News

Gov. Steve Beshear is urging legislative leaders to delay General Assembly redistricting.

In a letter to House Speaker Greg Stumbo and Senate President Robert Stivers, the governor says he’d like them to hold off redistricting in the 2013 legislative session and instead take up other important issues, such as pension and tax reforms.

Beshear is opening the door to handling redistricting in a special session instead, because the issue tends to cause hard feelings after lawmakers see their districts changing.

“If we drop redistricting on top of all of that, it might well create such turmoil that we couldn’t get anything done,” Beshear says.

Lawmakers must still re-draw their own districts — after the Kentucky Supreme Court threw out maps drawn in 2012 — calling them unconstitutional. Redistricting of Congressional districts is already finished.

Robert Griffin III, the star rookie quarterback with the Washington Redskins, had his torn lateral collateral ligament repaired and a "re-do" of his previous anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. ESPN is reporting a full recovery is expected.

Griffin III is just one of the latest athletes to suffer a knee injury involving the ACL.

WKU Public Radio recently reported on the surgical and recovery process involved in ACL injuries. We profiled WKU senior wide receiver Marcus Vasquez, a wide receiver on the football team who came back this past season from a torn ACL.

Two other WKU athletes recovering from torn ACL's are sophomore basketball player Nigel Snipes, and women's freshman basketball player Kendall Noble.

The chairman of a Kentucky Senate committee is promising to file legislation aimed at preventing Gov. Beshear from setting up two major pieces of the federal health care law without legislative approval.

The Courier-Journal reports Senate Health and Welfare Committee Chair and Louisville Republican Julie Denton says she doesn’t want the Governor to be able to unilaterally establish a new statewide health care exchange or expand Medicaid services to more Kentuckians. Denton and other Obamacare opponents say the state can’t afford the exchange or expanded Medicaid offerings.

Denton’s bill would make such moves contingent on General Assembly approval. Gov. Beshear has already taken steps to create a statewide health care exchange by 2014, which would allow those who don’t get insurance at work to buy a plan from a private company and receive government subsidies in the process.

The Medicaid expansion would allow those earning less than 133 percent of the poverty rate to qualify for the program. Beshear says he is still considering the Medicaid expansion, while House Speaker Greg Stumbo says he fully supports the move.

Kentucky’s agriculture commissioner is leveling criticism against the Environmental Protection Agency regarding a pollution control plan in Jefferson County.

In an interview with the Courier-Journal, James Comer came out swinging against water quality sampling conducted for the Floyds Fork Pollution Control Plan. The waterway serves as a focal point for Louisville’s newest string of parkland, but it currently fails to meet federal water quality standards. Comer says he’s worried that water quality sampling done at the site could result in new EPA regulations.

The Monroe County native says he’s especially concerned at the prospect of the EPA imposing new rules on how much fertilizer farmers can spread on their fields. But EPA officials and the Kentucky Division of Water both say the federal government doesn’t have the authority to impose limits on fertilizer applications and farm runoff.

Republican U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander is proposing a "grand swap" in which the federal government would take over all responsibility for Medicaid and the states would gain all control over education.

The senator said in an address to a joint session of the Tennessee General Assembly on Wednesday that the proposal mirrors one he made to President Ronald Reagan three decades ago while Alexander was Tennessee governor.  Alexander said Reagan embraced the idea, but it did not gain any traction in Congress.

Alexander told reporters after the speech that he see similar barriers to his proposal amid Democratic control of the Senate and the presidency, but said the change would remove the concerns and political challenges facing the states on expanding Medicaid or creating state insurance exchanges.