Kentucky News Now – July 23rd 2014

HEALTH OVERHAUL-SUBSIDIES-KENTUCKY

Beshear: Health rulings won't affect Kentucky

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear says rulings Tuesday on President Barack Obama's health care law won't affect enrollees in Kentucky's state-run health exchange.

Beshear said in a statement released by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services that premium assistance that Kentucky enrollees have qualified for also won't be affected.

Within hours of each other Tuesday, two federal appeals courts issued contradictory rulings on the subsidies that help low- and middle-income people afford premiums.

Beshear said the confusion highlighted by the rulings just reiterates that Kentucky was in the right by creating a state-based exchange rather than going with the federal exchange.

One court said the federal government was right in issuing credits for consumers in all 50 states, but the other court said that aid was only available to people in states that set up their own exchanges.

KENTUCKY SENATE

Grimes jabs McConnell on jobs issue in new TV ad

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes has released a TV ad featuring an out-of-work Appalachian coal miner who questions Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's commitment to job growth.

The 30-second ad airing across Kentucky seeks to capitalize on McConnell's off-the-cuff comments to an eastern Kentucky newspaper in the spring.

The Beattyville Enterprise reported that the five-term Republican senator said it's not his job to bring employment to struggling Lee County.

In the Grimes ad, unemployed miner David Stanley asks McConnell why he said that.

McConnell says his comments were taken out of context, but the newspaper editor stood by his story.

Kentucky Coal Association President Bill Bissett is defending McConnell. He says it's "unfair and untrue" to blame the top Senate Republican for the loss of eastern Kentucky coal jobs.

BOURBON INVENTORY

Ky. bourbon inventory tops 5 million barrels

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky bourbon makers are churning out larger volumes of whiskey being stored for aging.

The Kentucky Distillers' Association said Tuesday the state's bourbon inventory has topped 5 million barrels for the first time since 1977.

It says Kentucky bourbon distilleries filled 1.2 million barrels last year, the most since 1970.

Production has soared by more than 150 percent in the last 15 years, resulting in nearly 5.3 million aging barrels at the end of 2013.

KDA President Eric Gregory says the surging production comes amid big financial investments by distillers that are creating jobs and attracting record numbers of tourists. Gregory says the bourbon resurgence shows no signs of slowing down.

The KDA's Kentucky Bourbon Trail and Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour logged more than 630,000 visits last year, a new record.

CDC DIRECTOR-KENTUCKY

CDC director to be at Kentucky events

SOMERSET, Ky. (AP) — The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is holding four events in eastern Kentucky to discuss the region's high rates of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

Dr. Thomas Frieden will be at a 6:30 p.m. EDT reception and 7 p.m. dinner Aug. 4 at the Center for Rural Development in Somerset; a 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Aug. 5 appearance at Hazard Community and Technical College-First Federal Center; a 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Aug. 5 appearance at the Ramada Paintsville Hotel and Conference Center; and a 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Aug. 6 event at the Morehead Convention Center. The events are free, but registration is recommended to reserve meal service.

To make a reservation, contact Cheryl Keaton at ckeaton(at)centertech.com or (606) 657-3218.

INVESTMENT SCAM

Court upholds conviction of man in fraud scheme

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A federal appeals court has upheld the guilty plea of a Kentucky man sentenced to prison for a scheme to defraud investors in three states.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals found that a magistrate judge didn't mislead 30-year-old Cory B George into taking a deal with prosecutors in 2012.

Prosecutors say George, the owner of G3 Capital Management, bilked clients out of more than $484,000. He admitted to setting up G3 offices in Owensboro; Palm Beach, Florida, and Houston.

Prosecutors say between December 2009 and April 2011, George mailed fraudulent certificates of deposit, deposited investor checks into a bank account in G3's name and mailed small interest payments to a Kentucky investor.

George is serving eight years at the federal prison in Marion, Illinois.

FRAUD PLEA

4 plead guilty to fraud conspiracy

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Four Kentucky residents have pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud Lowe's Companies, Inc. by getting store credit accounts, bouncing checks to the accounts and buying merchandise from the stores using the fraudulent accounts.

U.S. District Judge Todd J. Campbell of Nashville accepted the pleas on Monday from 38-year-old Joe Fuqua, 39-year-old Michael Gregory, 49-year-old and Charles Ragar, all of Franklin, Kentucky, and 40-year-old Robert Trammel of Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Prosecutors say the men sold some of the merchandise to a co-conspirator in exchange for a percentage of the actual retail value of the merchandise, with fraudulent purchases exceeding $191,000 at 14 Lowe's stores across Tennessee and Kentucky.

Four other men from Kentucky and Tennessee are awaiting trial on related charges.

CEMETERY DECORATIONS DISPUTE

Families upset when cemetery decorations removed

PRINCETON, Ky. (AP) — The trustees of a western Kentucky cemetery removed decorations from multiple graves, upsetting the family members of the deceased who say they had no notice the items would be removed.

The dispute over what's allowed at Piney Grove Cemetery in Caldwell County has set off threats of ousting the trustees.

Johnny cotton Hicks, whose family plot is in Piney Grove, told WPSD-TV in Paducah the decorations were ripped out of the ground and tossed in a pile of broken statues, foot stones and even some grave markers.

The trustees declined to comment about the cleanup, which came after a notice in the February edition of the local paper, The Dawson Springs Progress.

The sheriff's office or county attorney's office can take complaint reports and conduct an investigation.

CHILD LEFT AT POOL

Police: Mom left child at pool, smoked crack

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky sheriff says a woman left her 9-year-old daughter alone at a hotel pool while she smoked crack cocaine in a hotel room.

Paula Kaye Ward has been charged with possessing a controlled substance and possessing drug paraphernalia

Franklin County Sheriff Pat Melton told The State Journal that Ward asked strangers at the Best Western hotel in Frankfort to watch her daughter while she charged her phone at about 10 p.m. Sunday.

Deputies say someone at the pool called for help 45 minutes later because Ward was still gone.

Investigators say they found her in a hotel room, smoking crack cocaine with a man.

Jail records list the 49-year-old Ward as being held on $10,000 bond. It was unclear if she had an attorney on Tuesday.

PADUCAH PLANT

Paducah plant deactivation deal awarded

PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a three-year, approximately $420 million order to Fluor Federal Services Inc. to clean up and prepare the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant for future operations.

The department said in a news release Tuesday the order includes hiring preferences for the available skilled labor force.

A statement from U.S. Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul and U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield said they sent a letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz asking the agency to begin the transitioning work now and commit to long-term cleanup efforts too.

The government-owned uranium enrichment plant was built in the 1950s and operated by the DOE and predecessors to support commercial and military nuclear reactors and weapons development activities. The facilities were leased to the United States Enrichment Corp. in 1993, and DOE is preparing for return of the facilities.

LOUISVILLE-JURICH

Louisville AD Jurich gets Maker's Mark bottle

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich is the latest Cardinal to get his own bourbon bottle.

Maker's Mark will feature the school's longtime AD on 8,500 commemorative bottles to be sold starting Friday in a fundraising effort for a campus academic center. The design features Jurich and the logo for the Atlantic Coast Conference, which Louisville joined on July 1 through his efforts.

Maker's Mark COO Rob Samuels said in a release on Tuesday that the Kentucky distiller chose Jurich for the series' final bottle "because he has truly brought the entire athletic department to a new level of achievement."

Sales of previous commemorative bottles featuring men's basketball coach Rick Pitino and former football coach Charlie Strong have generated $2.5 million toward the $14 million facility.