12:00am on Oct 23, 2011; Modified: 8:14am on Oct 23, 2011

State Attorney General Jack Conway

When Kentucky voters go to the polls on Nov. 8, they will have an opportunity to choose between two bright and energetic young people who are seeking the office of attorney general.

Todd P’Pool, 38, the Republican candidate, grew up in the Western Kentucky coal fields, where his family has worked for four generations. A graduate of the University of Kentucky law school, he became the first Republican elected to a countywide office in Hopkins County since the Civil War era when he was elected county attorney in 2006. He was re-elected to that post last year, and has been praised for his ability to cross party lines in a county where Democrats account for 70 percent of registered voters.

Mr. P’Pool has attempted to nationalize this race, no doubt since surveys indicate President Obama is unpopular in the commonwealth. He criticizes health care reform and says he would have joined other states’ attorneys general in a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality. He’s also critical of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, especially its regulation of the coal industry. Neither of those positions is in the public interest.

His opponent, incumbent Democrat Jack Conway, 42, is a Louisvillian who attended Duke University and George Washington University law school in Washington. At the age of 26, he became deputy secretary of Gov. Paul Patton’s cabinet, working just below the secretary, Crit Luallen, now the state auditor. The two of them forged a close working relationship that has worked to the benefit of the state on key issues over the past four years.

His term as attorney general has been impressive by any standard. He has saved taxpayers several hundred millions of dollars fighting high Medicaid drug costs, unjustified utility rate hikes and price gouging by the oil companies. He also saved money by resisting pressure to join the right-wing legal attack on health care reform, which he has, quite admirably, supported. Mr. Conway has been a strong advocate for transparency and openness in public meetings and records. And he has waged an effective campaign against illegal drug trafficking and production.

Despite a disappointing campaign for U.S. Senate last year, when he was swept up in a Republican tidal wave that sent Rand Paul, the Republican, to Washington, Mr. Conway remains one of the ablest public servants in Kentucky. We enthusiastically support his re-election.

Candidates not endorsed are invited to respond. Letters of no more than 200 words will be published if received by 10 a.m. Wednesday by email at cjletter@courier-journal.com, by fax at (502) 582-4155 or by our first-floor reception desk at 525 W. Broadway.

October 6, 2011

Beshear, Conway and Stumbo announce plans to battle prescription drug abuse

Gov. Steve Beshear

Herald-Leader Staff Report

Gov. Steve Beshear, Attorney General Jack Conway and House Speaker Greg Stumboannounced several initiatives on Thursday aimed at curbing prescription drug abuse.

The three men, who have each served as attorney general, said the initiatives would make it easier to report suspicious prescribing habits to licensure boards for possible investigation. They also proposed educating more health care providers about using the state’s prescription monitoring system.

The trio of Democrats said they want to develop legislation for the 2012 General Assembly, which begins in January, to expand use of the monitoring program and to regulate pain clinics.

Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for some age groups in Kentucky, where 16.1 percent of adults ages 18 to 25 have used prescription drugs for non-prescribed purposes, according to federal drug-abuse statistics.

Data show that 6.5 percent of all Kentuckians have abused prescription drugs, compared to the national average of 5 percent.

Beshear also said the federal Appalachian Regional Commission has awarded a $60,000 grant to Operation UNITE, an anti-drug program in 20 southern and eastern Kentucky counties, to support several educational summits for doctors and dispensers to learn about the dangers of prescription drug abuse and the benefits of the state’s drug monitoring system known as KASPER, or the Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting.

Beshear and Conway, who face re-election on Nov. 8, will coordinate the summits, which will be held in three locations across the state in coming months. Operation UNITE expects the summits will train about 1,000 health care providers.

Mike Farrell: Candidates expecting my vote have to be transparent, address key issues

I can’t vote for Todd P’Pool for attorney general either. He shows the same contempt for me.

You see neither thinks I, a citizen of this commonwealth – a taxpayer and a voter – matter enough that he is willing to talk about plans for the office for which he would like my support.

Beshear wants a second four-year term as Kentucky’s governor. But when he had the chance to talk about his plans for Kentucky’s schoolchildren with his two opponents, he showed his contempt for all Kentucky voters and me by not participating in the KET debate.

Really? What issue is of greater concern to Kentuckians than education? How can I vote for a candidate who doesn’t think he needs to talk candidly about the most important concern in the state?

Oh, I get it all right. I wasn’t born last week. The polls say Beshear has an enormous lead over his Republican opponent, Sen. David Williams, and the independent candidate Gatewood Galbraith. But that doesn’t entitle him to play hide and seek with the voters.

Beshear is more concerned about re-election than anything else. It doesn’t matter to him that he owes us an explanation of what he plans to do in a second term, how he will find the money to improve the education today’s children deserve or how he will create jobs.

And I haven’t missed the irony either. Beshear talked about bringing greater transparency to state government and even formed a commission to work on it after his election in 2007. But now, when he wants a second term, his plans are as transparent as the Ohio River after a heavy spring rain.

Instead of talking candidly and answering questions during a KET debate, Gov. Hide and Seek would convince us he’s the right candidate for Kentucky governor with his canned speeches and his glitzy ads.

Running away from your opponents and hiding from the voters may be good politics when you are way ahead, but it is not good for a democracy. The governor seems to have forgotten what he should have learned in college and law school, that public officials are accountable to the voters and that citizens must be well informed in order to choose the best leaders.

We know even less about Todd P’Pool. He seems just as contemptuous of voters and their right to be informed. The Scripps Howard First Amendment Center (of which I am the director) and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues invited Mr. P’Pool and his opponent, Democrat Jack Conway, who also is seeking re-election, to discuss their philosophy of open government and enforcement of the state’s Open Records Act and Open Meetings Act at a forum at the University of Kentucky.

The P’Pool camp suggested three dates, and then announced that because of a scheduling conflict he would not participate on the date Conway could attend.

It seems not to matter that one of the most important functions of the office of Kentucky attorney general is to rule on complaints that a public agency has violated the state’s Open Records Act by denying access to documents that should be public or violated the state’s Open Meeting Acts by excluding the public from their discussions.

The commonwealth has good sunshine laws enacted to guarantee openness. But if an attorney general fails to enforce those laws, their effectiveness diminishes.

How can I vote for a candidate who won’t talk about his philosophy of government transparency or discuss how he believes the office should address these appeals, usually more than 250 each year?

I want to know – as I hope other citizens want to know – that whoever is elected attorney general on Nov. 8 is not going to try to turn off the lights in Frankfort and in local government offices so that officials, elected and appointed, can operate in secret. Their ability to misuse their offices and to ignore the public good would increase significantly.

I also want to know – as I hope other citizens want to know – that whoever is elected governor on Nov. 8 is going to make education a priority for the next four years. I am convinced ensuring our children have the best education possible is essential to improving the long-term outlook for my state.

Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote in a decision 40 years ago that “Open debate and discussion of public issues are vital to our national health.” I wonder what he would have thought of these races?

I find the unwillingness of Mr. Beshear and Mr. P’Pool to engage the public in a discussion of these fundamental issues insulting and destructive of good government.

Rather than inform “we the people” in a debate on their ideas, they have chosen to hide behind their TV ads and web pages and meetings with their supporters.

I can’t vote for either one of them regardless of their qualifications or their opponents. I want public servants who are about democracy and government transparency; these two are about politics.

Mike Farrell is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications and director of the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center at the University of Kentucky. He was a journalist for nearly 20 years at The Kentucky Post. His views are his own and not those of the university or of KyForward.

September 29, 2011

Kentucky’s Jack Conway and other states’ attorneys general have picked up a high-profile ally in their effort to expose and rein in abusive practices by some for-profit colleges.

Holly Petraeus is the assistant director for service member affairs at the recently created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She also is a miltary family member; her husband is the retired Army general who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and now heads the Central Intelligence Agency.

In recent weeks, Mrs. Petraeus has appeared at Fort Campbell, Ky., along with Mr. Conway, to talk about consumer protection for America’s miltiary men and women. She also has spoken to NPR and authored an op-ed piece in The New York Times about a subject that Mr. Conway continues to stress in Kentucky: how some for-profit colleges use aggressive and misleading marketing methods to enroll vulnerable people into high-cost, debt-laden educations that may not pay off in terms of jobs.

“To be sure, there are some for-profit colleges with a long record of serving the military, solid academic credentials and a history of success for their graduates,” Mrs. Petraeus wrote. “But, compared with other schools, for-profit colleges generally have low graduation rates and a poor record of gainful employment for their alumni.”

Sound familiar? That consumer-protection focus has guided Mr. Conway in his endeavors to hold such schools accountable for their tactics and their results for students in Kentucky.

He has filed a complaint against Daymar College for overcharging on textbooks and misleading students about financial aid and credit hours, and he joined a federal lawsuit against the parent company of Brown Mackie College for tying recruiter pay to enrollment numbers, which violates federal law.

This week, Mr. Conway filed suit against another for-profit school, National College of Kentucky Inc., for lying about its job-placement statistics for graduates; he alleges the school’s actual numbers are far lower than what they tell the public and report to the accrediting agency.

Mr. Conway and Mrs. Petraeus must press on for a number of reasons. Among them: Laws exist to prevent these practices. The amount of money involved, much of it federal dollars, is staggering and, despite warnings, is growing. Most important, vulnerable people must be protected from operators who are exploiting their hopes and dreams for a better life only to leave them literally holding the bag.

KRISTIN M. HALL, Associated Press

Updated 06:53 p.m., Wednesday, August 24, 2011

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) — Army Staff Sgt. David Madeux, 26, thought he was getting a good deal on a laptop that he needed to stay in touch with family while deployed to Iraq. He didn’t have any cash, but the business he was working with offered him financing.

“They had easy financing and they did it right then and there and I walked out with a laptop in less than 30 minutes,” said the Fort Campbell, Ky., soldier. What he didn’t know was that he had agreed to pay $189 a month for three years for a laptop that broke three months later.

Scams like these that prey on young, inexperienced soldiers and their families are increasing, said Holly Petraeus, who is the wife of Gen. David Petraeus and has become a leading advocate for consumer protections for the military.

She returned Wednesday to Fort Campbell, where her husband commanded the 101st Airborne Division during the initial invasion of Iraq, to hear stories about predatory lenders and deceptive business practices that target soldiers like Madeux and their families.

Petraeus is the director of the Office of Servicemember Affairs within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new agency created out of the financial system overhaul act signed into law a year ago.

“They are targeted because they have an absolutely guaranteed paycheck that comes in twice a month,” she said. “For a big installation like this one, that’s a whole lot of those paychecks. It makes a very big payroll and can be one of the biggest in the state.”

Outside the gates at Fort Campbell, like many military installations, businesses try to attract military customers with advertising and special deals, ranging from car and motorcycle lots, jewelry and pawn stores to housing. But because many military families move often, they don’t know which ones are reputable businesses, Petraeus said.

Madeux wasn’t the only soldier taken in by the deal on the laptops. Tennessee’s attorney general filed a lawsuit in 2005 against Britlee, Inc. — which was doing business as The Military Zone also known as Militaryzone.com, Laptoyz Computers and Electronics — and two finance companies for deceptive sales and collection practices against Fort Campbell soldiers.

Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper Jr. and Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway joined Petraeus to speak with soldiers and their families about how to alert authorities to businesses like these.

Cooper said in the computer case, the finance company kept sending bills even after a soldier had been killed in Iraq for a computer he had purchased. He said the state got about $325,000 from the companies to pay back over 100 customers and that was just the start of the restitution.

Conway said he is especially concerned about for-profit colleges targeting troops and veterans who have educational benefits under the GI Bill. His office is seeking a multi-million dollar judgment against Daymar College, an Owensboro-based career college, for allegations of violating Kentucky’s consumer protection laws.

Petraeus said while at Fort Campbell, she saw the devastating effects that financial debt and bad credit can have on a military family.

“The number one cause of military security clearances being revoked is financial problems,” she said.

Madeux said he uses his experience as a learning lesson and advises younger soldiers to seek help from the installation’s consumer affairs office.

“If they go to make a big purchase, I’ll go with them,” he said. “We will take the stuff to consumer affairs to make sure it’s a legitimate contract that they are not getting ripped off.”

September 22, 2011

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway has joined several attorneys general from around the country who oppose any offer of government immunity to banks over activities related to the foreclosure crisis.

Conway, a member of a group of attorneys general that has been negotiating a possible settlement with a handful of major banks, said Thursday he and several members are pushing for a resolution.

“We are a little concerned the banks may not be taking us seriously,” Conway said. “We want them to know if they don’t come up with an agreement we are going to take some actions.”

The panel is discussing allegations including so-called “robo-signing” of mortgage documents, Conway said.

Other attorneys generals opposed to immunity include New York’s Eric Schneiderman and Delaware’s Beau Biden, he said.