Matt Bevin

Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear took another jab at Governor Matt Bevin Friday, one day after scoring a win in their on-going battle over whether the state will discipline teachers for participating in “sickouts” that closed Jefferson County Public Schools six days this spring.

Beshear’s challenge is the latest highlight in his campaign to unseat Bevin as governor.

In a campaign appearance Friday, Beshear said Bevin should “do something right” and fire his Labor Secretary David Dickerson for pursuing an investigation into teachers who called in sick to protest education bills at the Capitol. 

Gov. Matt Bevin will return to the Fancy Farm picnic stage this summer after a two year absence from Kentucky’s premier political event.

Bevin has criticized the rowdy festival, which encourages politicians to trade insults on statewide television in front of a crowd of hecklers, and hasn’t attended the event since his first year in office.

But the governor is running for re-election this year and will share the stage with his opponent in the general election, Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear.

A Kentucky judge has ordered the state to pay more than $72,000 in attorneys' fees and costs in a lawsuit over the release of an economic analysis of Gov. Matt Bevin's administration's analysis of the 2017 pension reform plan.

Franklin County Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd ruled Monday the Bevin administration intentionally violated the Kentucky Open Records Act in refusing to release a copy of the analysis. The Courier Journal reports Shepherd ordered the analysis be released and directed the state to pay fees and costs to the person requesting it.

With Kentucky’s regional universities and other agencies facing a massive spike in pension costs starting July 1, Gov. Matt Bevin’s office says he won’t call a special legislative session to address the issue until later in July or August.

The delay means that the agencies will rack up larger-than-hoped-for pension costs, which will be due at the end of July, and which stakeholders say could lead to cuts in services or even closures.

A fired aide to Kentucky's lieutenant governor asked the state's personnel board on Friday to reverse her dismissal, which deepened an election-year rift between Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton and Gov. Matt Bevin's administration over Hampton's depleted staff.

In her appeal, Adrienne Southworth is seeking reinstatement as Hampton's deputy chief of staff with back pay and benefits.

Southworth's appeal claims that Bevin's staff lacked legal authority to fire an aide to the lieutenant governor. The reasons given for her dismissal were "factually inaccurate," she said.

Neither Hampton nor Bevin's office immediately responded to emails seeking comment.

The drama between Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton and Gov. Matt Bevin continues following the firing of one of her staffers at the hands of the Bevin administration.

Hampton issued a statement on Tuesday saying Bevin’s chief of staff Blake Brickman “clearly overstepped his boundaries” when he fired her deputy chief of staff last month.

“Every Kentuckian should be concerned that an unelected bureaucrat appears to have power over the office of the Lieutenant Governor,” Hampton wrote in the statement. “I am perplexed by the vacuous decision to deprive an active, productive Lieutenant Governor of her staff.”

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin’s chief of staff says he authorized the firing of a key aide to Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton.

Blake Brickman said in a statement on Saturday to The Courier Journal that he authorized the firing of Adrienne Southworth, saying she repeatedly demonstrated poor judgment.

The firing last month prompted Hampton to send out a tweet praising Southworth’s work as “stellar” and asking for prayers in her fight against “dark forces.”

Kentucky’s only abortion provider is asking a federal appeals court to reconsider its ruling in favor of the state’s new ultrasound abortion requirement earlier this year.

On behalf of EMW Women’s Surgical Clinic, the American Civil Liberties Union has been suing to try and block Kentucky’s law that requires doctors to show patients an ultrasound before performing an abortion.

The ACLU argues that the 2017 measure violates doctors’ free speech rights by requiring them to describe the ultrasound even if patients demand them not to. The law has been defended by Republican Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration.

The Kentucky Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that Gov. Matt Bevin didn’t do anything wrong in 2017 when he overhauled several state boards that deal with public education.

Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear sued Bevin over the actions, arguing that the governor had circumvented the legislature’s lawmaking authority by appointing non-voting charter school advisers to the Kentucky Board of Education and totally replacing boards that deal with certifying teachers and establishing curriculum standards, among other changes.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin has joined 15 other states in supporting a Trump administration rule that would allow small businesses to sign up for health insurance plans that don’t comply with protections required by the Affordable Care Act.

The policy, which has been blocked in federal court, would allow small businesses or groups of people to sign up for “association health plans” that are exempted from covering prescription drugs, emergency services and mental health treatment — all provisions that insurance companies are required to provide under the Affordable Care Act.

While Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin has run into resistance from Republican lawmakers on pension legislation, and faced a messy dispute with his lieutenant governor, his Democratic challenger has forged alliances with his ex-rivals as the campaign starts taking shape.

Bevin and his Democratic challenger, Andy Beshear, have previewed themes likely to play out in their fall campaign in a red state race that could offer clues about the mood of the electorate heading into next year's presidential election.

Gov. Matt Bevin and leaders of Kentucky’s legislature are going back and forth over who’s in charge of rallying support for a new pension bill.

Bevin vetoed an earlier version of the legislation, which seeks to provide relief to regional universities and “quasi” state agencies like health departments that are facing a massive increase in pension costs starting next month.

Kentucky Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton took to Twitter on Friday to ask for prayers as she battles “dark forces” following the firing of her deputy chief of staff.

In the Tweet, Hampton said that “person(s) unknown initiated unauthorized personnel action” ending the employment of Adrienne Southworth, who had served as Hampton’s deputy chief of staff since the administration took office in 2015.

Gov. Matt Bevin still doesn’t have enough support for his version of a pension bill that would provide relief to some state universities and small agencies that are facing massive increases in the amount they have to contribute to the pension systems.

Bevin still says that he will call a special legislative session for lawmakers to vote on the bill before July 1, when the spike in pension contributions is set to begin.