All Entries in the "KY-5th" Category

Proposals to redraw Ky. congressional districts would bring big changes

By Beth Musgrave and Jack Brammer
bmusgrave@herald-leader.com

PDF: View the proposals

FRANKFORT — Two new proposals to redraw the boundaries of Kentucky’s six congressional districts could mean major changes for Central Kentucky voters.

Both plans appear to benefit Democratic U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, who represents Lexington and many surrounding counties in the 6th Congressional District.

The proposals — one pushed by the Democratic-controlled House and another by unnamed members of Kentucky’s congressional delegation — would move Republican-leaning Jessamine and Garrard counties out of Chandler’s district, replacing them with counties that lean more Democratic.

Republican Andy Barr, a Lexington lawyer who narrowly lost to Chandler in 2010 and plans to challenge him again in 2012, said Tuesday that the emerging plans amount to “incumbent-protection gerrymandering for a weak incumbent.”

Florida governor reverses course, will allow tracking of pain pill prescriptions

By Halimah Abdullah and Lesley Clark — McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Florida Gov. Rick Scott reversed course Thursday and said he will allow a prescription drug monitoring program that Kentucky officials have demanded to help block the flow of illegal prescription drugs coming from the Sunshine State.

Scott’s opposition to funding the database in recent months brought sharp criticism from Kentucky’s congressional delegation and Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, causing the Obama administration to enter the fray.

During the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing, Scott told Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., that private companies, not pharmaceuticals firms, are putting up the money to fund Florida’s prescription drug monitoring program for two years. Scott, along with the state’s attorney general, last month launched a statewide strike force to take a law enforcement approach to fighting the problem.

“If we have a database that I can deal with — and we’re going forward with the database, it passed last year — my focus is making sure we deal with the privacy concerns,” Scott said after the hearing. “There are many citizens all across our state that are very worried about their personal data being in a database, and so I’m going to be very focused on making sure I deal with those privacy concerns.”

Census: A lot of Kentuckians will get a new congressman

By Bill Estep – bestep@herald-leader.com

A lot of Kentuckians are going to get new representatives in the U.S. House because of significant shifts in the state’s population.

The eastern and western ends of the state lost population between 2000 and 2010 while the middle third grew, according to U.S. Census figures released this week.

Three of the state’s six congressional districts fall short of the necessary population, while the other three are over it.

The national average for a U.S. House District will be 710,767.

However, the target number will vary by state; dividing Kentucky’s population of 4.3 million by six seats means a population target for each district of about 723,000.

Rogers will need to slash earmarks to lead appropriations panel

By Halimah Abdullah – habdullah@mcclatchydc.com

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Harold “Hal” Rogers — who has steered hundreds of millions of federal dollars to projects in his rural district over three decades — knows he must change his ways if he becomes the next chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

“We have no choice. We’re in a drastic, dire situation, federal funding-wise. The deficit is off the charts,” Rogers said. “The borrowing that we’re doing from China is threatening our sovereignty even. So we’re in a drastic situation. We have to cut back on spending. And earmarks, unfortunately, became the symbolism of overspending. And so we have no choice but to rein them in.”

The possible ascension of Rogers in the wake of the tea party-fueled Republican House takeover concerns federal budget watchdogs, who worry that the very type of government pork that tea party candidates decried in their campaigns could flourish under Rogers’ leadership.

“This is a situation where you have someone who is going to be one of the chief spokesmen on spending, the chairman, down on the floor talking about the issue that got a lot of the people there elected,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of the Washington-based Taxpayers for Common Sense. “It’s a bit of a problem for the Republicans because of the fact that the head of the spending committee will be someone who was a prolific earmarker.”

Rogers poised to take control of House Appropriations Committee

By Bill Estep – bestep@herald-leader.com

The senior member of Kentucky’s Congressional delegation stands a good chance of gaining even more clout.

Republican U.S. Rep. Harold “Hal” Rogers said Friday that he has a majority of votes on a key panel to become the next chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee if the GOP wins enough seats on Tuesday to take control of the chamber.

Analysts predict the GOP will do just that.

The Appropriations Committee has purview over hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending.

In his 30 years representing the 5th District, Rogers has been adept at getting federal money for a range of programs and projects, including economic development, infrastructure, tourism and anti-drug efforts.

Heading the budget committee would give him more power, said Joe Gershtenson, director of the Institute of Public Governance and Civic Engagement at Eastern Kentucky University.

Election Preview: Eastern Ky.’s 5th Congressional District

By Halimah Abdullah – habdullah@herald-leader.com

WASHINGTON — The race to represent Kentucky’s 5th Congressional District is a repeat match between a politically powerful Republican incumbent with a substantial war chest and a Democratic political neophyte with meager coffers and virtually no financial support from his party.

Republican U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers of Somerset, known for steering federal money toward projects in his district, may well be on his way to a 16th term.

Rogers, 72, had raised more than $500,000 as of the June campaign finance filing deadline — much of that donated by the defense industry, an effort aided by connections he made while once serving as the first chairman of the House subcommittee on Homeland Security.

Meanwhile, Democratic challenger James “Jim” Holbert, 58, an emergency medical services helicopter pilot from London who is serving as his own campaign treasurer, has struggled to scrape together $10,000 for his grass-roots bid.

Rogers wants taxpayer help for cheetahs

By John Cheves – jcheves@herald-leader.com

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Somerset, is sponsoring a bill to give $5 million a year to conservation groups that work overseas on behalf of endangered “great cats and rare canids,” such as cheetahs, lions and Ethiopian wolves.

One group interested in applying, should Rogers’ bill become law, is the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund.

Its grants administrator, Allison Rogers, is the congressman’s daughter.

“Obviously, I’m waiting with bated breath,” said Allison Rogers, who lives in Versailles. “It would help us a lot because the Cheetah Conservation Fund does not have a very big budget.”

Kentucky milks Homeland Security money

By John Cheves — jcheves@herald-leader.com

Fred Payne, a University of Kentucky food engineer, had impeccable timing six years ago when he got an idea for defending American milk from terrorism.

Within months of Payne’s brainstorm, a Stanford University professor wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times theorizing that terrorists could kill hundreds of thousands of people by dropping a few grams of botulism toxin into the tank of a milk truck leaving a farm.

The essay sent shock waves through the booming homeland security bureaucracy in Washington, which was looking for ways to spend its billions of dollars.

Also around this time, U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky, was establishing the non-profit National Institute for Hometown Security, or NIHS, in his hometown of Somerset. As a senior member of Congress, Rogers helps control homeland security spending; he has earmarked $52 million in federal funds for the NIHS, in part to pay for anti-terrorism research at Kentucky universities.

Fear, meet funding. Payne won $2.67 million in NIHS research grants.

U.S. Rep. Rogers throws support to Grayson

FRANKFORT — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Trey Grayson picked up a key endorsement Monday from a popular Eastern Kentucky politician, only to see a national Christian leader revoke his support and throw it to Grayson’s chief rival, Rand Paul.

U.S. Rep. Harold Rogers, a Somerset Republican who rarely makes endorsements in party primaries, offered his full-throated support for Grayson in the May 18 GOP primary election.

“Trey Grayson will be a strong fiscal conservative in Washington, just like he has been as secretary of state,” Rogers said. “He cut spending in his office by 15 percent without cutting services. That’s the kind of leadership we need to cut out-of-control spending, pay down the debt and balance the budget.”

Meanwhile, James Dobson Jr., founder of the influential Christian organization Focus on the Family, said he made “an embarrassing mistake” last week in endorsing Grayson and instead will back Paul.

The Grayson campaign had hoped to garner headlines solely with Rogers’ endorsement and was disappointed and puzzled by Dobson’s switch.

Beshear praises Obama’s ‘clean coal’ proposals

By Halimah Abdullah – habdullah@mcclatchydc.com

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama met Wednesday with Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and governors of other coal-producing states to announce a series of “clean coal” proposals in hopes of shoring up support for the White House’s beleaguered energy policy.

The administration pledged to fund five to 10 commercial carbon capture and storage demonstration projects by 2016. The facilities would capture carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas linked to global warming, that is emitted from coal-fired power plants and store it underground, where it can’t trap heat in the atmosphere.

The White House also announced a carbon capture and storage task force charged with figuring out how the nation can deploy affordable cleaner-coal technology on a widespread scale within 10 years.

“Even if you disagree on the threat posed by climate change, investing in clean energy jobs and businesses is still the right thing to do for our economy,” Obama said Wednesday. “Reducing our dependence on foreign oil is still the right thing to do for our security. We can’t afford to spin our wheels while the rest of the world speeds ahead.”

During his meeting with the president, Beshear promised that Kentucky would aggressively pursue some of the carbon capture demonstration projects. However, the governor also stressed that both the state and nation are heavily reliant on coal.

Abrupt changes in regulations — such as a proposal that passed the House of Representatives to cap carbon emissions and fine companies that go over set limits — would balloon energy costs and cripple manufacturing industries, he said.