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Kentucky’s general and road fund receipts for October were down 4% this year compared to 2008. It looks like the General Assembly will head into the next session facing a 1.3 billion dollar shortfall for the next biennium. Will the calls for expanded gaming (again) and higher cigarette taxes (again) will inspire the legislature to pick up the pace for the 60-day session?
The Metro Council’s Government Accountability and Oversight Committee just approved the so-called Audit Ordinance, which calls for contractors who use certain amounts of city money to say how the money was spent. The legislation is partially a reaction to Cordish’s refusal to disclose how it spent about $900 thousand in city money to renovate the bowling alley in 4th Street Live. Cordish calls the information proprietary and says it can’t reveal documents that might hurt its competitiveness.
The legislation now goes to the full council.
Remember when the Mayor went to Florida last year? He took bourbon and business leaders and tried to lure young professionals to Louisville.
Did you ever notice that every so often, someone involved in business or education holds a press conference to announce a new plan to bring people with college degrees to Derby City?
Well, maybe those tactics are working.
The AP reports that college graduates are flocking to unexpected areas, most notably, the Southwest. But on the map, you can see a pale red box over Louisville. The city has a relative gain of outsiders with higher education. These brainy nomads are setting up shop in Falls City, but the Lou has a long way to go before it tops Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix or the Northwest.
Considering the economic benefit of an educated workforce and the amount of negative migration indicated on the map, I’d file this story in the “Any gain is positive” folder.
Metro Government’s stimulus page now has a map to show where the federal money will be spent.
Little did I know that the sidewalk construction I walk by every day is a stimulus project. Well, since the sidewalk was torn up before the stimulus package passed, I assume this was a “Shovel-ready” job.
Here’s what we reported on today:
Here’s what we reported on today:
- In Depth – MSD Considering Buyouts To Prevent Floods
- Another Drug Toss Set For Thursday Through Saturday
- Conway Applauds Gouging Law Ruling
- Indiana Launches Flu Shot Campaign
- Blanton Leaving Governor’s Office
- Arts Groups Offer Discounted Tickets Again This Season
- City, Firefighters Approaching Deal
- In Depth: Governor’s Arts Awards Handed Out In Frankfort
I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, and it’s time to stop procrastinating. Sloth is a sin, after all.
Kansas State University researchers did some number-crunching and mapped the distribution of the seven deadly sins. They used certain criteria to determine the geographic distribution of sin:
- Greed: Average incomes versus total inhabitants below the poverty line
- Envy: Total number of thefts (robbery, burglary, larceny, and stolen cars)
- Wrath: Total number of violent crimes (murder, assault and rape) per capita
- Lust: Sexually transmitted diseases per capita
- Gluttony: Number of fast-foot restaurants per capita
- Sloth: Expenditures on arts, entertainment and recreation versus rate of employment
- Pride: An aggregate of the six other sins
Kentucky avoids gluttony and sloth, but the map seems more like a reflection of wealth than virtue, especially with sloth. Poorer states are the least slothful by these criteria. Detroit is a hotbed for every sin except sloth and gluttony.
The conclusions make sense if you think about the locations and their history. But does that mean anything in a discussion of apparent righteousness? Should such a discussion even be held?
This post comes to us from WFPL arts and humanities reporter Elizabeth Kramer.
Last week, I wrote a post about recent grumblings, complaints, etc., about the National Endowment for the Arts. Meanwhile, there has been some action at the NEA after criticisms about conference calls that discussed getting artists and arts groups involved in weighing in on discussions about issues like health care, the environment and so on, which are also important to President Obama. The Washington Post is crediting FOX News talk show host Glenn Beck with the shakeup. (The newspaper’s media columnist Howard Kurtz also wrote about this in yesterday’s column. And, of course, with the column’s other tidbits, it’s definitely worth the read.) Beck was probably the loudest voice to ring out after news about the calls surfaced, but there were other voices that brought up some valuable concerns about the thrust of the conference call.
But let’s face it; the idea of co-opting artists to help spread particular ideas is ancient. Now, one historically known practitioner is trying looking to bridge the gap it has with contemporary artists: Pope Benedict XVI has announced an arts summit for November. The Vatican has invited 500 painters, sculptors, architects, writers, musicians, singers and film and theatre directors to form “an alliance between art and faith.” This comes after years of criticism of the Church in work by contemporary artists. (Here are reports by the BBC and The Guardian.) Some invited artists have already declined, including Bill Viola, whose video art work was shown in an exhibit last year at the 21C Museum Hotel.
This post comes from WFPL environmental reporter Kristin Espeland Gourlay.
Developing and developed nations could lose up to 12 percent of their GDP because of climate change. That’s the finding of a new report from consultancy McKinsey and Co., in cooperation with the European Union, nonprofit groups, and businesses. The report’s authors aimed to come up with new tools to help decision-makers quantify the risks of climate change, both now and 20 years into the future, based on a location’s “total climate risk.” They found that:
“If current development trends continue to 2030, the locations studied will lose between 1 and 12 percent of GDP as a result of existing climate patterns, with low income populations such as small-scale farmers in India and Mali losing an even greater proportion of their income. Within the next 20 years, climate change could worsen this picture significantly: in the locations studied, a scenario of high climate change would increase today’s climate-related losses by up to 200 percent as soon as 2030…
…however, the cases found that a portfolio of cost-effective measures can be put together to address a large part of the identified risk. In principle, between 40 and 68 percent of the loss expected to 2030 in the case locations – under severe climate change scenarios – could be averted through adaptation measures whose economic benefits outweigh their costs – with even higher levels of prevention possible in highly targeted geographies. These measures include infrastructure improvements, such as strengthening buildings against storms or constructing reservoirs and wells to combat drought…”
In other climate change news…Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed an order (.pdf file) today establishing a department-wide approach to coordinating responses to climate change.
It’s no small order: the Department includes agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and Parks, and manages nearly a fifth of the nation’s land mass. The order creates eight regional climate change response centers, including one in the southeast, a climate change council, and promotes more research into carbon capture. It points to some likely climate change impacts to which the department’s agencies will have to respond: shrinking water resources, sea level rise, shifting animal migration patterns, and invasive species.
The four non-paid furloughs mandated for non-emergency city workers this fiscal year have been called off.
The CJ reports that Mayor Abramson is convinced there are other ways to save $2 million.
The measures probably will include:
Reducing overtime.
Delaying filling some non-essential vacant positions.
Eliminating some vacant positions.
Reclassifying to lower-paying slots some positions that become vacant through retirements.
A memo sent to city workers Friday afternoon said, “cost-savings methods may vary from department to department, depending on the services involved. … We hope to avoid additional employee layoffs, but some may be required in the future, depending on economic conditions and revenue collections.” More than 100 workers were laid off at the start of the fiscal year.
