Tagged: Kentucky General Assembly

FRANKFORT—As the 2013 Kentucky legislative session begins, Tea Party activists are encouraging lawmakers to abandon the implementation of the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — in the state because of fiscal and health care concerns.

About 50 activists rallied in the Capitol Rotunda Tuesday; they wanted their state legislators to hear their concerns as the 2013 legislative session began.

State and local officials, including Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, came together in Frankfort today to press for action to address rising pension costs. It’s a problem they described as fast approaching unsolvable.

David Draine, a senior researcher with the Pew Center on the States, made his case for adopting some or all of the recommendations made by a state pension task force.

"Without real reform, rising pension costs are going to threaten key public investments and things like education, public safety and infrastructure," Draine said.

Giving Kentucky service members and their spouses the ability to cast absentee ballots electronically is the priority of the Kentucky State Senate heading into the 2013 legislative session, Senate President-elect Robert Stivers said on Monday.

Stivers says he’s taking recommendations from Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes to allow electronic voting for overseas military personnel.

The majority of Kentuckians — 59 percent — support a statewide smoking ban, says a poll conducted by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.

Last year, the poll said for the first time that most Kentuckians supported banning smoking in  public establishments. 

This year, fewer than  38 percent of Kentuckians opposed such a ban. The rest had no opinion.

1:06 - WFPL and KPR's Kenny Colston tells us what we can expect from the upcoming legislative session in Kentucky, and Joseph Lord looks back at this week's Sugar Bowl victory by the University of Louisville.

1:16 - Andrea Seabrook and DecodeDC explore the interplay of politics and the media, and how press coverage can feed into the negative, partisan bickering in Washington. Case in point: The Fiscal Cliff.