Secrecy: Authoritarianism's Dead Giveaway

This is so fucking cute. Bevin snatches a quarter-million dollars from Medicaid patients losing their health coverage in a secret repug Senate bill to pay for a secret hotline run by political hacks to keep state government corruption - wait for it - secret.

Your ass is showing, motherfucker.

Jack Brammer at the Herald:

Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration is spending nearly $250,000 this year for a new hotline and website that state employees and Kentucky residents can use to report wrongdoing in government.

Attorney General Andy Beshear said he has “serious concerns” about the new hotline, calling it redundant and lacking independent, trained investigators.

“I, like all Kentuckians, want to ensure that reports of unethical or illegal actions are reported to and investigated by a trained, independent and nonpartisan government agency,” Beshear said in an email.

Beshear, a Democrat, noted that state employees may anonymously report any questionable activity to his office through its Department of Criminal Investigation at 866-524-3672. That number is answered by sworn law enforcement officers, who are career merit employees, not at-will employees, he said.

Under Bevin’s hotline, reports “will not go to an independent law enforcement agency, but to his political employees who will then decide which allegations are investigated and which are not,” said the state’s chief law-enforcement official.

“That is putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,” Beshear said.