Sigler excellent choice in 45th House District
Pam Sigler is the kind of person who should be in the Kentucky House of Representatives. Voters in the 45th District in southern Fayette County would be wise to vote for her over longtime incumbent Stan Lee.
Sigler, who has worked for 17 years in the extension program in the college of agriculture at the University of Kentucky, has also been a public school and college teacher, and worked in a family business. At UK she’s managed extension agents across the state, overseen large budgets and federal grants. She serves on the UK Staff Senate and the Employee Benefits Committee.
Sigler worked with others for a decade to create a program to link farms to food banks to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to under-served communities at an affordable price. The program also creates a market for local farmers for their excess and not-first-quality produce that would otherwise be left in the field or thrown away. Last year 2,668,100 pounds of fresh produce from 302 farmers was distributed, reaching each of Kentucky’s counties.
Sigler, a Democrat, said her interest in challenging the Republican Lee arose when she tried to reach him to ask for support for legislation required to make the program work and got no response to her emails.
She is probably not alone in being neglected. Lee, who has been in office since 2001 and has not had a strong challenge, has done little for Kentucky or his district. He reliably takes up hot button issues to propose legislation that, even if held constitutional, would be difficult to enforce and/or have little impact on Kentucky’s persistent problems.
Just this week he prefiled legislation he’s promoted unsuccessfully in the last two sessions to allow home-schooled children to play on public school sports teams.
It’s an odd offering. First, why only sports? But, that aside, as columnist Mark Story wrote, it raises serious fairness questions for the students at the schools who could be bumped off teams and, of course, raises the specter of illegal recruiting and other ills that can plague competitive sports at the high school level.
Beyond that, does this legislation address Kentucky’s needs? With public pensions in crisis, drug abuse at epidemic levels, health problems throughout the state, higher education costs rising and prisons overcrowded, is this really a critical priority for a veteran legislator?
Sigler has gained a broad understanding of the state and its people through her work with extension agents across Kentucky, on nutrition programs, gardening and food preservation classes, farmers markets, gun safety and in many other areas. She has also worked on a program to link young people who want to get into farming with older farmers whose heirs don’t want to continue the family business.
In her interview with the editorial board she seemed more interested in solutions than ideology and displayed a genuine interest in researching issues to find common-sense, affordable solutions.
Lee, who did not have an opponent in the general election two years ago, did not respond to a request to meet with the editorial board nor did he agree to participate in a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters.
Voters in the 45th District are fortunate to have in Sigler a qualified opponent this year who would serve the district and the state well in Frankfort.
This story was originally published October 20, 2016 at 6:55 PM with the headline "Sigler excellent choice in 45th House District."