Beshear Trying to Buy Off WhistleBlower

As a Kentucky taxpayer, I resent a single dime of tax money going to cover up just how illegally yet slavishly the Beshear administration sucks Big Coal's cock, to the everlasting detriment of the Commonwealth.

 

For the same reasons, I am more than willing to pay my share of a multi-million-dollar court judgment as long as a public trial thorough exposes just how illegally yet slavishly the Beshear administration sucks Big Coal's cock, to the everlasting detribment of the Commonwealth.

 

John Cheves at the Herald:

Gov. Steve Beshear's administration is attempting to settle a lawsuit filed by Ron Mills, its former mine permits director, who says he was fired in 2009 for refusing to sign illegal permits sought by one of Beshear's major campaign donors.

Mills' wrongful-termination lawsuit against the state is scheduled to be heard by a jury next week in Franklin Circuit Court. However, state officials said Wednesday they're trying to avoid a trial."We are working on an agreed disposition of the Ron Mills case," said Dick Brown, spokesman for the state Energy and Environment Cabinet, where Mills worked. That "is all that I am at liberty to discuss at this point."

 

Mills and his attorney, Bernard Pafunda, declined to comment on settlement talks. Mills claims whistle-blower status, which could protect him even though he was a political appointee who served at the governor's pleasure. He wants to be reinstated and paid $3.23 million in punitive damages and lost wages.

 

In his lawsuit, Mills says he was fired by Energy and Environment Secretary Len Peters because he refused to sign five illegal mine permits sought by Alliance Coal of Tulsa, Okla., covering 55,000 acres in Western Kentucky.

 

Alliance Coal is a leading coal producer that has given more than $585,000 in Kentucky state and federal political donations since 2007. Beshear and the Kentucky Democratic Party are among its many beneficiaries.

 

The Beshear administration has been unable to get Mills' lawsuit dismissed despite challenging it for several years in motions as high as the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

Coal operators have been buying off Kentucky governors for almost as long as Kentucky has had governors. But rarely does an appointee like Mills get fed up and refuse to go along. Even more rarely does he go public with his disgust.

 

Kentucky needs this festering boil lanced, and only a public trial of Mills' charges can do that.