IN THE GAZETTE

Fair Salary
Embattled CEO = 3% raise; state workers = 0%

By Laura Cullen Glasscock
The Kentucky Gazette

   Kentucky State Fair Board President and CEO Harold Workman is one of the highest paid state employees in the commonwealth. Currently in the public spotlight, Workman could be on the brink of losing his $313,208.34 a year job as the top official at the Kentucky State Fair.

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COLUMN

 

Just say no to drug testing

By Laura Cullen Glasscock
The Kentucky Gazette

    It’s a safe and cynical election year ploy for incumbent lawmakers: Add your name as a sponsor to “popular” legislation that you know won’t go anywhere. The reason the legislation won’t go anywhere – hopefully – is because it’s bad.

    Such is the case with House Bill 26.

   Sponsored by retiring state Rep. Lonnie Napier,    R-Lancaster, and 59 others, HB 26 would require the drug testing of people who receive public assistance. Despite its bipartisan support – 34 of the sponsors are Republicans and 26 are Democrats – this legislation is all wrong for several reasons.

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CURRENT ISSUE

New Road

    A Washington Post investigation of the business dealings and earmarks of all 535 members of Congress over the last several years shows that 33 members “steered more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or near the lawmakers’ own property. Under the ethics rules Congress has written for itself, this is both legal and undisclosed.”
    Kentucky’s U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Somerset, was the only Kentuckian on the Post’s list of 33 members.
    Noted the Post: “Rogers has helped earmark $7.1 million since 2002 to a project that made-over a half-mile strip of College Street where Rogers has his residence. The project narrowed parts of the street to slow traffic, buried overhead utilities, rebuilt sidewalks, paved streets and installed new driveway aprons, curbs and decorative lamps. ‘Congressman Rogers sees no conflict of interest in helping local leaders achieve their goals for growth at large or in this case in particular,’ his spokesman said.”
    For the earmark report, the Post analyzed public records on the real estate holdings of all members of the U.S. House and Senate and compared them with earmarks the members had sought for pet projects, most of them in the last four years. The analysis uncovered appropriations for work in close proximity to real estate – both commercial and residential – owned by the lawmaker or members of his or her family.

 

EDITORIAL

Making the case
for economic greed

By Walter Williams
National Columnist

     What human motivation gets the most wonderful things done? It’s really a silly question, because the answer is so simple. It turns out that it’s human greed that gets the most wonderful things done. When I say greed, I am not talking about fraud, theft, dishonesty, lobbying for special privileges from government or other forms of despicable behavior. I’m talking about people trying to get as much as they can for themselves. Let’s look at it.

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KENTUCKY HISTORY

Cultural center
of Old Kentucky

By Ron Bryant
For The Kentucky Gazette

  It is indeed amazing how fast some parts of Kentucky transformed from a wilderness to culture and sophistication. The development of the commonwealth from a dangerous, rough pioneer settlement into the prosperous 15th state of the Union, took less than 20 years.
    Culture had arrived in Kentucky on the heels of the pioneers. John Filson wrote the first history of Kentucky in 1784. John Bradford established The Kentucky Gazette, the first newspaper west of the Allegheny Mountains, in 1787.

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