report from December 2023 found road paving contracts awarded by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet most frequently only had one asphalt company bidding for the work and that contracts with two or more bids were rare. Single-bid road paving contracts were also more costly compared to state engineering estimates, the report said, though single-bid contract costs went down in 2022 and 2023.?

Jeremy Skinner, an analyst for the Legislative Oversight and Investigations Committee, told lawmakers that from January 2018 to July 2023, Kentucky had about 50% of its road paving contracts go to a single bidder. That percentage is much higher than neighboring Indiana, Ohio and West Virginia which had respectively 10%, 15% and 32% of contracts go to single bidders.?

“The data shows that same single-bid contracts tend to be more expensive. Therefore, anything you can do to increase competition is probably advantageous,” Skinner said.?

Skinner did caution road paving contracts from other states may not be a perfect comparison given that some states only shared partial data, and the methodologies of how states calculated the costs of projects to compare to the bids weren’t clear. Skinner’s findings also showed the cost of single-bid contracts in Kentucky, while higher than state estimates, were lower than the cost of single-bid contracts in Ohio and Indiana.

Skinner, referencing the December 2023 report, said reasons for the single-bid contracts could range from the fact there are fewer asphalt plants and companies in rural parts of the state to compete for contracts and the limited distance an asphalt plant can be from a road project to service it.?

Single bid contracts were more common in rural areas, Skinner said, but researchers also found a lack of competition for contracts in Central Kentucky where there are more companies and plants. More than two-thirds of the road paving contracts in Fayette County had single bidders over a nearly five year period; Clark County had 94.4% of contracts go to a single bidder.?

‘No longer an excuse for inaction’

Andrew McNeill, president of the think tank Kentucky Forum for Rights, Economics and Education focused on free-market policies, said the the lack of competition for road paving contracts has been a problem in Kentucky for decades.

The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting in reporting on the issue in December noted that the road paving industry has a history of alleged corruption. The investigative journalism outlet, a part of Louisville Public Media, also reported lawmakers had originally promised to release the December 2023 report months ago.?

“It’s going to take favoring the taxpayers over a very powerful special interest, but there’s no longer an excuse for inaction or ignoring this problem,” McNeill said. “The legislature needs to remain attentive to this so that if the cabinet is not willing to reform itself, then legislative action is the likely next step.”?

McNeill’s own analysis of road contracts over the first six months of 2024 found Kentucky awarded more than $142 million in single-bid contracts, which he asserts cost the state over $4.5 million compared to if a second bidder was competing. McNeill calculated that figure by relying on a paper from economics professors from the University of Kentucky and Brigham Young University-Idaho, which found that highway contracts in Kentucky between 2005 and 2007 that had two bidders were an average 13.5% below the engineer’s estimate for cost. He then reduced the cost of each single-bid contract in the state to 86.5% of the value and added up the difference.

Transportation Cabinet leadership at the Thursday presentation told lawmakers they were working on the recommendations for addressing single-bid contracts included in the December 2023 report. Those recommendations included creating an internal process to verify a state engineer’s estimate of a road paving project, developing written guidelines for accepting or rejecting a bid and using software to detect potential collusion on bids. The cabinet disagreed with a recommendation asking for written guidelines, saying the agency needs flexibility on how it weighs bids.?

James Ballinger, the State Highway Engineer for the Transportation Cabinet, told lawmakers following the presentation the cabinet wanted “as much competition as we can” on the contracts.

Chad LaRue, the executive director for the Kentucky Association of Highway Contractors representing the road paving industry, said the group appreciated the work of legislative researchers and stood “ready to work” with the Transportation Cabinet on the report’s recommendations, along with “educating lawmakers and others about the unique challenges inherent in the highway construction industry in the Commonwealth.”?

Rep. Adam Bowling, R-Middlesboro, co-chair of the legislative oversight committee, asked Ballinger for the cabinet to provide an update on the progress made on the recommendations in the next 30 to 60 days.?

McNeill, the think tank leader, told the Lantern the Transportation Cabinet has an opportunity to take further steps beyond the report’s recommendations “to really prioritize reforming their contracting processes and efforts to entice and create competition for these asphalt contracts.”?

“The ball is in the Transportation Cabinet’s court,” McNeill said.

The U.S. Supreme Court, pictured, issued an order maintaining a block on new Title IX rules while a challenge is heard in an appeals court. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected efforts by the Biden administration to temporarily put on hold a federal court’s decision that blocks a central part of new Title IX rules for schools from going into effect.?

The order by the justices allows a decision made by Chief Judge Danny Reeves of the U.S. District Court in Eastern Kentucky to block the rules to remain in place for now. Reeves had sided with Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman and five other Republican attorneys general in a lawsuit challenging the new Title IX rules, which aim to protect transgender students.

A federal appeals court last month also declined to put on hold Reeves’ decision, and that court is hearing an appeal of Reeves’ decision in October.?

“The Court expects that the Courts of Appeals will render their decisions with appropriate dispatch,” the majority of justices wrote.?

The order also agreed to leave in place another federal court decision blocking the new Title IX rules brought separately by the Louisiana attorney general and three other Republican attorneys general.?

Coleman in a statement on the order said the Republican attorneys general were defending “equal opportunities for Kentucky’s women and young girls” at the country’s highest court.?

“The Biden-Harris Administration is threatening to rip away 50 years of Title IX protections. Together with our colleagues in Tennessee and four other states, we are fighting to uphold the promise of Title IX for generations to come,” Coleman said.

Title IX deals with sex-based discrimination at any school that receives federal funding.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miquel Cardona previously said in a statement the new Title IX rules would have built “on the legacy of Title IX by clarifying that all our nation’s students can access schools that are safe, welcoming, and respect their rights.”?

The rules, which would have went into effect Aug. 1, sought to roll back Trump administration changes that narrowly defined sexual harassment and directed schools to conduct live hearings, allowing those who were accused of sexual harassment or assault to cross-examine their accusers.

Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia joined Kentucky challenging the administration’s order.

Reeves’ opinion said the states represented in the lawsuit argued that the Title IX rules would “invalidate scores of States’ and schools’ sex-separated sports policies.” The Kentucky General Assembly passed such a law in 2022 to require athletes in schools to play on teams associated with their biological sex

A sponsor of that law, Sen. Robby Mills, R-Henderson, applauded the U.S. Supreme Court order in a Friday statement, which he said “directly condemns the woke ideology promoted by the U.S. Department of Education and the Biden-Harris administration.” Henderson thanked Coleman for defending the law.

“Wokeism and gender ideology must never trump Kentucky values and the U.S. Constitution,” Mills said.

Editor’s note: This story was updated Saturday morning with additional comments.?

Rep. Randy Bridges, R-Paducah, who was the primary sponsor of the resolution creating the Kentucky Housing Task Force, speaking with Rep. Jacob Justice, R-Elkhorn City, during this year's legislative session. (LRC Photo)

Kentucky doesn’t have enough housing. On that even the state’s lawmakers can agree.

But the reasons for the shortages differ from community to community, exacerbated by natural disasters in some counties and a booming economy in others.?

A task force, established by the GOP-dominated legislature earlier this year to better understand the state’s housing needs, has met twice this summer to hear from leaders of housing agencies and local elected officials about what they’re seeing in their communities. The task force is set to meet again Aug. 20 with three more meetings after that leading up to next year’s legislative session.?

Co-chaired by Sen. Robby Mills, R-Henderson, and Rep. Susan Witten, R-Louisville, the task force is required to submit their findings and recommendations to the Legislative Research Commission by Dec. 1.?

Here are the major takeaways from the two meetings.

Shortage straining renters and homeowners

Wendy Smith, deputy executive director at the Kentucky Housing Corporation, an independent public corporation that invests in housing projects, told the task force in June that Kentucky has a shortage of 206,000 housing units, but that shortage isn’t just for rental units. It also includes a lack of luxury homes and apartments that could help attract a workforce to communities.?

The Kentucky Housing Corporation released the first phase of a report on the state’s housing gap earlier this year, with the second phase of the report coming sometime this month detailing a five-year projection of housing based on migration patterns, job announcements and the status of home starts.

Smith, citing the housing gap report, called the shortage “Kentucky’s most urgent issue” affecting all counties from rural areas to larger cities. She pointed to an increase in first-time homelessness as a symptom of a “market problem.”?

“Because there’s not enough supply in the overall marketplace, we’re losing ground in serving the folks we try to serve. The overall marketplace needs more housing, and we need kind of a systematic approach that helps Kentucky be able to build and get brought to market more housing to meet our economic and population growth,” Smith said. “If we had enough supply — not even affordable, just enough supply — Kentucky would have lower average housing costs. Supply will bring down costs. That’s just, that’s economics, right?”?

While the lack of homes for buyers is evenly distributed across incomes, Smith said, lower-income Kentuckians are disproportionately affected by the lack of rentals. And while the largest number of housing units needed are in Louisville, Lexington and Bowling Green, the need for housing is spread out across the state.?

“I think there are a lot of folks who might think rural areas don’t have a housing crisis, and I can tell you, I am hearing from so many rural county judge executives and other leaders that they have a real need for more housing,” Smith said.?

Disasters, new jobs and ‘local resistance’?

Smith also testified in June that natural disasters destroyed and damaged housing, including roughly 5,000 housing units combined lost from a deadly tornado outbreak in December 2021 and deadly Eastern Kentucky floods in July 2022.?

Damage from natural disasters have also increased home insurance and rental insurance costs, she said, referencing New York Times reporting that showed claims for losses in 2023 were larger in Kentucky than any other state, except Hawaii.?

Another factor in some communities, she said, was housing strain brought on by economic growth, “local resistance” to building new housing and a lack of home builders.

She pointed out that many small builders “who did the lion’s share of construction in rural Kentucky,” quit during the Great Recession earlier this century. “They got out of business. They haven’t gotten back into it,” she said. “If they’re even trying, it’s hard for them to get access to lending.”?

Elizabethtown Mayor Jeff Gregory testified in the July task force meeting alongside other local officials that the jobs and economic activity brought by building the BlueOval SK electric vehicle battery plants were creating “unintended issues” with housing.?

Joe Reverman, the director of land use planning for Elizabethtown, said the city in the past has issued permits for about 100 housing units every year; over the past two years, that number has spiked to roughly 2,000 units. Reverman said keeping up with the infrastructure provided to the homes has been a major challenge.?

“With the previous state of development, we’ve been able to kind of plan and provide infrastructure in places where it was needed,” Reverman said. “But when you increase that tenfold, just in a short amount of time, it’s really difficult to build that infrastructure in advance.”?

Another local official in rural Marshall County also testified that the lack of available utilities, including high-speed internet access, limited housing growth.?

Boone County Judge-Executive Gary Moore also said that local control of housing development is going to be “huge,” saying that some people in his county are more resistant to building affordable, lower-income housing.?

“There’s places that people definitely understand the need for low-income housing and may be willing to consider it,” Moore said. “Other parts of the county, they know we need it — but ‘not in my backyard.’”?

A desire for denser ‘middle’ housing

Smith, the Kentucky Housing Corporation deputy director, and local officials also spoke about the need for denser housing, particularly in cities, to help increase the housing supply.?

Smith said the state generally lacked “middle housing,” explaining that zoning laws in Kentucky usually only allowed for the building of single-family homes or apartment complexes — and nothing in between. The federal funding the housing corporation gets, she said, is also usually geared toward building single-family homes and apartment complexes. She said the building of other types of housing ranging from duplexes, triplexes and more has almost “zeroed out.”?

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, who testified in July, said density could also mean taking single-family homes and turning them into duplexes, or adding more housing density with major transportation corridors for people to have access to transportation routes. He said given the limited amount of land to build new homes in Jefferson County, building more townhouses, duplexes, triplexes and other dense housing could be a solution.

“When you think of the way the world is evolving, people are looking to live in different ways than they have historically,” Greenberg said. “From an architectural standpoint, there is no visible added density, but maybe two families just live on smaller lots than what historically has been the case.”?

Elizabeth Strojan, the new executive director of the Louisville Metro Housing Authority, described housing density from her experience of living in the Highlands, a neighborhood on the east side of Louisville.?

“So you might walk past a single-family home, and the home next door is a duplex. And the home next door is an apartment building,” Strojan said. “It makes for a beautifully diverse neighborhood, so density can look different depending on what the context is.”?

Greenberg said some of the millions of dollars in funding the legislature appropriated to the city is being used to convert downtown office space into housing.?

What’s next for the housing task force?

When Mills, the co-chair of the task force, began the second meeting of the study group in July, he emphasized that the purpose of the committee wasn’t to “create or develop legislation” and that lawmakers wanted to hear about housing challenges around the state.?

Rep. Randy Bridges, R-Paducah, a member of the task force who was the primary sponsor of the bipartisan resolution to create the interim committee, told the Lantern that while he can’t speak for Mills, he thinks the committee can find other ways to make changes in housing through the regulations, either by creating new ones or modifying existing.?

“We don’t want to make a knee jerk reaction and come up with statutes that will be counterproductive or have unintended consequences,” Bridges said, who works as a Paducah real estate agent. “What we do realize is some of these may not require new laws.”?

Housing advocates and nonprofit home builders had called on lawmakers to invest $200 million? into state housing trust funds, citing a flush state “rainy day” fund, to provide a reliable source of investment for housing construction, especially to rebuild housing in areas of the state recovering from natural disasters. GOP legislative leadership did not heed those calls, instead providing funding for specific housing projects instead.?

Bridges said he didn’t want to appear to be “turning a deaf ear” to those advocates, saying that he wants to keep an open mind about possible solutions. But he said large appropriations for housing were probably not “in the list of urgency” on what he believed lawmakers would do.

“Where are we going to get the most return on our investment?” Bridges asked.?

A bipartisan bill that has been pre-filed ahead of the legislative session would allow certain Kentucky school districts to get more financial support from the Kentucky Department of Agriculture when funding is available. (Getty Images)

Kentucky lawmakers from both parties are hoping to lessen childhood hunger while also supporting farmers with new legislation set to be introduced in next year’s legislative session.?

The pre-filed legislation from Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, D-Louisville, and Reps. Chad Aull, D-Lexington, and Scott McPherson, R-Scottsville, would establish the “Kentucky Proud School Match Program.”?

In a statement Friday, Aull said the program would “make farm-to-table more of a reality in our school lunchrooms and have the state becoming a bigger financial partner.”?

The new program would allow Kentucky school districts that participate in the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP)? — a federal program reimbursing districts for the costs of providing free school breakfast and lunch in low-income areas — to get more financial support from the Kentucky Department of Agriculture when funding is available. About 90% of all public school districts and private schools in Kentucky participate in CEP, according to state data.

For school districts to get that additional support they would have to create a plan to reduce food waste and buy “Kentucky-grown agricultural products” that could prioritize “Kentucky Proud” branded products.?

“We know this program benefits both our children and our ag economy. Increasing the state’s investment will return even greater results, particularly with rising costs due to inflation and federal pandemic relief funds coming to an end,” McPherson said in a statement.?

A previous study partly supported by the food bank network Feeding Kentucky found Kentucky school districts generally lagged behind on incorporating local farm products into school meals. According to a press release on the pre-filed bill, Kentucky was one of the first 10 states to participate in CEP when it was established in 2010. More than 500,000 Kentucky students currently take advantage of it.?

“Since most schools are already using CEP, we believe the state needs to be a better financial partner in this effort,” Armstrong said in a statement. “For many children, a school cafeteria is the only place they regularly get nutritious meals, and studies are clear that students who are not hungry are more likely to do well academically.”

Al Chandler, a pastor and superintendent of the only private school in Graves County, told the Lantern he does not think his Christian school would "benefit greatly" if voters approve Amendment 2. Chandler gave the invocation at the Graves County Republican Breakfast, part of the Fancy Farm political festivities, Aug. 3, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

GRAVES COUNTY ?— Al Chandler, superintendent of Northside Baptist Christian School, the only private school in Graves County, plans to vote for Amendment 2 — but not because he thinks his local public schools are failing students or families.

“We really have wonderful, wonderful schools. Mayfield and Graves (County) both in our county, are just great schools,” Chandler said. “That really makes the conversation even more muddied if we bring it into our region up here because of the quality of choices that we have.”

Kentucky is in a minority of states that has no charter schools or voucher programs to help families pay for private schools. That could change if voters on Nov. 5 approve Amendment 2, which would lower barriers in Kentucky’s Constitution that have blocked a charter school law?and tax credits supporting private school tuition.?

If voters approve the amendment, which was put on the ballot by Republican lawmakers, Kentucky’s legislature for the first time would be free to fund private schools with public money, though the amendment offers no specifics on what form state support would take.

That prospect worries educators and school officials in Graves County who fear public education would be weakened if state funding is diverted into private schools.?

“It’ll hurt us financially. I mean, it will,” said Janet Throgmorton, the principal of Graves County High School who’s driven school buses across the rural county spanning 566 square miles, the seventh-largest in the state. She took on regular bus driving duties during the pandemic as the district, like others, faced a driver shortage. “They’re not thinking about a school district that travels thousands and thousands of miles because our county is so large and rural.”?

Amendment 2 was a hot topic of debate on stage at the annual Fancy Farm Picnic, but interviews with parents the day before the early August event suggest educating voters will be a challenge for both sides. Also, parents, at least in Graves County, are bullish on their public schools.

“This is just such a great school and they offer so many things, essentially for free,” said Brooke Lowry, whose 14-year-old son Vin starts his freshman year at Graves County High School this week. “He can graduate and have a welding certificate and go get a job automatically out of high school.”?

Lowry, who lives in the Mayfield Independent Schools district but sends her son to the county schools, wasn’t aware of Amendment 2 and was not sure about the idea of allowing public funding to go to non-public schools.?

Whether rural support for public schools will translate into opposition to the amendment is uncertain, but it’s the goal of the public education advocacy coalition Protect Our Schools KY and the Kentucky Education Association, the state’s largest union representing teachers. KEA members in red shirts waved signs among the throngs of onlookers at the Fancy Farm Picnic.

Chandler, lead pastor of Northside Baptist Church in Mayfield, and the Republican lawmakers who represent West Kentucky in Frankfort, talk about the need for more educational “choice,” not necessarily in their hometowns but in other Kentucky places that have, in Chandler’s words, “a lot more controversy, a lot more issues.”

Sen. Jason Howell, R-Murray, who voted to put Amendment 2 on the ballot, told a breakfast crowd before the Fancy Farm picnic that “KEA and the Jefferson County Teachers Association hate this amendment.” Howell also said West Kentucky “has really good school systems.” Rep. Richard Heath, R-Mayfield, told the Lantern the focus of the amendment is larger school districts like Jefferson County and less so West Kentucky.?

The state’s largest school district, Jefferson County Public Schools, has been a target of GOP criticism for years, most recently for a transportation debacle that saw school buses running hours behind schedule in getting kids home at the beginning of school last year.

Chandler, who was a Graves County public elementary school teacher and had homeschooled his kids before leading his Christian school, said more funding doesn’t always fix issues a school district is grappling with.?

Supporters of the amendment, including the conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, have argued public school funding should be controlled by families.?

“Does it hurt them by not being able to provide more resources to Jefferson and Fayette? You know, maybe,” said Chandler, referencing the amendment’s possible effects on the state’s two largest school districts. “Sometimes there needs to be some other options to bring out maybe what that community’s strengths are.”?

Funding worries amid a return to normalcy

Any disruption in state education funding could be acutely felt in Mayfield and Graves County, which are still recovering from natural disasters that damaged property and took lives, including a record rainfall event that caused damaging flooding last year and a catastrophic tornado that tore through Mayfield in 2021.

But signs of normalcy are returning to the county of about 36,000 people. Throgmorton, the high school principal beginning her 29th year in public education, said some students who lost homes are now living in newly rebuilt fully furnished ones. And the new stop lights are working.

“Have you ever been thankful for a stoplight?” Throgmorton said. “It feels normal. Like that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”?

Funding is a constant concern for educators, she said, especially with costs rising because of inflation. Salaries are the biggest item in school budgets. But schools also have to buy toiletries, pay electricity and water bills, fuel school buses and provide students laptops — including when they occasionally get broken.?

“I always tell people that when they say, “Where’s all the money go? They get all these millions of dollars,’” Throgmorton said. “All those expenses you have at home, we have here.”?

The GOP-dominated state legislature this year did increase funding to school districts, though not as much as Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear had called for. Instead of giving the direct 11% raise Beshear had proposed, the legislature encouraged public school districts to raise teacher salaries with the increased school funding. Graves County Schools and Mayfield Independent Schools both gave a 3% raise to their teachers.?

As fall campaigns begin and debate heats up around the amendment, Throgmorton raises questions: Where would the public funding come from to support private schools? Would transportation costs be covered for private schools since some students’ families don’t have reliable transportation? Would private schools that receive public funds be held to the same educational standards and accountability as public schools??

Jennifer Ginn, a Kentucky Department of Education spokesperson, said standards set for public schools that private schools are not subject to include state assessment and accountability and high school graduation requirements. The leader of a private school determines curriculum, Ginn said, while a public school district superintendent has control over curriculum.?

Throgmorton also joins critics who say Amendment 2’s ballot language is potentially deceiving; the preamble asks voters whether “to give parents choices in educational opportunities for their children.”?

“Why are we making this decision when you haven’t even laid out a plan about what that’s going to look like?” Throgmorton said. “Because people may vote, ‘Yes, give everybody school choice.’ And then they may be just mortified at what they’re going to do and how that’s going to look.”?

Republican lawmakers have said little about what comes next, that approval of Amendment 2 just provides the legislature with the option to publicly fund private schools. Rep. Suzanne Miles, R-Owensboro, the primary sponsor of the bill that put Amendment 2 on the ballot, spoke on the Fancy Farm stage. She said accountability concerns surrounding public money for nonpublic schools could be addressed in future legislation — but only if the amendment passes this fall.?

The left-leaning think tank Kentucky Center for Economic Policy in a July report found if Kentucky were to set up a school voucher program similar to the program in Florida, it would cost Kentucky over $1 billion. The think tank also estimates at least 65% of vouchers used in other states subsidize parents already paying private school tuition. Some religious schools in Florida have seen a surge of enrollment thanks to the state’s school voucher program, while other states have seen lawsuits over whether public funding should go to religious schools.?

The think tank researchers wrote Kentucky’s poorest school districts would be hit hardest if public funding is diverted from public schools, considering that some of the poorest school districts rely the most on state dollars. Some Eastern Kentucky Republicans joined with Democrats earlier this year in voting against the legislation that put Amendment 2 on the ballot, also concerned about harm to their public schools facing disaster recovery challenges from floods.?

When asked about that report and opposition from some in the GOP, Miles said there isn’t “a voucher in this amendment” and that “opponents are going to make up things” about the amendment.?

“Any parent that wants to choose right now, they choose. If they can afford to choose, they choose. There’s a lot of children out there and parents that can’t choose,” Miles said. “If every parent and child is happy in Graves County Schools, it would be exactly the way it is.”?

Chandler, the private school principal, said he understood the “fear” of public schools potentially losing funding, but he doesn’t see that happening in West Kentucky. He said he doesn’t think his Christian school would “benefit greatly” if the amendment passes.

He shared an anecdote from when he was leading a homeschooling co-op, mentioning he had conversations with a local public school official who was interested in helping homeschooling families with curriculum. But one of the primary reasons families were homeschooling, he said, was because they “didn’t feel comfortable with what was being taught” in public schools.?

“It seems maybe divisive, but yet at the same time it’s kind of a parental priority to do what’s best for your child and your family,” Chandler said.?

A community bonded through education

As the Fancy Farm Picnic weekend unfolded, the connections people had with local schools in Graves County were apparent, whether it was sporting clothing with school colors while walking around the picnic grounds to the people who put on the picnic themselves.?

Chandler, a Republican, gave a prayer the morning of the Republican breakfast ahead of the Fancy Farm Picnic speeches. Throgmorton has also attended the picnic for decades having previously been the Fancy Farm Elementary School principal for 26 years. The school was used as a resource hub in the immediate aftermath of the EF-4 tornado that devastated Mayfield.

Angela Richards, 52, was sporting a Fancy Farm Picnic shirt the day before the picnic as she and her 14-year-old son Noah walked out of Graves County High School finishing up orientation for incoming freshmen. Only minor complaints came from Noah as she asked to get his picture in front of the school.?

“We may be a small town, but we’re a very passionate town,” she said with a laugh when talking about Fancy Farm. He attended Fancy Farm Elementary, so Throgmorton will be his principal for a second time.?

Richards says having six elementary schools across the sprawling county — and the sense of community the schools build — is an asset. Even if students are funneled into the single high school, “you still have your grassroots from that elementary school.”?

“It’s neat that I think that you can grow up in those smaller communities and be more of a small hometown feel like Fancy Farm,” Richards said.?

Richards, who teaches at a beauty school in Paducah and has been a substitute teacher in Graves County, also was unaware of Amendment 2 and also unsure how she felt about? public funds going to private schools. Some teachers are working two jobs to make a living or buying school supplies on their own, she said.?

“It better not be taken away from my child,” Richards said. “There’s only so much money that the state provides that can be passed around. So if that’s going to make it worse, that would be something that I would totally be against.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell speaks in Louisville before Republican state lawmakers from across the country, Aug. 7, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

LOUISVILLE — U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell branded Vice President Kamala Harris’ new running mate as “far left” and said Democrats have “abandoned” rural America in a speech Wednesday before Republican state lawmakers from around the country.

The day after Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice presidential choice, McConnell, speaking to a Republican breakfast during the National Conference of State Legislatures annual conference in Louisville, repeatedly used the term “far left” to describe Democrats.?

Some pundits say Walz’s background —? National Guard veteran, former high school teacher, football coach and congressman who represented a district that voted for former President Donald Trump — could resonate with crucial Rust Belt voters who have drifted away from supporting Democrats.?

McConnell said Walz was recommended to Harris by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent known for progressive stances; he said the Harris-Walz ticket represents “the far left of the Democratic Party.”?

“By the way, that’s most Democrats today. Most Democrats today are far left,” McConnell said.?

Sanders had urged Harris to pick Walz as her running mate? because he would “speak up” for the working class.

McConnell said rural areas, including regions of Kentucky that had been Democratic strongholds, have drifted over recent decades to Republicans. He credited former President Barack Obama for that shift, along with? Americans’ rejection of “this kind of elitist, coastal view.”

“We want to thank them for their help completely reversing the political dynamic in rural, small-town America,” McConnell said of the Democratic Party. “They have abandoned rural America.”

Walz’s military and Midwestern background paired with what Democrats describe as a down-to-earth demeanor have spurred hopes among Democrats that Walz can succeed in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania this fall.

Republicans have panned the selection of Walz as an “empty suit” who will only move the ticket further to the political left. Walz, as governor with a Democratic-controlled legislature, signed into law a number of Democratic goals ranging from protecting abortion access to requiring utilities supply 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. While serving in Congress, Walz also cultivated a bipartisan, relatively moderate record, such as when he voted in 2014 to build the Keystone XL pipeline. That pipeline was intended to carry Canadian crude oil into the country and was opposed by environmental groups.?

Democrats across the country, particularly in North Carolina, have made it a priority to reach and connect with rural voters. The Kentucky Democratic Party recently started a listening tour of? rural counties after Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear made electoral inroads with voters in his reelection campaign last year.

Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, who introduced McConnell, told reporters he believes the selection of Walz as a vice presidential candidate confirms what McConnell said, arguing that Democrats are trying to appeal to rural voters.

“Whether they can or they can’t, that becomes a good question. I think that will be based on the policies that they put forward, and hopefully that’s what we get into, is the policies that each party wants to put forward to see what it does for rural America,” Stivers said.?

Signs hoisted by members of the Fancy Farm audience express conflicting views on the school funding amendment that Kentucky voters will decide in November, Aug. 3 2024, during St. Jerome Catholic Church Picnic in Fancy Farm. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

FANCY FARM — The stage at this year’s Fancy Farm picnic in West Kentucky was dominated by Republicans who used their speaking time to tee off on an absent Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, sprinkling in attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, who has locked up the Democratic nomination for president.

Only two Democrats, 1st Congressional District candidate Erin Marshall and Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson of Lexington, were among the 16 speakers Saturday at the St. Jerome Church parish picnic, famous for barbeque, rowdy political speeches and even rowdier crowds.?

Republican speakers, ranging from U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to local elected officials, honed in on the upcoming presidential election in a county that former President Donald Trump, this year’s Republican nominee, won by nearly 57 percentage points in 2020.?

“Politics is a lot like cooking,” McConnell said. “A bad recipe and you get a bad meal. Kamala’s recipe is simple. There are three things involved with her campaign: chaos, prices and incompetence.”?

Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman noted Beshear’s absence amid speculation that the governor is being considered by Harris as a potential running mate. Coleman chided Beshear for? “traveling all over the country auditioning to be vice president.”?

“But he won’t come to Fancy Farm,” Coleman said. “Friends, I really don’t know who she’ll pick, but I know it ain’t Andy.”?

A back-and-forth over Diet Mountain Dew between Beshear and Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance also made its way into Republican speeches. Daniel Cameron, the former Republican attorney general who lost last year’s governor’s race to Beshear, took the stage as a surrogate for Trump.

“The Democratic Party has gotten so weird that they want to tell you what soda to drink. They’ve gone from a ‘war on coal’ to a ‘war on Diet Mountain Dew,’” said Cameron. “But I got some good news for you: you don’t have to be burdened by what has been. The GOP is a big tent party. Whether you drink Ale 8, Mountain Dew, Ski or just plain water, there is room in the GOP for you.”?

McConnell and U.S. Rep. James Comer, the two federal elected officials who spoke on the Fancy Farm stage, took turns attacking Harris over inflation, border policy and her past call to ban fracking, a stance she recently reversed.?

“I’m always honored to share this day with my colleague in Washington, who will go down in history as one of the truly great U.S. senators ever,” Comer said, gesturing to McConnell. The senior U.S. senator said earlier on Saturday it was his 29th time attending the picnic.

McConnell echoed past attacks against Harris, saying she was the Biden administration’s “border czar” but “she played hooky on the border crisis.” Democrats have pushed back on the notion that Harris was given such a title or role by the administration.??

Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams also referenced Beshear’s ambitions to join Harris’ campaign, saying the Democratic governor “would be a good pick for national Democrats.”?

“Kamala Harris needs help with fundraising. And Andy Beshear can raise $200,000 off just one dude’s credit card,” Adams said, referencing a civil investigation by state campaign finance regulators into London Mayor Randall Weddle’s contributions to Beshear’s reelection campaign.

Beyond the Republican zingers, much of the energy from the crowd of onlookers was generated by opponents and supporters of a constitutional amendment on the ballot this fall that, if approved, would for the first time in Kentucky allow public funds to flow freely into nonpublic schools.

A few dozen people wearing red shirts bearing the logo of the Kentucky Education Association, the state’s largest union representing teachers, waved signs saying “Protect Our Schools in KY” and “No To Vouchers,” a reference to the possibility that the amendment would lead to taxpayer-funded vouchers to pay for private school tuition. Proponents of the amendment on the other side of the crowd waved large apple-shaped signs urging a “yes” vote.?

“To paraphrase Gov. Beshear, vouchers ain’t from here and we don’t need them,” said Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson, D-Lexington, speaking on stage. “This amendment is nothing more than a Hail Mary attempt to revive … voucher policies that Kentuckians don’t want, our students don’t need and the courts have faithfully blocked.”?

The Kentucky Supreme Court previously struck down a Republican-backed initiative to award tax credits for donations supporting private schools because the scheme violated the Kentucky Constitution, leading Republican lawmakers to put a proposal to change the Constitution on this fall’s ballot.

Rep. Suzanne Miles, R-Owensboro, who followed Stevenson on stage to speak for the amendment, told Stevenson that the emcee of the picnic, Father Jim Sichko, a priest from? Lexington, would have to have “confessional” after the speeches “for all the lies you just told up here.”?

“We no longer have a one-room school anymore,” Miles said. “They want to say it’ll harm public education. It may harm the systems, but it will not harm the teachers and the public education for every single child out there.”?

Gov. Andy Beshear and Kentucky First Lady Britainy Beshear acknowledged the crowd after his speech during last year's Fancy Farm Picnic, Aug. 3, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

An annual West Kentucky church fundraiser famous for barbeque, political speeches and cheers and jeers from onlookers is set to be a Republican-dominated affair this weekend as the only two statewide elected Democrats will be elsewhere.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s absence from this year’s Fancy Farm festivities may produce more buzz than his presence would have — thanks to speculation that Beshear is still under consideration as running mate to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Beshear’s cancellation of a Friday appearance at a West Kentucky ribbon-cutting caught the attention of the New York Post which also reports that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro canceled a weekend fundraising trip to the Hamptons. Politico reports that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg cut short his visit to Kokomo, Indiana, as Vice President Harris plans to meet with the finalists in her VP search in the next few days.

Harris, who quickly sewed up the Democratic nomination after President Joe Biden ended his campaign, is expected to announce her running mate on Tuesday in Philadelphia as the two of them begin a tour of battleground states.

Beshear notified organizers two weeks ago that he would not be part of the Fancy Farm Picnic’s Saturday speechmaking. However, Behsear was planning to attend a Democratic event Friday evening after appearing at a West Kentucky distillery earlier in the day. But on Thursday Beshear bowed out of the Friday night Mike Miller Memorial Marshall County Bean Dinner, sending a video instead.

NBC News reported Thursday that the Harris campaign’s vetting team has met with six potential running mates, including Beshear, Shapiro and Buttigieg. The others named by NBC are Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, ?Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.

In Ketucky, Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman will replace Beshear at a Friday ribbon cutting for an expansion of the Jackson Purchase Distillery in Fulton County. Coleman also will? attend the annual Democratic bean dinner and rally Friday night before the Saturday picnic, according to a local Democratic party chair. Marshall County Democratic Party Chair Drew Williams told the Lantern that he was given no reason for Beshear canceling his appearance at the bean dinner.

Coleman is also not attending the Saturday event, instead attending another event to support cancer survivors.?

Who will take the stage for the Saturday speaking at Fancy Farm? Local GOP state lawmakers with nearly all the Republican statewide constitutional officers, including Attorney General Russell Coleman, Secretary of State Michael Adams, Treasurer Mark Metcalf and Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Shell.

Former Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial nominee Daniel Cameron will also speak as a surrogate for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Republican State Auditor Allison Ball is not attending due to a conflict with a wedding.

The Marshall County dinner the night before Fancy Farm will also feature Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson, D-Lexington, who will be on the Fancy Farm stage urging defeat of constitutional amendment this November that, if approved by voters, would allow public funding to go to nonpublic schools. Kentucky House Majority Caucus Chair Suzanne Miles, R-Owensboro, will be advocating for the constitutional amendment on stage Saturday.

Other speakers at the picnic include nonpartisan Kentucky Court of Appeals judicial candidates Lisa Payne Jones and Jason Shea Fleming and the Libertarian Party presidential candidate Chase Oliver.?

Canoeing the Green River is one of Mammoth Cave National Park's many above ground attractions. (National Park Service)

Mammoth Cave National Park is famous for what’s below the ground, featuring the world’s longest explored cave system with hundreds of miles of passages and a unique ecosystem of fish, insects, worms and crustaceans. But it’s what’s happening in the air above the cave system that has Kentucky environmentalists concerned.?

Mammoth Cave is one of the country’s haziest national parks, says a national group dedicated to conserving the parks. Environmental groups say a Kentucky plan being drafted for controlling the air pollution that causes haze falls short — criticisms state officials largely refute.

Haze is tiny, airborne particulate matter that can obscure outdoor visibility. It can be created from natural sources such as wildfires but largely comes from man-made sources, such as emissions from motor vehicles and power plants. This pollution can impact people’s health by aggravating asthma, reducing lung function and leading to heart problems. It can also negatively impact wildlife.

“We’re seeing more of these haze pollutants depositing into the soil and the water and impacting wildlife, because they eat a lot of things that are in the soil and in the water,” said Natalie Levine, the senior manager for clean air and climate programs at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), the group that analyzed haze pollution in national parks.?

According to the NPCA, the large majority of that haze drifting into national parks is man-made. And at Mammoth Cave, more than 70% of pollution contributing to haze is coming from electricity generation — specifically coal-fired power plants.?

Smokestack emissions from coal-fired power plants contain toxic gasses sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, which can react with water and other atmospheric gasses to become acid rain that acidifies water and soil and harms the wildlife that rely on them. Excess nitrogen and sulfur from these gasses can be deposited into the soil and water through acid rain or by settling onto surfaces through the air, potentially killing and inhibiting the growth of trees and other plants.?

“We are concerned about our national parks. We’re concerned about their biodiversity. We’re concerned about hazy skies and giving people the best outdoor experience possible. But we’re really talking about the health of the communities as well,” said Julia Finch, the director of the Sierra Club’s Kentucky chapter.

A spokesperson for Kentucky’s environmental protection cabinet, however, says its efforts to reduce haze “are significantly reducing emissions”? and that air quality around the national park is better than national standards.?

John Mura, a spokesperson for the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet that houses the Division for Air Quality, in a statement said the state is committed to working with federal agencies “and other interested parties to ensure the cleanest air quality possible for our citizens by understanding and addressing the emission sources that are contributing to visibility issues at Mammoth Cave National Park.”?

Slow improvements in haze

Haze protections for national parks date back to the establishment of the Clean Air Act in the 1960s and the additions and amendments added to it over the decades,?

In 1999, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), empowered through the Clean Air Act, issued new regulations requiring states to develop regional plans to reduce haze in national parks and control the pollution sources contributing to it. Such regional plans, for example, could require coal-fired power plants to install smokestack scrubbers or controls to filter out sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions. The long-term goal of the plans is to return national parks to their original natural visibility by 2064.?

But there have been a number of delays in getting states to submit these plans, Kentucky included. The EPA required the first version of these plans to be submitted by the end of 2007; Kentucky did, but 37 states did not. Progress reports on how states are meeting goals set in their haze plans are due every five years, and new versions of the regional haze plans are due every 10 years.?

The EPA set another deadline for states to submit their second version of regional haze plans in July 2021, a deadline that Kentucky and 14 other states did not meet. Kentucky is now trying to submit a new draft haze plan for the EPA to consider by a new deadline of Sept. 29 under the potential threat the EPA could step in and create its own haze plan for Kentucky.?

State officials say Kentucky’s first regional plan has decreased the state’s sulfur dioxide emissions by 310,047 tons since 2008, and that air quality at the park is better than national standards.?

Data from the National Park Service (NPS) does show visibility and the impacts of acid rain and ozone at the park have improved in a little over a decade since the state’s first haze plan was submitted, though acid rain and ozone are still impacting wildlife and human health.?

Median visibility at the park only reached a “fair” classification as of 2021 after having “poor” visibility since 2009, according to NPS data. The amount of sulfur and nitrogen deposited into the park’s soil and water every year through acid rain and the air has decreased, though sulfur levels have decreased much more significantly than nitrogen levels.?

The levels of ozone, a reactive gas largely created from emissions from power plants and cars that can harm human health, have also decreased since 2009. Ozone impacts to vegetation in the park are rated at a “good” level but remain as only “fair” for human health, according to the NPS.?

Environmentalists say more should be done

Even with that progress, environmental groups including the Kentucky Chapter of the Sierra Club and the Kentucky Resources Council, say the updated haze plan Kentucky is considering doesn’t do nearly enough to reduce air pollution impacting the park through haze and acid rain.??

These environmental groups say only two coal-fired power plants — the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Shawnee Fossil Plant in McCracken County and the Big Rivers Electric Corporation’s D.B. Wilson Generating Station — were analyzed by the state as potential sources of haze pollution in the draft plan when over a dozen more pollution sources including other power plants and industry are also contributing to the haze.?

Among the two power plants analyzed, these groups say, the state decided to not require any additional emissions controls to reduce nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide emissions from the plants. The groups say state officials also only accounted for controlling sulfur dioxide emissions and not nitrogen dioxide emissions, which also can create haze.?

“In the excluded list were five coal plants and nine other industrial facilities, including those with aluminum and metal smelter operations, oil and gas operations, and lime and cement operations,” said Audrey Ernstberger, a lobbyist with the Kentucky Resources Council at a public hearing on the draft haze plan last month.

Ernstberger said the result, according to KRC’s analysis, is that more than 82,000 tons of haze pollution will still be released under the draft plan.?

In Kentucky’s draft plan, state officials write that because the electric utility Big Rivers Electric Corp. had installed a device in November 2022 to control sulfur dioxide at its Wilson coal-fired power plant, a deeper analysis into potential emissions controls wasn’t needed.?

Officials also write that the emission levels of nitrogen dioxide coming from the Wilson and Shawnee plants didn’t exceed “screening thresholds” in the state’s modeling, so officials “did not perform any reasonable progress analyses” for nitrogen dioxide emissions.?

For the Shawnee Fossil Plant, Mura said the state worked with the Tennessee Valley Authority to modify its state air permit to limit sulfur dioxide from the plant to 8,208 tons per year starting in 2028. State officials chose that limit following a deeper “four-factor” analysis conducted into potential emission controls for the coal-fired plant.?

When asked by the Lantern why the state chose only the Wilson and Shawnee plants to analyze for haze pollution, Mura said the state used modeling to determine the plants were “significantly impacting Mammoth Cave National Park and that limiting SO2 emissions at these facilities would have the greatest impact in improving visibility in the region.”?

If Kentucky meets the September deadline for submitting a haze plan, the EPA could approve the plan as is, ask the state to make revisions or step in and make its own plan. A federal judge last month signed a consent decree directing the EPA to speed up action on haze plans submitted by 32 other states.?

Hilary Lambert, a former Lexington resident who led a New York-based water protection nonprofit, said at the July public hearing she owns a cabin in Green County less than 50 miles east of Mammoth Cave National Park. She echoed what she wrote in a Louisville Courier-Journal column saying the state needs to do more to curb pollution and ensure compliance with state and federal regulations.?

“It's the state's own, the commonwealth's only big national park, and it's a jewel for people to visit,” Lambert said at the hearing. “Please get up to date and bring a number of businesses into compliance with the law to clean up the air for everybody.”

Then-gubernatorial candidate Daniel Cameron speaks during the 143rd Fancy Farm Picnic on Saturday, Aug. 5, 2023. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)

The former Republican Kentucky attorney general who lost last year’s gubernatorial race to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear will speak as a surrogate for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign at the upcoming annual Fancy Farm Picnic.?

Steven Elder, the political chairman for the Graves County picnic known for political speaking and barbeque, shared the update Monday about the addition of Daniel Cameron as a speaker. A Kentucky Democratic Party spokesperson referred the Lantern to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign when asked if a surrogate for Harris would also speak at the picnic.?

Cameron, whose one term as attorney general ended in January, is now CEO of a group opposed to environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices among corporations.?

As speculation has swirled about Beshear being a potential running mate for Harris, Cameron recently commented on Beshear’s statement that Republican vice presidential candidate and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance wasn’t a true Kentuckian.?

Cameron said on Fox Business that Trump would win Kentucky this November and that there were “a lot more people that grew up here in Kentucky like J.D. Vance than they did (like) Andy Beshear.”?

Former president Donald Trump won Kentucky’s eight electoral votes by a wide margin, 62% to 36%, in the 2020 presidential election. But Beshear was able to defy the state’s conservative leaning by beating Cameron in last year’s gubernatorial election, winning the state by about 5 percentage points.?

Neither Beshear nor Kentucky Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, the only state-wide elected Democrats, are speaking at this year’s picnic. Beshear has only attended the Fancy Farm Picnic twice in the past five years: in 2019 when he was challenging former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, and in 2023 when he was running for reelection as governor.?

Those confirmed to be speaking at the picnic include Republicans Attorney General Russell Coleman, Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Shell, Secretary of State Michael Adams and Treasurer Mark Metcalf.

The Fancy Farm Picnic is Saturday, Aug. 3. Speeches begin at 2 p.m local time. Father Jim Sichko, of Lexington, is this year’s emcee.

Gov. Andy Beshear read a prepared statement saying he was "honored to be considered" as a vice presidential candidate when asked if he was being vetted as a potential running mate to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

FRANKFORT — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear during a Thursday press conference dodged questions about reports he’s being vetted to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in this fall’s presidential election, instead pointing to areas where he believed Harris and he have common ground.

Various national media outlets have reported that the second-term Democratic governor is on the list of Democrats that Harris is vetting to be her running mate. He declined to answer whether he’s being vetted, reading a prepared statement that he was “honored to be considered” as a vice presidential candidate and would work to elect Harris as president.

But the Democratic governor did say he believed Harris and he have both supported public education, health care access and infrastructure.

“We need better in this country. We deserve better in this country, and I believe Vice President Harris is going to lead us to a better place,” Beshear said.?

When asked about issues that he might face as a vice presidential candidate, he side-stepped some questions while providing lengthy answers to others.?

Beshear declined to answer questions about the Israeli government’s continued offensive in Gaza, saying that Israel is a “strong ally” and that foreign policy is set by the president.?

“When you have disagreements with a strong ally, I think you have them privately, and I don’t think you can litigate foreign policy through the press,” Beshear said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised victory over Hamas militants during a joint meeting of Congress Wednesday that attracted thousands of protesters and spurred a boycott by some Democratic lawmakers. Harris condemned protesters who burned the U.S. flag near the U.S. Capitol while voicing support for Hamas. The death toll in Gaza continues to increase beyond 39,000, according to Gaza health authorities in the Hamas-controlled territory.

The governor did voice strong agreement with President Joe Biden’s rhetoric that former President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.?

“Former President Trump refused to accept a full and fair election, took steps to try to overturn it, but also incited a mob that attacked our U.S. Capitol,” Beshear said. “We deserve better. I can’t believe that he is somehow a presidential candidate after all of that, and it just shows why we need after this election to get to such a better place.”?

Following the 2020 presidential election, Trump while still in office pressured the Republican Georgia secretary of state to “find” votes to overturn the election result in that state. The Detroit News also reported Trump in a recording pressured local election officials in Michigan to not certify the 2020 presidential election.?

At the end of the press conference, Beshear said he owed “an apology” to Diet Mountain Dew, referencing attacks he made on national television Monday against Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. Vance had previously said at a campaign event Democrats would find a way to label him drinking Diet Mountain Dew as “racist.” Beshear on CNN panned Vance’s remarks as “weird” and asked who even drank the zero-calorie soda.

Beshear at the press conference said while Ale-8-One was the “soft drink of Kentucky,” he didn’t mean to say negative things about the diet soda.

“I don’t believe that government should be making your decisions. So if you enjoy Diet Mountain Dew, you be you. We want to support you,” Beshear said.

This story was updated to include Beshear’s comments about Diet Mountain Dew.

Utilities install and repair utility poles in tornado-struck Hopkins County in May 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

President Joe Biden has declared a major disaster declaration for Kentucky counties hit by a deadly tornado outbreak and other severe weather in May, opening up applications for individual Kentuckians to apply for federal aid.?

A release Wednesday from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says that federal funding, including money for temporary housing and home repairs and low-cost loans for uninsured property losses, is available to individuals in Butler, Caldwell, Calloway, Christian, Clay, Greenup, Hopkins, Knox, Logan, Muhlenberg, Simpson, Todd, Trigg, Warren and Whitley counties.

Business owners and residents in disaster-impacted areas can apply for federal assistance through FEMA’s website, through FEMA’s mobile app or by calling 1-800-621-3362.?

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and local officials in Western Kentucky had pushed disaster survivors to document their damage to increase the chances of FEMA granting individual disaster relief, which isn’t guaranteed after a natural disaster. The May tornado outbreak included one EF-3 tornado that tore a similar path to an EF-4 tornado that devastated Western Kentucky communities in December 2021, destroying some homes that were newly rebuilt after the first tornado.?

“We are once again thankful to President Biden and his administration for approving this funding. This support will be a big help for our families as they recover and rebuild from yet another terrible storm,” Beshear said in a statement. “As always, we saw our first responders and everyday Kentuckians rally to help each other in those toughest of moments, and that is why I am so proud to be Governor of this great commonwealth.”

FEMA also stated local governments and some nonprofits in 55 counties across the state are eligible for assistance to repair damaged facilities.?

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event at the Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote Presidential Town Hall at the Pennsylvania Convention Center on July 13, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Drew Hallowell/Getty Images)

In the hours after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign, Brian Clardy, historian and Kentucky delegate to the 2020 Democratic National Convention, worried that a divisive fight for the nomination could spell electoral disaster for Democrats in November.

“Democrats cannot afford to go into this thing split. They just cannot afford to do it. History has proven that when Democrats are divided, Democrats lose,” Clardy, a professor at Murray State University, said in an interview with the Lantern Sunday evening.?

Twenty-four hours later, any chance of a spirited open contest had all but evaporated as Democratic delegates, including those from Kentucky, unified behind Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden’s choice to succeed him as president.

Fresh off endorsing Harris on national television, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear spoke Monday morning to a virtual meeting of Kentucky’s delegates who will head next month to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Beshear, on a short list of ?potential running mates for Harris, urged the state’s delegates to come out in support of the vice president, which they did almost unanimously.?

“She’s ready to lead, and so there was not much debate at all,” said delegate and state lawmaker Reggie Thomas, who was in the meeting and chairs the Kentucky Senate Democratic Caucus. ”We support Kamala Harris and we’re ready for her to become our nominee and to take on and defeat Donald Trump,” Thomas said.

Only one of Kentucky’s 59 delegates dissented, saying she didn’t yet know Harris’ stand on a ceasefire in Gaza, according to someone who attended the meeting but did not remember the dissenting delegate’s name. Kentucky Public Radio also attributed the dissenting vote to concerns about Israel’s war in Gaza.

First-time delegate Robert Kahne of Louisville said he is impressed by the speed with which Democrats have coalesced around Harris, including potential rivals who have endorsed her. “My personal opinion is Democrats are mostly about one thing: defeating Donald Trump. Not having to talk about each other — and talking about Donald Trump — is better,” said Kahne.

Kahne is realistic about the unlikelihood in Kentucky of any Democrat defeating the former Republican president. Trump has carried the state twice by wide margins. No Democrat for president has won Kentucky since Bill Clinton in 1996.

But Kahne says the rejuvenated Democratic ticket at the top of the November ballot could help Kentucky Democrats turn out voters in state legislative races, especially in suburban districts. “If you give up now you’re never going to win,” he said.

Kahne, who hosts “My Old Kentucky Podcast,” also predicts that abortion will be a major issue in the first presidential election since the fall of Roe v. Wade and that voters’ perception of the economy could break for Democrats “at just the right time.”

In 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, Kentuckians, to the surprise of many, defeated an anti-abortion constitutional amendment; voter worries about the loss of abortion rights also contributed to disappointing results for Republicans in midterm congressional races that year. Nonetheless, courts in Kentucky have allowed the state’s near-total ban on abortion to stand. And attempts by Democrats and Republicans to loosen the restrictions have gotten nowhere in the Republican-controlled legislature.

Ona Marshall, founder of the Kentucky Reproductive Freedom Fund, sees Kentucky at a “critical crossroads” and says “one of the major ways that we can have a path forward here is to get federal protections.”

Marshall says Harris has been a more outspoken advocate for reproductive rights than Biden. “She’s been fighting all along to restore rights and protect reproductive freedom in every state.”?

A spokesperson for Kentucky American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told the Lantern the chapter is “encouraged by VP Harris’ record on abortion access.”

Among the delegates “enthusiastically” endorsing Harris was Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, who also praised Biden and said his presidency would be “historic for cities like Louisville” and the country.?

Greenberg told reporters? he is looking forward to the convention. “I’m excited to get together with folks from around the country to talk about what we can do to continue to make historic investments in cities like Louisville,” Greenberg said. “We need to make sure that we continue to partner with the federal government to make Louisville safer, stronger and healthier. I know Vice President Harris is committed to that, Gov. Beshear is committed to that and I look forward to working with mayors and other elected officials across the convention on plans to continue to do that in the coming years.”?

Lots of talk about Beshear’s shot at vice president

Speculation about Beshear’s chances of becoming Harris’ running mate dominated political talk in Kentucky Monday as Democrats touted the governor’s electoral appeal and Republicans voiced more skepticism.

Kahne, the Democratic convention delegate, dismissed the conventional wisdom that candidates should pick a running mate who can help carry a swing state as obsolete and said it “very rarely works out in that way.”?

Kahne says Harris and Beshear would complement and balance each other. “Andy Beshear would make a great contrast to Kamala Harris. And they also have a lot in common. They were both attorneys general and state politicians deeply loved by their bases.”

Tres Watson, former spokesperson for the Republican Party of Kentucky, said being tapped as vice president would be great for Beshear but a “horrible move” for Harris, who would gain neither an electoral or fund-raising advantage from putting Beshear on the ticket.

Watson also predicted that Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance would “run circles around” Beshear in a debate. “I think other than being a white guy, what does Andy Beshear bring to this ticket? Nothing,” Watson said.

During his Monday morning appearance on MSNBC, Beshear took swipes at Vance, who wrote about his Eastern Kentucky family roots in his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” ?

“I want the American people to know what a Kentuckian is and what they look like, because let me just tell you that J.D. Vance ain’t from here,” Beshear said.

Later in the day, according to CNN, Vance responded with a swipe at Beshear. “It’s very weird to have a guy whose first job was at his dad’s law firm and inherited the governorship from his father to criticize my origin story.” Vance added that “nobody gave me a job because of who my father was. I’m proud of that.”

Republican Trey Grayson, a former secretary of state, said Beshear, a three-time (counting attorney general) elected Democrat in a red state, could bring a “middle American presence” to the Harris ticket.

“I’m not convinced he’s going to get it, but I understand why he would certainly be on the list,” Grayson said, adding there’s “no downside” for Beshear in pursuing what could be a path to raise his political profile and put him in line for a cabinet position or even the presidency.

Grayson said Republican Vance, whose memoir recounts a childhood made turbulent by his mother’s addiction and family dysfunction, has a more interesting life story than Beshear, the son of a prominent elected official and two-term governor. But Beshear has more political experience than Vance.

Also, running mates are often asked to go on the offensive, which is not the Beshear brand, although Harris might be looking for something different in a running mate, Grayson said.

Beshear joining the Harris ticket would not put Kentucky in play, Grayson said. “We’re just too Republican. Trump’s too popular.”

Thomas, the Democratic state senator, was more optimistic about a Democrat’s chances of winning Kentucky’s eight electoral votes with Beshear on the ticket. “That’s not going to be an easy task. … I wouldn’t go as far to say that Kentucky will turn blue overnight, but I think Kentucky will get behind him should he be on the national ticket,” Thomas said.

Conventions past

In an interview with the Lantern, former two-term Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton, a Democrat, also stressed the advantages of a? harmonious convention. Patton cited 1972 when Kentucky Gov. Wendell Ford and most of the the state’s delegates supported Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson. The convention nominated Sen. George McGovern, who lost in a landslide to incumbent President Richard Nixon.

Clardy, the history professor, cited the tumultuous Democratic convention from four years earlier in 1968 as what the party should avoid. After President Lyndon B. Johnson, weakened by popular opposition to the Vietnam War, chose not to seek reelection, Nixon won the White House.

Patton said he supports Harris or any Democrat who can oppose Trump. Patton said he has “serious doubts” that Trump, if he wins, would abide by the constitutional limit on presidents serving only two terms.

One big advantage Harris brings over other would-be Democratic nominees: Money. She can argue that her position on what was the Biden ticket qualifies her campaign to tap the $96 million already in Biden’s war chest at the end of June, though Republicans will almost certainly challenge that view.

Harris would be the first Black woman to become president — though not the first Black woman to run for president, a distinction that belongs to Shirley Chisholm, also the first Black woman to be elected to Congress. Clardy said passing over Harris, a graduate of the historically Black Howard University, would have produced “deep resentment” among Black voters, potentially causing them to sit out the election and handing the presidency to Trump.?

Podium with Kentucky Democratic Party's logo at June 14 Forward Together even in Louisville. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

Democratic convention delegates from Kentucky have “overwhelmingly voted” to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee following a request from Gov. Andy Beshear to do so.?

The endorsement, announced in a Monday morning press release, follows Beshear’s national TV appearance earlier the same morning in which he personally endorsed Harris to be the presidential nominee and fielded questions about his interest in joining the ticket.

Kentucky Democratic Party Chairman Colmon Elridge in a statement said Harris has been a “proven partner” to President Joe Biden and attacked the Republican presidential ticket as “relying on fear to drive a wedge between you and your neighbor.”?

“She has a remarkable record of public service, from tackling housing costs as a U.S. Senator to protecting consumers as California’s chief law enforcement office. Vice President Harris is ready to serve as president on Day 1 and finish the job that Joe Biden started,” Elridge said. “Now more than ever, we must work hand in hand to elect Kamala Harris. The stakes this November — for both our beloved Commonwealth and our country — are too high.”

Reuters reported Sunday all 50 state Democratic party chairs had endorsed Harris to be the nominee. Beshear is reportedly among a list of candidates Harris is considering to be her potential running mate along with fellow Democratic governors Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who have also endorsed her.

Lewis Ritchie pulls a kayak through floodwater after delivering groceries to his father-in-law on July 28, 2022 outside Jackson in Breathitt County. (Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

Over a week in July 2022, more than a foot of rainfall came down on Eastern Kentucky bringing a deluge of flood waters that displaced thousands of people and killed more than 40. A recent study published by Kentucky’s former top geologist suggests environmental damage from surface coal mining worsened the deadly disaster, perhaps significantly.

Bill Haneberg, the author of the study, led the Kentucky Geological Survey as state geologist until 2023 and fielded questions after the catastrophic floods about the role coal mining played in the flooding. That spurred him to try and find an answer, analyzing federal rainfall data from July 2022 and other datasets involving topography and where mountaintop removal sites were located in the region.?

Surface coal mining, which includes mountaintop removal mining, has had sprawling impacts on the landscape in Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia. With surface coal mining, trees and soil are removed, and rock on the side and top of a mountain is blown off with explosives to reach a coal seam underneath. What remains, environmental and mine safety advocates say, is a mined surface with little vegetation and little to no water retention.?

Haneberg said the July 2022 floods were a 1,000-year rainfall event and would have been a “bad flood” regardless of surface mining’s impacts. But he believes his study shows surface coal mining made the floods “significantly worse.”

His study found that the maximum additional water that could have been contributed by surface coal mining, compared to unmined areas, were:

• 28% more along the North Fork Kentucky River near Jackson, the Breathitt County seat. That’s equivalent to approximately 17 billion gallons more water added.?
• 41% more at the confluence of Troublesome Creek and the Nork Fork Kentucky River. That’s equivalent to 6.1 billion gallons more water added.?
• 21% more along the North Fork Kentucky River near Hazard, the Perry County seat. That’s equivalent to approximately 4.1 billion gallons of water.
• 22% more along the North Fork Kentucky River near Whitesburg, the Letcher County seat. That’s equivalent to approximately 0.3 billion gallons more water added.?
• Over 50% more in areas adjacent to mined land, and between 50% to 150% more ?— essentially doubling the amount of water — in small tributaries originating from mined land.?

The calculations are for the maximum potential of surface mining’s contribution, which assumes that the mined lands in the areas studied had zero ability to absorb water. The actual amount of water contributed, Haneberg said, is likely less than the maximum. But he said the point of the study was to show the potential contributions surface mining had in the disaster, an important context to have moving forward.?

“Coal mining has been declining in Eastern Kentucky, but those mine lands are going to be with us for a long, long time,” Haneberg told the Lantern. “If you don’t understand that context for the events you’re trying to mitigate or the problems you’re trying to solve, there’s a good chance you may be wrong, and when you’re dealing with hazards like this, that could be very deadly and expensive.”?

He said that context is especially important given that climate change is increasing the risk of catastrophic flooding events in Appalachia.?

“You can’t fix a problem you can’t define, and one of the worst things to do is deny that there’s any problem at all,” Haneberg said.?

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a progressive grassroots advocacy group, alongside former federal and state coal mine inspectors, last year called on the federal Office of Surface Mining Regulation and Enforcement to launch an investigation into how surface mining affected the July 2022 floods.?

Davie Randsell, a former supervisor for the Kentucky Division of Mining Permits who was part of that call to action, said the potential impacts of surface mining on Eastern Kentucky flooding goes beyond active mines to include the reduced ability of reclaimed mine lands to absorb and hold back water, too.?

“It doesn’t replicate what was there before,” Randsell said of reclamation and the “eons” required to create new sedimentary rock that was destroyed. “It’s still going to be much more highly permeable, and it’s going to discharge more water.”?

She said the new study was a “hallmark statement” of what federal officials need to investigate. Emails sent to an inbox for media inquiries to the federal office asking whether the office was considering an investigation were not returned.?

Beverly May, a retired epidemiologist with the University of Kentucky and a member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, said the study was “completely consistent” with what she saw in the days after the flood and her own documentation.?

May was one of the authors of a separate study from University of Kentucky researchers last year that analyzed the locations of people killed in the July 2022 floods and found a number of fatality locations were adjacent, or downstream from, mountaintop removal mine sites. The study also found more than 40% of analyzed fatalities from the July 2022 floods happened within a half-mile of Troublesome Creek, a tributary that flows into the North Fork Kentucky River.?

May said she remembered driving a woman from one of the federal relief camps to visit the woman’s father down the hill. The woman, May said, told her during the drive she was a cousin to four children who drowned in Knott County.?

May said when she turned up the road along where Montgomery Creek flows into Troublesome Creek in Knott County she saw that the force of the flood waters had washed away much of the dirt supporting the road along the creek, and the road itself was broken off along the edges.?

“I get almost to her dad’s house, look in front of me, and there is a flat horizon of a huge mountaintop removal job…it just fills up the horizon,” May recalled. “I stopped whatever the conversation I was having and took a breath. And I said, ‘Do you think that mine has something to do with the flood?’ And she looked at it and paused a minute, and she said, ‘I don’t know. I’ve never thought about that.’”?

President Joe Biden, shaking hands with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, visited Dawson Springs days after deadly tornadoes devastated the town in December 2021. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Kentucky Democrats praised President Joe Biden after he withdrew from the presidential race Sunday, but it was unclear how much support Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden’s choice to succeed him, is picking up among the state’s Democrats.

Gov. Andy Beshear said Biden’s decision to leave the race “is in the best interest of our country” and that he will be “remembered as a consequential president.” The Democratic governor also praised Harris’ leadership in his statement but did not endorse her.

Beshear, who has been mentioned as a possible contender for the party’s vice presidential nomination were Biden to drop out, is scheduled to appear on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday morning. Beshear posted on X Sunday night that he planned to thank Biden for his service “and to talk about the path forward.”??

Harris was endorsed by a pair of Louisville Democrats — U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey and his predecessor in the U.S. House, John Yarmuth — and by a Western Kentucky delegate to next month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

In a statement to the Lantern, Yarmuth said: “I am excited about the prospect of a Harris candidacy and its potential to solidify Democratic voters and all other Americans who recognize the existential threat of a second Donald Trump administration.

“It was an honor to serve with Joe Biden and to help enact his historic agenda, including the American Rescue Plan, and, as a private citizen, I look forward to continued progress under President Kamala Harris,” Yarmuth said.

McGarvey, who on Friday called on Biden to leave the race, endorsed Harris in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter). “Democrats are already uniting around the Vice President and I look forward to working to elect Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States,” the first term member of Congress said.

Convention delegate Tyler Sagardoy of Owensboro said he would support the vice president. “I support Harris. Joe Biden chose her to be his VP and endorsed her for the presidency. As a pledged Biden delegate, I will do what the president asks of me.”

Asked about the sudden shift in plans for choosing a Democratic presidential nominee, Sagardoy said, “Regarding the convention or process moving forward, I can’t say I’m informed enough to make such an analysis at this moment.”

Kentucky Democrats issued statements praising Biden’s leadership as president, especially the concern and aid he directed to Kentucky after devastating natural disasters and his success in pushing infrastructure funding through Congress, including for a new bridge between Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati.

Some Kentucky Republicans said Biden should also step down as president. Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Barr of Lexington said on X “that if President Biden is unfit to seek re-election, he is equally unfit to continue serving as our Commander in Chief for the balance of his term.”

However, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky did not call on Biden to leave the presidency, though terming the Democratic administration a failure.

Statements:

U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey:

“Today, President Biden once more put his love of country before himself. This decision could not have been easy and he deserves our immense gratitude and profound respect.

“By returning to public service in 2020, he protected America from four more years of extremism, division, and hate under Donald Trump. President Biden brought the country together after January 6th, guided us out of the pandemic, led the nation to record low unemployment and record job growth, made the largest investment in clean energy and climate action in history, and restored American leadership abroad.

“President Biden knows the stakes of this election are simply too high and that the very fabric of our democracy is at risk. Through his actions today, President Biden has cemented his legacy as one of the most honorable, selfless, and effective Presidents in history.

“President Biden made an excellent choice when he selected Kamala Harris as his running mate in 2020. Vice President Harris has been fighting for a stronger, safer, and more inclusive America since day one. I’m proud to endorse her as the Democratic nominee. Democrats are already uniting around the Vice President, and I look forward to working to elect Kamala Harris.”

Former U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth:

“Today, Joe Biden cemented his legacy as one of our greatest Presidents. His selfless, heroic act of forgoing the nomination of the Democratic Party was just one more of many examples of his prioritization of the national interest.?

“I am excited about the prospect of a Harris candidacy and its potential to solidify Democratic voters and all other Americans who recognize the existential threat of a second Donald Trump administration.?

“It was an honor to serve with Joe Biden and to help enact his historic agenda, including the American Rescue Plan, and, as a private citizen, I look forward to continued progress under President Kamala Harris.”?

Kentucky Democratic Party Chair Colmon Elridge:

“For more than five decades, Joe Biden has put the needs of our country first. His presidency forever changed the trajectory of this nation and left an indelible mark on generations to come, helping families far and wide better realize the American Dream.

“It was Joe Biden who led our country through the COVID-19 pandemic. It was Joe Biden who tackled runaway prescription drug prices and capped the cost of insulin for our seniors. It was Joe Biden who defied the naysayers to deliver historic investments in Kentucky’s infrastructure, making the decades-long-promised Brent Spence Bridge project a reality, and helping more Kentuckians access clean drinking water. It was Joe Biden who fought for fundamental reproductive freedoms after they were ruthlessly ripped from women and girls following the fall of Roe.

“And when Eastern Kentuckians were devastated by once-in-a-century-flooding, it was Joe Biden who showed up to not only ensure the weight of the federal government was on hand to support recovery efforts, but to — as he always has — offer compassion.

“President Biden did more than just show up — he got the job done. While Donald Trump and his extremist friends may claim otherwise, one thing is certain: America is a better place because Joe Biden met the moment and never lost sight of who he served. This is a man who served as vice president to our nation’s first Black president, defending him against unprecedented attacks, and who, as the Democratic nominee just four years ago, selected Kamala Harris to both break the glass ceiling and color barrier of the vice presidency.

“While passing the torch may not be easy, we respect that at times it is necessary. We thank President Biden for the many years of service he devoted to helping our nation become a better version of itself, and for his admirable decision to pave the way for a new generation of Democratic leaders.”

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear

“President Biden will be remembered as a consequential president. Along with Vice President Harris, he led us through the aftermath of the January 6th attack on our Capitol and steadily steered us out of a global pandemic. He showed up for Kentucky after devastating tornadoes and historic flooding, delivering immediate federal aid that is helping to rebuild our communities. His leadership provided infrastructure investments that are bringing clean drinking water and high speed internet to parts of Kentucky that for far too long had been overlooked and underserved. President Biden came through on the Brent Spence Companion Bridge Project, getting bipartisan funding for a project that had been stalled for years and is a major thoroughfare for national commerce.

“While his decision today could not have been easy, it is in the best interest of our country, and our party. I want to thank him for his leadership, kindness and for a successful presidency that got big, important things done.?

“Now it is time for our nation to come together. We need to dial down the anger, rancor and noise. We have an opportunity to remember that we are taught to treat our neighbor as yourself—and that we are all each other’s neighbor.”

Kentucky House Democratic Caucus Leaders Derrick Graham, Cherlynn Stevenson and Rachel Roberts:?

“President Biden has served this nation with distinction, building a legacy as senator, vice president and president that will have a positive and lasting impact for generations. We commend him for his dedication to always put our country first, a selfless value that undoubtedly drove today’s decision. His administration has overseen strong economic growth, a return of respect on the world stage, and a commitment to building an America that seeks to unite rather than divide. Our presidential nominee may change, but furthering those goals never will.”?

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky:

“For four years, the American people have faced historic inflation at home, chaos at the border, and weak leadership on the world stage. Our nation is less prosperous and less secure than it was in January, 2021. We cannot afford four more years of failure.

“Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has been busy in recent weeks trying to upend the expressed will of the American people in primary elections across the country. Washington Democrats have not proven themselves any more capable than the President of delivering the secure borders, safe streets, and stable prices that working families deserve. They are selling open borders, higher prices, climate radicalism, and soft-on-crime policies, and the American people are not buying.”

McKenna Horsley contributed to this story.

This story has been updated.

Sights like this barge loaded with coal on the Ohio Rive near Cairo, Illinois, would become more rare under a Biden administration rule that seeks to curb heat-trapping emissions by drastically reducing the burning of coal and gas to produce electricity. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — A litigator for the Kentucky attorney general disputed the role of carbon dioxide emissions in warming the world’s climate, despite near-total agreement among scientists that the clear gas is a major contributor to warming.

Speaking Thursday to state lawmakers, Vic Maddox, counsel on special litigation for Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman, cited the work of two physicists — William Happer and Richard Lindzen — who insist there is no climate emergency and have long disputed or questioned the scientific consensus on climate change. Maddox pointed to two recent publications — an eight-page article from June, published in an open-access archive maintained by Cornell University, and a two-page document from July.

According to Maddox, Happer and Lindzen contend that carbon dioxide has become a “weak greenhouse gas” because of the “saturation effect,” and that the more carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere the “less of a warming effect it has.”

Maddox was among several witnesses appearing before the legislature’s Interim Joint Natural Resources and Energy Committee which was discussing the implications of new federal rules requiring coal-fired power plants and new natural gas-fired power plants to capture 90% of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions by 2032 if the plants intend to run beyond 2039.?

As of earlier this year, Kentucky generated more than 70% of its electricity from burning coal according to federal data, an outlier in the country as utilities have transitioned to cheaper alternatives such as natural gas or renewables. Coal is considered to be the “dirtiest” fossil fuel in terms of carbon dioxide emissions from burning it for electricity.

Coleman, along with other Republican state attorneys general and investor-owned utilities in Kentucky, is challenging the rule which he calls a “radical green agenda that would only leave Kentucky in the dark.”

Maddox, in explaining the AG’s legal efforts to block the Biden administration rule, said the EPA should consider the physicists’ conclusions about the role of carbon dioxide emissions.

“We think the EPA should consider it, and we think that as these cases go forward, there may be an opportunity to present this sort of material to the court for consideration,” Maddox said. “The question here is …is carbon dioxide really an important greenhouse gas at this point? Is it causing the problem that the EPA wants to solve, and will its elimination or reduction actually result in the result that it seeks?”?

Scientists have come to a near universal consensus that the Earth’s climate is getting warmer mostly because of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels that releases carbon dioxide emissions, those being a primary driver of global warming. Scientists have also refuted the theory, which dates back more than a century, that the atmosphere will warm at a much slower rate because it is already “saturated” with carbon dioxide.?

A climate scientist from the University of Washington, who reviewed the eight-page June document from Happer and Lindzen that Maddox cited, criticized the methodology of the document and the small number and quality of references in that document. He also said the document, which he characterized as “shoddy work,” wasn’t a peer-reviewed publication nor had it appeared in a scientific journal.

“The Cornell archive simply provides people with a place to self-publish, rather similar to some websites,” said Thomas Ackerman, a professor emeritus of atmospheric sciences. “There is a grain of truth to the absorption saturation argument, but the application here is wrong. It would take a lot of radiative transfer physics to explain that in detail, but, if that argument were true, a lot of us scientists would have figured that out a long time ago.”

“If this were a meaningful paper, it would be peer-reviewed and published,” Ackerman said.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body at the United Nations of the world’s leading climate scientists, in its latest synthesis report found greenhouse gas emissions including carbon dioxide have “unequivocally” caused global warming with impacts to ecosystems on land and water, increases in extreme heat events and sea level rises likely attributed to climate change.?

When asked by the Lantern about Happer’s and Lindzen’s skepticism about climate change, Maddox didn’t directly address the question and claimed that models predicting climate change by the IPCC were inaccurate and “so inadequate that they can’t predict what has already happened.”?

Maddox referenced a book from Steven Koonin, another physicist who worked in the U.S. Department of Energy under President Barack Obama, in his criticisms of the IPCC. That book has been criticized as misleading, using strawman arguments to attack climate science or falsely asserting that climate science isn’t settled.

In a 2021 article in National Review, the physicists Lindzen and Happer criticized the Biden?administration for signing onto the Paris climate accord and “joining in the crusade against a supposed ‘climate emergency.’ We use the word ‘crusade’ advisedly, since the frenzy over climate resembles the medieval crusades against foreign infidels and home-grown heretics. There is even a children’s climate crusade.”

The two physicists in that article insisted there is no climate emergency: “Nor will there be one. None of the lurid predictions — dangerously accelerating sea-level rise, increasingly extreme weather, more deadly forest fires, unprecedented warming, etc. — are any more accurate than the fire-and-brimstone sermons used to stoke fanaticism in medieval crusaders.”

Last year was the warmest since global records began in 1850 at 1.18 degrees Celsius (2.12 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 20th-century average of 13.9 degrees Celsius? (57.0 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The global annual temperature increased at an average rate of 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since 1850 and more than three times that rate since 1982, NOAA reports.

Rep. Jim Gooch, R-Providence, a co-chair of the interim committee who has previously denied the science of climate change, asked in response to Maddox’s presentation if government leaders were willing to subject citizens to electricity rate increases “because of the so-called existential threat of climate change.”?

“The leaders in this country are really trying to force us to fuel switch, which would decrease the amount of coal,” Gooch said, mentioning that coal-fired power plants were being built abroad while the United States government is “rejecting” them. “It’s a real problem.”?

This story was updated with comments from a University of Washington climate scientist.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear gives the State of the Commonwealth address in Frankfort, Ky., on January 3, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Arden Barnes)

FRANKFORT — Kentucky legislators enacted more than 200 laws this year, most of which take effect today, July 15.

At least 20 new laws are in limbo, however.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear says the Republican-controlled General Assembly failed to fund them — to the tune of $153 million — even after he informed lawmakers of the problem on April 10.

On April 15, the session’s final day, the legislature passed Senate Bill 91, a budget cleanup bill that the administration says made $372 million in appropriations.

“But none of those appropriations addressed the unfunded mandates outlined in the Governor’s letter,” said Crystal Staley, a spokesperson for Beshear, in a statement to the Lantern. “We have consistently said — even if some of these bills represent good public policy — if the legislature does not provide the funding, it does not intend for the executive branch to perform those services.”

Republican lawmakers are unconvinced. Dustin Issacs, a spokesperson for the Republican supermajority in the Kentucky Senate, in a statement said the governor’s “constitutional responsibility is to execute the law.”

“The administration’s excuse for not implementing bills enacted by the General Assembly during the previous legislative session rests on their flawed interpretation and application of a Supreme Court case dating back to Governor Fletcher’s administration,” Issacs said.

The bills in limbo range from House Bill 271 — which mandates creation of a statewide system for reporting child abuse 24/7 that the administration estimates would cost $43 million — to a school safety bill, Senate Bill 2, which authorizes school guardians with a price tag estimated by the administration at $220,000.?

Rep. Nick Wilson, R-Williamsburg, primary sponsor of the child abuse reporting bill, said he was unaware of any funding problems until being contacted last week by the Lantern. He also was unaware of the governor’s April 10 letter.

Stephanie French, a spokesperson for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, in a statement said the cabinet sent a fiscal impact statement on March 15 saying Williams’ HB 271 had an estimated annual cost of $43 million to implement.??

However, no fiscal impact statement is attached to the bill on the legislature’s website.

Of the 22 bills and two resolutions that the governor warned were unfunded, only two have fiscal impact statements published on the legislature’s website. Beshear said a request was made for a fiscal impact analysis on most of the bills that he says ended up as unfunded mandates.

Any lawmaker may ask for a fiscal impact statement; the fiscal impact of a bill has traditionally been estimated by nonpartisan Legislative Research Commission staff in consultation with the executive branch agency that would be responsible for implementing the new law.

French, the CHFS spokesperson, said, “Team Kentucky is 100% focused on the children who rely on us for their safety and well-being,” adding that the cabinet was supportive of the bill. “We were not allocated the funding to be able to implement therefore, there is a fiscal impact that must be addressed before implementation can occur.”

‘Flabbergasted:’ Help for kinship care families passed unanimously. $20M price tag could derail it.

This dispute spilled into public view last month over Senate Bill 151 intended to provide financial relief to grandparents and other kinship caregivers raising children in Kentucky. Beshear in his letter said he supported the law, which he signed, but that it lacked approximately $20 million in funding to implement.?

The primary sponsor of the law, Sen. Julie Raque Adams, R-Louisville, pushed back against the Beshear administration’s reasoning and argued implementation of the law is non-negotiable.

Michelle Sanborn, president of the Children’s Alliance, an advocacy group supporting at-risk children and families, lobbied for HB 271 and the law providing relief for kinship care. She wondered why fiscal impact statements weren’t attached publicly to those bills.

“I don’t know where the breakdown was, whether it was one side or the other, or both,” Sanborn said.

The dispute will be revisited July 30 when the Interim Joint Committee on Families and Children plans to seek more information ?on what’s holding up implementation of the kinship care bill.

Wilson, an attorney who’s worked in family courts, questioned the $43 million price tag on the bill creating a new statewide child abuse reporting system. He said children’s lives and well being are at risk when investigations do not proceed in a timely manner. The bill had bipartisan support and was signed by Beshear.

“I don’t see how it could cost that much,” Wilson said. “The children are the most important thing in Kentucky. If any law is going to get implemented, I think it should be this one. It’s pretty upsetting to me. I mean, it’s heartbreaking.”

French, the CHFS spokesperson, didn’t respond to an emailed Lantern question asking for more specifics about the costs associated with the $43 million. In the previous state budget, Kentucky lawmakers allocated $19.6 million to support a different hotline to help Kentuckians in mental health crises.

Other Republican lawmakers have been skeptical of fiscal impact statements associated with bills in the past, and a member of Republican leadership in the Kentucky House passed a bill this session requiring more documentation from state agencies for fiscal impact statements.

Generally, fiscal impact statements are requested by a bill sponsor or legislative committee chair asking about a bill’s costs and financial impact on state government.

In his April 10 letter, the governor cited a Kentucky Supreme Court decision from 2005 dating back to former Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s administration as legal reasoning, saying if the legislature doesn’t provide funding to implement a policy, then it “does not intend for the executive branch to perform those services over the biennium.”

Beshear in the letter enumerated $153 million in new costs to implement the 20 bills and two resolutions that he listed.

The Lantern previously reported a constitutional law expert and past president of the Kentucky Bar Association agreed with the Beshear administration’s interpretation of the state Supreme Court decision in question, saying the executive branch can’t spend money that hasn’t been appropriated.

Other laws described as unfunded mandates in Beshear’s April 10 letter to the legislature cover a wide range of topics and policies, including:

• A GOP-sponsored law passed unanimously requiring school officials to report truancy to a county attorney after a certain period of time.
• A Democratic-sponsored law allowing foster parents who work outside the home or teleworking inside the home to receive child care benefits
• A bill and joint resolution sponsored by Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Benton, creating a nuclear energy research authority and directing the state utility regulator to prepare for siting nuclear energy facilities.?
• A bill prohibiting the sale of kratom to those under the age 21 and ordering the Kentucky Department for Public Health to regulate it.

Staley, the governor’s spokesperson, said the executive branch will implements provisions in the questioned laws that don’t require new funding.

Money is available to lawmakers. The dispute is unfolding as state tax revenues remain robust; the state budget office anticipates Kentucky’s budget surplus will top $1 billion for the fourth consecutive year.??

Sen. Chris McDaniels, the chair of the Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee, in a statement about the rosy budget projection said the legislature has remained “steadfast in our goal of fiscal restraint” amid “progressive and executive branch pressures” and that the state’s economic success has happened while lowering Kentuckians’ income taxes. Many Republican lawmakers and the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce want to make sure the legislature can afford to keep lowering income tax rates in future sessions.

A bipartisan effort in limbo

Wilson said he wants to make sure a new child abuse reporting system is at least funded in a future legislative session.

“I think everyone wants this,” Wilson said. “I’ll do whatever I can. I’m willing to work with anybody.”?

In the 2024 session, it took weeks of family court judges testifying, forming a working group and deliberations among cabinet officials, lawmakers and other stakeholders before a version of HB 271, the child abuse reporting bill, passed a Kentucky House committee on its way to eventual final passage. HB 271 passed unanimously in both chambers. Beshear signed it on April 9.?

“It’s been a true bipartisan effort, and I think that’s something that we sometimes miss in Frankfort,” said Rep. Samara Heavrin, R-Leitchfield, the chair of the House Families and Children Committee, when the bill passed. “We had several late nights and several hard conversations.”?

For Wilson, passage of the bill came down to ensuring the safety and welfare of Kentucky’s children.

“The wait times were so bad that it made it hard to report, and it was actually pretty hard to just receive a phone narrative or a written complaint and decide whether or not a social worker should investigate,” Wilson said. “The sad result is that there’s just not enough investigations from social workers on child abuse cases.”

Read Gov. Andy Beshear’s April 10 letter to the legislature and list of unfunded bills

Cellist and vocalist Ben Sollee, above, in his "Misty Miles" video, will speak at the Kentucky Bike Walk Summit next month in Lexington. (Ben Sollee)

Acclaimed cellist and native Kentuckian Ben Sollee said he gained a sense of freedom growing up in Lexington on his bicycle. He would hop on it to ride around the neighborhood, no cell phone and little worries with him, not having to be home until dark.?

But as he grew into adulthood and a career as a touring musician across the country and world, traveling by cars, planes and trains, he began to feel disconnected from the “experience of music and being in a place” given his fast-paced, time-consuming travel.?

In 2009, he was booked to perform at the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee and decided to try getting there via a newly-bought bicycle capable of carrying more than 50 pounds of equipment, supplies and, of course, his cello. He remembers the roughly 330 miles between Lexington and the music festival as “very hot” as he pedaled across the Cumberland Plateau, playing several smaller shows along the way.

“The wonderful thing about being on a bicycle is you can only ride so far and so fast, especially when you’re hauling so much gear,” Sollee told the Lantern. “I found myself being very present.”?

He said over the next five years he would ride about 6,000 miles on his bike as he incorporated it into some of his tours. The bicycle, he said, provides him not only a healthy way to get around but also a way to be more present in his community and with himself.?

It’s that message of how bicycling has improved his life and its connections with his music that he hopes to bring as one of the keynote speakers for the Bike Walk Kentucky Summit next month at Transylvania University in Lexington.?

The conference, scheduled for Aug. 15-16, is described by organizers as a gathering of hundreds of Kentucky leaders in and outside of government hoping to brainstorm and envision safer and more numerous walking, hiking and biking routes and facilities across the state. A similar summit took place at the private university in 2018 connected to the nonprofit Bike Walk Kentucky.

Jim Gray, the secretary of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and a former Lexington mayor,? will give opening remarks along with current Mayor Linda Gorton. In a statement, Gray said the summit will “promote safe practices and encourage more complete streets to support a safer and more inclusive transportation system that protects all road users.”?

Other keynote speakers at the summit include Bill Nesper, the executive director of the League of American Bicyclists; Angie Schmidt, a writer and expert on sustainable transportation, and tourism and recreation leaders Kalene Griffith and David Wright from Bentonville, Arkansas, a community highlighted by Axios for its investments into the cycling industry.?

Sollee hopes the summit can promote cycling as not only something that’s healthy for Kentuckians and the environment but also something to be celebrated — highlighting the challenges bicyclists face on public streets battling traffic but also the fun it can bring people, too.?

“The biggest thing we could possibly do is just celebrate and promote people that use their feet and bicycles in the community,” Sollee said. “We really have to be very proactive about sharing, not just what a battle it is out there to ride your bicycle on public streets, but also what a joy it is, and how you know how it helps us connect with other people in our community.”

Those interested in attending the summit can register on Bike Walk Kentucky’s website.

An Amazon Web Services data center under construction in Stone Ridge, Virginia, on March 27, 2024. Amazon plans to spend almost $150 billion in the coming 15 years on data centers, giving the cloud-computing giant the capacity to handle an expected explosion in demand for artificial intelligence applications and other digital services. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

LOUISVILLE — The boom in artificial intelligence is fueling a proliferation of new data centers? — the computer clusters that power the internet — in “places that maybe we hadn’t thought of before,” an industry spokesman told utility regulators gathered in Louisville last month.

Kentucky could be one of those places in the not-so-distant future.

The state’s largest utility and the legislature have taken steps to attract the investments — potentially billions of dollars — that come when companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon develop data centers. The data center boom is also fueling surging demand for power at a time when climate change has upped the pressure to reduce heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels.

In an earnings call in May, the CEO of the parent company of Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities said it is “actively working with several large data centers” in Kentucky. PPL Corp. CEO Vince Sorgi said the prospective centers would each need 300 megawatts to 500 megawatts of electricity.

For comparison, one prospective data center could consume the entire power generation of one of LG&E and KU’s coal-fired units. E.W. Brown Generating Station, the utility’s coal-fired power plant in Mercer County, has a net power capacity of 457 megawatts.?

Kentucky lawmakers are among those who see economic potential in these large-scale computer hubs. The GOP-dominated state legislature earlier this year sweetened the enticements for data centers to locate specifically in Jefferson County through House Bill 8, a broad tax policy law passed over the veto of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.?

HB 8 gives sales tax breaks on data center equipment if a data center owner or operator makes a capital investment of at least $450 million or a “project organizer” invests at least $150 million. Those tax breaks would need approval from the state’s incentives board, the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority.

The Kentucky Lantern requested an interview with Rep. Jason Petrie, R-Elkton, the chair of the Kentucky House Appropriations and Revenue Committee and the leading sponsor of HB 8. In response, Petrie in a statement said the incentives in HB 8 were “consistent with our ongoing efforts to make sure Kentucky remains competitive as we continue to explore potential economic investments.”

WDRB reported in April that Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said he was excited about a “transformative” economic development project involving a data center that could locate in the southwestern part of the city but declined to discuss additional details about the project.

?The prospect of attracting data centers to Kentucky, however, also raises concerns among advocates for the environment who follow utility policy: Would Kentucky consumers be forced to shoulder the financial burden of building new transmission lines and power plants to supply data centers with power? Does the state have enough clean energy to attract data center companies that want access to it?

Randy Strobo, a Louisville attorney focusing on environmental issues and litigation, said state and federal governments ultimately have the responsibility to analyze how new data centers would impact Kentucky’s regional electric grid and local communities “from all different perspectives.”?

“There’s going to be other impacts other than just energy,” Strobo said, mentioning how some data centers use large amounts of water to cool computers. “They really need to weigh all the different costs and benefits and try to balance it out in a way that helps more people than hurts them.’

What are data centers — and what can they bring?

In addition to the highly publicized boom in AI services, other factors are also driving the surge in new computer hubs, including the demand for “cloud” storage space and computation power along with a slew of data-driven enterprises across the globe.?

Josh Levi, the industry spokesperson and president of the Data Center Coalition who addressed the Louisville conference, put growing data usage in simpler terms: Sending emails. Using search engines. Streaming video. Credit card transactions. Sending high-definition medical records to help make diagnoses in health care.

“We’re doing it in more places: our home, our office, our home office, the plane, the train. We’re doing it all hours in a day,” Levi told the Louisville audience. “It seems like we’re fairly ubiquitous in our command to generate data, and our companies are very much responding to that.”?

The payoff, at least in terms of capital investment and potential tax revenue, can be significant for communities and states that have the power, internet connection and workforce.?

Communities in Northern Virginia — a nucleus of data center development? — could reap tens of millions of dollars from local taxes on the operations. Critics, however, say that Virginia’s state tax breaks for data centers generally cancel out any new revenue brought in by local governments.?

States outside the data center hubs of Virginia and Atlanta have already benefited from the boom. In Mississippi, Amazon is spending about $10 billion to build two data center campuses. In Southern Indiana across the Ohio River from Louisville, Facebook’s parent company Meta is investing $800 million in a data center.?

Levi in a statement to the Lantern also asserted data centers have a job multiplier effect beyond their direct employment, pointing to a Data Center Coalition-commissioned report by consulting group PricewaterhouseCoopers that found that nationally each data center job supports six jobs elsewhere in the broader economy.?

“By prioritizing investments in local communities, data centers also boost supply chain and service ecosystems, creating jobs for thousands of construction professionals during the building phase and providing quality, high-wage jobs for ongoing operations,” Levi said in his statement. “Further, every data center comes with years of reliable support for local economies by promoting job creation at restaurants, hotels, rental car agencies, fiber and HVAC installers, steel fabricators, and many other businesses.”

What do data centers need — and at what cost?

Levi said data center developers are looking for fiber internet connections, a workforce to build and run the centers and places less at risk for natural disasters.

They also need power, and lots of it.

According to a January 2024 report from consulting firm McKinsey and Co., electricity demand by data centers in the United States is expected to go from 17 gigawatts in 2022 to 35 gigawatts in 2030. For comparison, Kentucky’s net summer capacity — the maximum amount of electricity produced in the state during peak summer electricity demand — in 2022 was 17.6 gigawatts, according to federal data.

“Reliable power is incredibly important to the data center industry,” Levi said at the conference. “This is an industry who is relied upon to provide non-stop access to the data.”?

But in weighing potential investments and jobs, some environmental advocates in Kentucky worry about who would pay for new transmission lines and power plants if they’re needed to run data centers.?

“As these new data centers are coming online, how are we going to pay for them?” said Strobo, the environmental attorney. He questions whether states should offer “huge incentives” to data centers given the possibility that the costs to accommodate them could fall on electricity ratepayers.?

Two utilities, including American Electric Power, the parent company of Kentucky Power, are protesting before a federal regulator an agreement between Amazon and an independent power producer to use electricity from a Pennsylvania nuclear plant because of concerns that up to $140 million in electricity transmission costs for the agreement could be shifted onto ratepayers. Talen Energy, the independent power producer, is pushing back against AEP’s protest.

Some environmental advocates also worry about heat-trapping carbon emissions connected to new data centers, particularly that demand from new data centers could be keeping older coal-fired power plants online when they could be retired. In Georgia, the state’s largest utility is building new natural gas-fired or oil-fired generators along with some solar battery facilities in part to meet the future power demands of data centers.

Levi told the Lantern that access to clean energy is a consideration for where data centers locate. For example, Amazon is helping pay a local utility in Mississippi to build solar farms to pair with its new data center campuses but will also power the data centers with a new natural gas-fired turbine.?

Kentucky currently has very little in the way of renewable energy, notwithstanding hydroelectric power, with about 70% of electricity generated in the state coming from burning coal, the “dirtiest” fossil fuel in terms of heat-trapping carbon emissions, as of February 2024 according to federal data.?

Lane Boldman, the executive director for the environmental advocacy group Kentucky Conservation Committee, says Kentucky must build more renewable energy to compete for new industries, including data centers and an aluminum smelter, which prioritize climate-friendly technology.?

“We just haven’t taken the time to build out the power. But we have the potential to build up the power. We certainly have the right mix of ingredients to do that. I mean, that’s just simply a political problem to work through,” Boldman said.?

The unique circumstances of data centers

John Bevington, senior director of business and development at LG&E and KU, says manufacturing companies looking to locate in Kentucky usually ask about the availability of land and nearby railroads or highways.?

Not so with data centers.?

“They’re so energy intensive, they tend to start asking questions of utilities first,” Bevington told the Lantern. “They really need proximity to power lines and power lines that have capacity.”?

It’s unclear at this point whether LG&E and KU would seek to build more power generation, fossil fuel-fired or renewables, to meet the demands of prospective data centers coming into the state.?

Chris Whelan, a spokesperson for LG&E and KU, told the Lantern that the potential power demands of data centers will be analyzed in the utility’s future energy planning documents to be filed later this year with the Kentucky Public Service Commission, the state’s utility regulator.?

Bevington with LG&E and KU said the higher energy demands of prospective data centers coincide with the overall higher energy demands of new economic development projects in Kentucky, including battery plants being built by Ford. For the time being, Bevington said, the number of existing data centers in LG&E and KU’s territory is “pretty minimal.”

Strobo, the environmental lawyer, says tech companies like Google appear to be a safer economic development bet than cryptocurrency mining operations that are similarly energy-intensive. The PSC last year in multiple? cases denied or approved electricity cost discounts sought by utilities to serve Bitcoin mining operations across Kentucky.

“It seems like Google and Microsoft and all of them are being intentional about trying to do it in a way that tries to minimize impacts, although, of course, there’s still going to be some pretty major ones from all of it,” Strobo said. “We all know they’re coming. Everybody wants them to come for the most part.”

Bloomberg News recently reported the parent company of Google, which has seen its heat-trapping carbon emissions rise due to its investment in AI, is no longer claiming its operations are carbon neutral, and the company plans to be carbon neutral by 2030. Google also recently announced an investment into solar power in Taiwan among other renewable energy endeavors.

While data centers may not create a large number of jobs, Bevington of LG&E and KU said, the tax revenue brought in could be a boost to communities.?

“Whether that’s a data center or a new automotive supplier or an electric vehicle battery manufacturer or a new bourbon distillery, I think we really tend to look at all of it as, ‘What can we do to enable growth in our communities?’” Bevington said. “We sort of look at data centers as, you know, another very competitive project.”?

Kent Chandler, the former chair of the Kentucky Public Service Commission, speaking before lawmakers in June. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

The chair of Kentucky’s utility regulator is leaving the post after almost three years to the disappointment of some consumer advocates.?

Kentucky Public Service Commission Chair Kent Chandler’s term on the three-person commission expired on June 30. Crystal Staley, a spokesperson for Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, said Chandler had resigned and that the governor appreciated Chandler’s service. She said his replacement would be appointed soon.?

Chandler in a statement to the Lantern said he had no indication or confidence he would be reappointed to another four-year term, based on a lack of communication from the Beshear administration regarding his reappointment.?

“I decided it was best for me and my family to walk away at the end of my term,” Chandler said, noting he appreciated serving the commission in a number of roles including leading it the last three years.?

Attorneys who represent ratepayers — both households and manufacturers — praised Chandler’s leadership and expertise as chair.

“I’ve been practicing at the Kentucky commission for 38 years. Kent Chandler is by far the hardest working and smartest commissioner that has been on the bench in my memory,” said Michael Kurtz, general counsel for Kentucky Industrial Utility Customers, a coalition of manufacturers.

Long-time environmental advocate Tom FitzGerald called Chandler’s departure a “significant loss” for the state, particularly for residential and small business ratepayers. FitzGerald, the former executive director of the nonprofit legal firm Kentucky Resources Council, in an email said while some utility representatives might have issues with a particular PSC decision, nobody “can credibly state that he was not among the most diligent, thoughtful, involved, and fair commissioners that we have had at the PSC.”?

“I am very disappointed that Gov. Beshear failed to reappoint chair Chandler,” FitzGerald said. “Those of us who represent ratepayers with low- and fixed-incomes who are among the most vulnerable to high utility costs, are especially appreciative of his service and the sacrifice of his family in allowing him to put in long hours at short pay in service to the ratepayers of the Commonwealth.”

FitzGerald said Chandler’s departure comes at a time of unprecedented change in how electricity is generated and used, ranging from the “integration of renewables and storage to the grid” to the “retirement of uneconomic coal-fired units.” He said while he believed the two remaining commissioners at the regulator are “able and thoughtful people,” neither have the “breadth of experience” that Chandler has.?

PSC faces increasing demands

The Kentucky Public Service Commissioner (PSC) regulates the rates and services of more than 1,100 utilities, ranging from massive investor-owned electricity providers such as Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities to small water districts that provide drinking water to rural communities. The regulator also fields complaints from Kentuckians about service and rates and hears requests from utilities to retire or build new power generation.

The PSC is facing increasing demands to vet a surge of renewable energy developers seeking to build solar installations, navigate new laws passed by the GOP-dominated legislature placing barriers on retiring fossil fuel-fired power plants, and oversee water utilities grappling with aging and dilapidated pipes, water tanks and treatment plants.?

In his statement to the Lantern, Chandler said: “Most people don’t know what the public service commission is, and maybe they shouldn’t have to know. The irony is that if a PSC is well-resourced and doing a good job at regulating rates and service, over time their work should be seamless and unnoticeable, and the efforts should result in affordable and consistent utility service by those they regulate. Of course, it’s not obvious year to year the impact the PSC has on the public, so taking the PSC’s efforts for granted can lead to a lack of resources made available to the agency.”?

Chandler said he had the “utmost confidence” the remaining commissioners and the regulator’s “incredible staff” would continue the PSC’s mission “without missing a beat.”?

Chandler last year called for more funding for the commission, saying “something has to change” because the regulator was dealing with an increasing number of cases, with expanding complexity, coinciding with having fewer and less experienced staff than in the past.?

The GOP-dominated legislature in the two-year state budget enacted this year did increase funding for the regulator by a little over a million dollars from fiscal year 2023-2024 to fiscal year 2024-2025 for a total yearly budget of nearly $18 million.?

But the legislature also put new burdens on the regulator in the form of mandated eight-month deadlines the commission has to issue decisions by in certain types of cases, including the building of new power plants. Those deadlines were passed as a part of Senate Bill 349. Beshear in an April letter to the legislature said the regulator would take on a little over $1 million in unfunded costs because of SB 349, among other passed laws that the governor said would have funding omissions.?

Under Chandler’s leadership, the commission had strongly scrutinized future power generation plans utilities are required to create and present, had opened investigations into electricity cost discounts given by utilities to cryptocurrency mining operations, honed in on power outages and costs faced by utilities during Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022 and slashed a much-criticized rate hike sought by utility Kentucky Power.?

Chandler had previously served as an attorney in the Attorney General’s Office of Rate Intervention when Beshear was attorney general. Before his appointment, Chandler served as an advisor to the commission on federal wholesale gas and electricity markets and also served as the commission’s executive director. He was appointed as a commissioner and designated as the commission’s vice chair in July 2020 and was designated as chair of the commission in August 2021.?

Whoever the Democratic governor does appoint to the commission would have to be confirmed by the GOP-dominated Kentucky Senate, which isn’t a guarantee. Amy Cubbage, an attorney who formerly served as Beshear’s general counsel among other roles in his administration, wasn’t confirmed by the Senate to the commission in 2022.

Rep. Killian Timoney, R-Nicholasville, sponsor of the bill outlawing "gray machines" says the ruling will put enforcement on firmer ground. (LRC Public Information)

A Kentucky judge has upheld the legislature’s 2023 ban of so-called “gray machines,” agreeing with the attorney general that the law does not violate free speech or equal protection guarantees and isn’t unconstitutional special legislation.?

Franklin Circuit Court Judge Phillip Shepherd in his ruling Friday sided with arguments made by Attorney General Russell Coleman defending House Bill 594, which banned the slot-style machines commonly found in many bars and gas stations around the state.?

The machines’ moniker is derived from their murky legal status, an “allegedly gray area” that Shepherd referenced in his 52-page ruling. Opponents characterize the games as illegal gambling. Proponents refer to them as “skill games” and have argued a ban would let the horse racing industry monopolize gambling in the state. Churchill Downs had filed an amicus brief in defense of HB 594.

Shepherd in his ruling wrote that plaintiffs, including “skill-based” gaming company Pace-O-Matic, had not proved their claim that HB 594 violated the constitutional right to free speech by targeting the “Burning Barrel” game because the legislature didn’t like the ideas the game expressed.

“The Court is not persuaded that HB 594 targeted Burning Barrel because of its expressive content, but rather enacted HB 594 to target the conduct of unregulated wagering,” Shepherd wrote.?

Shepherd also wrote that while HB 594 did appear to benefit Kentucky’s horse race tracks, which had supported the ban, that appearance in and of itself didn’t make the law unconstitutional special legislation.?

Coleman in a statement said lawmakers “took a bold and bipartisan step to protect Kentucky children and families when they outlawed gray machines.”

“After the law was challenged, our Office launched a vigorous defense of the statute and the General Assembly’s fundamental role as our Commonwealth’s policymaking body,” Coleman said. “The resounding victory in the Franklin Circuit is a testament to the top-flight work of our attorneys, and I’m honored to work alongside them every day.”

Guthrie True, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, told the Lantern he was disappointed in the ruling but hadn’t had time to review it in detail. True said he planned to talk to his clients about a potential appeal.?

Lobbying efforts around? HB 594 dominated spending in the 2023 session of the Kentucky legislature, with two groups on opposing sides spending nearly $600,000 in ads over two months, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. The legislation sharply divided Republicans in the GOP-dominated legislature as it eventually got final passage and was signed by Democratic Gov. Andy Behsear.?

House Majority Whip Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, opposed the ban while also representing a “gray machine” company as an attorney. Nemes told the Lexington Herald-Leader an ethics opinion he requested and received from the Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission said it was ethical?to advocate and vote on HB 594 because the legislation affected the entire “gray machines” industry, not just his client. House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, was a co-sponsor of HB 594.

Louisville Public Media reported earlier this year that slot-style machines had begun to reappear in gas stations, with “skill based” machine companies arguing the machines were changed to become “no risk” games as to not run afoul of HB 594.?

Rep. Killian Timoney, R-Nicholasville, the primary sponsor of HB 594, told the Lantern the companies essentially haven’t changed. He believed Shepherd’s ruling will give the attorney general and county attorneys “a whole lot more teeth” to enforce the law.?

“They’re just an extension of the gray machines because there’s still an element of chance — it’s just a secondary element,” Timoney said. “Russell Coleman will have a much more clear direction on how to relay messaging to the county attorneys pertaining to [House Bill] 594.”

Timoney, who was defeated in a primary election last month, said he didn’t believe additional policy was needed in a future legislative session, saying the key now will be enforcing the law that’s already on the books.?

This story was updated with a statement from Attorney General Russell Coleman. Additional context was also added regarding an ethics opinion Rep. Jason Nemes received.

Valves on a Kentucky River hydroelectric plant await the installation of turbines. (Photo courtesy of Jonathan Moore)

Jonathan Moore sees potential for reliable, durable electric power in Kentucky’s hundreds of miles of waterways, more navigable water than many states can boast.

The Kentucky River is a prime example, says Moore, a partner in the company Appalachian Hydro Associates. Taking advantage of a system of locks and dams dating back to the 19th century, his company has partnered with Berea College in recent years to build two hydroelectric plants at locks?on the Kentucky River. One plant has been online since 2021, and Moore said the second plant should be fully constructed by the end of the year.?

These hydro plants produce only a small amount of electricity, a few megawatts at most, while other renewable energy sources such as utility-scale solar can generate hundreds of megawatts of power. But Moore said the small number “belies the fact that it’s going to generate that power all the time for 100 years or more — basically forever.”?

“Appalachia in general has a good deal of potential,” Moore said. “It’s low-hanging fruit in the renewable energy spectrum for power that can be produced when the wind doesn’t blow in, the sun doesn’t shine.”?

Federal funding, announced Wednesday, will help construct a third hydroelectric plant along the river, another partnership with Berea College.

U.S. Department of Agriculture officials announced more than $375 million in partially forgivable loans and grants across the country through two U.S. Department of Agriculture programs — the funding made possible through the Inflation Reduction Act — to help fund numerous energy projects, including installing rooftop solar panels on farms and heat pumps at small businesses.?

In Kentucky, the USDA is providing about $16.6 million in partially forgivable loans for the latest hydropower plant. Moore said the federal support will help build the plant much more quickly. Power from the third plant, like the others, will be sold at a discount to the utility East Kentucky Power Cooperative to generate revenue for Berea College. Moore said a total of six plants are planned along the river, which he believes can add up to a significant amount of electricity.?

“I’m glad that water’s going to turn a turbine and get some people power,” he said.?

Another grant provided through the USDA is helping a Hancock County farmer try out solar power on his farm for the first time. Justin Obenchain, 37, grows about 20 acres of sweet corn and uses energy-intensive freezers year-round to keep the corn fresh for sale to local schools and elsewhere.?

He learned about the grant program through a local agriculture extension agent and saw solar as a way to curb some of the cost of powering the freezers.

“I thought it would be something that would fit us pretty well,” Obenchain said. “An open mind to what’s coming is going to be very beneficial in the long run.”?

He received a $40,000 grant through the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program, or REAP, which covered about half the cost of the rooftop solar installations now located on his farm. He expects the about 90 solar panels to be turned on sometime in July, he said, potentially an opportunity to show his neighbors how solar power works for him.?

“??I think everything deserves a look. And some farms it may fit, some it may not,” Obenchain said. “But I think for ours, it’ll be a good fit.”

One of the next steps in deploying the money is ensuring the accuracy of Kentucky's broadband access maps. (John Lamb/Getty Images)

Federal officials have approved Kentucky’s plan to deploy almost $1.1 billion?to expand broadband, a key step toward connecting homes and businesses throughout the state.?

The funding was given to the state last year. Earlier this month the National Telecommunications and Information Administration approved the second volume of Kentucky’s proposed plans for using the money through the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program, or BEAD, created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.?

Those approved plans include how grants will be awarded to internet providers, what affordability mechanisms will be available to help Kentuckians pay for internet service once it’s expanded, and how workers will be trained to help build broadband connections.?

Kentucky will require internet providers applying for the funding to offer a “low-cost” option, which would be $30 a month or less, though internet providers could negotiate the price of that “low cost” option to a max of $65 a month. No charges for installation, maintenance or repairs are to be allowed in the monthly cost.?

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear in a Monday press conference said the internet expansion spurred by the funding “should provide a route” for more Kentuckians to have affordable internet.?

“If broadband and high speed internet is just as important as roads and bridges, then everybody needs to be able to use it. So, affordability is absolutely critical,” Beshear said.?

Some providers will offer low-cost internet even as federal program ends, White House says

Beshear also called the recent expiration of a federal program that provided up to $30 a month to low-income households for internet access “a shame.” Approximately 1 in 4 Kentucky households were enrolled in the Affordable Connectivity Program.?

The next steps to roll out Kentucky’s funding include a process for ensuring the accuracy of the state’s broadband access maps. Meghan Sandfoss, the executive director of the Kentucky Office of Broadband Development, said her office has received more than 400,000 challenges to the maps from internet providers, nonprofits and local governments, and the challenge process should finish by July.? Accurate maps will better identify underserved and unserved parts of the state and make sure broadband expansion isn’t duplicative, Sandfoss said.?

From there, the state has less than five years to distribute broadband grants and build internet connection. Sandfoss said the state has until 2028 to distribute the more than $1 billion in BEAD funding. She said broadband projects underway that were previously funded by the state with hundreds of millions of dollars through the American Rescue Plan Act have to be finished by the end of 2026.

Sandfoss said about 12% of Kentucky is either underserved or unserved by internet providers,? according to federal data, and the BEAD funding should “close the gap all the way.”?

“There’s quite a lot of activity going on right now, and it will continue for the next four years,” Sandfoss said.

The coal preparation plant was photographed from the air on Nov. 1, 2023, the day after its collapse. Louisville Emergency Management took the photo via a drone. (Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet records)

On a cool evening in late October, David Peyton heard a pop then a warning scream to get out. Within seconds two men were trapped under 11 stories of steel and concrete.

Peyton ran to where Alvin Nees and Billy Joe “Bo” Daniels were trapped in the collapsed Pontiki/Excel coal preparation plant in Martin County. He talked with the men but lost contact with Nees after a half hour, maybe a little longer.

Peyton, a subcontractor on the project to demolish the plant, told state investigators that he had refused to do the demolition himself because of his concerns about the plant’s decades-old condition. That’s according to a report by state workplace safety officers and released to the Lantern through an open records request.?

Emergency responders from across Kentucky worked for several days in a dangerous but ultimately futile attempt to rescue Nees and Daniels. Both men died from their injuries, a loss that Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear in early November called a “heartbreaking situation.”?

A months-long investigation by the Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet found that it was a situation that might have been averted had federally-required safety precautions been followed.?

The investigation found multiple safety violations that preceded the collapse, including:?

• Not having an engineering survey and plan before demolition.
• Not bracing corroded load-bearing steel columns or ensuring the columns were not “overstressed” before using welding torches to cut into them.
• Not having someone certified in first aid on site.
• Not informing Nees and Daniels of the hazardous conditions involved with the demolition.

The cabinet on April 30 fined Skeens Enterprises, the primary contractor charged with demolishing and scrapping the plant, $31,500 for five violations that preceded the deaths of Nees and Daniels.

A voicemail and text message to Peyton from the Lantern asking about the state report were not returned. Attempts to reach Stanley Skeens, the CEO of Skeens Enterprises, or a representative of Skeens Enterprises were not successful.??

What state and federal officials found

Lexington Coal Co., a prominent mining operator with a history of environmental compliance issues, holds the state permit to reclaim the site of the coal preparation plant, which had been operated by Alliance Resource Partners until it was closed and sold in 2014.?

Lexington Coal Co. is led by Jeremy Hoops, the son of Jeff Hoops whose bankrupt coal company, Blackjewel, in 2019 withheld final paychecks from employees who then blocked a coal train for two months. Jeff Hoops was Blackjewel’s CEO and president.

Lexington Coal Co. contracted with Pike County-based Skeens Enterprises to demolish and salvage the plant. Skeens Enterprises then subcontracted with Tennessee-based Bordeau Metals, LLC to help with the demolition including with the loading and transportation of metal. Bordeau Metals, led by Brad Bordeau, then subcontracted with Peyton’s McLean County-based company Ace Welding and Fabrication to conduct the demolition of the plant.?

State workplace safety officials noted in their report that Lexington Coal Company required in its contract with Skeens Enterprises that the contractor get permission before subcontracting the demolition work. Lexington Coal Company was unaware that subcontractors had been brought on or that demolition work had begun in late October, according to the state report. State officials investigated Lexington Coal Co. separately after the collapse but didn’t issue the company any citations.?

Peyton, head of the welding company, had his doubts about the demolition project going back to September 2023.

Peyton told Skeens in September he wasn’t comfortable demolishing the plant due to its condition. The steel of the idled preparation plant had been widely corroded. State inspectors later attributed the corrosion to decades of exposure to chemicals used and coal ash created by crushing and removing excess rock from the mined coal.?

Skeens persisted in keeping Peyton on the project; the two agreed that month that Peyton would move forward with his work if Skeens “could get the building on the ground.”?

But in late October, Peyton told Brad Bordeau, the other subcontractor, he wasn’t going to go forward with his part in the demolition project. Bordeau then decided to bring in a Louisville company specializing in demolitions to look at the structure. Bordeau informed Skeens and Peyton he was bringing in the Louisville company.

Skeens, the primary contractor, had another idea. He reached out to Bo Daniels and Alvin Nees, unbeknownst to Bordeau. Daniels had worked with Skeens before but not on a demolition project, according to the state report, and Skeens had demolished around a dozen coal preparation plants before tackling the project.?

Skeens asked Peyton if Nees and Daniels could use Peyton’s welding torches and equipment, which Peyton provided them, along with protective gear. Peyton also taught Nees and Daniels how to use the torches. On the day of the demolition, Oct. 31, 2023, Nees and Daniels began cutting two-foot notches out of the steel columns at the base of the plant.?

It was Skeens’ screaming that Peyton heard when the plant began to collapse, according to the state report. Skeens felt sick following the collapse and was taken to the hospital.

State officers didn’t find any evidence of an engineer conducting a survey before the demolition was done as required by federal regulations. Nor was there someone certified with first aid at the plant site, also required by federal regulations, though Skeens had a first aid certification that had expired in 2008. Skeens told state officers he didn’t advise Daniels on how to drop the building other than to have it fall to the east. Daniels and Nees were supposed to be paid $5,000 for their work.?

That same day, Bordeau had brought in Jon Davies, the president of Louisville-based Complete Demolition Services, to price the demolition of the plant. State officers write Skeens said Davies told him at the plant site the demolition process Nees and Daniels were undertaking “looked good.” But when state officers interviewed Davies, he told them the demolition process was “not how he would do it” and that he requested to get away from the building.?

A federal engineering report stated that while using welding torches isn’t uncommon with a demolition, the cuts made into load-bearing steel columns on the ground floor of the plant posed a “serious risk to the structural integrity of the building.” One of the columns that had been cut into by the torches had a calculated load of 56,000 pounds, or the equivalent of more than a dozen large SUVs.?

That column was overstressed and “in a precarious state even before the collapse transpired,” Alan Lu with the federal Office of Engineering Services wrote. “Field investigations further reveal that some columns in the eastern section of the building were subjected to torch cuts resulting in the complete loss of their load bearing capacity.”?

“The inadequate demolition procedures ultimately culminated in the premature and catastrophic collapse of the building during demolition operations,” Lu wrote.?

Rescuers from around the state worked for more than two days, using dogs, listening devices and cameras to search the unstable debris. The county sheriff told the Mountain Citizen of Inez that responders crawled under tons of steel and concrete that was “snapping and popping” and at one point attempted to free Daniels by surgically amputating his leg.?

The two men were remembered last year by their families and loved ones as “a great father”? and “a great person.”

On Nov. 18, 2022, Stacey Feezor plays with her niece Delilah Jenkins, 6, in Graves County outside her camper at Camp Graves, which provided transitional housing to those who lost homes in the December 2021 tornado. (Julia Rendleman for Kentucky Lantern)

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear alongside leaders from the state’s housing corporation and local communities on Monday announced more than $223 million in bonds and grants will be invested to replenish rental housing in Bowling Green and other Western Kentucky communities impacted by tornadoes.?

Much of the region’s rental housing stock, particularly homes accessible to low-income families, including in Mayfield and Dawson Springs, was destroyed by a devastating tornado outbreak in December 2021. Local leaders have said the region suffered from a housing shortage even before the tornado outbreak.?

Mayfield Mayor Kathy O’Nan said it was “heartwarming” that two of the rental housing developments to be funded in the Graves County seat will create homes for “the most vulnerable” in her community.?

“It was those people who lived in the subpar rental homes that are now still struggling,” O’Nan said. “What will come from our community to rebuild not only Western Kentucky but add to our commonwealth as a whole will be well worth every dollar invested.”

Plans call for 953 rental units to be built by private housing developers across Mayfield (122 units), Dawson Springs (88 units), Madisonville (32 units), Hopkinsville (76 units) and Bowling Green (635 units). The housing developments will be income-restricted to be accessible for moderate to low-income families with most rental units having two to three bedrooms, according to a release from the governor’s office.?

About 60% of the invested funding, about $135 million, will come from tax-exempt bonds issued to private housing developers by the Kentucky Housing Corp., the state’s public housing corporation. Another almost $60 million in federal grant funding is being made available by the Kentucky Department for Local Government. That grant is a large chunk of funding received last year from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Other funding sources include state and national housing trust funds, another federal grant and projected equity from tax credits.?

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a statement to the Lantern said the announcement was “welcome news for Western Kentucky” and that federal funding he “fought to secure” will build hundreds of new housing units.

“I’m glad to see my home state put these federal dollars to work and take this crucial next step in delivering real relief to Kentuckians,” McConnell said in his statement.

Will help Bowling Green continue ‘historic growth,’ says Beshear

Wendy Smith, deputy executive director of housing programs at the Kentucky Housing Corporation, said developers taking advantage of the government financing must agree to accept low-income housing vouchers. Smith said the potential rent range for these units is federally determined by county which would likely mean a two-bedroom apartment will go for $750 to $900 a month. Smith said it would likely be 18 months to 24 months before prospective tenants would be able to move in.?

The private housing developments receiving the funding include Leitchfield-based Wabuck Development Company, Louisville-based SOCAYR Inc., Louisville-based LDG Multifamily LLC and Lexington-based AU Associates Inc.?

Winston Miller, the chief executive officer of the Kentucky Housing Corporation, called the funding announcement “historic” because of the amount of housing being constructed along with what he said was the unprecedented combining of federal grant funding with bonds issued by the corporation.?

“To keep up with the economic and job growth, Kentucky needs to build more housing units. Today’s announcement of the 953 units is a very significant step in closing the supply gap that exists in West Kentucky,” Miller said.?

Beshear said the construction of rental housing in Bowling Green, which is receiving about two thirds of the new construction, is “absolutely necessary” to help the city continue “historic growth.” He said state officials believed the funding announcement to be the largest housing development effort in Western Kentucky in history.?

“A home is more than four walls. It’s the security of raising your family, and for those that lost the place they were living, a new unit, a new home means so much,” Beshear said.

This story was updated with a statement from U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell.

Raymond Emery searched for his dog Brandon, on the left, in the rubble of his trailer after the tornado. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

HOPKINS COUNTY — Raymond Emery has spent the past few nights leaning back in the front seat of his green minivan to stay close to his chickens and dogs. They’re among his few remaining possessions after a powerful EF-3 tornado, winds reaching 160 mph, ripped through his rented trailer the evening of May 26.

One of his dogs, Brandon, keeps a watchful eye on Emery.?

“I think he’s watching over me. I think people been mean to him in his life, but he’s a stray,” Emery said Thursday, noisy hens and roosters strutting around him. He found Brandon on the street about five months ago chasing his chickens and hungry, so he adopted him along with his other animals.?

The 60-year-old hid under his coffee table as the trailer’s walls and roof collapsed on top of him. In the dark, he dug through the debris of what was his home searching for Brandon.?

“I thought Brandon was gone because I couldn’t find him, but he was hiding in the woods somewhere,” he said.

This isn’t his family’s first loss from a powerful tornado. He said his sister lost her home when a long-track EF-4 tornado tore through the Hopkins County community of Barnsley in December 2021.

That tornado outbreak destroyed hundreds of homes across Western Kentucky in a more than 100 mile-track that devastated the cities of Dawson Springs and Mayfield. Seventy-four Kentuckians died in that outbreak.?

The Sunday tornado took a similar path as the 2021 tornado but veered slightly north of Dawson Springs, putting more scattered homes along rural roads in the path of demolishing winds. He said his sister’s rebuilt home was spared this time in Barnsley. Others in Barnsley were not as fortunate and are again facing the prospect of rebuilding. One person in Hopkins County died from the May 26 storms, among five Kentuckians killed across the state.?

Emery’s story of survival is one of several in a county recovering from its second violent tornado in less than three years. Neighbors who were spared in 2021 and came to the aid of others now face the shock and long journey of disaster recovery themselves — in a disaster that at least one official predicts will garner less attention and fewer resources than the earlier one.

Emery’s trailer wasn’t insured, and he’s not immediately sure what his nephew, who owns the property, has planned. His nearby family has offered him places to stay, but for now he’s decided to stay by his chickens. Feeding and taking care of them is what keeps him going. Brandon, too, stayed close by the tin- roofed coop, a chorus of rooster crows surrounding them.

“You got to keep going. You never know when time is going to stop,” Emery said.?

Finding support for the long path forward?

On Thursday, a crew of volunteers with an Illinois-based Christian youth ministry were tearing down the remains and rubble of Emery’s trailer one piece at a time, dishes and clothing stacked in piles next to metal and wooden shards.?

Rebecca Resillez with the Salem United Church of Christ said volunteers came to Hopkins County on Sunday expecting to work with a housing nonprofit on home rebuilds from the 2021 tornado, only to be thrust into cleaning up debris from the latest tornado.

Other volunteer groups handling debris removal and bringing supplies have come to Hopkins County in the days after the storms. A church in the unincorporated community of Charleston is serving again as a hub for packaged food, bottled water and cleaning supplies.?

“We opened the doors and God walked in,” said Margaret Purdy, a member of the Charleston Missionary Baptist Church who was ushering tornado survivors to various supplies.?

The church served as a resource hub for the area an entire year after the 2021 tornado.?

She said the impacts of this tornado may be different because homeowners hit recently may be more likely to have home insurance. But she believes local resources will be there for her fellow community members regardless.?

“You give me what I can do and I’ll do it to the best of my ability to do it, and that’s all of us,” Purdy said.?

The costs that will fall to individual disaster survivors this time are still being calculated as county and state officials push to open up federal disaster assistance to survivors.?

Nick Bailey, the emergency management director for Hopkins County, told the Lantern the damage to his county’s bridges, roads and other infrastructure plus the cost of cleaning up debris will total more than $4.5 million.?

Bailey is confident those costs will qualify for Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance to repair public infrastructure. But qualifying for FEMA assistance to individuals is a different story.?

Having enough damage across the state to qualify for FEMA assistance to disaster survivors, particularly to help uninsured or under-insured Kentuckians, isn’t guaranteed. The Brookings Institute, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, found that only about a third of disasters that are federally declared qualify for individual aid for disaster survivors.?

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has previously urged Kentuckians to document damage and report it to local officials to make a stronger case to FEMA for the need for individual assistance.?

Bailey also said because of the much larger scale and timing of the 2021 tornado, compared to the latest tornado he generally expects less funding to aid survivors this time. He said relying on local resources, such as through the county’s long-term recovery committee, will be key moving forward. As of Friday afternoon, he said Hopkins County had 89 damaged structures with 29 completely destroyed.?

“We still have people that are going to need help. There’s going to be people that will likely fall through the cracks. But we’re going to do everything we can on the local level to support as many as we can and try to help as much as we can,” Bailey said.?

There is some aid coming to Hopkins County in the coming weeks: Kentucky Realtors, an association representing thousands of realtors across the state, announced Friday it was providing $200,000 to help recent disaster survivors pay for one month of housing expenses. Bailey said there’s also a large need for more volunteer groups to help clear debris in the weeks ahead.?

A near miss and hard memories?

Sharon Franklin, 70, lost her house in Caldwell County in the 2021 tornado. She then lived in the garage of her daughter’s home while dealing with an insurance company that wasn’t willing to build back her house. Her memories of that 2021 tornado never leave her mind, remembering the screams of family members as they huddled in the basement.

Eventually, she decided to move to a new home just north of Dawson Springs instead of rebuilding.?

“You just want to get somewhere and call it home again, and this is all I could find,” Franklin said.

Next to her ranch-style home in Hopkins County, she had installed a brand new concrete storm shelter only about a week before she had to use it.?

Seven people including her daughter, her grandchildren, and great grandchildren — along with a backyard chicken — all huddled in the shelter as the tornado came within less than a mile of her home. Trees fell on top of the storm shelter, trapping them for hours after the storm.?

While the pecan trees she loved in her yard had to be cut down due to damage, her new home is still intact.?

“People right up the road lost everything. I don’t know them but I still feel bad for them,” she said. “Nothing will ever be home anymore.”?

A tornado destroyed out buildings and damaged the roof and windows of Tabatha Adams' home in Hopkins County. (Courtesy of Tabatha Adams)

Sitting on her front porch surrounded by tornado damage, Tabatha Adams never imagined being on the other side of disaster recovery.?

As the former president of her local Rotary Club, she helped her neighbors when Dawson Springs grappled with the devastating aftermath of an EF-4 tornado in December 2021. The Western Kentucky city of about 2,400 lost 75% of its housing while 19 residents lost their lives in the severe weather outbreak that killed 74 Kentuckians.?

Adams organized disaster grants, totaling $180,000 in 2022 she said, to help her neighbors rebuild and spearheaded the construction of a memorial remembering those killed from Dawson Springs.

But now, it’s her own family that is receiving help from neighbors she had previously aided. Kentucky faced the brunt of another tornado outbreak Sunday with a particularly strong tornado — one that spurred the National Weather Service to issue a rare “tornado emergency” — tearing a track just north of Dawson Springs city limits through the unincorporated communities of Charleston and Barnsley.

A survey by the National Weather Service found the tornado to be of EF-3 strength with peak wind speeds of 160 mph and a peak width of 700 yards or nearly a half-mile. The Sunday tornado’s track was north of the path taken by the 2021 tornado and through a less densely populated area.

Gov. Andy Beshear said five people across the state were killed in the storms, including a 48-year-old woman from Hopkins County. Fatalities also were reported in Caldwell, Hardin and Mercer counties and in Louisville. At least 14 counties have declared states of emergency, and tens of thousands still were without power across the state as of Tuesday afternoon.?

About 40 homes across Hopkins County have been significantly damaged or are complete losses from the Sunday tornado, according to Kevin Cotton, the mayor of the Hopkins County seat of Madisonville. That included Adams’ home along Daylight Road, considered an epicenter of damage from the twister: her two-car garage and barn were both toppled, shingles torn off her roof and windows broken throughout her house.?

But she’s grateful her family, dog and cats are safe. She’s also not having to rebuild a second time; some homes hit by the Sunday storms were damaged or destroyed in the 2021 tornado. Adams said the 2021 tornado had missed her home by less than a mile.?

“We’re talking not even three years ago these people were picking up their lives and rebuilding,” Adams said. “Here they are again. It is unimaginable and unthinkable, and it just really makes you wonder why.”?

In recent decades, more tornado outbreaks have shifted geographically to the mid-South including Western Kentucky, which scientists say is connected to the impacts of climate change. More warm, moist air is coming from the Gulf of Mexico to collide with colder air from the Western U.S., fueling potential tornadoes across the South, scientists say.

In Hopkins County, recovery efforts at least have a head start because of the existing recovery infrastructure and knowledge on how to respond, said Heath Duncan, the co-chair of the Hopkins County Long Term Recovery Committee.?

Duncan, who’s also the executive director of the regional Habitat for Humanity organization, said a surge of hundreds of volunteers since Sunday has arrived to help clear debris and check on survivors. But the financial costs of recovery, especially what costs will ultimately be borne by local communities and residents, is still being realized.?

Duncan said the 2021 tornado destroyed not only homes but also city infrastructure from water lines to sidewalks. Rebuilding to better withstand future storms can be an “incredibly expensive endeavor,” he added. He said financial support moving forward will still likely rely on generosity of local donors and state and federal governments.?

“The process of long term recovery work has been difficult the last two years, and for me personally, the hardest thing that I’ve had to do in life,” Duncan said, mentioning he feels frustrated on the verge of anger at times over his community’s situation. “A lot of us are just tired from the 2021 tornado, and so now every time a storm blows through we’re like, ‘Please, we can’t handle anything else.’”?

Gov. Andy Beshear in a press conference with emergency management officials Monday said he believed the storm damage from across numerous counties, particularly in Western Kentucky, would qualify the disaster for FEMA’s public assistance program, which provides grants to restore infrastructure.?

But individual survivors being able to apply to FEMA for disaster aid is not guaranteed; Beshear said it would take every Kentuckian impacted to document their damage and report it for FEMA to open up aid to individuals. That’s especially crucial, he said, for those impacted who are uninsured.?

“Your willingness to track your damage and to turn it in is what could help a neighbor or someone you don’t even know from another county get that help,” Beshear said.?

While state officials wait to hear if and what federal disaster assistance Kentuckians will receive, local Hopkins County residents are still working long hours in the immediate aftermath to help their neighbors.?

Meredith and David Hyde only moved back into a newly constructed home in Dawson Springs less than two years ago after their original home was made unlivable after the 2021 tornado. On Tuesday afternoon, they drove around damaged areas in Charleston dropping off monetary donations made possible by the local Rotary Club to survivors.?

Meredith Hyde, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, said she’s been mindful to provide survivors with mental health resources when they need it, some of them still processing the shock of the disaster. David and she don’t have many memories from the first couple of weeks after the 2021 tornado, she said, and “neither one of us I don’t think could have made it without the other one.”?

She mentioned one woman they were visiting provided them $500 worth of kitchen supplies after the 2021 tornado.?

“This community just takes care of each other,” Hyde said. “This is not about having to do it. This is about wanting to do it.”

Kerry Harvey (KETscreenshot)

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has appointed the former secretary of the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet to the commission that oversees horse racing and sports gambling in the state.?

Kerry Harvey, of Lexington, will succeed Naveed Chowhan, a Louisville-area doctor, whose term expired on the 15-member Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. Beshear announced Friday the appointment of Harvey to the commission among a list of other board appointments.?

The commission has broad oversight over gambling in Kentucky, including betting on horse races, sports wagering and equine safety and medications. Other statutory commission members include secretaries for the Public Protection Cabinet, the Cabinet for Economic Development and the Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet.?

Harvey left his role leading the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet in February after announcing his retirement last year. Less than a week after his departure, Beshear appointed Harvey to the Kentucky Board of Cosmetology.?

Republican lawmakers had criticized Harvey and former Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice Commissioner Vicki Reed in response to reports of understaffing and violence in juvenile detention centers. Beshear appointed Harvey and Reed in their respective cabinet positions in 2021.?

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a civil rights investigation into the conditions at one development center and eight youth detention centers in the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice.

Before his role as cabinet secretary, Harvey served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky from 2010 to 2017. As a federal prosecutor, Harvey created an “Overdose Prosecution Initiative” to address Kentucky’s opioid epidemic. Harvey was a top attorney in the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services during the administration of Gov. Steve. Beshear.

A steam engine at the repair shop owned by the Kentucky Steam Heritage Corp. (Photo provided)

For Chris Campbell, Estill County is where almost everyone has a connection to the rail lines that run by the “twin cities” of Irvine and Ravenna, the latter founded by a railroad in the early 20th century.?

Campbell, while not an Estill County native, is a train enthusiast and president of the Irvine-based nonprofit Kentucky Steam Heritage Corp. that is trying to transform the county’s long-time rail yard into an “economic incubator” that can be a draw for his part of Appalachian Kentucky.?

The vision: turning the rail yard into a community greenspace, dubbed the “The Yard,” featuring a pavilion for music, a campground, jogging trails, a museum and a renovated repair shop where historic steam engines are restored. Campbell foresees thousands of people coming in for music shows, spending the night, spending money at local restaurants and stores, and visiting other Eastern Kentucky attractions.

The nonprofit is getting a big boost ?toward making that a reality in the form of a nearly $5 million federal grant announced this week to clean up the rail yard, remediating decades of industrial use from hauling coal out of Kentucky’s mountains.

Visitors to the new community space could help “a new economy spring up” on ground where the economy has long been based on coal mining and railroading, says Campbell.?

“None of these ideas can even come to fruition if you don’t do the literal groundwork to make it possible. So, the literal groundwork is moving dirt around and to make it legal to have the general public on it,” Campbell told the Lantern.?

The almost $5 million grant is from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields program, which has more funding to distribute thanks to passage of federal spending bills such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Two area development districts and the city of Barbourville also recently received grants through the program to assess properties and create an inventory of properties to be potentially remediated and restored.?

Campbell said the work already done toward the project — which includes a music stage that could start hosting music as soon as this fall — has been made possible through private donations and other state and federal funding in recent years.

Along with building that community space, Campbell said, those at the Kentucky Steam Heritage Corporation want to preserve the legacy of the region’s railroading into the future.?

A steam engine repair shop supplied jobs in Ravenna before trains moved to diesel-electric engines, and the nonprofit is restoring a 20th century steam engine that’s seen plenty of time in Kentucky. Campbell said the nonprofit, which owns the rail yard, ?hopes to acquire the tracks from CSX in the future to be able to bring tourists into town by train. He said trains occasionally come down the tracks if they need repairs but the runs are no longer regular.

“People that worked for the railroad were really passionate about it,” Campbell said. “We’re interested in the history of railroading and preserving it but also doing it in a way that’s marketable and has some longevity.”?

Campbell said the nonprofit, which owns the rail yard, ?hopes to acquire the tracks from CSX in the future to be able to bring tourists into town by train. He said trains occasionally come down the tracks but the runs are no longer regular.

Bernheim Forest encompasses 16,000 acres in Jefferson and Bullitt counties. (Bernheim Forest)

The Bernheim Forest and Arboretum is asking Kentucky’s highest court to take up a legal battle over condemnation of some of its land to build a gas pipeline.

In April, the Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed a ruling last year from the Bullitt Circuit Court that said Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities (LG&E and KU) can exercise eminent domain to acquire land that is protected by conservation easements to build a natural gas pipeline.

Now, an attorney working on behalf of the research forest in a Monday filing is asking the Kentucky Supreme Court to reverse the appeals court decision. It’s the latest development in a years-long legal battle over LG&E and KU’s push to build a gas pipeline through a 494-acre wildlife corridor originally put into conservation through state-purchased easements that restrict development and require the property to be used as habitat for wildlife.

Environmental advocates have argued the ecological impacts haven’t been considered in developing the pipeline, while LG&E and KU representatives have argued the pipeline is needed for natural gas reliability. Louisville Public Media previously reported internal documents from the utility showed the gas pipeline would primarily benefit the Jim Beam distillery, though the chief operating officer for the utility has denied that.

In the Monday filing, an attorney for Bernheim Forest argued one of the reasons justices should take up the case is that the appeals court interpretation of the law could “extinguish” the existence of state-owned conservation easements. The Kentucky Land Heritage Conservation Fund, a state board that invests funding across Kentucky toward preserving land, originally helped purchase the property for the wildlife corridor.

Randal Strobo wrote in his filing that eminent domain use was limited to privately-owned lands and that publicly-owned conservation easements can’t “simply disappear when a party wishes to condemn the encumbered property without violating several constitutional limits on legislative acts.”

Only a small minority of requests made to the state Supreme Court to take up a case, known as a motion for discretionary review, are granted by justices.

In the April appeals court ruling, Judge Christopher McNeil wrote that some of the arguments made by research forest attorneys were previously rejected by the appeals court in a different case brought forward by the Kentucky Heritage Land Conservation Fund. McNeil wrote LG&E and KU can seize the land because Kentucky law doesn’t prevent land protected by conservation easements from being taken through eminent domain.

An LG&E and KU spokesperson in a statement last week said the utility was pleased with the appeals court decision that reinforces the utility’s plans “to enhance reliable natural gas service for customers and support continued growth and economic development within the region.”

A statement from Bernheim Forest in April said the nonprofit’s leaders were “obviously disappointed” with the appeals court decision. The more than 16,000-acre privately-owned research forest founded in the 20th century features an arboretum, educational programs and more than 40 miles of hiking trails.

A herd of wild swine is called a sounder. (USDA)

FRANKFORT — Because an “educated” pig is harder to track or trap, Kentucky is taking steps to prevent the hunting of feral hogs known to damage crops, woodlands and potentially spread disease.?

Kentucky wildlife management officials are finalizing a ban on the hunting of wild pigs in an effort to more easily capture them. Under the new regulation, pigs could still be shot if they’re damaging private land, although wildlife experts are encouraging landowners to instead contact the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources to have the animals removed.?

Steven Fields, an attorney for the department, told lawmakers during a legislative hearing earlier this week that if a sounder — the name for a herd of wild swine — knows it’s being hunted, the sounder avoids humans and shifts its activities to night, making it harder to track.

The Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission, the governing board overseeing the KDFWR, voted in December to approve a regulation eliminating the existing year-round hunting season for wild hogs.

Ben Robinson, the wildlife division director at the state agency, told the board the department was trying to prevent “anybody from shooting a pig at any time” because it can make feral hogs hard to trap en masse, something state and federal officials have actively been pursuing.?

“It goes against what we’re trying to do with our trapping efforts by educating these pigs, making them much more difficult to trap,” Robinson said in December. “We’re having a lot of success with our partners, [U.S. Fish and] Wildlife Service, USDA, in trapping these animals and keeping them out of Kentucky. So by allowing landowners to just shoot freely, that goes against what we’re trying to do.”?

To report wild pig sightings, damage or criminal release, call 1-800-858-1549.

Robinson said other wildlife management agencies in the South had recommended the Kentucky agency take measures to prevent a problematic “pig hunting culture” from being established.?

The agency has been encouraging ?Kentuckians to refrain from shooting feral hogs and instead report sightings so that the animals can be trapped and removed.

U.S. Department of Agriculture data as of January 2024 shows the range of feral hog populations including parts of Eastern Kentucky, Northern Kentucky and counties near the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. Wild pig populations have been steadily moving northward and westward, according to the USDA.?

Feral hogs can carry a number of diseases harmful to wildlife, livestock and humans, along with causing billions of dollars in agricultural damages across the country. One analysis highlighted Kentucky as one of the top 15 states affected by invasive wild pigs.

For residential ratepayers, the PSC decision means a 9% increase in monthly service fees for water meters — $15 to $16.40 — and about an 11% increase in water consumption charges. The company had sought more. (Getty Images)

FRANKFORT — Kentucky American Water customers are due a refund after the state utility regulator rejected part of a rate increase the company began charging in February and chastised it for not doing more to stem water loss from its system.

Kentucky American Water, serving more than 138,000 customers in Lexington and more than a dozen counties, had asked last year for a revenue increase of almost $26 million or more than 22%.

In a May 3 order, the Public Service Commission (PSC) pared the revenue increase to $10.6 million. The regulator also rejected expenses that Kentucky American Water sought to recoup to cover inflation, food and gifts for employees, and excess fuel and power costs.

For residential ratepayers, the PSC decision means a 9% increase in monthly service fees for water meters — $15 to $16.40 — and about an 11% increase in water consumption charges. Customers will also receive a refund from when the water utility began on Feb. 6 to collect rates under its proposed increases. The company had asked for a 33% increase in service charges for residential meters to $20 a month, along with an across-the-board 36% increase in the water consumption charges.

Susan Lancho, a spokesperson for Kentucky American Water, a subsidiary of publicly-traded American Water, said in a statement that the utility is reviewing the order and communicating with the PSC about next steps following the order.

The Lexington-Fayette Urban Government and Attorney General Russell Coleman collaborated in the rate case, raising concerns about the size of the rate hike request and the utility’s? proposed expansion of a program originally meant to replace “high-failure” water lines creating leaks.?

Susan Straub, a spokesperson for the Lexington mayor’s office, in a statement said the city always intervenes in Kentucky American Water’s “frequent rate hike requests” in an effort to “keep the cost of living low in Lexington.”?

Coleman specifically took issue with the increased monthly water meter service charges, saying in a filing that it could be a “financial hardship” on “customers already struggling to make ends meet.”?

Water loss rises even as company replaces aging infrastructure

Coleman and the LFUCG opposed a proposed expansion of what’s called a Qualified Infrastructure Program (QIP), created in 2019 with the PSC’s permission, to help Kentucky American Water recoup more quickly the costs of replacing “high-failure” cast iron and galvanized steel water main pipes. At the time, according to the utility, such water main pipes accounted for nearly two-thirds of water main breaks despite only making up 15% of the utility’s distribution system.?

The utility had argued it needed to expand its QIP to be able to recoup costs on more miles of water pipeline each year and to be able to replace more types of water pipeline, beyond just galvanized steel, in order to to be able to replace its aging water infrastructure in a reasonable timeframe.?

But Coleman and the Lexington-Fayette Urban Government pushed back against those arguments. They hired a consultant who argued in a filing the expansion of the QIP would more than double the scope of the pipe replacement program and burden ratepayers with the cost.?

Greg Meyer, a senior principal with the Missouri-based firm Brubaker and Associates Inc., said in a filing the QIP allows Kentucky American Water to recoup costs to replace water pipes on its own without oversight.?

“[T]he company is asking the commission to broadly expand the amount and type of pipeline replacement. It does not appear that the Company has given adequate thought to rate affordability,” Meyer said in a filing.?

The PSC in its order also noted that even with an existing QIP to fix water leaks in specific, problematic water mains, Kentucky American Water has seen increased rates of water loss in recent years. Kentucky American Water’s percentage of unaccounted for water loss in its system has inched up from 19.95% in 2018 to 21.59% in 2022, according to the PSC.

Under state regulations, a water utility can’t recoup costs through rates for unaccounted water loss if the percentage of water loss exceeds 15%, though a utility can ask for a different standard to follow.

Kentucky American Water requested their water loss standard be raised to 20%, saying the 15% limit was “unrealistic” given that there’s no one solution to fixing water loss. The PSC wasn’t convinced, denying the request and asserting the utility hadn’t done enough to address existing water loss.?

Specifically, the regulator in its order wrote Kentucky American Water hadn’t developed a formal plan to reduce water loss nor had requested from the regulator additional personnel or equipment to deal with water loss.?

“This signals to the Commission that Kentucky-American does not appear to take the increasing water loss as a serious matter. This is a cause for serious concern,” the PSC wrote.?

Lancho, the Kentucky American Water spokesperson, in an email did not answer Lantern questions about criticism of its water loss or its QIP.

Power plants that burn fossil fuels would have to significantly curb heat-trapping carbon emissions under new EPA rules being challenged in federal court by Kentucky's Russell Coleman and other Republican attorneys general. (Getty Images)

Kentucky’s chief law enforcement officer has joined Republican attorneys general from 24 other states in challenging new federal rules aimed at curbing water pollution and nearly all greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal-fired power plants and newly constructed gas-fired power plants.

A news release from Kentucky Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman on Thursday said the Environmental Protection Agency’s “package of job-killing energy regulations … would drive up prices on Kentucky families.”?

“We’re fighting this radical green agenda that would only leave Kentucky in the dark,” Coleman said in a? statement.

The challenge filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. says the attorneys general will “show that the final rule exceeds the agency’s statutory authority and otherwise is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not in accordance with law.”?

The state legislature last month appropriated?$3 million to Coleman to boost his efforts litigating federal environmental regulations.

The new EPA rules target the management of older toxic coal ash landfills and ponds created from burning coal for electricity, air pollution from mercury and other toxic metals from burning coal, wastewater pollution from coal-fired power plants and greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants.?

Specifically, one of the new regulations will require coal-fired power plants to “control” 90% of carbon emissions by 2032 if the plants are intended to run beyond 2039. If implemented, the rule would mean a sea change in how Kentucky generates its electricity. As of 2021, Kentucky was one of just four states that generated more than 70% of its electricity from burning coal, according to the Energy Information Administration.?

Environmental groups have hailed the EPA rules as a long-awaited move to cut down on air and water pollution, particularly from coal-fired power plants. EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the rules were fulfilling the Biden administration’s vision “to tackle climate change and to protect all communities from pollution in our air, water, and in our neighborhoods.”

The International Energy Agency has previously found that burning coal for electricity across the globe has been the single largest source of global temperature increase.?

Some utilities and lobbying organizations for the coal industry have pushed back on the rules, arguing they rely on unproven technologies to capture carbon emissions and could strain electricity reliability at a time when nationwide energy demand is surging.?

Anthony Campbell, the president and CEO of the nonprofit utility East Kentucky Power Cooperative, in a statement said the EPA’s attempt to “force wide adoption” of carbon capture technology will “be disastrous for America’s electric grid.”?

East Kentucky Power Cooperative, which generates electricity for 16 electric cooperatives in Central and East Kentucky, supported a bill passed into law by state legislators earlier this year that created new barriers for utilities to retire fossil fuel-fired power plants.?

Supporters of that legislation, Senate Bill 349, had argued it was needed to ensure the reliability of Kentucky’s electricity, a notion refuted by the leader of Kentucky’s largest utility Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities. Investor-owned utilities including LG&E and KU had joined environmental groups in opposing SB 349, arguing it could burden ratepayers with the costs of keeping aging, uneconomical coal-fired power plants online.?

The Artemis Power Tech facility, photographed last year before noise canceling blankets were installed, sits among the Wolfe County woods, power lines connecting it to a nearby substation. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

Nine months after a suspected cryptocurrency mine moved into her previously quiet part of Wolfe County, Brenda Campbell says noise canceling blankets installed by the operator are not helping and she still doesn’t know where to turn for relief from the constant, intrusive whirring.

Wolfe County Judge-Executive Raymond Banks agrees the noise blankets haven’t been very effective, though he said the data center company told him the noise levels are so low it wasn’t necessary to “even have to put what they put up there.”

“I think the sound will always be there regardless of what they do,” Banks recently told the Lantern.

Campbell and Banks are looking to Frankfort for answers and point to recent action by Arkansas lawmakers as a possible roadmap.

Spurred by rural communities’ complaints about noise and disruption, Arkansas lawmakers passed and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation this month requiring cryptocurrency mining operations to obtain state permits and when they operate near homes to implement “noise-reduction” techniques. The new law also bans some foreign governments, most notably China, from owning a cryptocurrency mining operation in Arkansas and restores authority to local governments to pass regulations related to cryptocurrency mines.?

To do this, the Arkansas legislature had to reverse a law that it had passed just last year, in part at the urging of a pro-crypto lobbying group, the Satoshi Action Fund. The earlier law had limited local governments’ authority to regulate noise from the facilities.?

Earlier this year, the Satoshi Action Fund lobbied the Kentucky legislature to pass House Bill 741, which was approved by the House but died in the Senate.

Rural counties without zoning most vulnerable

Crypto mining uses tremendous amounts of electricity to run high-powered computers that solve complex mathematical equations to secure online transactions of cryptocurrencies through a digital ledger called the “blockchain.” Mining companies that, for example, solve these equations for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin are rewarded with Bitcoin itself; one unit in Bitcoin was worth more than $60,000 earlier this month.

Electric fans used to cool the computers can generate a lot of sound.?

The Kentucky sponsor of the industry-sought bill, Rep. Adam Bowling, R-Middlesboro, said the legislation would steer noisy, large-scale cryptocurrency mining operations to industrial parks and other designated places for industry.?

But others said the bill would leave the many rural Kentucky counties that have no zoning laws without protection or recourse from crypto mining noise.

As recently as 2020 a little more than half of Kentucky counties had no planning and zoning offices or boards, according to a presentation that year by the Kentucky Association of Counties. Wolfe County is one of them.?

Bowling appeared before a legislative committee on March 13 with representatives from Satoshi Action Fund and Kentucky Blockchain Council, both groups supporting the bill.?

Bowling told the Lantern that some local governments are reactively trying to “change the rules and kind of patch it together” once cryptocurrency mining operations are already established and that the bill would put regulations in place before operations move into a community.?

“They want to get the rules and the regulations set out on the front end before they make multimillion dollar investments and then things are changed after the fact,” Bowling said.?

An? environmental group expressed concerns at the time that the bill would still allow for intrusive noise pollution from mining operations. Audrey Ernstberger, a lobbyist with the Kentucky Resources Council, told members of the House Banking and Insurance Committee in March that the bill “would selectively override the ability of local communities” to reasonably regulate off-site noise impacts from asset mining operations.

Ernstberger said the bill would have held crypto mines to the community’s most “lenient” noise regulations, instead of a more protective standard, and set no specific noise level parameters.

The bill cleared the Kentucky House with Republican support in a largely party line vote, but upon reaching the Senate was never assigned a committee.

In an interview with the Lantern, Ernstberger said the bill would have blocked communities from implementing more stringent noise or zoning regulations after a cryptocurrency mining operation has moved in. The bill provides no conditions for operating cryptocurrency mining facilities in a county without noise or zoning laws, which Ernstberger said could allow facilities to establish themselves anywhere without zoning.

Eric Peterson, the director of policy for the Satoshi Action Fund, in response to a question from a lawmaker at the committee hearing, said the group doesn’t want large-scale mining operations to set up “next to our house, next to a school, next to a church.”?

“Businesses in industrial zones, they create noise, they use a lot of energy. That’s where we want these things,” Peterson said.

The Satoshi Action Fund didn’t respond to emails requesting an interview about their advocacy on HB 741.

‘Just really no business like it’

In Arkansas, one of the new law’s sponsors, Republican state Sen. Missy Irvin, said the measure will provide “great legal standing” for those opposing nuisance cryptocurrency mines, referencing a legal battle between residents of an Arkansas community and a crypto mine.?

Another Arkansas Republican, Sen. Bryan King, of Green Forest, wanted the legislature to go even further by providing communities more notice of where crypto companies plan to mine. King unsuccessfully tried to require mining companies to file a notice with the state six months before buying or leasing land.

King doesn’t see zoning, which local governments traditionally use to decide where industry and business can locate, as a solution, in part because rural communities like those he represents do not want zoning. He also points to the unique nature of crypto mining.

“There’s just really no business like it,” King told the Lantern. “You may have a mill or industry that may emit noise from 8 to 5, but not 24-7, 365 (days a year).”

‘Just one day it’s there’

In Kentucky, Banks, the Wolfe County judge-executive, remains firmly opposed to zoning or a noise ordinance, fearing such laws could hamper future economic development in a county where many struggle with poverty.?

But Banks told the Lantern he wishes the county had received some notice that Artemis Power Tech’s data center was moving into his county before it powered up.

“We’re clueless — just one day, it’s there. Nobody ever mentioned it to me,” he said.

“I don’t have the answer to it. If I had known the thing was going in before it went in, I could have maybe have done some kind of ordinance to stop it.”

Campbell and her neighbors, which include her daughter, grandson and cousins, are still bothered by the high-pitched noise from the data center that set up shop next to an electrical substation in August 2023. Her efforts to curb the noise haven’t gained traction.?

An Artemis Power Tech representative in an email said the company in January installed “noise canceling blankets” after a “third-party construction site noise control assessment” and “have heard no further complaints since then.”

The representative added the company is “willing to take reasonable measures through open communication to ensure we are a long-term trusted partner here.”?

But Campbell said the blankets “have not helped at all.” She says the noise seems worse on days when the weather is warmer because the cooling fans run harder.

The Artemis Power Tech representative told the Lantern it decided to install noise blankets instead of a physical noise barrier because building such a barrier would require trees to be cut down and “reduce noise absorption effectiveness.”

Banks had told the Lantern in October the noise issue would be fixed with the company promising to install a “noise barrier.”?

Campbell said that what started as her concerns about noise have expanded to broader worries about regulation of the cryptocurrency industry as a whole — who owns and runs cryptocurrency mining operations, how cryptocurrency is being used and more.

“I just feel like that somebody has dropped the ball and that they’re just not paying attention,” Campbell said. “It just seems like the whole situation is being ignored, not only at the local level but also, you know, at the state and national level.”

She applauds what Arkansas is doing to protect local communities.?

“They changed their mind that something needed to be done,” Campbell said.

Lane Boldman, executive director of the Kentucky Conservation Committee, a statewide environmental advocacy group, said Campbell’s situation is an example of a crypto mining operation taking advantage of a rural county’s lack of zoning.??

Boldman noted that solar energy projects must promise to mitigate excessive construction noise as part of a hearing before the Kentucky Public Service Commission.

Cryptocurrency mining operations don’t have any similar process to mitigate local impacts, she said..

“They probably cause just as much noise, if not worse noise in some ways, because it doesn’t stop,” Boldman said.?

The Ohio River, as seen in a trailer for the documentary "This Is The Ohio." (Screenshot)

A Louisville filmmaker is debuting a new documentary showcasing the rich history of the Ohio River and the future challenges it faces on Kentucky’s public television broadcaster.?

The one-hour documentary called “This Is The Ohio” features the travels of filmmaker Morgan Atkinson and his 981-mile journey along the river from the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers near Cairo, Illinois, to the city of Pittsburgh, according to a release.?

“I questioned the river’s true identity. I asked, ‘Is it solely a commercial highway essential to the economic well-being of the United States? Or is it a natural wonderwater providing incredible opportunities for recreational users? How about its status as America’s second most endangered waterway?’” Atkinson said in a statement. “I found the answers to be in all of the above.”

The nonprofit environmental advocacy organization American Rivers in an annual report last year ranked the Ohio River as the second most endangered river in the country, citing pollution and climate change as threats to wildlife and drinking water for millions of people who rely on the river.?

Kentucky Educational Television will premiere the documentary on Monday, May 6, at 5 p.m. Eastern Time with 12 subsequent airings. The documentary will also be able to be streamed online.?

The Ohio River, unlike other bodies of water across the country, doesn’t have a long-term strategic plan for its future nor does it receive federal funding. U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey, a Democrat representing Louisville, in an interview included in the documentary noted the lack of federal funding and said he wants to make sure the waterway “is getting the resources it needs, that it deserves.”?

“That’s got to change,” McGarvey said in a statement. “Having a clean river is essential.”?

Gov. Andy Beshear and residents of the Paris Westside Neighborhood Association hold shovels at the groundbreaking ceremony. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)

PARIS — When David Downey retired from the Navy in 1968 after serving in three wars, he came back to where he grew up, a home on the west side of Paris, Kentucky. But three years before he returned, a trash incinerator had been placed in his neighborhood, too.?

“The stench from it was ridiculous,” Downey, 97, said Monday. “You’re sitting in the kitchen trying to eat stuff, and all the stench is coming in — whether you had your windows up or down — the stench is coming in, and you’re eating supper. And that’s not a good thing.”?

The incinerator burned the community’s trash, and to some residents it was obvious why it was put in the city’s predominantly Black neighborhood.

City officials must have thought that “those people were not going to complain, or ask questions, or had the power to do anything about it or the money to get lawyers to stop it,” said Vanessa Logan, 74, president of the Paris Westside Neighborhood Association, who remembers when the site used to have a baseball field where men would play on the weekends, and where she would play as a kid visiting family.?

Eventually the city stopped burning its trash, turning the site into a waste transfer station, where garbage was dumped before being sent elsewhere. Residents still wanted it gone, with noisy garbage trucks rumbling back and forth through the neighborhood.?

“The land was just taken away from Black people,” Logan said. “A transfer station was put there, and they had no say so. They couldn’t say yes or no. So this is righting a wrong.”?

On Monday, they came a step closer to getting their wish as local, state and federal governments including state lawmakers, the regional Environmental Protection Agency administrator and Gov. Andy Beshear came together to break ground on a community recycling center — far from their residential neighborhood.

Bourbon County Judge-Executive Mike Williams, motioning to Downey and other veterans from the Westside neighborhood, said they “served their country honorably” even if they weren’t appreciated in the past.?

“Hopefully today they’ll feel appreciated, because this community is going to do something about social injustice that has been directed at them and their friends and family,” Williams said.?

Even with the community support to move the city’s dump, it took years of planning and lobbying going back to late 2019 to secure the land and finances for the new recycling center.?

The Bourbon County Fiscal Court voted to lease the land to the city for the new center. Beshear awarded a $2 million grant for the project in 2022. The Kentucky legislature this year allocated an additional $1.5 million. And Bill Alverson, a retired banker who has advocated for the project for years, made plenty of calls to lawmakers and other decision makers.?

“If I get in, I’m all in,” Alverson said. “Everybody had a little something to offer, and that’s what I had to offer. And I probably called some people two or three times about things.”?

Alverson said the existing dump will remain in the neighborhood until the new recycling center off of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is completed. But he said the Environmental Protection Agency has also been a big help with getting the process started to remediate the existing dump, which is planned to be turned into green space.?

EPA Region 4 acting administrator Jeaneanne Gettle said the federal agency has started a preliminary assessment to allow the local community to access funding to redevelop the site through the EPA’s Brownfields program.?

“Communities deserve to have green space,” Gettle said to the crowd. “We look at it through that lens of environmental justice. Whatever you call it, whatever it is for you, we want you to have the resources that we now have available.”?

For Downey, the dump in his neighborhood was a “wrong in the beginning” that was turned right.?

The one constant the veteran sees is change.?

“Changes are made for the better,” Downey said. “As time goes on things change, and it’s going to be a change here again. I may not be here to see it, but there will be a change.”?

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman (Kentucky Lantern photo by Mathew Mueller)

When Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman told state lawmakers in January about the budget needs of his office, Rep. Patrick Flannery, R-Olive Hill, asked if he needed more resources to address a “regulatory avalanche” regarding a “green agenda” coming from the federal government.?

Coleman, a Republican, said his office would welcome them, saying there was a “shotgun of regulation targeting the coal industry, targeting coal-fired power plants” in the near term.?

The two men were referring to regulations either finalized or in the process of being finalized by the Biden administration, many of them issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. Broadly, these regulations seek to curb heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change, along with cutting related air and water pollution and are aimed at fossil fuel-fired power plants and the transportation industry.?

“We’re going to be pushing back and fighting the EPA particularly in a way that is unprecedented,” Coleman said then, adding that he had the benefit of following former Attorney General Daniel Cameron who had built “a team to push back” and work with other attorneys general.?

Coleman has done just that through federal courts, leading and joining lawsuits with other Republican state attorneys general suing to block federal rules over a litany of issues, including methane emissions at oil and gas wells, deadly soot pollution from power plants and industry and attacking the EPA for pursuing environmental justice using civil rights laws, a petition calling it a form of “racial engineering.” Coleman recently trumpeted a federal judge ruling in favor of a legal challenge he led against a rule requiring state transportation officials to set goals for reducing heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions from vehicle tailpipes and other sources.?

The GOP-dominated legislature decided earlier this month in the final hours of this year’s legislative session that Coleman needed more financial support. Taking a bill originally about regional drivers licensing offices, Republicans added last-minute language giving $3 million to Coleman’s office from the state’s Budget Reserve Trust Fund or “rainy day” fund to create an “electric reliability defense program.”?

That bill became law after Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear line-item vetoed some last-minute appropriations added into that legislation, Senate Bill 91, but left the funding for the $3 million. A Beshear spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to an email asking if he supported the funding.

Coleman told the Lantern the extra $3 million will be used to pay attorneys and find experts. He said the regulations will both impact prices and undermine electricity reliability for Kentuckians at a time when energy demand is rapidly increasing.?

Senate President Robert Stivers told reporters during the legislative session the idea behind the allocation was to have the attorney general litigate “overreaching regs” by the EPA and other agencies. He referenced the “Good Neighbor Plan,” Obama-era regulations strengthened under the Biden administration limiting downwind air pollution that creates smog.

Those regulations aren’t in effect in Kentucky and 11 other states after court orders suspending the rules amid legal challenges. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments about the regulations earlier this year.?

A new legal battle between Republican attorneys general and the EPA could emerge soon as the agency last week finalized a suite of new rules that, among other aspects, targets carbon dioxide emissions at coal-fired power plants and new gas-fired power plants. Existing coal-fired power plants and new gas-fired power plants would have to “control” 90% of their carbon emissions by 2032 if power producers plan to operate the plants past 2039.?

Globally, burning coal for electricity plays an outsized role in warming the climate, according to the International Energy Agency. The intergovernmental, autonomous research organization found that burning coal across the world was the single largest source of global temperature increase. Kentucky is also among the minority of states still largely reliant on coal; a 2022 report from the Energy Information Administration, a federal agency collecting and analyzing energy-related data, found that Kentucky was one of four states in 2021 that generated more than 70% of its electricity from burning coal.?

Rules designed to protect public health

But for the leader of one Kentucky-based environmental legal group, the funding spent by the legislature to boost Coleman’s efforts is “a waste of taxpayer dollars that can be put to much better use.”?

Ashley Wilmes, the executive director for the Kentucky Resources Council, said it was “particularly unfortunate” that Coleman, who’s charged with representing ratepayers’ interests, is obstructing “an inevitable transition to a clean energy future, to a decarbonized energy future.”?

“It’s just disconcerting to see these attacks on EPA rules that are designed to protect public health and the environment at a time when we really need to be focusing instead on reducing carbon emissions that cause climate change and reducing air pollution emissions from a public health perspective,” Wilmes said.

Generally, utilities across the country are already transitioning on their own away from coal-fired power because of lower-cost options such as gas-fired power plants and renewable energy. Utilities, including those in Kentucky, are raising strong concerns about the feasibility of the EPA’s new carbon emissions rules for power plants, particularly its reliance on carbon capture technologies that are still being tested at utility scale.?

Wilmes said there is even more uncertainty being created for Kentucky utilities seeking a transition away from coal with the passage of laws by the Kentucky legislature that create additional barriers to retiring fossil fuel-fired power plants.?

A Stivers-backed bill this year creating a new review board to analyze fossil-fuel power plant retirement decisions became law after the legislature overrode a Beshear veto. Critics, ranging from investor-owned utilities to environmental groups, decried Senate Bill 349 as burdening ratepayers with the costs of keeping aging, uneconomical coal-fired power plants on the power grid.?

Stivers, along with lobbying interests for the coal industry, argued SB 349 was needed to ensure the reliability of the state’s electricity supply. Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities President John Crockett, who was among utility representatives who testified against SB 349, had previously rebuffed assertions from Stivers that the state is facing an energy reliability crisis.?

Coleman responds to criticism

Coleman, like Stivers, argues that the EPA is going beyond the authority it has been given by Congress and that the legislative funding allows him to enforce the law.

“These folks who take another view, with all due respect, they need to go to Congress, they need to go to the people’s representatives and change the law. If their view should carry the day, they need to constitutionally go to Congress and change the law,” Coleman said.?

When asked what he personally thought of the issue of climate change — given the Biden administration cites it as a driving reason for pursuing these regulations — Coleman, without mentioning climate change, said “we have a duty to be good stewards of our land and our water.”?

When asked about calls from the leader of the United Nations urging rich countries such as the United States to end the use of coal for electricity by 2030 and have carbon-free electricity by 2035, Coleman said there was a “disconnect” with countries like the United States being asked to “severely restrict its use of carbon fuels” while China is “building coal fired power plants at an unprecedented pace.”?

One 2023 report found that China is building six times more coal-fired power plants than other countries, with the report’s authors saying the push for new coal being driven by the need for electricity created by a drought and a historic heat wave in 2022 that increased the demand for air conditioning. Scientists say that the heat wave’s likelihood was increased by climate change.?

The International Energy Agency in 2022 affirmed again that no new “unabated” coal-fired power plants can be built if the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius below pre-industrial temperature levels is to be met.

Wilmes said she believed the EPA with its new power plant regulations wrote “very defendable rules” but that “you just never know” what will ultimately happen given future litigation.?

“We knew we were going to see challenges to these rules,” she said.?

While Republican West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has already said he’ll challenge the power plant rules, Coleman told the Lantern to “stay tuned” and that any challenge to federal rules wouldn’t be done alone.

“It is always a couple of dozen, the heft of a couple of dozen states pushing back on what we’re seeing coming out of the Biden administration,” Coleman said. “I deeply respect clean water, and clean air. This is a policy disagreement.”

The EPA first created rules regulating coal ash impoundments in 2015 after a dike collapsed flooding embankments and the Emory River near Harriman, Tennessee. Coal ash slurry was contained in a pond, above. (Greenpeace photo)

Kentucky is one of a minority of states that produces most of its electricity by burning coal. A byproduct of that legacy today: creating millions of tons of what’s known as coal ash, a waste from burning coal containing a slew of toxic metals that’s often stored by utilities and power producers in impoundment ponds and landfills.

Without proper protections or cleanup at these coal ash sites, the ash can be blown into the air or seep into nearby groundwater. Coal ash impoundments failing have led to environmental disaster, such as when more than 1 billion gallons of coal ash slurry poured into the Emory River near Kingston, Tennessee, in 2008. More than 50 workers who cleaned up the aftermath died and more than 150 are sick after not having proper protection.?

Such problems led the Environmental Protection Agency to issue rules in 2015 requiring the pits where the coal ash is stored to be lined and have dust controls and for the groundwater near operating coal-fired power plants to be monitored.

On Thursday, the EPA expanded those regulations to cover coal ash landfills and impoundments at retired or inactive coal-fired power plants as well, something environmental groups such as Earthjustice have called for. The agency is also seeking to regulate sites where coal ash has been disposed of outside of a regulated impoundment or landfill. The new coal ash rules are part of a number of other finalized rules that aim to dramatically curb greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution from coal-fired and gas-fired power plants.?

The EPA states 194 “legacy” impoundments at 85 facilities across the country will be subject to the expanded coal ash rule, with 11 such sites in Kentucky at former coal-fired power plants including the Kenneth C. Coleman Generating Station, the William C. Dale Power Station, the Green River Generating Station, the Tyrone Generating Station and the Pineville Generating Station.?

The federal agency notes some coal ash ponds at these former coal-fired power plants in Kentucky are closing or have closed under oversight from state officials, while the closure status is unclear for other sites. The EPA cites data from Earthjustice in its count of inactive coal ash sites that will now be regulated under the expanded rules. Earthjustice previously tallied the number of unregulated coal ash sites in Kentucky at 25.

Abell Russ, a senior attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project, told reporters earlier this week groundwater contamination from unlined, unregulated “coal ash dumps” can often go unaddressed because the sites are classified as an inactive or “legacy” coal ash site by the EPA, even when situated next to coal ash sites that are regulated.?

“They’re not doing anything about it because they say it’s all coming from the older, larger ash pond that closed a long time ago, and so there’s no cleanup happening there,” Russ said. “This is a huge loophole.”?

Russ said the EPA expanding regulations to coal ash ponds at retired or former coal-fired power plants will require utilities to monitor and improve groundwater at these sites, though enforcement capacity remains a concern.?

Tom FitzGerald, a former long-time lobbyist for the environmental legal group Kentucky Resources Council, submitted a public comment about the rule urging the EPA to approve the expanded coal ash regulations, saying the exact number of unregulated, inactive coal ash sites was unknown because utilities aren’t required to report the total number of sites.?

“These dumps are almost certainly contaminating water and threatening health and the environment; however, monitoring data are not currently available for most unregulated sites,” Fitzgerald wrote. “It is appropriate and necessary that these legacy facilities be addressed and that they be required to be fully characterized and properly closed.”?

Kentucky utilities in previous public comments on the coal ash rule have criticized the expanded coal ash regulations as unnecessary, expensive to ratepayers and disruptive to remediation already conducted at some sites under the oversight of state officials.?

Clay Larkin, a lawyer for the Utility Information Exchange of Kentucky representing all of Kentucky’s major utilities, in a July 2023 public comment wrote that many of the “legacy” coal ash sites that would be newly regulated are “heavily revegetated” and would require “significant environmental impacts” to remove the coal ash.?

“State-led closure efforts at many of these sites have accomplished careful management of existing risks and, in some cases, complete elimination of risk,” Larkin wrote. “In reaching specific closure decisions, states have balanced the concerns of, and impacts on, local and regional populations while limiting or eliminating environmental impacts to areas where site conditions are already well understood because of years of study and evaluation.”?

In its final rule, the EPA explained that it could not exempt inactive coal ash sites that state officials have deemed as “closed” because of evidence that past state-approved closures were “significantly less protective” in preventing groundwater contamination.?

Natural Bridge State Park in the Red River Gorge Wilderness Area in Slade, Kentucky. (Photo by ehrlif/iStock images/Getty Images

Over the past three decades, a state-managed fund has been a financial force behind the creation and expansion of parks, nature preserves and hunting grounds across Kentucky.?

The Kentucky Heritage Land Conservation Fund, established in 1990 to provide a consistent source of funding for local governments, state agencies, nonprofits and universities to protect land for recreation and preserving wildlife, has put into conservation more than 95,000 acres across the state.?

The fund helped add 118 acres to a local park in Lincoln and Garrard counties. It helped conserve threatened and endangered species of plants on state-owned nature preserves, including the white fringeless orchid in Southeastern Kentucky. And it helped Western Kentucky University purchase and protect the entrance to a cave featuring Native American drawings dating back to 80 B.C.?

Zeb Weese, the former executive director of the Kentucky Office of Nature Preserves and a consultant for the Kentucky Lands Trusts Coalition, said funding from the conservation fund has also significantly grown the size of Natural Bridge State Resort Park.?

“When you go to Natural Bridge, you hike around, you think that it’s forest as far as the eye can see, and it is. But a lot of that was private land that came up for sale.” Weese said. “Folks enjoy the parks in their area, but they don’t necessarily know (the) heritage land fund was part of it.”

But in the past 15 years, the funding sources for the conservation fund dwindled for a number of reasons. Revenue the fund receives from an unmined mineral tax on coal has cratered with the decline of the coal industry. Monies received from fines levied by state environmental regulators are inconsistent, and funding collected from the sale of certain vanity license plates has also declined.?

Weese said at least $15.5 million of revenue had also been swept from the fund in past state budgets, zapping it of the annual revenue that it is supposed to statutorily receive. Weese said the fund went from conserving thousands of acres each year in the early 2010s to just conserving a little over one acre of Wolfe County land in fiscal year 2023.?

Those sitting on the board overseeing the conservation fund say they’ve seen fewer applications to fund land conservation in recent years, and some past projects have had to be put on hold to wait for funding to become available.?

Weese said the budget sweeps from the fund have stopped the past couple of years, and environmental advocacy groups such as the Kentucky Conservation Committee wanted this year’s state budget to replenish the more than $15 million swept from the fund in the past by tapping into billions of dollars in the state’s rainy day fund.?

Lawmakers ultimately allocated two million dollars to the fund, which while less than what advocates wanted, could still provide more opportunities for conservation projects.?

“It’s a new lease on life,” said Hugh Archer, the vice-chair of the conservation fund’s board and past commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Natural Resources. “It’s really important that we fund these things today while they’re available and are affordable to the citizenry, and what we’re preserving is things like biological diversity.”?

Archer, who has served on the board under various governors, said it can take a while to develop and build trust with landowners, which makes having funds available important for when a land deal finally does go through. Funding can also be used to match federal grants toward conservation projects, making the fund’s dollars go even further.?

Sen. Matthew Deneen, R-Elizabethtown, who advocates point to as instrumental in getting the $2 million allocated to the fund, told the Lantern he views the money as a boon for economic development and the health of Kentuckians by creating greenspaces, parks and trails that can benefit growing Kentucky communities.?

“The heritage land trust fund is just a piece of that puzzle that has been missing, and we need to fill that void and make sure that it’s there and secure as we grow the state,” Deneen said. “When you have these amenities, it helps attract people here. What’s the closest park?”?

Deneen said he realizes $2 million is not much funding, but he believes it’s a start. He’s hopeful that local governments in particular that lack local funds can take advantage again of the conservation fund to expand and create new parks.?

“You don’t have to be some extreme environmentalist to appreciate what these amenities can bring to a community,” Deneen said.?

As for addressing how to tackle diminished revenue sources from coal mineral taxes in the future, those who work for the conservation fund say it’s an ongoing conversation that Kentucky lawmakers would need to change.?

Zach Couch, the current executive director of the Kentucky Office of Nature Preserves who sits on the conservation fund board, said those on the board plan to put the funding to “good use,” something that can be an asset for his office in protecting species that are declining but not federally listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act.?

He said much of Kentucky’s land is still privately owned and will likely remain that way; 88% of Kentucky’s forests are privately owned, according to the Kentucky Division of Forestry. Couch said the fund provides investments toward preserving natural spaces for land owners willing to sell.?

“The best way to prevent the need for listing those species is to manage them now, and a big part of that is through land acquisition, protecting their habitat, protecting the actual population,” Couch said. “By doing this work, it’s a small investment that pays off dividends that allows for continued development and economic development of the state.”

For residential ratepayers, the PSC decision means a 9% increase in monthly service fees for water meters — $15 to $16.40 — and about an 11% increase in water consumption charges. The company had sought more. (Getty Images)

FRANKFORT —? Rep. Kevin Bratcher, a Louisville Republican, says he wants to be on the right side of history when it comes to the man-made “forever chemicals” that are in Kentucky’s waterways, fish and some Kentuckians’ drinking water.

He likens the widespread presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS for short, to lead poisoning. “How many years did it take before folks and the industry got their arms around that, killing so many people? I don’t want to look back and say, ‘You didn’t do anything for this,’ when it was obvious that some things are happening and there’s a lot of smart people concerned.”?

Over the past three years, Bratcher has co-sponsored legislation filed by his Democratic colleague Rep. Nima Kulkarni, also of Louisville, aiming to raise awareness of and prevent exposure to the chemicals long used in products ranging from nonstick cooking ware to firefighting foam to food packaging. Those bills haven’t received committee hearings.?

It’s been an uphill battle in the Kentucky legislature, where Bratcher says much of the challenge is getting his fellow lawmakers to understand the issue in the first place. Exposure to the? toxic chemicals has a broad range of potential harmful health impacts: hormonal changes, increased cholesterol levels, decreased vaccine responses in children, increased risk of some cancers and more.?

In 2019, the legislature did ban the use of PFAS-containing firefighting foam for training purposes. And this year, lawmakers approved a resolution directing the Energy and Environment Cabinet to provide guidance about PFAS handling to entities discharging into wastewater treatment plants.

The federal government recently took steps that are expected to spur more state and local action.? The Environmental Protection Agency finalized limits on the amount of PFAS allowed in drinking water. Environmentalists hailed the move, though some utility groups worry about the costs of removing contaminants being monitored at incredibly small levels. The EPA last week? announced another new rule to hold industries discharging two types of PFAS legally and financially responsible for their cleanup.??

Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet spokesperson John Mura in a statement on the finalized drinking water rule said the cabinet has been working with public water systems on “sampling, treatment options, community outreach and training to ensure safe drinking water.”?

Mura said fewer than 10% of more than 400 water utilities tested in Kentucky had PFAS at levels above the maximum limits set in the new federal rule.

Kulkarni says Kentucky’s legislature should do more. And while she believes the federal regulations are a positive development, she pointed out that they set the maximum limits for PFAS in drinking water higher by multitudes than the lifetime health advisory limits released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2022.?

“I don’t hail it as any kind of a huge step, but I mean it’s something,” Kulkarni said in reference to drinking water regulations for PFAS. “Ideally, we come up with, obviously, technological devices or processes to test for PFAS at lower concentrations because there is no safe amount.”?

Kulkarni was one of two Kentucky lawmakers, along with Rep. Al Gentry, D-Louisville, to sign onto a letter from 278 state lawmakers across the country supporting the federal drinking water regulations.?

For one type of “forever chemical,” PFOA, the maximum exposure before a person might experience “adverse health effects” is .004 parts per trillion (ppt), according to the 2022 interim health advisories. The maximum limit allowed in drinking water for PFOA under new federal regulations is 4.0pt. For reference, 1 ppt is equivalent to one drop of water in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.?

Kulkarni argued state government could do more to identify the sources of PFAS in the state, tying PFAS regulations to health outcomes in communities instead of waiting for slower action from federal regulators tied to an arbitrary testing limit.?

“Because people are exposed to PFAS, there’s a duty that we have to be as proactive as possible,” Kulkarni said. “If there isn’t a good solution out there, we should be looking for the best solution and not waiting for someone else to come up with it somewhere else. This is going to be addressed locally in any given state regardless of EPA levels.”?

Testing and exposure

The commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection Tony Hatton addressed lawmakers in a committee hearing in July 2023 about the PFAS testing his agency has done since 2019, saying the “investigative work” was done in part to prepare for the drinking water standards established by the EPA.?

The state found all 98 fish samples collected from Kentucky lakes and rivers tested positive for PFAS. One or more PFAS were detected in 83 of 194 water treatment plants; 36 of 40 monitoring stations testing surface waters detected PFAS.

The Somerset city council last year voted to stop accepting landfill leachate — liquid created when rainwater filters through landfills containing chemicals and residuals from the waste — to be treated at its local wastewater treatment plant because of citizen concerns about PFAS in the landfill leachate. Republican Rep. Tom Smith asked Hatton in last year’s committee hearing about the Somerset situation before the committee.?

Hatton responded the cabinet was focused on potential PFAS exposure in drinking water and that the “other parts of it are so complex they’re not going to be resolved very quickly.”?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is developing new guidelines and standards for landfill leachate after a study found PFAS in 95% of leachate in surveyed landfills.?

Sen. Cassie Chambers Armstrong, D-Louisville, also asked Hatton about other potential ways children can be exposed to PFAS, such as through waterproof clothing, and if there was a federal or state standard requiring consumers to be notified of PFAS in products. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PFAS exposure is possible through a number of ways from consumer products, food and more.?

Hatton said at the time the sources of PFAS into the environment would “probably be more heavily addressed” once “the regulatory basis” for PFAS is established.?

Similar to other states, the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet has sued the chemical company DuPont de Nemours, consumer products company 3M and other companies over alleged PFAS pollution, alleging the companies are knowingly contaminating Kentucky’s natural resources.?

Sen. Brandon Smith, R-Hazard, who brought Hatton before lawmakers last year and sponsored the resolution passed on PFAS this year, told the Lantern criticism from advocates that the state hasn’t done enough to address PFAS is fair. He hopes the issue “will have a lot of energy” in next year’s legislative session because it’s “going to absolutely have to be addressed.”

“More people than me will be talking about it, and people that know a lot more about it than me will be talking about it,” Smith said.

PFAS protection — at a cost

State environmental protection officials have worked with at least two utilities — the North Marshall Water District and the Ohio River-bound city of Lewisport — on reducing high levels of PFAS found in their water systems.?

PFAS contamination forced the shutdown of a water treatment plant supplying Kentucky Dam Village State Resort Park last October. Roger Colburn, the general manager for the North Marshall Water District in Marshall County, told the Lantern he shut down a plant that had been treating groundwater after state testing found one of the operating water wells had nine types of “forever chemicals” present at nearly three times the federal maximum limit now established in drinking water.?

Colburn said the chemicals are “probably the largest problem the drinking water industries had to address over the course of the last 30 or 40 years.”

Under the new regulations, drinking water utilities would have to notify their customers when PFAS levels exceeded the maximum limits and work to remove the chemicals through processes like reverse osmosis or granular activated carbon.

In a mid-November post on Facebook, the Marshall County water utility notified residents that it had taken the contaminated water well offline. Colburn said he thankfully hasn’t needed the water well yet to meet his utility’s water demand without a costly alternative. Other utilities haven’t been as lucky.?

Public notification of PFAS contamination of drinking water became an issue in one northeastern Kentucky community. As reported by Louisville Public Media, residents of the Greenup County city of South Shore weren’t notified by local officials about PFAS contamination in the city’s drinking water, the highest level of PFAS contamination found by state officials out of all systems tested in Kentucky. The city received a more than $8 million loan last year to build a water line to the city of Portsmouth, Ohio, across the Ohio River to replace the PFAS-contaminated water supply.

But the costs of removing PFAS contamination to below incredibly small limits worries groups including the Kentucky Rural Water Association, representing drinking water utilities across the state. Utility groups are concerned about the financial burden testing and treating PFAS will have on smaller utilities in particular. The Biden administration is touting billions of dollars available to help utilities with PFAS treatment, though KRWA leadership believe the long-term costs of the regulations, including ongoing testing, could still fall on Kentucky ratepayers.??

But Teena Halbig, a retired microbiologist and community activist from Fern Creek who urged her state representative Bratcher to focus on PFAS, says the health costs created by PFAS ultimately will outweigh the cleanup costs.?

“It’s hard for people to believe things that they really cannot see, and I can understand that,” Halbig said.? “It’s going to cost everyone, but what is it costing you to go to the doctor for health appointments, for the quality of life that you have?”

Pushback from industries that profit from PFAS may also be a barrier to getting significant PFAS legislation passed, according to a lobbyist representing unionized firefighters.?

Bratcher told the Lantern he was “visited by some companies” that had concerns when House Bill 116 was introduced this year. It was another bill sponsored by Kulkarni and Bratcher that would have, among other things, created created a public inventory of PFAS-containing products made in Kentucky. Industry representatives for the paint and coatings industry and the car manufacturer General Motors had lobbied on the bill along with groups representing environmentalists and scientists.?

Jeff Taylor, the legislative director for Kentucky Professional Firefighters representing firefighter and EMS unions across Kentucky, told the Lantern he supports Kulkarni’s efforts because “anything that raises awareness, with respect to how dangerous this product is, is good for us.”?

Taylor said firefighters’ main focus with PFAS is removing the substances from firefighting protective gear that can break down in the heat, exposing firefighters? to the man-made chemicals. He said he knew firefighters who had served for decades, only to die from cancer connected to their line of work.?

“You can understand why we’re passionate about these issues,” Taylor said.

But the challenge with making legislative change on PFAS, he said, comes down to facing off against corporate interests that have a stake in using PFAS and profiting from? it.

“I don’t think it’s too much to ask the politicians that are making laws that you provide some type of consumer awareness as to what this product is and what it’s in,” Taylor said.?

This story was updated with additional information about House Bill 116.

The EPA says Kentucky will use the $62 million to “expand access to low-income solar through financial assistance models and workforce development programming.” (Getty Images)

The Environmental Protection Agency is awarding a more than $62 million grant to Kentucky’s state government to help expand residential solar energy to low-income households, one of dozens of awards given across the country as a part of a federal grant competition.?

The “Solar for All” competition, funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, is allocating $7 billion through 60 grants to state governments, tribes and nonprofits that an EPA release estimates will be able “to deliver residential solar projects to over 900,000 households nationwide.”

Kentucky could win ‘massive’ solar investment in federal competition. Here’s what’s possible.

According to the EPA, the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet will use its $62,450,000 award to “expand access to low-income solar through financial assistance models and workforce development programming.”

The Kentucky Lantern previously reported the state’s application for the competition, which originally asked for $100 million, proposed to add residential solar and electricity storage systems to hundreds of “disaster recovery” homes across the state, increase access to community solar projects for low-income Kentuckians and create community college scholarships to build a workforce to deploy residential solar installations.?

An Energy and Environment Cabinet spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the award announcement.

Steve Ricketts, the board chair for the advocacy group Kentucky Solar Energy Society, told the Lantern that utility-scale solar installations are increasingly setting up shop in Kentucky and there’s growing interest from some cities in promoting solar energy.?

But low-income Kentuckians have been less able to access solar, he said, which he hopes this grant funding can help solve.

“Until we get clean energy that includes everybody, and nobody’s left behind, we’re not doing a good job,” Ricketts said. “This is the piece of the puzzle we desperately needed.”?

Ricketts said he hoped state officials would collaborate with “an extremely willing and motivated grassroots community who want them to succeed” with rolling out the grant funding.

Another “Solar for All” application, submitted as a collaboration between Louisville and some Eastern Kentucky counties, did not receive a grant. Louisville and Eastern Kentucky counties proposed to use $150 million to create a forgivable loan program for low-income households to add residential solar, create community centers powered by solar energy for use during natural disasters and also build the solar installation deployment workforce.?

Sumedha Rao, the executive director of Louisville Metro Government’s Office of Sustainability, said her office still plans to utilize newly-made connections with leaders in Eastern Kentucky counties to go after future funding opportunities for solar energy.

“There was a lot of good ideas, good reasons to collaborate and strengths that both regions brought together that just makes sense,” Rao said. “So, I’m really grateful to have built those connections.”

Rao said she’s eager to partner with the state government and “help them deploy the funds equitably across the state through all of our communities.”

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, told reporters the Senate vetted appointees to be sure they weren't out to retaliate against Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Rich Storm. (LRC Public Information)

FRANKFORT — The GOP-dominated Kentucky Senate confirmed nearly all of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s appointments to a board governing the state’s wildlife management department following pushback from sportsmen’s groups over the Senate failing to do so in past years.

Senators in the final hours of this year’s legislative session Monday confirmed four of the five appointments made by Beshear this year to the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission, a nine-member board made up of volunteer hunters and anglers overseeing the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR).?

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, told reporters Monday evening the Senate decided to confirm the four appointments after “lots of discussion, lots of review, lots of research” — and that a priority for the Senate was protecting Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Rich Storm, the department’s chief executive.??

“There was a comfort level that this would not be some type of retaliatory appointment to get rid of commissioner Storm.”

“There’s been a lot of friction between the governor and the commissioner,” Stivers said. “We think the commissioner has done a really good job in fish and wildlife.”?

Gary Greene of Greenup was the only Beshear appointee not confirmed by the Senate.

Sen. Robin Webb, D-Grayson, had sponsored a resolution to confirm Greene, which the Senate did not vote on.

Stivers said he believed Greene’s social media comments about “particular members of the state Senate” led to Greene not getting confirmed.?

Greene in a Lantern interview said he hadn’t made “any political posts” on social media since he was appointed by Beshear in January. But he said he was active on social media last year supporting Beshear’s reelection, which he believed shouldn’t be a consideration of whether to confirm his appointment.?

“The bottom line is: what’s that got to do with my ability to sit there and make a rational decision to run fish and wildlife? Just because I don’t bow and kiss the ring of the Republican Party,” Greene said.

Greene said he spoke with Beshear for “about 20 minutes” in his office when he was appointed, and Storm never came up in that discussion. Greene was also appointed by former Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear to the commission in 2015, only to also not be confirmed by the Senate then.

The commission, by state law, is supposed to be bipartisan with “not more than five of the same political party” sitting on the nine-member board.?

Greene said he was disappointed with not being confirmed and that he had wanted to help protect and promote small game in Kentucky, particularly the ruffed grouse.?

“I feel like I’ve let a lot of people down who supported me,” Greene said.

The commission, by state law, is supposed to be bipartisan with “not more than five of the same political party” sitting on the nine-member board.?

Edwin Nighbert, the president of the League of Kentucky Sportsmen representing thousands of hunters across the state, has been one of several critics of the Senate not confirming past commission appointments. Nighbert told the Lantern he was glad the Senate decided to confirm most of Beshear’s appointments.?

“That’s what the sportsmen wanted,” Nighbert said. “We can get back to doing the business and the commission do what the commission’s mission is, and that is to make the department accountable across the board.”?

Senate refusals to confirm appointments had left the nine-member board with three vacancies, which will now be down to one vacancy after Monday’s confirmation votes.

The process for appointing commission members begins in district nominating meetings of Kentuckians who hold a hunting or fishing license. The governor then appoints a commission member from the top-five vote getters at the district meetings. Finally, the Senate has to confirm that appointment.

Leadership of groups representing sportsmen and wildlife conservationists have previously accused senators of weaponizing the Senate confirmation process against the voices and votes of sportsmen, saying they have refused to confirm commission appointments for partisan political reasons, including the Senate’s desire to protect Storm who has clashed with the Beshear administration over a number of issues. The board has the power to hire, and potentially fire, a KDFWR commissioner.?

Politics swirl around who will oversee Kentucky Fish and Wildlife

Beshear’s administration and the KDFWR have fought over the length of Storm’s contract as commissioner — at one point stopping Storm’s paychecks due to the dispute? —? and over executive branch oversight of how the KDFWR implements procurement and conservation easements.???

Beshear in March urged the Senate to confirm his commission appointments, urging the Senate? to “stop protecting leadership of what I think is the most corrupt part of state government.” When asked what he thought was corrupt about the KDFWR, Beshear during a press conference that same month pointed to a special examination of the department by a former Republican state auditor in late 2018 criticizing practices and spending at the department, along with how Storm was controversially hired as commissioner in early 2019.

“If leadership in an organization only answers to you on a board, you’ve got to be an active board. You got to make sure things are running right,” Beshear said in the press conference.?

A review by the Lantern of Greene’s public Facebook posts shows he had asked? people to call senators in support of his appointment to make sure the 8th commission district isn’t left vacant, leaving hunters and anglers “without their rightful representation.” Greene also wrote posts in the past three years, before he was appointed by Beshear, criticizing the Senate for refusing to confirm past commission appointments.

Webb, the senator who sponsored Greene’s confirmation resolution, in an interview said she was “aggrieved” Greene wasn’t confirmed believing he didn’t get a chance to talk about his social media use with senators, ideally in a public committee hearing. In past years, senators have brought forth some, but not all, commission appointments to a committee hearing to ask questions of appointments before a potential confirmation vote.?

Webb said she had a floor speech ready in case the Senate again rejected most of Beshear’s commission appointments. She said she plans to work on improving the confirmation process in an effort to avoid vacancies on the KDFWR board.?

Webb said she was relieved the Senate confirmed most of the the appointments.??

“If we would have left that much of Kentucky’s population of sportsmen go without representation, I was to going to go a little nuts,” Webb said. “I want the sportsmen to maintain a vote, maintain a voice in this, but I want everybody to do their due diligence that’s involved in the process and do it in a timely fashion to prevent vacancies.”?

Webb was a vocal opponent against a Senate bill that didn’t become law which would have stripped Beshear of his power to appoint commission members and given it to Republican Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Shell.?

About 900 companies, trade associations and other groups registered to lobby during the 2024 session of the Kentucky legislature held at the Capitol in Frankfort. Their combined spending was roughly $1 million higher than the previous record set the year before. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Arden Barnes)

FRANKFORT —?The GOP-dominated Kentucky legislature easily overrode nearly all of Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s vetoes Friday on the next to last day of this year’s legislative session, cementing a number of Republican priorities into state law.?

In total, Republican supermajorities in both legislative chambers overrode two dozen vetoes of bills and a resolution, including overriding nearly all line-item vetoes of budgetary bills funding state government.

Democratic lawmakers pushed back, unsuccessfully urging Republicans to uphold the vetoes on a number of bills including a sweeping crime bill, a bill creating more barriers to retire fossil fuel-fired power plants in Kentucky, and a bill changing how U.S. Senate vacancies are filled.?

The legislation with overridden vetoes will now become state law with the signature of Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams. Here are some of the key vetoes the legislature overrode.?

Budget bills

Bills funding the state executive branch to the tune of $128 billion, funding the state legislative and judicial branches and road projects saw multiple line-item vetoes from Beshear.

The governor took issue with a number of provisions in House Bill 6, legislation funding state cabinets and agencies. He vetoed provisions that capped executive branch spending to respond to disasters and forest fires, mandated reports to the legislature about the governor’s executive orders and required state executive branch officials get permission from the state treasurer to use state-owned planes for out-of-state travel.

“Executive orders by their very nature are within the Executive Branch’s authority as set forth in the Kentucky Constitution,” Beshear wrote in vetoing HB 6. “The information requested to be provided by the Executive branch in this provision far exceeds anything the Legislative branch has required under its own procedures during the 2024 Regular Session.”?

Both chambers of the legislature overrode nearly all line-item vetoes in state budgetary bills. They sustained a veto of requiring the Kentucky Department for Natural Resources to create a report on abandoned and active coal mine reclamation projects.?

Rep. Lindsey Burke, D-Lexington, echoed Beshear’s concerns on the House floor, saying “it’s not enough to say we’ll come back and have a special session when people are in crisis.”?

“They need a crisis level response. The governor is right: we should sustain his veto as it relates to responding to natural disasters,” Burke said.?

Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, said the arguments against the funding limits for natural disasters were “specious” considering the next state fiscal year for the budget begins in July and that the legislature will reconvene for its next legislative session in about six months.?

Some of the reporting requirements and studies that we direct are important,” McDaniel said, mentioning the legislature’s desire to gather more data on Kentucky State Police operations and the Medicaid waiver program.

House Bill 5

The House easily overrode Beshear’s veto of House Bill 5, an omnibus crime bill backed by Jefferson County Republicans in a vote of 73-22. The bill went straight to the Senate, whose members voted 27-10 to override the veto.?

Beshear vetoed the bill earlier this week. He told reporters Thursday that he supported some parts of the bill, such as the carjacking statute and flexibility for the Kentucky Parole Board, but other parts concerned him.?

“This bill has a number of good sections, but I do believe it was cruel to put some of these sections that would have received unanimous approval with others that individuals knew would have been controversial,” Beshear said.?

The governor added that he had been in Louisville this week to mark the one-year anniversary of the Old National Bank shooting that killed five victims, including a personal friend of his. He noted that one provision of the bill would allow for weapons used in murders to be destroyed after an auction sale.?

He criticized one of the most controversial sections of the bill — making street camping a crime in Kentucky. Advocates have argued that would largely impact people who are homeless. Beshear said several ministers contacted him about the issue.?

“I could not in good conscience, with my faith, sign a bill that would virtually criminalize homelessness and would treat an abandoned car better than a car that had a person in it who was suffering from homelessness,” the governor said.?

Beshear expressed concern about the financial impacts of increasing incarceration in Kentucky —?an issue that falls to the executive branch. Lawmakers are also finalizing the next two-year state budget this session. The governor criticized a limitation included that prevents his administration from delving “into unnecessary government expenses if our correction costs go over.”

Advocates from both right and left think tanks said the legislature should have an in-depth fiscal analysis before implementing the legislation. Beshear said his administration tried to give an estimate to the General Assembly but it “never published it — at all.”?

When the veto override vote was being considered in the Senate, Sen. John Schikel, R-Union, said the supporters of HB 5 are “dealing with real life” and not “hypotheticals about homeless people.”?

Senate Bill 299

Legislation backed by Republican leadership in the General Assembly would dissolve the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission and Department of Charitable Gaming and create a new government corporation to oversee those duties. The Senate overrode Beshear’s veto of Senate Bill 299 and forwarded it to the House Friday afternoon.?

Beshear vetoed the bill because he viewed it as an “unnecessary and unworkable bill, and its unintended consequences would tremendously affect horse racing, sports wagering and charitable gaming industries and the ability of people to serve on the newly-created corporation,” he wrote in his veto message.?

The governor told reporters that a conversation should be had about the move during the legislative interim session and pointed out that it was finalized shortly before the veto period began.?

“The Public Protection Cabinet worked so hard to get sportsbetting launched,” Beshear said. “They brought all of their resources to bear and look at how well it’s gone. There’s that old axiom, ‘if it ain’t broke,’ right? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

House Bill 622

Beshear vetoed a measure that would end the governor’s power to fill U.S. Senate vacancies, House Bill 622. In his veto message, the governor wrote that the General Assembly had passed legislation in 2021 to change the process and criticized it for changing “its mind for the second time in three years.”?

“This administration deserves the same authority as previous administrations,” Beshear continued.?

Unsurprisingly, the House and Senate disagreed with him and overrode his veto Friday. The bill had passed through both chambers with bipartisan support.?

Senate Bill 349?

Both chambers of the legislature overrode Beshear’s veto of a bill, Senate Bill 349, backed by Senate President Rorbert Stivers, R-Manchester, creating new hurdles before utilities can retire fossil fuel-fired power plants.?

SB 349 will create a new commission, whose membership would include significant fossil fuel interests, that utilities would have to give notice to about plans to retire a fossil fuel-fired power plant before officially filing such a plan before the state’s utility regulator, the Kentucky Public Service Commission.?

This commission would create a report for each retirement request analyzing the impacts of and alternatives to the request, including impacts to the state’s electricity supply and whether the retirement would create a “loss of revenue” for local and state government.?

Environmental advocacy groups and Investor-owned utilities including Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities (LG&E and KU) have decried SB 349 as potentially burdening ratepayers with the costs of keeping aging, uneconomical coal-fired power plants on the power grid. Proponents, including national coal industry interests, have backed the bill as a way to secure the reliability of the state’s power grid, an assertion rebuffed by the president of LG&E and KU.?

Beshear’s veto message rejecting SB 349 said he agreed Kentucky “must have energy reliability” but said the new commission wasn’t the right solution, was unconstitutional and something that instead could “jeopardize economic development.”?

Gov. Andy Beshear delivers the State of the Commonwealth address on Jan. 3, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Arden Barnes)

Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear issued a number of vetoes Tuesday including rejecting a sweeping anti-crime bill pushed by Jefferson County Republicans and strongly opposed by Democrats, arguing House Bill 5 is a costly and “unwieldy” bill.?

HB 5, primarily sponsored by Rep. Jared Bauman, had received opposition across a broad political spectrum with conservative and progressive groups saying the legislation needs more fiscal analysis before being implemented.?

Beshear in his veto message echoed that concern among other issues, saying lawmakers didn’t provide a “fiscal impact analysis” with HB 5 despite the “tremendous fiscal impact” it would have on the Kentucky Department of Corrections and county governments.

The governor wrote HB 5 did have “good parts” that would have likely gotten “unanimous support” as standalone bills, such as requiring firearms used in murders be destroyed and “making carjacking its own separate crime.”?

The legislature instead, he wrote, included these good policies with dozens of other measures “that would criminalize homelessness and significantly increase incarceration costs without any additional appropriation.”?

Beshear also wrote the legislature is capping the Kentucky Department of Corrections’ ability to tap excess funds if needed to pay county jails for housing state inmates, costs which would increase under HB 5.?

HB 5 creates increased or new criminal penalties, implements a three strikes rule for violent offenders and bans street camping. For prisoners convicted of violent offenses, HB 5 requires them to serve 85% of their sentences before becoming eligible for parole; those prisoners currently have to serve 20% of a sentence before becoming eligible. HB 5 also classifies more crimes as violent.?

The Kentucky Fraternal Order of Police and some families of deceased crime victims have supported the bill.?

Bauman in an emailed statement said he “completely” disagreed with the governor’s veto, claiming Beshear was using “misinformation and fear-mongering” and was more concerned “about offending criminals than protecting innocent Kentuckians.”

“I hoped that he would take this opportunity to do the right thing as we work to address public safety, a fundamental obligation of government and an issue that unites Kentuckians regardless of where they live,” Bauman said.

Beshear also vetoed specific line items in state budgetary bills along with other legislation backed by the GOP-dominated legislature including: Senate Bill 349, creating new barriers for utilities to retire fossil fuel-fired power plants; Senate Bill 299, creating a new government corporation overseeing horse racing and charitable gaming; House Bill 622, requiring vacancies of U.S. Senate seats be filled by special elections; and Senate Bill 16, criminalizing the use of drones and recording equipment at meatpacking plants and agricultural operations without consent of operation owners or managers.?

Republicans have supermajority representation in each chamber, meaning they can easily override any Beshear veto.?

This story was updated with a statement from Rep. Jared Bauman.

The Kentucky Senate, Feb. 27, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Arden Barnes)

FRANKFORT — A bill that open government advocates warn would introduce loopholes into Kentucky’s open records law could make its way to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s desk when lawmakers return to Frankfort later this week.?

The final two days of the 60-day regular session — Friday and Monday — are set aside to consider gubernatorial vetoes of bills that both chambers have passed. The Republican supermajority can easily reach the simple majority of votes needed to override ?vetoes.

Legislation that has yet to make it through both chambers also could come up in the final two days, including a bill to end the certificate of need requirement for freestanding birth centers and a maternal health bill that ran aground in the Senate after a late amendment was added in committee.

The Senate is expected to consider confirming Robbie Fletcher as the state education commissioner, along with appointments to other positions. Thanks to a law enacted last year, it will be the first time the education commissioner has required Senate confirmation.

Any bill that lawmakers pass would be subject to a successful veto by Beshear because the legislature would have no chance to override it.

‘Bad actors’

Beshear has voiced support for the controversial changes to the open records law proposed in House Bill 509. During his weekly news conference last week he said he needs to see the bill’s final form before deciding what action to take on the bill. “We’ll review it when it gets to me.”

The House passed the bill, but the Senate did not give it a floor vote ahead of the veto period. The Senate could give final passage to the bill when both chambers reconvene Friday and Monday.

HB 509 would require state and local government agencies to provide email accounts to public officials on which to conduct official business. However, the bill doesn’t address what happens to public records created on private devices.?

Beshear told reporters he thinks the bill would be more effective than current law in deterring officials from conducting public business on their personal devices or email accounts. He traced the controversy to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR), which has waged a so far unsuccessful court fight to block release of commissioners’ text messages. The challenge is now before the state Supreme Court.

“Fish and Wildlife hadn’t issued state email addresses to their commissioners and they insisted on texting each other on their own devices,” Beshear said. “That’s wrong. So, right now, what the law says is if you do that, that is an open record. But all we can do in terms of enforcement is ask that person ‘would you please look through your phone and take snapshots of anything that we’re asking for and send them to us now?’ Do you think a bad actor who’s trying to get around the open records request is going to do that and send them to you?”

HB 509 would destroy Kentucky’s long tradition of openness. And Beshear knows it.

Beshear said HB 509’s mandate that official business be conducted on government email accounts could aid transparency by making government agencies responsible for the records. “What it does is take whether you get a record away from a potential bad actor and put it with the agency that can secure those records.”

Agencies could discipline employees who violate HB 509’s mandates — by using a personal cell phone or email account for official communications, for example — but it’s unclear if and how those records could be publicly disclosed. The bill includes no penalties for violations by elected officials. The bill also does not require agencies to search for public records on personal devices.?

When asked if he thought Beshear would veto the bill, Republican Senate President Robert Stivers told reporters as the veto period began: “You’d have to ask the governor on that. I do not know. I don’t know what he would do.”?

The open records challenge against the KDFWR was spurred by a former member of the KDFWR’s governing board requesting text messages among Fish and Wildlife officials and lawmakers. The governor and Republican legislature have also clashed over the Kentucky Senate not confirming gubernatorial appointments to the KDFWR’s governing board. Five appointments are? awaiting confirmation this session.?

Here’s a look at where some other high-profile legislation stands:?

Momnibus?

After picking up some controversial baggage in the last leg of the legislative session, the maternal health bill called “Momnibus” failed to get final passage.?

The bill would incentivize Kentuckians to get prenatal care by adding pregnancy to the list of qualifying life events for health insurance coverage, among other things. It had bipartisan support.

But a late amendment borrowed language from a bill filed by an anti-abortion lawmaker that requires hospitals and midwives to refer patients who have nonviable pregnancies or whose fetuses have been diagnosed with fatal conditions to perinatal palliative care services. Abortion rights advocates say the requirement could become coercive.

The bill awaits Senate passage and Beshear’s action.?

Meanwhile, Democrats in the Senate have filed amendments

Democrats in the Senate have filed amendments to loosen the state’s near-total ban on abortion by adding exceptions for rape, incest and lethal fetal anomalies ?and changing the word “baby” to “fetus.”?

It could still pass in the final two days but would have to be a version that meets Beshear’s approval because lawmakers would be unable to override a veto.??

Freestanding birth centers?

A bill to remove the certificate of need requirement for freestanding birth centers that meet a set of criteria was approved by the House. It has had two readings in the Senate but still needs to pass a Senate committee.?

A Senate Resolution to reestablish a task force to study certificate of need in Kentucky has also not passed.?

Crime bill awaits action by Beshear

A sweeping crime bill backed by Jefferson County House Republicans has been awaiting action by the governor for about a week. House Bill 5 has been hotly debated, with House Democrats futilely arguing on the last day before the veto period against the measure.??

The bill includes new or increased criminal penalties, bans street camping and imposes a three strikes rule on violent offenders. It requires prisoners convicted of violent offenses to serve 85% of their sentences instead of the current 20% before becoming eligible for parole, and classifies more crimes as violent.

HB 5 has gained opposition from across the political spectrum, as both progressive and conservative groups have argued that a more in-depth fiscal analysis is needed before implementing the legislation. However, the Kentucky Fraternal Order of Police and some families of deceased crime victims have expressed support for the bill.?

Beshear told reporters Thursday that he was still reviewing the bill and was supportive of parts of it but concerned about other sections. He added that he supported the carjacking provision but had reservations about provisions that could criminalize homelessness by creating the crime of illegal street camping.?

He said a part of the bill that would “allow for the destruction of a weapon used in a murder” is close to him a year after the Old National Bank shooting in Louisville. The bill would allow someone to purchase such a weapon at auction and ask Kentucky State Police to destroy it. The funds are used for local government and law enforcement grants.?

Local officials highlighted the issue of the auctions after the shooting last year. One of the victims, Tommy Elliot, was a close friend of Beshear’s.?

“Thankfully, the ATF seized that weapon, and it was destroyed,” Beshear said of the weapon used in the bank shooting. “Otherwise, I was going to have to watch a weapon that murdered my friend be auctioned to the highest bidder.”?

Beshear also added that he wished legislation like this would be broken up into separate bills. He can only issue line-item vetoes on budget bills.?

Changes to horse racing and gambling oversight

Beshear can also take action on another bill that was passed by the General Assembly just before the veto period began that would dissolve the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission and Department of Charitable Gaming.?

Senate Bill 299 would form a new government corporation to oversee the duties of the commission and department. Both of those are currently under the Public Protection Cabinet. The House and Senate have both given approval on the measure.

The bill has been backed by the legislature’s Republican leadership. In a joint meeting of the Senate and House economic development committees, Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer and House Speaker David Osborne presented the bill.?

Beshear told reporters that it does not impact gubernatorial appointment powers but would create an independent corporation that could “take regulatory action and punish different groups,” such as trainers. That raises a question about the constitutionality of the bill, he said, as an executive branch officer will not be over the corporation.

“So, how are you independent but have full regulatory and enforcement authority? I think that’s the thing to work through there,” Beshear said. “We’ve never seen it before. We don’t know of another group that acts that way, so a little complex legally.”?

New hurdles for fossil fuel-fired power plant retirements

Beshear has yet to act on Senate Bill 349, a Senate president-backed bill that would add new bureaucratic hurdles to slow the retirement of fossil fuel-fired power plants. Before utilities could retire a fossil fuel-fired plant, they would have to notify a newly created board, whose membership would be dominated by fossil fuel industries.

Investor-owned utilities and environmental advocacy groups have decried the bill, saying it could keep aging, uneconomical coal-fired power plants on the grid and burden ratepayers with the costs of their maintenance. Advocates for the bill, including coal industry interests, have argued SB 349 is needed to ensure the reliability of the state’s energy grid, an assertion rebuffed by the leader of Kentucky’s largest utility.

Beshear last month criticized the bill, saying it was going to “take authority” from the state’s utility regulator, the Kentucky Public Service Commission, which makes decisions on power plant retirement requests. He said he’s been in the “same place” as some of the people who have pushed for SB 349, but that the proposed board is “not the way” to address the issue.

Limiting power of Louisville’s air pollution regulator

Beshear on Monday vetoed House Bill 136, sponsored by Rep. Jared Bauman, R-Louisville. The bill would prevent the Louisville Air Pollution Control District from issuing fines against industries that self-disclose violations of federal pollution regulations. Critics, including the environmental law group Kentucky Resources Council, say it could give industry in Jefferson County a “free pass” from penalties when a self-disclosure of a violation happens by ending the air pollution regulator’s ability to issue penalties in such cases.

Bauman and other Republicans have argued HB 136 is needed to align air pollution regulations in Jefferson County with the rest of the state. Most Democrats have opposed the bill, worried the bill could create less accountability over air pollution in Jefferson County.?

Criminalizing documentation of meatpacking plants, ag operations without consent?

Senate Bill 16, sponsored by Sen. John Schickel, R-Union and backed by Tyson Foods and Kentucky’s poultry industry, would criminalize using recording equipment or drones at concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and commercial food processing and manufacturing plants without the permission of the operation’s owner or manager. It would also criminalize distributing the footage.

Group alleges ‘hidden-camera’ video reveals ‘cruelty’ in chicken production in Kentucky?

Critics, including animal welfare groups, have said the bill is a so-called “ag gag” bill meant to hide from the public and prevent whistleblowers from exposing the conduct and practices of large-scale, corporate agricultural operations. An animal protection advocacy group released a video from a “hidden-camera” investigation of alleged “cruelty” within Kentucky poultry production, an investigation the group argues would be criminalized under SB 16.?

Schickel and other SB 16 supporters have said the bill is needed to prevent harassment of employees and agricultural operations that provide jobs to Kentucky communities. The bill passed through the legislature largely on party lines.?

Bills that are in the legislative graveyard or near

Anti-DEI bills: Republican efforts to limit or end diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public universities and colleges died when the Senate declined to consider changes made in its bill by the House. Any effort to revive anti-DEI legislation would almost certain be vetoed by Beshear.

Drag bill: After several edits to soften the legislation, a bill to place restrictions on adult-oriented businesses with “sexually explicit” performances sputtered on the House side despite passing a committee.??

Vaccine bill: A bill to bar employers and educational institutions from requiring the COVID-19 vaccination for treatment, employment or school, passed in the Senate but failed to advance on the House side.?

Though it could still pass in the final days of the session, Beshear, an outspoken supporter of the vaccines, would likely veto it.?

Abortion bills: None of the bills seeking to loosen Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban were assigned committees, making them effectively dead on arrival.?Those include:?

• A Republican bill to add rape and incest exceptions and clarify doctors can treat ectopic pregnancies?
• A Democratic bill to add rape and incest exceptions.?
• A Democratic bill to roll back all abortion restrictions.?

Loosening state child labor law: A bill that would allow some teenagers to work longer and later hours, voted down and then revived by a Senate committee, still needs final passage through the Senate to get to Beshear’s desk.?

Lawmakers wouldn’t have the chance to override a veto of House Bill 255 from Beshear, who in past comments panned the legislation saying child labor protections are there “for a reason.”?

Education and Labor Cabinet officials have said HB 255 also deletes language in state law that mirrors federal prohibitions on employing 14- and 15-year olds in hazardous occupations, such as jobs involving railroad cars and conveyors, loading and unloading goods from motor vehicles and requiring the use of ladders. State labor officials said they wouldn’t be able to enforce those hazardous occupation standards even if still federally prohibited.?

Bill sponsor Rep. Phillip Pratt, R-Georgetown, who owns a lawn and landscaping company, said his legislation would help minors “gain valuable experience in the workplace.”

Weakening a mine safety protection: House Bill 85, sponsored by Rep. Bill Wesley, R-Ravenna, would weaken a key workplace protection for coal miners, according to a long-time coal miner safety advocate. Wesley has argued HB 85 is needed to help smaller coal mines continue operating.?The bill would need approval from the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee and three required readings before being sent to the governor, who could veto it without the legislature overriding it.?

Gov. Andy Beshear addressed lawmakers on Jan. 3, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Arden Barnes)

FRANKFORT — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has vetoed bills creating a nuclear energy authority and outlawing “discriminatory treatment” of filling stations.

He also vetoed a measure similar to one the state Supreme Court overturned last year but that Republicans say is different enough to withstand judicial scrutiny. It allows a change of judicial venue for constitutional challenges and lawsuits against the state.

State lawmakers will reconvene for two days — April 12 and 15 — when the GOP supermajorities are expected to easily override the Democratic governor’s vetoes.? A veto override needs only a majority of each chamber’s approval.?

The governor has signed into law more than 50 bills and resolutions as of Thursday, according to records received by Secretary of State Michael Adams.?

During a Thursday news conference, Beshear highlighted his vetoes, including? Senate Bill 198, sponsored by Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Benton, creating a new research authority to develop nuclear energy in Kentucky.?

Beshear said he has no problem with developing nuclear energy but that the board for the newly established authority “isn’t appointed or really overseen by myself or any other constitutional officer.” Beshear said the authority needs more oversight in order to be constituted as an executive branch agency.

“This is not any opposition to nuclear energy or a development authority, but a development authority has to be created legally, and if it’s going to be an executive branch agency, it can’t be made up of directly selected private sector individuals through legislation,” Beshear said.?

Carroll in a statement said he was disappointed by the veto and that “political considerations often overshadow” efforts to help Kentuckians. Carroll argued that having board members represent “diverse entities” would minimize political influence on the authority’s decisions.?

This veto only delays Kentucky’s progress in exploring nuclear energy opportunities, a path many other states are pursuing,” Carroll said in his statement, urging his fellow lawmakers to override the veto. “It does not encroach on the governor’s executive powers.”

Beshear signed related legislation, Senate Joint Resolution 140, also sponsored by Carroll, which directs the state utility regulator, the Kentucky Public Service Commission, to begin preparations for siting future nuclear power plants. Beshear said he was concerned the legislature didn’t provide specific funding to the PSC to do the new work.

Beshear vetoed House Bill 581, sponsored by Rep. Ken Upchurch, R-Monticello, requiring local governments to allow retail filling stations in any land-use zone where electric vehicle charging stations are allowed. Upchurch has argued that he wants to create an “equal playing field” for electric vehicle charging stations and gas stations, while opponents have warned the bill could exclude small charging stations at public buildings, YMCAs and small shops where chargers are a draw for customers.?

In his veto message, Beshear said the bill “imposes big state government control over local governments’ planning decisions” that? “should be left to the local officials elected to make them.”

Beshear also vetoed House Bill 804, sponsored by Rep. Patrick Flannery, R-Olive Hill, which would allow a participant in a lawsuit challenging a state regulation or state law to have cases moved from the court in which a case was filed to an adjacent judicial circuit.

The governor panned the bill as another attempt by the legislature to “violate the separation of powers,” saying the state judicial branch has exclusive authority to determine the proper courtroom or venue for lawsuits.?

“What it attempts to do is take the decision of venue entirely out of the judicial branch and give it to any one of the litigating parties that can just simply ask for a change of venue without any process or evaluation,” Beshear said.?

The Kentucky Supreme Court last year struck down a similar law that had allowed lawsuit participants challenging a state law or regulation — including the attorney general intervening in the lawsuit — to request a change of venue and allow the case to be moved to a new court chosen at random by the Supreme Court clerk.?

The Kentucky Supreme Court in its ruling stated the law violated the separation of powers between state government branches.?

Flannery in legislative committee hearings said HB 804 was “much different” than last year’s law, saying he thought it would comply with the Supreme Court decision.

Rep. Lindsey Burke, D-Lexington in a legislative committee hearing asked Flannery if the law was an “unreasonable restriction” on the power of Franklin Circuit Court judges to hear challenges to state laws and regulations. Flannery said in response that such challenges can be brought in any circuit court across the state.?

House Majority Whip Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, said other circuit court judges he knew in the area, not just those in Franklin County, could handle cases involving constitutional challenges.?

“You can be against this for some reasons — that’s fine,” Nemes said. “But you cannot say that the circuit judges in areas contiguous to Franklin County aren’t up to snuff.”?

The circuit court in Franklin County has traditionally heard legal challenges to state laws and regulations because it’s the seat of state government and most state agencies. In particular, Franklin Circuit Court Judge Phillip Shepherd has been a target of GOP criticism for court decisions.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttegeig said the rule would provide a “clear and consistent framework to track carbon pollution” and provide states “flexibility to set their own climate targets.”?(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

A federal judge has sided with Kentucky’s Republican attorney general in ruling that the Biden administration overstepped by requiring states to set goals for reducing heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions from vehicle tailpipes and other sources on federal highways.?

U.S. District Judge Benjamin Beaton, of Kentucky’s Western District, in a Monday order said the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) lacked legal authority to issue the “arbitrary and capricious” rule. Reuters reported the judge stopped short of enjoining the regulation’s enforcement or vacating it, noting a federal judge in Texas had already struck it down nationwide before Beaton could finish considering the case.

Beaton was appointed by then-President Donald Trump in 2020.

The FHWA’s rule would require state transportation departments to establish two-year and four-year emissions reduction targets beginning in 2024. The rule granted states “flexibility” to set goals that “are appropriate for their communities and that work for their respective climate change and other policy priorities.”?

At the time the rule was finalized, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttegeig said? in a statement that it would provide a “clear and consistent framework to track carbon pollution” and provide states “flexibility to set their own climate targets.”?

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, transportation contributed 29% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, fueling the increasing effects of human-driven climate change.?

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman along with 20 other Republican attorneys general sued the Biden administration to stop the rule from going into effect.?

Coleman in a statement said Biden’s “radical environmental agenda” is costing “Kentucky families, farmers and workers.”?

?“Like all Americans, Kentuckians love our trucks, cars and vans. With this victory in court, we’re slamming the brakes on the Biden Administration’s politics that make no sense in the Commonwealth,” Coleman said.?

A FHWA spokesperson said in an email the agency was reviewing the court decision and remained committed to the administration’s goal of “cutting carbon pollution in half by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.”?

Lawmakers questioned a Kentucky Transportation Cabinet official about the FHWA rule and the lawsuit during a February legislative committee meeting.

Mike Hancock, deputy secretary for the cabinet, told lawmakers the cabinet had a “great relationship” with the FHWA and that the cabinet was “in the habit of meeting federal requirements” to not endanger hundreds of millions of dollars in federal transportation funding given to the state.?

Gov. Andy Beshear surveys damage in Prospect from Tuesday's severe weather. (Gov. Andy Beshear X account)

Gov. Andy Beshear said a Kenton County resident died in a car accident as a result of the severe storms and tornadoes that swept Kentucky Tuesday, while emergency management officials have reported no other major injuries or deaths.

Beshear in a Wednesday news conference praised emergency management officials, first responders and utility workers for their response during the severe weather outbreak.?

“This storm and the tornadoes involved had statewide impacts hitting numerous areas,” Beshear said. “I am so thankful that Kentuckians have remained so weather aware.”?

The governor said the Kenton County death occurred “when this first line of strong storms and rain were coming through” and that the death of the young man was a “tragic occurrence.”?

Beshear said federal weather officials are still surveying, but preliminary National Weather Service surveys have confirmed separate EF-1 tornadoes in Anderson, Nelson, Jessamine and Bourbon counties, along with another EF-1 tornado that hit the city of Prospect in Jefferson and Oldham counties. Other counties including some in Eastern Kentucky could have tornado damage, he said. He said he thinks at least seven tornadoes will be confirmed once surveys are done.?

The governor said states of emergency requests had been received from Union County in the west to Elliott County in the east. Cities across the state had also declared states of emergency including Ashland, Louisville, Mount Vernon and Catlettsburg.?

Additionally, Beshear urged Kentuckians to take photos and document any damage before cleaning up in an effort to help the state qualify for federal disaster assistance, particularly to qualify for individual assistance.

New legislative limits on administration’s emergency response spending

Beshear also renewed calls for the GOP-dominated state legislature to remove funding limits in the pending state budget for agencies responding to emergencies and disasters. Beshear said his administration wouldn’t have been able to respond to Tuesday’s storms in the way it did if such funding limits had been in place.

“We’ve made this plea to leadership on both sides. I admittedly don’t understand why it’s still in there when these are our Kentucky neighbors,” Beshear said, mentioning that if the funding limits remain in place he could have to call a special legislative session during emergencies to appropriate money for a response. “It’s just not smart policymaking.”

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, in an emailed statement through a spokesperson said Beshear already has “access to $100 million” in emergency spending. The spokesperson did not immediately respond to Lantern questions about if the $100 million referred to funding allocated in the current fiscal year or future fiscal years.

“If an emergency is so significant or tragic that it requires spending more than $100 million, the governor has a responsibility to call the General Assembly into a special session. Otherwise, he suggests we forgo our constitutional duties as the branch responsible for the purse of the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” Stivers said. “The cost of calling the General Assembly, your representatives in Frankfort, in for a special session would be pennies on the tens of millions of dollars we’d allocate and would ensure the governor’s collaboration with the legislative branch of government.”

Emails sent to a spokesperson for Republican leadership in the Kentucky House of Representatives asking about Beshear’s renewed calls were not immediately returned.?

The latest version of House Bill 6 — the state executive branch budget passed by the legislature on the last day before it adjourned for the veto period — sets various funding limits for emergency responses:

• A $4 million limit for “emergency forest fire suppression” in each fiscal year.
• A $50 million limit for each of the next two fiscal years on funds the Kentucky Department of Military Affairs can use to match federal disaster funding “in the event of a presidentially declared disaster or emergency.”
• A $25 million limit in each fiscal year for Kentucky National Guard operations when an “emergency or exigent situation” is declared by the governor.?

Beshear in a March press conference referenced the next budget’s $25 million funding limit on the Kentucky National Guard and said that lodging at General Butler State Park wouldn’t have been able to be opened for survivors of a Trimble County tornado if the funding limit imposed by the legislature was in place for the current fiscal year.

In a January letter sent to lawmakers, State Budget Director John Hicks said a $50 million limit on matching monies for federal aid hadn’t been exceeded in past fiscal years but could be exceeded in the current fiscal year. Hicks in his letter said a $4 million limit on “emergency forest fire suppression” has never been exceeded.?

This story has been updated with a statement from Senate President Robert Stivers.

A national advocacy group says a bill approved by the Kentucky legislature will criminalize investigations of industrial agriculture abuses. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

An animal protection advocacy group released footage from a “hidden-camera investigation” Monday of what it says is cruel treatment of chickens being transported from poultry operations in Kentucky — an investigation the group says would be criminalized under a bill recently approved by the Kentucky legislature.

Mercy For Animals, a California-based nonprofit which describes its mission as to “end industrial animal agriculture by constructing a just and sustainable food system,” in its published video showed workers throwing chickens into cages for transport. Some chickens are kicked and thrown around as workers navigate the enclosure, and at least one chicken is stepped on as a worker tries to catch it. The video narrator says six-week-old birds living in “overcrowded barns” are “kicked, thrown and stuffed into cramped transport cages.”

A separate video the group shared with the Lantern details documentation, including screenshots of GPS locations the group’s investigator visited and video of the investigator allegedly talking with other workers. They appear to show the poultry houses, which the group describes as contract farms, are in Western Kentucky and provide chickens to Pilgrim’s Pride, one of the country’s largest poultry producers with a meatpacking plant in Graves County.

The group is releasing the footage as part of its opposition to Senate Bill 16, sponsored by Sen. John Schickel, R-Union, which would criminalize using drones or recording equipment at commercial food processing and manufacturing plants and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) without the permission of the operation’s owner or manager.?

The legislation, which is now at the desk of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear for his consideration, would also criminalize the distribution of such footage at food processing plants or CAFOs. The bill would make exceptions for utility workers and state and federal law enforcement and regulators.

Alex Cerussi, a senior state policy manager for the group, in a statement said “whistleblowing is an important safeguard against unsanitary practices” in the absence of robust government oversight of “factory farms.”?

“Kentucky’s Senate Bill 16 is dangerous legislation blatantly designed to keep the public in the dark about cruelty and hazards in industrial animal agriculture,” Cerussi said. “This bill isn’t about protecting small Kentucky family farms; it’s about shielding massive corporations from accountability for the harms they cause to animals, workers, and consumers. The public deserves to know what happens in factory farms and food-processing facilities.”

The Lantern tried to contact JBS, the international meatpacking company that owns Pilgrim’s Pride, through its online media inquiries form to ask about the footage and whether workers are paid by the number of chickens caught, as Mercy For Animals alleges. The company has not responded. Messages sent to Jamie Guffey, the executive director of the industry group Kentucky Poultry Federation, asking about the standard protocol for handling chickens in poultry houses, were not immediately returned.?

Critics of the legislation have characterized SB 16 as the latest in a long line of so-called “ag-gag” bills enacted around the country to block whistleblowers from investigating the practices and conduct of industrial agriculture. A lobbyist with the Humane Society of the United States has also questioned whether SB 16 is constitutional on First Amendment grounds, and the environmental legal advocacy group Kentucky Resources Council has expressed concerns about the bill’s unintended legal consequences.

A federal appeals court struck down a similar law enacted in 2015 in North Carolina, a decision the U.S. Supreme Court last year let stand.

Legislative debate

Proponents of the legislation, including a lobbyist for Tyson Foods and the industry group Kentucky Poultry Federation, have argued SB 16 is needed to prevent harassment and endangerment of employees and livestock at these facilities. Schickel, the bill’s sponsor, had previously told the Lantern that “agriculture by its nature can be distasteful to some” and that “these businesses have to protect their operations and their customers.”

SB 16 passed on largely party line votes through the GOP-dominated legislature during this legislative session. An email sent to a spokesperson for Beshear asking whether the governor planned to sign, veto or let SB 16 become law without his signature was not immediately returned.?

Democrats in the Kentucky House of Representatives unsuccessfully last week tried to add additions to the bill through floor amendments, one of which would have clarified employees of these facilities would be protected from “retaliation or discrimination” for making public “any wrongdoing or documentation of noncompliance of any federal, state, or local law or regulation.”

Rep. Al Gentry, D-Louisville, said he had heard Tyson Foods’ lobbyist say it wasn’t the intent of SB 16 to interfere with whistleblower protections for employees, but he hoped his floor amendment would make that clear.?

“If we vote no on this amendment, to me I think it shows there is a lack of concern for this potential situation that could exist and for employees that find themselves in a difficult predicament,” Gentry said.

Rep. Richard Heath, R-Mayfield, whose district includes the Pilgrim’s Pride meatpacking plant in Graves County, said he’d talked with the lobbyist for Tyson Foods along with the sponsor of SB 16 who considered the floor amendment “unfriendly.”?

Gentry’s floor amendment was voted down 27-49.?

Heath on the House floor said the bill protected “food processors” including Pilgrim’s Pride in his district, along with protecting “the farmers who raise livestock and poultry” from an “unauthorized intrusion.”?

“This is a private property protection bill for the folks who produce and process the food of our state and who employ thousands,” Heath said.?

House Speaker Pro Tem David Meade presides over the House Thursday night. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Sarah Ladd.)

FRANKFORT — This year’s banner culture war crusade fizzled out in the Kentucky Senate in the final days of the General Assembly.

The Senate took no action on a House overhaul of Senate Bill 6, a Republican-backed bill aimed at curbing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in Kentucky’s public universities and colleges.

Lawmakers could revive the bill when they return April 12 but they would not have time to override Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s certain veto, meaning the measure is dead this year.?

Republican Senate President Robert Stivers, of Manchester, told reporters after lawmakers adjourned around midnight Friday that he was not sure if the bill would move again when the General Assembly returns to Frankfort for its final two days, April 12 and 15.?

“It has been contentious within our caucus, and that’s about all I can say,” Stivers said.?

Senate Republican Floor Leader Damon Thayer, of Georgetown, said the caucus decided to “not concur with the House changes.” The House had made major changes to the Senate’s bill, including eliminating DEI programs and offices at public universities and colleges.

The explanation down the hall was similar. Republican House Speaker David Osborne, of Prospect, said it “does not appear that will be taken up again. There was just a disagreement in the languages. Neither side (was) willing to give substantively on it.”?

Thursday was the last day the Republican-controlled legislature could pass veto-proof bills. Democrats argued against some high-profile bills but there were few surprises as the chambers worked through a mountain of? legislation. The session now enters ?a 10-day period during which Gov. Andy Beshear can veto or sign measures passed by the legislature. The legislature will return for two days in mid-April when it typically overrides any Beshear vetoes.

Winning final passage were bills allowing schools to hire armed “guardians” in place of law enforcement officers, making it harder for utilities to retire fossil fuel-fired power plants and increasing criminal penalties and creating new crimes.

One bill that did not make the veto-proof finish line was Taylor Mill Republican Rep. Kim Moser’s maternal health House Bill 10, dubbed the “Momnibus,” after the Senate committee added a controversial amendment.

Is the anti-DEI bill dead?

When he filed Senate Bill 6, Republican Whip Mike Wilson, of Bowling Green, said his intent was to prevent public postsecondary institutions from requiring employees and students to “endorse a specific ideology or political viewpoint” as part of graduation or hiring practices. The Senate passed his version on party lines.?

However, when Senate Bill 6 was sent across the Capitol, it was overhauled in the House Education Committee without Wilson’s presence. Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, presented a version of the bill that included provisions from her House Bill 9.?

Kentucky’s anti-DEI legislation filed this session followed a nationwide trend as conservative politicians aim to roll back such measures, particularly in higher education. Earlier in March, the University of Florida closed its DEI offices, eliminated DEI positions and administrative positions and stopped DEI contracts with outside vendors following a state board of education vote to prohibit universities from spending money on DEI programs.?

Wilson’s original bill was also modeled after a recent Tennessee law that allows students and employees to file reports against schools for allowing “divisive concepts” to be taught.?

Throughout the legislative session, university administrators including University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto and University of Louisville President Kim Schatzel have voiced support for their campuses DEI initiatives.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear has also repeatedly reaffirmed his support for DEI, calling diversity “an asset” that makes Kentucky “more welcoming” to companies that might relocate to the state.?

If the Republican supermajority in the General Assembly did take action on the bill when it returns for its two final days in April, lawmakers could not override a likely veto from the governor.?

School ‘guardians’

The House approved a key piece of GOP Senate legislation aimed at paving the way for school districts to hire “guardians” to fill vacant law enforcement officer roles on school campuses while strengthening support for mental health resources in schools.?

Sponsored by Campbellsville Republican Sen. Max Wise, Senate Bill 2 is a continuation of a successful piece of school safety legislation that he carried in 2019. The bill underwent several changes in the House Education Committee earlier this week, including the controversial addition of allowing licensed pastoral counselors to serve on trauma-informed teams in schools. The Kentucky School Counselors Association began opposing the bill after the change.?

However, debate was limited to three minutes per side on the House floor for the bill. The move angered Louisville Democrat Rep. Josie Raymond since she and others could not explain their votes and she did not have time to ask questions. Debate limitations through the night got “shorter and shorter,” she told reporters.?

“One hundred members were just barred from explaining their votes on a bill that’s going to put guns in our kids’ schools,” she said. “It was cowardly of them to limit debate… It was cowardly of them to save this bill for 11:15 on the final night. I should not be penalized for their poor time management, which is what this is.”

She said the portion of the bill dealing with “strangers with guns” into schools “really frightens me” as a parent.?

Osborne said the move to limit time was “certainly” to finish before midnight.?

“Time is very very limited on the main days,” he said. “Most of these bills … have been debated, in many cases, for hours on this floor previously.”?

The bill also now has more oversight of the school “guardian” program by giving the Kentucky Center for School Safety a staffer to coordinate the program if funds are available.?

Under Wise’s original proposal, certified “guardians” would include honorably discharged military veterans and retired or former law enforcement officers. Other states like Florida have similar programs.?

School districts that choose to employ a “guardian,” they must enter an agreement with local and state law enforcement to identify the chain of command in emergency situations. The program is an option for school districts to fill vacant School Resource Officers, a type of sworn law enforcement officer that is required in schools. Wise said after filing the bill that 600 campuses do not have SROs in Kentucky.?

The Senate concurred with the House’s changes late Thursday night.?

Horse racing and gambling

In a vote of 64-28, the House passed Thursday Senate Bill 299, which is a late-hour overhaul of how horse racing and gambling will be regulated in Kentucky. The Senate later concurred with changes made in the House.?

Replacing a shell bill earlier this week, the legislation would form a new government corporation to replace the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission and Department of Charitable Gaming — both of which are currently under the Public Protection Cabinet. A shell bill is minor legislation that lawmakers use to introduce major legislation after the deadline for filing bills.

Thayer and Osborne backed the measure.?

Thayer called the passage of the bill “a crucial step in safeguarding the integrity and prosperity of our signature horse racing industry” in a statement.?

“As a cornerstone of Kentucky’s heritage and economy, it’s imperative that we uphold strong oversight and management of these vital industries,” he said. “I contend the success of this industry demands it be a stand-alone entity capable of utilizing its funding without having to get authorizations from a bureaucratic agency. I am proud to sponsor this measure to promote this integral part of the commonwealth.”

Osborne said on the House floor that the topic of the Horse Racing Commission’s structure has been a years-long discussion.?

But some lawmakers said sponsors of charitable gambling were taken by surprise and had been flooding them with questions.

Kentucky is the site of several renowned horse races, including the Kentucky Derby. Last year, sports betting was legalized in Kentucky.?

Under the legislation, the corporation would oversee areas like live horse racing and sports wagering, as well as charitable gaming after July 2025.?

Employees of the commission and department would be transferred to the new corporation after the entities are dissolved. The Horse Racing Commission would be abolished in July 2024. The charitable gaming department would be abolished the following summer.?

Board members of the corporation would be appointed by the governor and subject to Senate confirmation. Current board members of the commission and department would serve two-year terms on the corporation.

Some Republicans raised concerns from constituents, such as churches, who oppose charitable gaming and voted against the measure.?

‘Momnibus’

By midnight on the last day before the General Assembly broke for the veto period, the maternal health bill called Momnibus failed to receive a vote on the Senate floor.??