Kentucky has approved more than $90 million in film incentives for companies producing movies and television shows here. But nobody in state government can say whether taxpayers are getting their money’s worth.
A law to spur economic development in blighted areas is now sometimes used for private developments in upscale neighborhoods. Overall, Kentucky has given developers $111 million through TIF tax rebates in the past decade and at least $2.9 billion more has been pledged.
Kentucky’s state property tax rate on small boats is 30 times higher than the tax rate on many luxury houseboats. That means owners pay less state property tax on a $150,000 houseboat than on a $25,000 fishing boat.
Kentucky’s sales tax generated more than $3.4 billion in fiscal year 2017, but the state could have brought in an additional $2.5 billion in revenue that year if it expanded the sales tax to cover services, ranging from haircuts to legal work.
Kentucky loses about $8.5 million a year by not applying its 6 percent sales tax to gravestones, monuments and tombstones — part of a whopping $13 billion the state loses each year through tax loopholes.
Over the past five years, at least 36 Kentucky children accidentally shot themselves or another child with a loaded gun that adults either gave them or left within their reach. Most of the time, police quietly closed their investigations of the shootings without bringing criminal charges. “How is nobody legally responsible for this?” one anguished father asks.
Social workers at the Kentucky Department for Community Based Services closed a child abuse investigation in Berea three years ago after the father refused to cooperate with them. “He’s not abusing his kiddo,” one of the social workers concluded. Months later, the man’s daughter was carried into the hospital as a catatonic torture victim.
An upscale shopping center, The Summit at Fritz Farm, is rising at Nicholasville Road and Man o’ War Boulevard. The future home of Pottery Barn and Whole Foods Market was sold last summer for $13 million.
The 2009 murder of Amanda Ross in Lexington, Ky., by former state Rep. Steve Nunn led to a new law that allows electronic monitoring of some domestic violence perpetrators. Court records show that it is not being used.
According to a lawsuit filed in Harlan County Circuit Court, a former chairman of the county’s Industrial Development Authority and two local businessmen allegedly conspired to transfer a publicly-owned building into private hands.
A former investigator at the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services who alleged that her superiors wanted her to cover up mistakes made in a horrific child abuse case in Berea has settled her whistleblower lawsuit in exchange for a cash award and a new position.
Blake Shouse, manager of Shelbyville Monument Co. in Shelbyville, Ky., makes his case for why the state should not put a sales tax on tombstones and grave markers. The tax exemption on gravestones costs Kentucky about $8.5 million each year.
Kentucky film producer AJ Hochhalter explains how Kentucky's film incentive program helped him produce his documentary "Neat: The Story of Bourbon" just before the production's hometown screening at Kentucky Theatre.
Each year, Kentucky gives away more tax revenue through loopholes and incentive programs than it actually collects. Gov. Matt Bevin promised earlier this year to turn some of these "sacred cows" of Kentucky's tax code into hamburger, but that's ea
Kentucky has promised more than $90 million in incentives to companies making movies, television shows, documentaries and commercials inside the state.
Gun safety activist Luther Brown says the man who accidentally shot and killed his 8-year-old grandson in 2016 is likely to spend little time behind bars.
Mark and Sharon Bryant run Gun Violence Archive, a website based in Lexington which fills a real-time information gap left by government, law enforcement and academic researchers.
Blake Shouse, manager of Shelbyville Monument Co. in Shelbyville, Ky., makes his case for why the state should not put a sales tax on tombstones and grave markers. The tax exemption on gravestones costs Kentucky about $8.5 million each year.
