Wonder what this could be about? Beshear plans "personnel announcement" for Tuesday

Late Friday afternoon, after the sun had gone down and state employees had gone home for the long Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, one of the Beshear administration's spinmistresses sent forth an e-mail proclaiming that Beshear will have a "personnel announcement" Tuesday afternoon at 4 p.m.

What could this be about? The new governor has already made most of his key appointments and we can't imagine that his propagandists would be putting out a notice at 7:30 p.m. EST on the Friday of a holiday weekend for a run of the mill commissioner appointment or anything like that.

The wording of the announcement is a bit unusual, as well. No mention is made of an "appointment." Instead, the event is cryptically categorized as an "announcement."

Thinking out loud, we're wondering if perhaps Beshear won't be telling the state that he has asked Attorney General Little Jackie Conway to investigate the illegal raise given to former State Treasurer Jonathan Miller's gal pal Brooke Parker.

When it came to light that the paperwork for Parker's dramatic salary increases had not been properly filed, Beshear's personnel advisers proclaimed that they could fix the problem by processing an ACE award for Sweet Brookie. The only problem is that ACEs can only be given to an individual once every two years and they are capped at 10 percent (most ACEs given in state government are only 5 percent). So there's no doubt that the "fix" prescribed by the new Personnel Cabinet gurus is illegal as can be.

Is it possible that Beshear is going to actually call for investigation into this travesty?

Wait a minute -- Gov. Beshear is the same man who, as attorney general, sat idly by and watched Gov. John Y. Brown violate state merit system laws left and right and did absolutely nothing. When a valid complaint was brought to him about the personnel law violatons in Secretary of State Frances Jones Mills' office, Beshear said it was a job for the Personnel Board.

So given Beshear's history of not doing the right thing when it comes to personnel laws, we have trouble believing he's suddenly found religion.

Nope, Tuesday's announcement will probably be yet another disclosure that some recycled hack from the 1980s has been brought back into state goverment and given a prominent, overpaid position.