Is the noose tightening?

6:34 Update: Susan Straub called just now and said Newberry "was not questioned by the FBI last week and has not been questioned by the FBI."
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Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry's communications officer Susan Straub said this evening that she did not know whether Newberry was questioned by FBI officials last week.

A city employee source who asked to remain anonymous, however, said he was. His indifference to the alleged cover-up of prisoner abuse was the subject of posts here and here last week and a Lexington Herald Leader story on Sunday.

How fast can they deep-six the jail story?

When I was in college, journalism students got in trouble for writing one-source stories. So seeing the top story on Kentucky.com, The Lexington Herald Leader's website, only get around to interviewing one person today was a little disappointing.

And it was just a defense attorney:

"Defense attorney Brian Butler of Louisville, who is representing Estep, said his client has served in law enforcement and in the military and adamantly denies the charges against him.
“This is a terrible situation for him to serve his country for many, many years then be accused of a crime,” Butler said."

Blah, blah, blah.

Fortunately, the investigation doesn't depend on the story to be told in the newspapers. But I can't help wondering how the coverage might be different in Lexington if the politicians involved represented a different political persuasion. The Herald Leader does little good for its credibility with the way it has handled the jail fiasco.

Joe Prather lawyers up

After calling Transportation Cabinet Secretary Joe Prather on the carpet for failing to show for a Senate Transportation Committee meeting today and then chewing up a couple of unarmed officials and their lawyer, Senate President David Williams gave observers a taste of what his road fund lawsuit against the governor is going to be like.

Think deep fried Beshear-o-crats.

One more

I'll be on WVLK AM 590 in Lexington this afternoon on Kruser's program talking about the Lexington jail fiasco. The call-in number is 859-253-5959.

Meanwhile, a parade of new whistleblowers in the case is expected to file new lawsuits against the city of Lexington very soon.

Don't let Beshear sock you for another $50 million

As some newspaper columnists are trying to get Governor Steve Beshear to jump back on his dead dog of a casino bill, he has worked up a scheme to deal out an immediate $50 million to city and county governments in the pension special session starting today.

And who do you think gets to pick up the tab on that little goody?

We are already in the tank almost $30 billion in the public employee fringe benefits scandal. Now is not a great time to spend good money on helping a politician shore up his low approval rating.

Your barn door is open and your cow is gone

Multiple sources at the Fayette County Detention Center report an effort today to prevent jail staff and inmates from reading some negative publicity in the Lexington Herald Leader.

So, I just have to ask: are you guys going to try to do this with Tuesday's paper too? And the best part for me is hearing that inmates have visitors showing up with paper copies of Kentucky Progress posts.

Gonna be a little tough to hide the truth now, boys.

By Jove, I think she's got it!

Lexington Herald Leader reporter Beth Musgrave writes in this morning's paper:

"Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry issued a statement after the indictments were released, saying the city had made several changes to ensure the safety of the inmates and the officers there since he came into office in January 2007.

But in March -- just three months ago -- Newberry said in a deposition that he had not investigated problems at the jail nor had he asked for any changes to be made there.

Newberry said he knew of no changes to any of the procedures since he took office and had not contacted the FBI and offered the city's assistance -- despite the fact that he knew officers were testifying before a grand jury in Covington. The FBI confirmed that it was investigating allegations of civil rights abuses at the jail in September 2006 after it conducted a search of the Old Frankfort Pike facility.

Newberry, in a statement released to the Herald-Leader Friday, said he has learned more about the situation since his deposition."

There is much, much more coming on this story.

Stop Public Financing of Meth Labs Act of 2009

Rep. Melvin Henley sponsored one of two twin bills to cut welfare benefits for drug abusers in 2008.

He said today he is reworking the bill for 2009. Constitutional issues with the original bill would be addressed by requiring a show of probable cause before attempting to strip away public assistance. Rep. Henley said he wanted to set up a pilot project someplace in the state so policymakers could see what happens.

"There is not enough money to support these people who want to take what we give them and spend it on drugs," Henley said.

Rep. Lonnie Napier, the sponsor of the other twin bill, was not immediately available for comment. Napier's bill had thirty co-sponsors in the House.

Monday Admin meeting at FCDC will be fun

Courthouse sources said Lexington Herald Leader reporter Beth Musgrave was in Nicholasville this past week making copies of documents related to the Lexington jail prisoner abuse scandal at the Fayette County Detention Center.

The whistleblower's civil lawsuit against the city was filed in Jessamine County.

With the first public criminal court hearing on all this insanity coming Monday and the possibility of newspaper story tomorrow, the heat is slowly turning up on all the right people (here and here).

Starting to jump ship like a bunch of rats

There is intense speculation surrounding the Fayette County Detention Center tonight that Administrative Officer Senior Don Leach is trying to work out a deal to avoid losing his pension by flipping on some of his buddies regarding the ongoing inmate abuse scandal and providing critical evidence for an investigation into financial improprieties at the facility.

Don't be surprised to see the next wave of indictments hit Lexington jail employees as soon as this next week. (Memo to staff: if you have anything that might be of value to any kind of investigation out there, time is running out.)

Kentucky has third worst debt ratio in America

Official statistics compiled by a Michigan think tank researcher show Kentucky's state and local government debt gobbling up 22.18% of gross domestic product, worse than every state but Massachusetts and New York.

As revenues and and economic activity are at an all-time high, one might think it is about time to get our spending under control.

Newberry: Tim Bennett is my fall guy

This is a picture of Sgt. Hughes asking Mayor Jim Newberry about the whistleblower lawsuit against the city filed by Cpl. John Vest.

Newberry's response? "I guess I'm going to have to get to know John Vest a lot better," he said.

In sworn testimony, Newberry appeared to blame Public Safety Commissioner Tim Bennett for the cover up of illegal activities at the jail.

"Tim Bennett is the Public Safety Commissioner, who is responsible for the jail. And he is my primary source of information about the jail," Newberry said.

According to available court records, Bennett has not yet testified publicly. That should be an interesting conversation.

Is Newberry a mayor or just a money-grubber?

When it comes to dealing with city problems, Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry is a hard man to get involved in the process beyond, it seems, just sitting back and collecting attorney's fees.

Despite multiple lawsuits representing potentially millions of dollars in judgements against Lexington taxpayers, Newberry was extraordinarily incurious about what was happening at the scandal-plagued Fayette County Detention Center. In many of the lawsuits, the city is represented by Newberry's law firm Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs.

Newberry stated in a sworn deposition taken in Lexington on March 13 that despite an active FBI investigation, multiple phone conversations he had with federal whistleblower John Vest, and multiple media reports to the contrary he said he "had no reason to believe anything inappropriate was going on there."

One week ago, five people were indicted on multiple counts related to their actions in the Lexington facility. Four of the five are still employed there and the other was transferred out to work in another part of city government.

Further, Newberry said he didn't have any problems with jail administration interrogating staff members upon their return from testifying to the grand jury, but that he didn't think that was happening either.

In an interesting exchange during his deposition, Newberry stated that he had done no investigation of the jail and had no plans to do any investigation. Attorney William Jacobs then asked him if his only plan of action was to defend the lawsuits through his attorneys.

Newberry answered "yes."

Staying on the attack against official fraud

The Bluegrass Institute keeps hammering away at the Kentucky Department of Education's boondoggle that keeps Kentuckians stupid and bureaucrats raking in the dough.

The official response from the boondogglers is total silence, but several of them are supposed to be meeting in Frankfort starting in July for a task force to "study" the CATS assessment program. But don't expect much. They are so far in to the CATS mythology that if word really got out how rotten the whole thing is the stampede to get rid of the all the cheaters with their fancy titles and taxpayer-provided cars would be overwhelming.

Lex. Mayor Newberry: it depends on what you mean by do I know corrections officers

Sworn testimony by Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry in the Fayette County Detention Center indicates he is far more incompetent than was previously known.

The following is from a deposition conducted by attorney William Jacobs of Lexington:

Jacobs: So has anybody, anybody, Ted Bennett or anybody else, assured you or reassured you that the Detention Center is being operated according to law, safely, following the constitutional law and all that? Has anybody told you that? Not those exact words, but you know what I am asking you.

Newberry: I don't know that I've heard those exact words, but I have had no reason to believe that things were being done otherwise. I have confidence in Mr. Bennett's ability. I have confidence in Mr. Bishop's ability. And I'm impressed with the professionalism of the other jail personnel, with whom I've had occasion to work with from time to time. So I don't have any reason to believe that it's being operated in less than an appropriate fashion.

Jacobs: Is it fair to say that you have that opinion because you haven't asked anybody?

Newberry: I think I just told you why I have that opinion.

Jacobs: Because they're good workers out there you have confidence in them?

Newberry: Yes.

Jacobs: Okay. How many corrections officers do you know?

Newberry: I don't know... I guess it depends on what you mean by do I know corrections officers.

This is going to be more fun than I thought it was going to be.

If Jed Clampett listened to John Yarmuth...

He would still be out on the farm shooting holes in the ground and wishing that black stuff tasted better.

Giving credit where credit is due

Hey, did you hear? In honor of Gov. Steve Beshear, House Speaker Jody Richards, and Senate President David Williams coming back into Frankfort next week to fix the public employee fringe benefits disaster, the Bluegrass Institute is suggesting a day of celebration worthy of their fine efforts.

Blogger loses court case and you do, too

Former Kentucky blogger/media darling Mark Nickolas didn't mention the settlement of his blog blocking lawsuit on his new blog. After reading the settlement agreement, the reason for this becomes clear.

He lost the case, spin from a misleading press release notwithstanding.

From the settlement agreement:

"3. The Commonwealth Office of Technology employs software to filter internet
usage on state-owned computers. This software provides users the ability to block internet site categories predefined by the vendor. As part of its internet filtering policy, the previous named defendants chose to block several categories, one of which included “newsgroups/blogs.”
“Newsgroups/blogs” are defined by the vendor as containing “Web sites that enable the sharing of information such as on a bulletin board. Includes Web logs (‘blogs’) and guest book servers as well.”
4. Mr. Nickolas’s websites, bluegrassreport.org and bluegrassreport.com, are
categorized as “newsgroups/blogs” and therefore users of state computers were blocked from gaining access to them."

And you will be glad to see that the pro bono legal work provided by Ralph Nader cost the taxpayers of Kentucky $10,000.

A heads up on Fayette jail coverage

Tomorrow I will report on sworn testimony by Lexington's former Mayor Teresa Isaac and Mayor Jim Newberry in the ongoing Fayette jail scandals.

The Bluegrass Institute lives!

Two weeks after a massive hacker attack nearly destroyed the online presence of Kentucky's free market think tank, the Bluegrass Institute and Bluegrass Policy Blog are available again on the internet.

While a fairly expensive fix got the sites back up, a much larger project is underway to secure donor funding to take the organization's websites to the next level. This is in addition to generating much larger exposure for public policy solutions by expanding the efforts of the Institute in print and broadcast media.

The Institute's legislative tracking site, Kentucky Votes, was unaffected by the attack but it will also be part of the upcoming improvements that will be rolled out this summer.

By the way, if you wish to be kept updated with no nonsense daily reports on the activity of next week's special session, go to Kentucky Votes and sign up for a free account. You will get email reports first thing each morning on the prior day's legislative activity and which will keep you updated through the rest of the year as pre-filed bills are posted for the 2009 General Assembly.