Tagged: wkms

The Kentucky House passed a bill Tuesday requiring criminal background checks for prospective nursing home employees.  Applicants' names and fingerprints would be run through state and national databases.  Bill sponsor, Democrat Carl Rollins, says the Commonwealth would get $3 million in federal grant money to initiate the program and fund it until May 2014. The program would then cost the state about a million a year.  

The House Committee on Elections, Constitutional Amendments and Intergovernmental Affairs has passed legislation that would let Kentuckians decide whether to amend the state Constitution to restore some felons' voting rights.  The perennial bill by Democratic Representative Jesse Crenshaw cleared the panel Tuesday.  

You could say that the Jackson Purchase hasn’t been frontier territory since, well, since Andrew Jackson was President.  But now, in the 21st century, the federal government is proposing a new system that would classify the Purchase as Frontier and Remote, or FAR.  Researchers and policymakers with the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services say the new FAR area codes will help such regions improve access to public services as well as food and household goods. Futurist Ivan Potter is also the publisher of West Kentucky Journal, an online publication, and in a recent article, he writes that even though this possible reclassification has slipped under most people’s radar, it could have far-ranging effects. Todd Hatton speaks with Potter to get a sense of what the pros and cons of living on the frontier. 

Former Trigg County Judge-Executive Stan Humphries is well into his first session as the First District's new State Senator, and he's arrived in Frankfort at a particularly important time: the Commonwealth's General Assembly is set to address a range of issues from Medicaid and industrial hemp to tax reform and underfunded state employee pensions.  To see how he's settling in, Todd Hatton spoke with Senator Humphries from his office in Frankfort.