News

Governor Steve Beshear has named the members of the state health insurance exchange board.

The now-19 member board includes top level officials from Kentucky's major insurers, including Anthem, Humana and Bluegrass Family Health.

It also includes represents from the state’s major hospitals, including Central Baptist in Lexington and KentuckyOne Health, which operates statewide.

Patient advocate groups, including Kentucky Voices for Health, AARP and Kentucky Youth Advocates, also have seats on the board.

Louisville Water Company officials say they’d like to build an international water innovation center in Louisville. The idea was presented today as part of a pre-Idea Festival conference focusing on water.

Louisville Water Company CEO Greg Heitzman says the idea makes sense in a place like Louisville.

“Essentially what it will do is bring water to the people,” he said. “So what we’re going to be doing is taking what we do inside of our water company box and opening that up to the public.”

A consultant says Louisville should restore the Falls of the Ohio to its natural state, which would spur tourism. The presentation was part of today’s pre-Idea Festival conference about water.

The Falls of the Ohio are technically still there, but most of the falls have been covered by flooding from the McAlpine dam. Steven Greseth says the dam should be relocated, and the historic falls should be restored.

Greseth says restoring the falls would give Kentucky and Indiana residents a tie to their history to be proud of, and could also boost tourism in the area.

Over the last ten years, Actors Theatre of Louisville has made educational outreach an institutional priority. The theater's student matinees are a cornerstone of its education program.  About 15,000 students, teachers and chaperones attend matinees at Actors Theatre every season.

A Republican group tasked with winning state-level races across the U.S. has its sights set on Kentucky.

The Republican State Leadership Committee is an independent Republican political action committee that has established itself as a major factor in state legislative races.

The group has been involved in Kentucky legislative races off and on for several years. But with House Republicans making a strong push to win Kentucky’s lower chamber, the committee is once again taking a long look at the Commonwealth.

A crowd of well-wishers braved the showers under a tent outside the University of Kentucky’s new Wildcat Coal Lodge earlier today to witness the unveiling of a statue of former men’s basketball coach Joe B. Hall.

A newly-formed political action committee is hoping to influence school board races across the commonwealth, embarking on territory usually dominated by teachers unions.

For decades, education policy and school board races across the commonwealth have been aided solely by teachers unions giving campaign donations through political action committees.

But a new group has just been formed to combat that influence on school board races. The Bluegrass Fund was created last week by Louisville develop David Nicklies, according to statements filed with the IRS.

The Louisville Metro Council Accountability and Ethics Committee is voting Tuesday on more changes to the policy that governs the distribution of taxpayer dollars to non-profit groups.

A recent audit found that half of the discretionary grants given out by city lawmakers lacked proper documentation to determine if the funds were being spent properly.

Councilman Jerry Miller, R-19, is chairman of the accountability committee and a co-sponsor of the proposal along with Council President Jim King, D-10. He says the amendments being proposed give non-profit groups clear guidelines and should help restore public trust.

"The resolution that we’re going to hear today will start us on the path of restoring public confidence in this process, regardless of what individual council people—including myself—think of the overall process we have to be able to restore confidence that public funds are being used appropriately," says Miller.

According to Louisville Emergency Management, there's been a "very small" ammonia leak at a Stir the Pot, a Butchertown food manufacturing plant. A Code Red alert was sent out to the plant's neighbors, but the Louisville Fire Department says there's no danger to the public. Plant employees were evacuated.

Stir the Pot is  located at 1057 E. Washington Street.

The Indian media has been all over the recent scandal over the country’s coal allotments—the system where the state’s resources are divvied up among companies. And the various articles are of obvious interest to Kentucky, where a private company recently inked a $7 billion deal to send up to 9 million tons of Appalachian coal to India every year for the next twenty-five years.