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Two candidates for a single Kentucky Court of Appeals seat have raised about $649,000 — real money for a race with no party label and almost no coverage. Read the filings and the maxed-out checks sort into two networks: the appointed incumbent funded by the plaintiff's bar, labor and the Beshear circle; the challenger funded by the horse-farm establishment, a Republican Senate leader — and her own husband, a Chief Justice of Kentucky who stepped down about a year and a half ago. None of it is illegal. Almost none of it is covered.
In January, in a meeting no reporter attended, Lexington's pension board set the city's contribution at 51.24 percent of police and fire payroll — about $52.5 million in the budget council just adopted. The fund is $386.6 million short, stuck near 72 percent funded for eight years, retirees are losing ground to inflation under COLA caps a federal court upheld, and a subcommittee is quietly debating whether to make benefits more generous anyway. The fight lands in Frankfort in 2027. Somebody should be watching.
Twenty-four years of Fayette County election results survived this morning in exactly one reachable place: the Internet Archive. The clerk’s site migration killed the archive, council video is legally destroyable 30 days after minutes are approved, and the plow data lives on because a citizen saved it. We recovered all 37 lost elections in an afternoon — which is exactly the scandal.
The Urban County Council took the cheapest of three options on the Mint Lane pump station Tuesday. The other costs — environmental, geological, and political — are still on the table, just deferred.