The cornerstone of the American republic is an educated, active, and engaged citizenry; however, the multifaceted inner workings of government and the political forces that shape it are incredibly complex. Kentucky Government, Politics, and Public Policy is the first book in nearly three decades to provide a comprehensive overview of the commonwealth's major governing and political institutions and the public policy issues that profoundly affect Kentuckians' daily lives. In this groundbreaking volume, editors James C. Clinger and Michael W. Hail have assembled respected scholars from across the state to inform citizens about their governing institutions, the consequences of their policy choices, and the intricacies of the political process. They provide clear and authoritative information on Kentucky's government and explain significant trends and patterns, exploring the legacy of the state's political history and illuminating the contributions of influential Kentucky politicians such as Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, and Jefferson Davis. The contributors also address essential topics such as the structure and function of the three branches of government, the constitution, and federalism and intergovernmental relations, as well as administration, budgeting, and finance. They analyze key issues in education policy, economic and community development, and health care in great detail, explaining persistently controversial topics such as campaign finance, the cost of elections, ethics, and the oversight of regulatory agencies. From the executive branch to the legislature, from the court system to political parties, there is no better primer on government in the commonwealth.

Penny M. Miller takes a comprehensive approach to Kentucky politics and government. She uses the details of the state's political institutions and processes, its policy issues, and its place in national politics to demonstrate the tension between Kentucky's forces of change and its inertia. Since the Civil War, geographic, economic, and cultural factional divisions have dominated the struggle for progress in the Bluegrass state. Yet Kentucky is in a state of change, and its political institutions have undergone significant transformations in the last few decades. Miller points out that the state's judicial system, long one of the nation's least-altered, has recently become one of its most innovative; the educational system has undergone radical legislative reformation, trying to escape its near last-place national ranking. The legislative branch has gained more independence and autonomy, and its relationship to the executive branch has experienced an enormous readjustment. The state has emerged from its past stereotypes of bourbon, fast horses, burley tobacco, and coal mines. Some things endure, though--political corruption, voter apathy, and an aged constitution. This book, the only comprehensive study of politics and government in Kentucky, illuminates contemporary problems within their historical context and suggests how the state's institutions, policies, politics, and people will formulate the future of Kentucky.

In his inaugural address, Governor Brereton C. Jones proclaimed, "This administration is committed to having the most positive, progressive, exciting four years in our state's history." Through speeches and press releases, this volume reflects the principal concerns of Jones's time in office. Thematically organized, the more than two hundred public statements included here present the public face of the Jones administration on such issues as health care, education, economic development, the environment, and governmental reform. Nowhere else has the full text of these speeches and press releases been printed. Governor Jones, born in 1939, was elected to the West Virginia legislature in 1964, where he served for four years before retiring from politics. After moving to Kentucky and switching allegiance from the Republican to the Democratic Party, he re-entered politics with a successful campaign to become lieutenant governor in 1987. He was elected the Commonwealth's fifty-fourth governor in 1991 by a record margin of nearly two to one. Jones initiated a number of reforms once in office. He turned a $400 million budget deficit into a $300 million surplus in four years, and he passed dramatic ethics reform in both the executive and legislative branches. Health-care issues were also of great importance to Jones, who spent the years before his election working with the Kentucky Health Care Access Foundation in addition to farming. After surviving a helicopter crash in 1992, he turned the main focus of his administration toward health-care reform and initiatives. Though he met with legislative opposition when he proposed universal health care for all Kentuckians, he did help pass legislation in 1994 that would serve as a solid beginning on the issue for future governors.

"At various points in history, Kentucky's politics and government have been rocked by scandal, and each episode defined the era in which it happened. In 1826, Governor Desha pardoned his own son for murder. In a horrific crime, Governor Goebel was assassinated in 1900. James Wilkinson was branded a traitor against Kentucky and the nation. "Honest Dick Tate" ran away with massive amounts of money from the state treasury. In modern times, Operation BOPTROT resulted in perhaps the biggest scandal in the state. Authors Robert Schrage and John Schaaf offer a fascinating account of Kentucky's history and its many unique and scandalous characters." -- Page 4 of cover.

If knowledge is power, then John Hird has opened the doors for anyone interested in public policymaking and policy analysis on the state level. A beginning question might be: does politics put gasoline or sugar in the tank? More specifically, in a highly partisan political environment, is nonpartisan expertise useful to policymaking? Do policy analysts play a meaningful role in decision making? Does policy expertise promote democratic decision making? Does it vest power in an unelected and unaccountable elite, or does it become co-opted by political actors and circumstances? Is it used to make substantive changes or just for window-dressing? In a unique comparative focus on state policy, Power, Knowledge, and Politics dissects the nature of the policy institutions that policymakers establish and analyzes the connection between policy research and how it is actually used in decision making. Hird probes the effects of politics and political institutions—parties, state political culture and dynamics, legislative and gubernatorial staffing, partisan think tanks, interest groups—on the nature and conduct of nonpartisan policy analysis. Through a comparative examination of institutions and testing theories of the use of policy analysis, Hird draws conclusions that are more useful than those derived from single cases. Hird examines nonpartisan policy research organizations established by and operating in U.S. state legislatures—one of the most intense of political environments—to determine whether and how nonpartisan policy research can survive in that harsh climate. By first detailing how nonpartisan policy analysis organizations came to be and what they do, and then determining what state legislators want from them, he presents a rigorous statistical analysis of those agencies in all 50 states and from a survey of 800 state legislators. This thoroughly comprehensive look at policymaking at the state level concludes that nonpartisan policy analysis institutions can play an important role—as long as they remain scrupulously nonpartisan.