Kentucky Votes Forum

Introduced in the House on February 21, 2008, to establish a new procedure for the optional consolidation of counties

The vote was 87 in favor, 10 opposed and 2 not voting

(House Roll Call 0 at House Journal 0)

Click here to view bill details.

I like that there are a lot of counties. The rules under the previous state constitution requiring that a courthouse be within one day's ride from anywhere else in the county was a good law. It keeps local government small and makes it so that if one county does something extremely stupid, one can move to an adjacent county and not have to change jobs. I can't see why any county would want to "fold" into another one. And if a majority of people in one county want to be a part of the other, why not just move into that county? It doesn't make sense to me why one county would fold into another. Maybe I'm missing something.

As an attorney practicing all over the state of KY, I have found it tedious trying to attend motion hour dockets in 120 counties. Many counties have so few court cases that they only have motion hour once a month. If your schedule is already full, you may have to wait 2 months to have your case heard. If some of the smaller counties merged, and cases were heard in one judicial center, the court system would run more smoothly.

The only thing keeping this sorry mess from being even worse is the number of counties we have. I can just see it now. . . . .get the number of counties where you morons want it and the entire commonwealth will be yours to do as you see fit. BS!!

In 1995 task force named Commission On Quality & Efficiency recommended elimination of 70-out-of-120 locally elected statutory officers saving state in 2008 an estimated $50 million annually. There is one statutory PVA officer elected for each county to assess taxes for property tax purposes. Average pay for all 120 PVA officers, whose duties and responsibilities have been greatly reduced since most if not all their records have been computerized, ranges from $50,000-$100,000 annually. In addition to this expense to KY taxpayers, is PVA staffing and equipment costs. Fifty PVA's could do the job of 120 PVA's saving taxpayers $50 million per year! dash

If a state's general fund budget of $20 billion cannot adequately fund all legislated benefits and services for an estimated 4 million citizens divided into 120 counties', don't you think its past time for those 4 million citizens to replace the inefficient 120 county status for a 50 county status to be able to adequately fund all 4 million citizens' services and benefits? Currently, Kentucky's obsolete state tax base coupled with Kentucky citizens lack of desire for increased taxes and feds economic policy replacing federal regulations with greed calls for immediate action to courter today's economic pending disaster for state's like Kentucky! dash