Kentucky News Now

ELECTION DIRECTOR RETIRES

Election agency director to retire

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — The director of the bipartisan agency responsible for administering Kentucky's campaign finance laws will retire three days before the Nov. 4 election.

The Kentucky Registry of Election Finance said in a news release Thursday that Sarah M. Jackson will retire on Nov. 1 as the agency's executive director. The 57-year-old has been the agency's executive director since 1999.

The registry appointed budget analyst Rebecca Feland as the interim executive director. Registry Chairman Craig C. Dilger said a search for Jackson's replacement will take several months.

During her tenure, Jackson oversaw the development of an online searchable database for campaign finance data and created an online training tutorial for candidates and committees. She was president of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws in 2009.

KENTUCKY SENATE-GRIMES AD

Grimes' grandmother stars in new Senate ad

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky's U.S. Senate candidates turned their attention to Medicare on Thursday with a pair of statewide TV ads targeting the state's roughly 800,000 seniors who benefit from the government health insurance program.

Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes' grandmother talks about the financial pressure caused by her husband's stroke, which Grimes uses to criticize Sen. Mitch McConnell for votes she says would have raised seniors' Medicare costs.

McConnell's ad features a Kentucky couple praising the Senate Republican leader for using his experience to fix a paperwork error that caused Medicare to not pay their bills.

A McConnell spokeswoman called Grimes' ad a debunked partisan attack, noting McConnell voted for bills that would have preserved traditional Medicare plans. The Grimes campaign said the bill would have increased seniors' cost in other ways.

KENTUCKY JOBS

Kentucky nears full job recovery from recession

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A state economist says Kentucky is on pace in the coming months to fully regain all the jobs lost during the Great Recession.

Economist Monoj Shanker said Thursday that Kentucky has regained 96 percent of the 122,100 jobs that were shed as a result of the deep economic downturn, and that a full pre-recession recovery is expected by year's end.

Shanker says nonfarm employment in Kentucky totaled 1,865,800 in August, up by 24,000 positions from a year ago. Last month's total is 4,800 jobs away from reaching the state's peak employment in January 2008 before job losses began mounting during the recession.

The state says last month's jobless rate in Kentucky dropped to 7.1 percent, down 1.3 percent from a year ago.

Kentucky's unemployment rate remains above the national rate.

SCHOOL BOOKKEEPER-EMBEZZLEMENT

School bookkeeper charged with embezzling funds

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A former bookkeeper at Saint Gabriel the Archangel Church and School in Louisville has been charged with embezzling $83,191 in funds from the parish by means of wire fraud.

A federal grand jury indicted 47-year-old Tammy Goodlett on Thursday.

The panel alleged that Goodlett devised a scheme starting in August 2010 to transfer funds from Saint Gabriel's bank account to her own bank accounts, make unauthorized credit card expenditures and manipulate financial records to make unpaid debts appear paid.

If convicted at trial, Goodlett could be sentenced to no more than 20 years in prison, could be fined no more than $250,000 and serve no more than three years of supervised release.

Court records did not list an attorney for Goodlett.

BLUE RIBBON DISPUTE

Louisville woman loses state fair blue ribbon

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The Louisville woman whose prize-winning recipe for buttermilk pie featured a store-bought crust has lost her blue ribbon.

The Courier-Journal says Kentucky State Fair officials stripped the blue ribbon Linda Horton was awarded at the fair last month.

State fair culinary director Steve Lee told the newspaper in an email the entry was disqualified and the ribbon withdrawn because the 67-year-old Horton's use of a commercial pie crust went against the rules.

Horton said earlier she used the store-bought crust because her own homemade crust doesn't turn out right and she wasn't aware of the rule. The newspaper said Thursday she didn't return phone messages.

The issue came to Lee's attention after the newspaper published winning recipes and people asked whether a store-bought crust was permissible for fair entries.

BLACK LUNG-LEGISLATION

Bill seeks fairer treatment for black lung victims

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Bob Casey are unveiling legislation aimed at ensuring fairer treatment for coal miners with black lung disease as they pursue benefits claims.

The bill by the two coal-state senators Thursday comes after an investigation examined how doctors and lawyers, working at the behest of the coal industry, helped defeat the benefits claims of sick miners. The investigation was done by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News.

Among other things, the bill requires parties in a case to disclose all medical evidence, and strengthens criminal penalties for making false statements in the claims process.

Black lung is an irreversible and potentially deadly disease caused by exposure to coal dust, where the dust particles accumulate in the lungs.

OBIT-VAN HOOSE

Former Kentucky Republican leader dies

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — Former Kentucky gubernatorial press secretary and congressional aide Larry Van Hoose has died in Florida. He was 76.

Van Hoose, who was also executive director of the Kentucky Republican Party, died Tuesday in Cape Coral. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported he had lived there about a year.

Fuller Metz Cremation & Funeral Services in Cape Coral said a memorial service would be held later in Kentucky.

Van Hoose joined Gov. Louie B. Nunn's administration in the late 1960s. Fred Karem, a Nunn aide, said Van Hoose was Nunn's press secretary, speech writer and "just about everything else."

He went on to lead the state's Republican Party before becoming chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Larry Hopkins of Lexington. He also worked for other Republican congressmen, including Ed Whitfield of Kentucky.

MUHAMMAD ALI-CONCERT

Bruno Mars concer to benefit Ali Center

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Boxing great Muhammad Ali will be in his hometown for a benefit concert featuring Grammy-winning singer Bruno Mars.

The concert is set for 5 p.m. EDT Saturday at the Kentucky International Convention Center in downtown Louisville. The event will raise money to help support the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville.

Tickets for the concert are available at the Kentucky Exposition Center Ticket Office and all Ticketmaster outlets.

It's the first of two big upcoming events featuring Ali. The other is the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards event on Sept. 27 in Louisville.

The award recipients will include NFL Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown and actress Susan Sarandon.