Louisville Metro Councilwoman Attica Woodson Scott, D-1, is defending hefty contributions from individuals outside her district, but rivals in the Democratic primary are criticizing donations from Council President Jim King, D-10, and allege he’s buying influence.

Scott has raised over $20,000  in the May 22 election, which is six times more than her closet rivals.

During WFPL’s District 1 debate, opponents grilled the incumbent for taking campaign cash from people outside the district and questioned Scott’s relationship with the council president. After Scott was appointed to the council last year, Councilwoman Mary Woolridge, D-3, alleged the process was rigged in Scott’s favor and was unfair to the other applicants.

“It’s not so much that Mr. King would want a favor. I think that it would be Mr. King would feel like that he’s in control of you,” says Janis Carter-Miller, one of four challengers vying for the seat. “And I am not the person that anybody is going to be in control of me—at all.”

Scott says she out worked other applicants to earn the seat and King has no control of her decision-making, adding she is simply a better fundraiser than her opponents.

“I did fundraising for a living for more than a decade,” says Scott, who was a labor activist before being appointed to the council last year. “So I know how to raise money…and if somebody thinks that $1,500 is enough to buy me they are out of their minds.”

Scott told WFPL that her opponents should be more concerned with rival Ray Barker taking funds from anti-gay activist Dr. Frank Simon, than her contributions from King. Barker defended the contributions, saying that he and Simon do not agree on all issues and that Scott is bowing to special interest groups in the gay community.

Political observers note that King remains unpopular in District 1 due in part to the removal trial of former Councilwoman Judy Green, who was ousted from the council last fall. At several points during that controversy, Green told media outlets King was trying to boot her from the council and had intimated her before the ethics hearings began.

King denied the allegation and stepped down as chairman of the removal trial in order to avoid the appearance of conflict, but during the debate Scott’s opponents continued to pummel her for the contribution.

Steven Colston is also running for the District 1 seat, and hasn’t raised any money in the primary battle. He says by accepting those contributions, Scott will owe King favors and council members should avoid raising money outside their districts.

“I believe whenever you accept money there is a sense of obligation and you owe a favor,” he says. “If you raise money, raise money in District 1 because that’s where your job is going to be. I personally don’t want to be represented by District 10 dash 1.”

The full District 1 debate is available below and will air in its entirety on WFPL at 1 p.m. Thursday.

Louisville’s Air Pollution Control District is considering raising the fees industries pay for certain types of permits.

Many of the fees companies pay to the Air Pollution Control District are based on the tons of various pollutants they emit every year. But as both technology advances and tightening federal regulations reduce air pollution, Louisville’s air is getting cleaner and the fees paid to the district are getting smaller.

District Spokesman Tom Nord says that’s a ‘good news, bad news’ situation for the agency.

“The good news is, it means pollution levels are dropping, which is our goal at the Air Pollution Control District,” he said. “The bad news is, if you base your fee structure on the amount of pollution people produce, you’ve got to find some way to make up that revenue somewhere.”

Nord says to keep the programs sustainable, the district will have to change the way it levies fees.

“So our plan is to right size our fee structure, so it’s still fair and still allows business to do business here but also recognizing that we had to make some changes in order to keep ourselves a self-sustaining operation,” he said.

For example, Louisville’s Strategic Toxic Air Reduction (STAR) program has been around for seven years, and the permit fees have never been raised. At the time of its implementation, the district only intended fees to account for 42 percent of the program’s cost, but that’s no longer feasible.

Nord says just because there’s less pollution doesn’t mean it takes fewer agency resources to regulate the industries. The district plans to present a revised fee structure to its board for approval sometime in the next few months.

A new report by Kentucky Youth Advocates is shining light on the state’s high number of incarcerated youth with low priority crimes.

The report released this week, Ending the Use of Incarceration for Status Offenders in Kentucky, shows nearly one in every six incarcerated minorities is jailed for low priority offenses. The data comes from the Department of Juvenile Justice.

Kentucky is among the top three states accounting for 60 percent of incarcerations nationwide for status offenses, or lower level crimes, but the state’s numbers have declined recently, according to the report. Since 2007 the number of young status offenders in the state has dropped about 40 percent, according to the report. There were 1,335 Kentucky cases last year where juveniles were incarcerated. 

KYA Executive Director Terry Brooks said status offenses include running away from home or purchasing alcohol with a fake ID, but too often such offenders are put into cells with more dangerous criminals, he said.

“One of the things that we know that happens now is that status offenders are put in cells with young people who have committed violent offenses,” he said.

“You’re not hearing us talk about being soft so to speak on kids that have committed violent crimes, who have committed adult level criminal activity. It’s so important that folks understand that status offenses are a whole other category.”

This past legislative session the Kentucky General Assembly passed a law with overwhelming support that created a task force to study the juvenile justice code. It has an emphasis on looking at how the state treats status offenders. The move is also partly to cut costs.

The idea behind the task force is to organize legislation that could eventually be presented and passed by the General Assembly. This year there was an attempt to retool certain parts of the juvenile justice system but nothing substantial passed. Next year may be different, said state representative Kelly Flood, D-Lexington, who introduced legislation last session to ease restrictions on young status offenders.

“I think there’s a real shot at it, I really do,” she said.

The report further says putting money toward services like after school programs could benefit the community more than incarceration.

Thirty-six films will make their Kentucky premieres in the Louisville Film Society’s fourth annual Flyover Film Festival June 7-10. The films range from a concert feature on Louisville rockers My Morning Jacket to a dark comedy by provocative Comedy Central stars Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim.

The festival will feature a special early screening on May 29 of “The Artist is Present,” an award-winning documentary on acclaimed performance artist Marina Abramovic presented in partnership with 21C Museum. Abramovic and co-director and producer Jeff Dupre, a Louisville native, will appear at the screening in the Kentucky Center’s Bomhard Theatre at 6:30 p.m.

Here’s this year’s festival lineup:

June 7

At the Speed Art Museum:
“Filmmaker’s Follies” (Shorts I): a short film showcase featuring new films by local and national filmmakers including “One Big Holiday.” Part concert film, part portrait of our city, “One Big Holiday” documents My Morning Jacket’s electrifying performance at the KFC Yum! Center and also features Wax Fang, the Louisville Youth Orchestra, ear-X-tacy’s John Timmons and plenty of other local flavor. Q&A’s with filmmakers to follow. Doors at 6:30, film at 8 p.m.

June 8

At the Speed Art Museum:
Amy Seimetz’s “Sun Don’t Shine,” 7 p.m.
Kentucky writer/director Martha Stephens’ “Pilgrim Song,” 8:30 p.m.

June 9

At Dreamland Film Center:
Andrea Arnold’s “Wuthering Heights,” 12 p.m.
Tony Balko’s “Made in Milwaukee” showcase (Shorts II), 2:30 p.m.
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s “Detropia,” 4 p.m.
Tony Balko’s own “Through the Rainbow” (Shorts III), 6 p.m.

At Headliners Music Hall:
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim’s “The Comedy,” 8 p.m.
Tod Browning’s “The Unknown” – live with Seluah, 10 p.m.

June 10

At the Speed Art Museum:
Zachary Trietz’s showcase “From the Festival Circuit” (Shorts IV), 12:30 p.m.
The Ross Brothers’ “Tchoupitoulas,” 2 p.m.
The Zellner Brothers’ “Kid-Thing,” 4 p.m.

The Greater Clark County Schools superintendent search committee has narrowed the field to three candidates and a second of interviews began Wednesday.

Five candidates were considered last week to replace outgoing superintendent Stephen Daeschner, who is one of the highest-paid superintendents in Indiana. During his time with Greater Clark, student achievement improved, but the school board chose not to renew his contract and to cut the office’s salary.

Board president Christina Gilkey said the finalists come from all over the state, and the search committee is pleased with its options.

“If this gives you any indication: one board member on the way out of the last interview for the first round said I don’t see how we can go wrong with any of these folks. And for our board that’s a pretty strong statement,” she said.

Daeschner’s contract includes a salary of $220,000 but the new superintendent will likely make between $160,000 to $180,000 and will be expected to continue the district’s successes.

“We’re asking them to put together a 10 to 15 minute presentation on how they would continue to propel our district forward academically,” said Gilkey.

The three candidates will likely participate in a public hearing later this month and the new superintendent will be announced shortly afterward, she said.

Health care groups and other organizations in Kentucky and Indiana are launching an effort aimed at better protecting children from abuse and neglect.

The Partnership to Eliminate Child Abuse includes Kosair Children’s Hospital in Louisville, which hosted an announcement today regarding an educational and awareness campaign addressing the problem.

Allison Ellis is participating in the effort. Her nine-month old granddaughter, Karlie, died in 2009 after she was abused by a family friend. She says no expense or resource should be spared in protecting children.

“They have every right to grow up in a safe and healthy environment. So there should be no budget worries, manpower, or whatever the excuse for lack of investigation. (It) is unexcusable,” she said.

Officials say Kentucky’s child abuse death rate of 30 to 40 per year is among the nation’s highest.

The partnership’s materials include information about anger management and how to look for signs of abuse.

Kentucky Senate President David Williams says he had no idea what trouble his former gubernatorial running mate Richie Farmer was causing as agriculture commissioner.

During an interview on Kentucky Sports Radio Wednesday, host Matt Jones asked Williams about the abuses of power and resources that were uncovered in a recent audit of Farmer’s time in office.

“Absolutely not. Are you kidding me? No, absolutely not,” said Williams. “As a matter of fact, at the time I asked him to join me on the ticket he was the most popular political figure in the commonwealth of Kentucky and that’s why you pick running mates, because they’re very popular.”

The audit was ordered by current Agriculture Commissioner James Comer. Various accusations of misdeeds dogged Farmer for much of last year’s campaign, but the audit put more evidence behind the allegations.

Farmer has stayed out of the public eye since leaving office in January. This is the first time Williams has commented on the audit. He also said he encouraged current Agriculture Commissioner James Comer to request an investigation of Farmer’s time in office.

Tiff Gonzales is a fourth-generation Mexican American, native to Texas, who identifies as queer both in gender identity and sexual orientation.

Tiff moved to Louisville five and a half years ago for work. She says when we talk about race in Louisville, we’re generally only talking about black and white. Latino issues re rarely part of the conversation, and when they are, it often only includes immigrants. “There’s so much that draws me to this city,” she says, “but that invisibility is something that I, on a regular basis, would struggle with to determine whether or not I can continue to live here.”

Tiff says there’s a certain loneliness in the lack of a community of folks who share similar identities. “I could name maybe just a couple of other people who I feel like would hold the identities of being a queer Latino here in this city.” But, she says, “I’m hopeful that there will be some change in that in the city that I really do love.”

When Tiff Gonzales spoke with WFPL’s Phillip M. Bailey and Laura Ellis, the conversation at one point turned to tokenism and whether the trouble with seeking diversity on panels and projects like this is that one person is asked to represent the experiences of an entire group—whether it’s race, class, LGBTQ status, etc. “I really struggled with accepting this invitation. I thought, I’m going to be put into this position where I need to answer a question as one person, for—truly, when we’re talking about Latinos in the United States—millions upon millions of people.”

“I am one person, who has been shaped by many other people, and many other experiences. I can only tell you what it’s like to be me.”

On Being Genderqueer
“This has been an interesting development over the course of my life. I think about myself as a very young child to today, and how my understanding about gender identity has really evolved. For a long time, I thought, well, I’m just going to really fail at being the girl or the woman people want me to be. In all the other ways that I can make my parents an my family proud of me, this will just be one of the ways that they will be disappointed, because I will fall short of the mark of being who they want me to be in this regard.

Today I understand that there are not just women and men. You do not have to fall into either one of those categories. And I don’t know that the story of my gender identity is complete. I identify today with you all as genderqueer; I don’t know what that will be one day. For me what it means today is that the lines between what it is to be a man or a woman, or however you want to identify yourself, however you want to express your gender, is fluid. For me to say I am genderqueer today means that I don’t feel confined to what society says that you have to be from your birth. That who we are is actually more complex than the limitations that are put on us for who we can be. And I feel free to live in that complexity and not have any anxiety in living in a space that is not as defined as, ‘you will be one, a man,’ or, ‘you will be two, a woman,’ and I feel perfectly fine with that, and I feel happy that I have been able to let go of those limitations that are really, truly unfair to put on people.”

On Family
“For a long time as a teenager, I worried about a couple of things. While I was perfectly and fine with who I understood myself to be at that time, I worried that folks would tell me two things: That God will not be happy with who you are, and that my family, who… in terms of my identity, when I think about myself as that cultural identity that I have, the family for me is at least equal, if not more important to me, than my personal identity. I hold to that family identity very closely. So the fear of whether or not my family will continue to hold me in that identity, in that grouping, was very much a fear of mine.

I am very fortunate that my family has been loving to me from my birth until this moment. I recognize it as a great blessing and know that that is not the experience of every person who lives the life that I live. I’m blessed. That doesn’t mean that sometimes we don’t talk about things. We don’t talk about everything. My relationship with my father truly is a beautiful thing for me, because while the identities that I hold may be difficult for him in some regards, his commitment to unconditional love has transcended everything, and my unconditional love for him is transcending that at every turn. And that means we can talk about sexual orientation, and even in these past few years talking about gender identity, which is some ways may be even more of a struggle in our conversations. But there really has been an overwhelming amount of love there that is helping us to negotiate the complexities of what it is to encounter something that you may not know.”

On the Trouble with Diversity Efforts
“You won’t get at what is the reality of these various groups of people to really talk about what we look like as country, or what we look like as a city, if the spaces are held are by those that have, again, that class, race, gender privilege, I don’t think that we can get to the real story of that. I think for me the answer is that folks create spaces that make sense for them, where people are sharing power together, in order to have stories and experiences, concerns, be lifted up, and then also to say, now we all share these concerns together, we share these stories together, we’re sharing this experience together, and we can work from this place. As long as those spaces are created by other folks, I think it absolutely encourages that tokenism.

I don’t want to participate in those kind of things. It’s unfair to me as an individual, but it also shows a lack of the amount of work that people really need to do. If these things are of concern to you, then creating real spaces, and participating and partnering to create spaces where the concerns of people who are brown and queer, those who may also be poor, where those voices actually can be lifted up. And not just to be heard—that’s one aspect—but are we actually going to move forward in our work together in this community to do something about what we’ve heard? It’s one thing to be listened to, but it’s another thing to say okay, I value what it is that you’ve said. I may not understand every bit of that experience, but I choose to be with you in the struggle to create a happier, healthier, safer life for you, and for the communities that are important to you. And I want to be part of the latter.”

by The Associated Press

A woman has died after an accident underground at a limestone mine in northern Kentucky.

The Gallatin County sheriff’s office says 37-year-old Angela Common of Carrollton was pronounced dead just after 4 p.m. Tuesday.

The sheriff’s office said in a statement that she was driving a large dump truck inside the Sterling Materials mine when the truck turned over. The statement said the woman was ejected when she hit a rock wall and was run over by the truck’s rear wheel.

The sheriff’s office says operations at that mine shaft were suspended temporarily while the incident is investigated.

Key agreements with the federal government and energy suppliers will allow the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant to stay open for another year.

The plant processes uranium for use in nuclear power plants. Under the new agreement, the plant has federal approval to re-enrich depleted uranium for the Tennessee Valley Authority and Energy Northwest. The United States Enrichment Corporation, the plant’s operator, previously said allowing re-enrichment at the plant was necessary to turn a profit.

The plant’s continued operation was also contingent on a new power contract, which the company secured. The previous contract was scheduled to end at the end of this month.

1,200 people are employed at the Paducah plant, and the agreement will keep the facility open for one more year.

State leaders were exuberant at the news, but warned that a transition plan is necessary.

“I am pleased the various parties have come together,” District 1 Congressman Ed Whitfield said in a statement. “But there is more to be done. We must continue to work together to ensure a viable transition plan is developed as this plant faces eventual closing.”

“The extension means our hard-working families will have an additional year of employment, and the community will have additional time to determine next steps,” said Governor Steve Beshear.