Tagged: Mayor Greg Fischer

The Louisville mayor’s office will relocate to the Kentucky Center for the Arts this week in conjunction with the Idea Festival. Mayor Fischer’s staff will operate from an IdeaHub set up in the lobby of the Kentucky Center starting Wednesday. They’ll remain there throughout the festival, which continues through Saturday.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer has unveiled his office's long-planned data tracking system, LouieStat.

LouieStat is meant to be the source for significant data on Metro Government. It's supposed to track everything from pothole locations to release rates at Metro Animal Services to overtime hours of public employees.

In its first official public action, Louisville's Violence Prevention Work Group has put out a call for volunteers for a new crisis response team.

As the name implies, the response team will be sent to crisis situations (typically crime scenes) to work with bystanders, family members, witnesses, etc. and help alleviate the trauma. The team would ideally help prevent the actions that spurred the creation of the Violence Prevention Work Group in the first place.

The Louisville Metro Council could override Mayor Greg Fischer's veto of contentious changes to the landmarks ordinance this week, but one member says the administration is twisting lawmakers' arms.

The legislation amended several provisions of the four-decade-old law that governs historic site declarations, but Fischer agreed with preservationists that the changes politicized the process and violated the separation of powers between the council and mayor's office.

Since city and county governments merged in 2003, there have been four mayoral vetoes of council measures and lawmakers have never mustered the necessary two-thirds vote to override.

Councilman Kelly Downard, R-16, who voted for the landmarks bill, says lawmakers have bipartisan agreement this time and should overturn the mayor's decision in part because Fischer is overstepping his bounds.

"The vote Thursday is not going to be about the ordinance again, it's going to be about overriding a veto. So there are other issues that come into play beyond the merits of the ordinance itself," he says. "And I'm hoping we end up with the 18 votes that we need. I just think (Fischer's) attempting to usurp some power of the council and I'm not exactly sure why. This is not a major issue for him to pull out the veto power."

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer has vetoed the contentious landmarks ordinance a week after the Metro Council passed the bill.

The legislation amended several provisions of the four decade old law, and allowed a majority vote in the council to overturn a decision made by the city's landmarks commission. Despite stiff opposition from preservationists and outcry from a handful of lawmakers it passed the council by a 16-7 vote.

In a letter to city lawmakers, Fischer agreed with preservationists, who argued the ordinance politicized the process and violated the separation of powers between the council and mayor's office.

"The positive impacts of our current, nationally recognized landmarks law far outweigh the need to change this four decade precedent for our city," he says. "Additionally, the citizens of Louisville have clearly told me that they fear the landmarks process potentially could be politicized through Metro Council involvement.I cannot support a law that allows a simple majority of the Metro Council to overturn the standards based review of the Landmarks Commission."