Skip to Main Content

City and County Issues

Renee Shaw discusses tornado damage in western Kentucky with state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, Warren County Judge/Executive Mike Buchanon, and Fancy Farm political speeches organizer Steven Elder. Then she explores important issues for cities and counties with J.D. Chaney of the Kentucky League of Cities; Jim Henderson of the Kentucky Association of Counties; Henderson County Judge/Executive Brad Schneider; Morehead Mayor Laura White-Brown; Bullitt County Judge/Executive Jerry Summers; and Versailles Mayor Brian Traugott.
Season 28 Episode 38 Length 56:34 Premiere: 12/13/21

About

Kentucky Tonight

KET’s Kentucky Tonight, hosted by Renee Shaw, brings together an expert panel for in-depth analysis on major issues facing the Commonwealth.

This weekly program features comprehensive discussions with lawmakers, stakeholders and policy leaders that are moderated by award-winning journalist Renee Shaw. Often aired live, viewers are encouraged to participate by submitting questions real-time via email, Twitter or KET’s online form.
For nearly three decades, Kentucky Tonight has been a source for complete and balanced coverage of the most urgent and important public affairs developments in the state of Kentucky.

Viewers with questions and comments may send e-mail to kytonight@ket.org or use the contact form. All messages should include first and last name and town or county. The phone number for viewer calls during the program is 1-800-494-7605.

After broadcast, Kentucky Tonight programs are available on KET.org and via podcast (iTunes or Android). Files are normally accessible within 24 hours after the television broadcast.

Kentucky Tonight was awarded a 1997 regional Emmy by the Ohio Valley Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. The series was also honored with a 1995 regional Emmy nomination.

To purchase a DVD:
Call 1-800-945-9167 or e-mail shop@ket.org.


Tune-In

KET Mondays • 8/7 pm

Stream

Watch on KET’s website anytime or through the PBS Video App.

Podcast

The Kentucky Tonight podcast features each episode’s audio for listening.


Renee Shaw is Moderator and Director of Public Affairs for Kentucky Educational Television, currently serving as host of KET’s Kentucky Tonight, Connections, election coverage, Legislative Update and KET Forums.

Since joining KET in 1997, Shaw has produced numerous KET public affairs series and specials, including KET’s nationally recognized legislative coverage. Under her leadership, KET has expanded its portfolio of public affairs content to include Kentucky Supreme Court coverage, town hall-style forums, and multi-platform program initiatives around issues such as opioid addiction and youth mental health.  

As an award-winning journalist, Shaw has earned top awards from the Ohio Valley Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, earning two regional Emmy awards, and an award from the Kentucky Associated Press for political coverage of the state legislature. She was inducted into the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame in 2017. She has been honored by the AKA Beta Gamma Omega Chapter with a Coretta Scott King Spirit of Ivy Award; earned the state media award from the Kentucky Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 2019; named a Charles W. Anderson Laureate by the Kentucky Personnel Cabinet in 2019 honoring her significant contributions in addressing socio-economic issues; earned the Anthony Lewis Media Award from the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy for her work on criminal justice reform in 2014; and, in 2015, received the Green Dot Award for her coverage of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking.  

In 2018, KET earned a national media award from Mental Health America for its multi-dimensional content on the opioid epidemic shepherded by Shaw. That same year, she co-produced and moderated a six-part series on youth mental health that was awarded first place in educational content by NETA, the National Educational Telecommunications Association. In 2019, Shaw was recognized by The Kentucky Gazette as one of the 50 most notable women in Kentucky politics and government. In addition, Renee was awarded the Charles W. Anderson Laureate Award by the Kentucky Personnel Cabinet which recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions in addressing socio-economic issues.

Host Renee Shaw smiling in a green dress with a KET set behind her.

Public Officials Discuss the Devastating Tornado Event in Western Kentucky and Their Policy Goals for the Future

When Steven Elder emerged from his Mayfield, Ky. home Saturday night, he wasn’t sure what he would find. His town had just experienced a rare December tornado with winds estimated to be as high as 200 miles an hour.

While he and his family and his neighbors were okay, he wasn’t sure about the rest of Mayfield. So he ventured out to the courthouse square in the middle of town. Even in the cloak of darkness, Elder says the devastation he encountered was “jaw-dropping.”

“I could not believe what I was seeing… and what the force of this storm had just done to Mayfield,” says Elder, who is a local financial advisor and an organizer of the Fancy Farm picnic political speeches. “I knew then it was total destruction.”

Some of the first images out of Mayfield on Saturday morning came from state Sen. Whitney Westerfield (R-Crofton), who is a licensed drone operator. He drove to Graves County from his home in neighboring Christian County before sunup to document the damage in Mayfield. His aerial footage of block after block of debris, the flattened candle factory, and the courthouse shorn of its clock tower was soon seen around the world.

“It’s just a chilling amount of destruction,” says Westerfield. “It’s hard to fathom the amount of force and energy that nature produced to create that much destruction.”

That twister blasted a path of ruin from the state line near Fulton, through Mayfield, Princeton, Dawson Springs, and Bremen as it continued north and east through the state. Other tornados left a wake of damage and heartbreak in at least a dozen western and central Kentucky counties.

“Pictures… don’t explain it in a way that you can image,” says Kentucky Association of Counties Executive Director and CEO Jim Henderson, who toured the stormed-damaged areas. “You have to almost see it to understand the devastation.”

In Bowling Green alone, as many as 500 homes and 100 businesses have been damaged or destroyed, according to Warren County Judge Executive Mike Buchanon. He says it could take weeks to restore power to some parts of the community.

“Many streets look like a war zone with utility poles out of the ground, and wires hanging across the road and through the trees, and piles of debris where there used to be homes,” says Buchanon.

Death and casualty counts are still being tallied, but officials say this will likely be the deadliest storm system in the state’s history. Buchanon says Bowling Green could have as many as 20 fatalities alone. Two families on a single street on the west side of town endured 11 deaths. Of those, seven were children, according to news reports.

Henderson says the neighborhood where those lives were lost is populated with low- to moderate-income families living in starter homes.

“These are folks who probably have very little to rebuild with,” says Henderson. “It is just gut wrenching to see it.”

As bad as the storm was in some places, other nearby western Kentucky towns were left unscathed. Henderson County Judge/Executive Brad Schneider says his community suffered no damage or deaths.

“The fact that a tornado like this can avoid your county and destroy the one next to it just boggles my mind,” says Schneider. “I think a lot of us are almost feeling survivor guilt.”

As the sun rose Saturday morning, emergency teams from across Kentucky were already arriving in the impacted areas. J.D. Chaney, Executive Director and CEO of the Kentucky League of Cities, says the response from state and federal officials has been tremendous. He says no amount of training can prepare civic officials to cope with an emergency of this magnitude, where homes, businesses, city buildings and infrastructure like electric and water services are decimated. For example, He says Mayfield no longer has a city hall, so a temporary site is being assembled in mobile units in a local parking lot.

“It’s going to be a long, long road for them to restore,” says Chaney. “I know we’ve seen a lot of posts that say the city is gone, or Mayfield is being carted out in dump trucks, but it’s not. It’s the people that compose the community.”

Westerfield says he expects lawmakers in the 2022 General Assembly session to create some kind of aid package to help the effected towns and counties recover. Until then donations of supplies, food, money, assistance, and other essentials are pouring in from around the commonwealth and across the nation.

“As tragic as the weekend has been, it’s great to know that we love one another, we care for one another, and no one over the last several days has given one rip about who you voted for or what party you are,” says Westerfield. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is getting people back to a sense of normalcy.”

Revenue Options for Local Governments

Representatives of city and county governments from across the commonwealth will be in Frankfort this winter to lobby the General Assembly on a range of issues from workforce development, to transportation, to tax policy.

“If this last year has shown us anything, it’s the importance of… looking at tax reform on many different levels,” says Morehead Mayor Laura White-Brown.

Now local governments are generally limited to some combination of occupational, property, and insurance premium taxes to generate revenues to pay for services from fire and police protection to roads and libraries. Versailles Mayor Brian Traugott says his community gets much of its revenue through an occupational tax, which he says is sufficient for Versailles but may not be for other towns.

“The key word is flexibility,” says Traugott. “That’s what cities are really looking for because we have a diverse group of cities and the way to meet the revenue needs in Morehead may differ from Versailles.”

Some mayors and county judge executives want the ability to raise additional funds to cover their escalating costs. Previous legislatures have defeated proposals for local option sales taxes that would be targeted for specific projects and time-limited. J.D. Chaney of KLC says an ongoing consumption tax that a city or county could implement would help municipalities pay their bills, foster growth, be more competitive, and involve visitors in helping to pay for local government services.

But the problem is allowing a local sales tax would require amending the state constitution.

“It’s a hard jump for some people to go to a constitutional amendment that is perceived as giving counties and cities new taxing authority,” says KaCO’s Jim Henderson.

Henderson County Judge Executive Brad Schneider says he thinks his constituents would welcome a local sales tax option.

“It could be one more tool in our box to help meet our costs, many of which are increasing partly due to unfunded mandates from Frankfort and the General Assembly,” says Schneider.

Funding County Jails

One of those unfunded, or more specifically underfunded, mandates for counties is operating county jails. Schneider says when his jailer houses a state prisoner, the commonwealth reimburses Henderson County $31.34 a day. But he says it actually costs the jail $46 a day to hold that inmate, which leaves county taxpayers to make up the difference. He says if a prisoner is sick or injured, the county may also be on the hook for paying some of their health care expenses.

“They need to upgrade their payments to counties for those prisons,” says Schneider. “It is killing many counties, and many counties have closed their jails altogether because they can’t handle the cost.”

Those costs can be substantial. For example, a recent audit shows that the state owes the Bullitt County jail about $800,000 in revenues for holding prisoners during the pandemic, according to Judge Executive Jerry Summers. He says his county already subsidizes the jail to the tune of $2.2 million, which he says is about a third of the county’s property tax revenues.

“We just can’t afford to keep footing the bills for the training and expertise that it takes to run a jail,” says Summers

One idea to help counties with jail funding is to charge cities that house inmates in their county lockups a booking fee. Mayors Traugott and White-Brown say they oppose that option, and Chaney calls it a “cockamamie idea.” He says cities already help fund their county jails through the taxes their residents and businesses pay.

Criminal justice reform advocates have pushed for measures designed to reduce jail populations. But the reforms passed so far in Kentucky have failed to achieve that goal. Schneider says ideas like measures to allow for non-monetary bail are good in theory but can also backfire.

“We’d love to be able to figure out a way to help people,” he says, “but bad people can be let go in such a way that they just commit more crimes.”

Filling Local Government Jobs

City and county officials are also facing staffing shortages as employees leave to take more lucrative jobs elsewhere. Chaney says low pay affects public works positions that require physical labor as well as law enforcement and EMT jobs may require long hours or dangerous working conditions. He says those jobs end up looking less attractive when places like fast food restaurants offer more money for easier work.

“We’re going to have to look at the way we compensate in order to be competitive with the private sector,” says Chaney. “That really puts the public at risk when we can’t fully staff fire departments and we can’t fully staff police departments or the public works.”

Historically, local government employees could offset their low wages with the prospect of a comfortable pension when they reach retirement. But Traugott says it’s harder to attract people to take critical municipal jobs after changes to the state’s defined-benefit public pension system.

“That’s been taken away, almost by necessity – it was extremely costly, but we are paying the price for that now,” says Traugott.

The 2022 General Assembly session starts on Tuesday, Jan. 4 and continues through Thursday, April 14.

Sponsored by:

Season 28 Episodes

City and County Issues

S28 E38 Length 56:34 Premiere Date 12/13/21

Compensating College Athletes: Name, Image and Likeness

S28 E36 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 11/22/21

Trends in State and National Politics

S28 E35 Length 56:34 Premiere Date 11/15/21

Abortion Rights and Restrictions

S28 E34 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 11/08/21

Kentucky's Social Services System

S28 E33 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 11/01/21

School Choice in the Commonwealth

S28 E32 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 10/25/21

Historical Horse Racing: A Growing Pastime in Kentucky

S28 E31 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 10/11/21

New Developments and the Unknowns of COVID-19

S28 E30 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 10/04/21

COVID and the Classroom

S28 E29 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 09/27/21

Remembering 9/11, 20 Years Later

S28 E28 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 09/13/21

Kentucky's Response to COVID-19

S28 E27 Length 56:35 Premiere Date 08/30/21

Discussing the Surge of COVID-19 Cases in Kentucky

S28 E26 Length 56:34 Premiere Date 08/23/21

Fancy Farm Preview and State Politics

S28 E25 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 08/02/21

Back-To-School Issues in Kentucky

S28 E24 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 07/26/21

Childcare Challenges

S28 E23 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 07/19/21

The Urban-Rural Divide in Kentucky

S28 E22 Length 56:34 Premiere Date 07/12/21

Work Shifts: Kentucky's Labor Shortage and Hiring Challenges

S28 E21 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 06/28/21

Public Infrastructure: What Kentucky Needs

S28 E19 Length 56:34 Premiere Date 06/21/21

Debating Critical Race Theory

S28 E18 Length 56:34 Premiere Date 06/14/21

Kentucky's Rebound From COVID-19

S28 E17 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 06/07/21

Jobs and the Economy

S28 E16 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 05/17/21

The Future of Policing in America

S28 E15 Length 56:34 Premiere Date 05/10/21

President Biden's First 100 Days

S28 E14 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 05/03/21

Mass Shootings and Gun Laws

S28 E13 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 04/26/21

Voting Rights and Election Laws

S28 E12 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 04/20/21

The 2021 General Assembly: Debating Major Legislation

S28 E11 Length 56:34 Premiere Date 04/12/21

Wrapping Up the 2021 General Assembly

S28 E10 Length 56:34 Premiere Date 03/29/21

School Choice in Kentucky

S28 E9 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 03/22/21

No-Knock Warrants

S28 E8 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 03/15/21

Debating Legislative Priorities in the 2021 General Assembly

S28 E7 Length 56:35 Premiere Date 03/08/21

Proposed Legislation to Modify Kentucky Teachers' Pensions

S28 E6 Length 56:34 Premiere Date 02/22/21

Debating Historical Horse Racing Legislation

S28 E5 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 02/08/21

New Lawmakers in the 2021 Kentucky General Assembly

S28 E4 Length 56:34 Premiere Date 02/01/21

A Nation Divided

S28 E3 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 01/18/21

Recapping the Start of the 2021 General Assembly

S28 E2 Length 56:34 Premiere Date 01/11/21

Previewing the 2021 General Assembly

S28 E1 Length 56:33 Premiere Date 01/04/21

See All Episodes

caret down

TV Schedules

Jump to Recent Airdates

Upcoming

2024 Legislative Session Preview - S30 E33

Renee Shaw hosts a 2024 legislative session preview. Scheduled guests: State Representative Chad Aull (D-Lexington); State Representative Stephanie Dietz (R-Edgewood); State Senator Cassie Chambers Armstrong (D-Louisville); and State Senator Amanda Mays Bledsoe (R- Lexington). A 2023 KET production.

  • Wednesday December 6, 2023 6:00 pm ET on KETKY
  • Wednesday December 6, 2023 5:00 pm CT on KETKY

Kentucky Tonight - S30 E34

  • Monday December 18, 2023 8:00 pm ET on KET
  • Monday December 18, 2023 7:00 pm CT on KET
  • Tuesday December 19, 2023 6:00 am ET on KETKY
  • Tuesday December 19, 2023 5:00 am CT on KETKY
  • Tuesday December 19, 2023 2:30 pm ET on KETKY
  • Tuesday December 19, 2023 1:30 pm CT on KETKY
  • Tuesday December 19, 2023 11:00 pm ET on KETKY
  • Tuesday December 19, 2023 10:00 pm CT on KETKY
  • Wednesday December 20, 2023 2:00 am ET on KET
  • Wednesday December 20, 2023 1:00 am CT on KET
  • Wednesday December 20, 2023 6:00 pm ET on KETKY
  • Wednesday December 20, 2023 5:00 pm CT on KETKY
Jump to Upcoming Airdates

Recent

2024 Legislative Session Preview - S30 E33

  • Wednesday December 6, 2023 1:00 am ET on KET
  • Wednesday December 6, 2023 12:00 am CT on KET
  • Tuesday December 5, 2023 11:00 pm ET on KETKY
  • Tuesday December 5, 2023 10:00 pm CT on KETKY
  • Tuesday December 5, 2023 2:30 pm ET on KETKY
  • Tuesday December 5, 2023 1:30 pm CT on KETKY
  • Tuesday December 5, 2023 6:00 am ET on KETKY
  • Tuesday December 5, 2023 5:00 am CT on KETKY
  • Monday December 4, 2023 8:00 pm ET on KET
  • Monday December 4, 2023 7:00 pm CT on KET

2024 Legislative Preview - S30 E32

  • Wednesday November 22, 2023 6:00 pm ET on KETKY
  • Wednesday November 22, 2023 5:00 pm CT on KETKY
  • Wednesday November 22, 2023 1:36 am ET on KET
  • Wednesday November 22, 2023 12:36 am CT on KET
  • Tuesday November 21, 2023 11:00 pm ET on KETKY
  • Tuesday November 21, 2023 10:00 pm CT on KETKY
  • Tuesday November 21, 2023 2:30 pm ET on KETKY
  • Tuesday November 21, 2023 1:30 pm CT on KETKY
  • Tuesday November 21, 2023 6:00 am ET on KETKY
  • Tuesday November 21, 2023 5:00 am CT on KETKY
  • Monday November 20, 2023 8:00 pm ET on KET
  • Monday November 20, 2023 7:00 pm CT on KET

2023 Election - S30 E31

  • Tuesday November 7, 2023 2:30 pm ET on KETKY
  • Tuesday November 7, 2023 1:30 pm CT on KETKY
  • Tuesday November 7, 2023 6:00 am ET on KETKY
  • Tuesday November 7, 2023 5:00 am CT on KETKY
  • Monday November 6, 2023 8:00 pm ET on KET
  • Monday November 6, 2023 7:00 pm CT on KET
Top

Contact


Explore KET