Rep. Coursey’s Response is Short on Truth
By Lance Cary
Having my elected representative, Will Coursey, call me a liar, in his own special way, on Marshall County Daily would offend me if his attack weren’t so laughably transparent. There is only one liar in this conversation.
Rep. Coursey is upset with me for exposing him on voting to raid public employee benefit funds. He shouldn’t be. I was simply following the well-earned criticism from the Jefferson County Teachers Union president Brent McKim, who called the raid “a selective tax on public employees.” Even more ridiculous was that Rep. Coursey also got McKim to write in to this, one of my hometown news sites, to attack me for taking his comments “out of context.” What he meant, of course, is that he didn’t expect his words to be used against a democrat.
After essentially calling me a liar for telling the truth about his votes — and Rep. Coursey doesn’t actually refute my evidence, but merely said that others in Frankfort did the same thing — he keeps the circus going by attempting to turn the covering of his own backside into an attack on Gov. Bevin for working to fix the damage that he and, of course, others did to the funds meant to pay for public employee benefits. This is not to say I agree with the Governor’s pension plan. I have family and friends that are affected by the pension crisis, but I take great offense to being attacked publicly in this manner by someone who is supposed to be representing me in Frankfort.
It should be known that in 2016 it was two democrats, Reps. Mike Denham and Tom Riner, that bravely drafted House Bill 89 that amended KRS 18A.2254 to prohibit any fund transfers from the Public Employees Health Insurance Trust Fund to the General Fund. Rep. Denham earned his associate degree from Maysville Community and Technical College, his BS from the University of Kentucky, and his MA in business administration from Morehead State University. Rep. Riner was a Baptist pastor that graduated from Centre College.
These two representatives saw the problem and knew it could get worse. They chose to do something about it. Unfortunately, the bill went to the House, was then sent to the Appropriations and Revenue Committee, and it stayed there until it died after session ended. That was no accident.
While we wait another year to vote him out, I can only hope Rep. Coursey devotes half as much energy to actually serving the interests of the citizens in his district as he does attempting to contrive attacks against us in the media and in the state budget.”