Vernie and Eight or Nine Dwarfs

Who says fairy tales don’t happen in Frankfort? In this story we don’t have a wicked Queen, we have Vernie McGaha and eight or nine small minds.

From the Herald-Leader:

FRANKFORT - Universities and other public agencies should not be allowed to offer health benefits to unmarried domestic partners of employees, a Senate committee said yesterday in approving a bill its sponsor said was not gay bashing……

Eight members of the Senate State and Local Government Committee voted for the bill. Two Democrats -- Walter Blevins of West Liberty and Julian Carroll of Frankfort -- did not vote.

Ok so I’m a little confused about this story. If Blevins and Carroll didn’t vote that leaves nine members on the committee. So who voted against the bill or joined Carroll and Blevins in not voting? Or maybe there was just a math error in the story.

Let’s don’t worry about the math, maybe everyone should call the Honorable Senators and ask them why they voted the way they did on this bill.

2007 Senate Standing Committee on State and Local Government
Members
Updated February 13, 2007

Sen. Damon Thayer [Chair]
Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr [Vice Chair]
Sen. Walter Blevins
Sen. Julian M. Carroll
Sen. Carroll Gibson
Sen. Ernie Harris
Sen. Tom Jensen
Sen. Dan Kelly
Sen. Elizabeth Tori
Sen. Johnny Ray Turner
Sen. Ed Worley

WTVQ Picks Up the Tosh Story

Let me give a note of thanks to Heather MacWilliams, at WTVQ-36, for following up on my post about Adam Tosh.

WTVQ got the following response from Bill Hanes about the Tosh hiring.

("Any reason you guys left out on the press release that you sent out to the media, you left out the whole part about MDL?)

"We don't believe it's relevant," says KRS Executive Director William Hanes. “His relevance to us is his experience and knowledge that he gained by working for a public pension system quite frankly. He worked for treasury and that was somewhat related but his work at MDL was just a carry on for what he did for the public systems and quite frankly we're more interested in what his work experience was with the public retirement system," Hanes continued.

Hanes says to his knowledge Tosh had no involvement with the hedge fund in question.
"We've had ample discussion with Adam in the process. Board members were concerned about that issue and we explored it and found that he was not involved... I don't believe he was involved. He's an excellent candidate and we're happy to have him as our Chief Investment Officer," says Hanes.

Hanes says Tosh was hired from a pool of 39 candidates and did a complete background check on him prior to his employment."

"The search committee recommends to me the individual that's most qualified and quite frankly I think we've got a very qualified person."

Neither Tosh nor MDL returned messages seeking comment.

Looks like Hanes is doing the usual smoke and mirrors act with this hire. Hanes' answer that he doesn't have any direct knowledge of Tosh's involvement and that he really doesn't think that Tosh working for a company that lost public money in hedge fund applies to Tosh's current job is completely consistant with the way KRS is being run.

I can't wait for Heather to get Jody Richards' comments about his involvement in the Tosh hiring.