Paper soaked with irony, unfit to read

As part of "Pile on Bill Nighbert Month," earlier this week, the Herald-Leader printed a story about how the Washington County Fiscal Court repaired a rural road leading to property owned by Nighbert's brother and property later purchased by Nighbert and his brother through their "Double Buck LLC" hand holding company.

The county's Democrat judge-executive, who'd have absolutely no reason to lie for Nighbert considering his party registration, his county's overwhelmingly "D" voter registration, and his county seat's place as the home of one of Frankfort's most conniving political insiders (Mike Haydon), said that the repairs were needed and were not requested by or done as favors for Nighbert.

Yet the H-L made a huge deal out of this non-story. The irony of this report was dripping off the pages of the paper, especially considering what's been done in the past for governors with state money that got nowhere near the attention of this item.

Where were these intrepid reporters when Paul Patton was building a white-elephant arena in Pikeville?

Where were they when Brereton Jones was pushing for all sorts of financial incentives for horse breeders?

And where were they when Wallace Wilkinson was building a new US 127 all the way from Danville to Russell Springs that, what a surprise, passed right through his hometown of Liberty and Casey County?

We don't remember too many howls of protest over those projects, the merits of which can be sincerely questioned (well, the first two anyway, US 127 needed to be rebuilt), but yet there's an uproar over a few thousand dollars in County Road Aid Funds?

Well, those three governors mentioned previously are or were Democrats, so it is to be expected that they wouldn't get the scrutiny that a Republican official in a Republican administration would.

Then again, it is "Pile on Bill Nighbert Month."

And an aside on Haydon, the aforementioned Washington County resident, former Springfield mayor, former cabinet secretary and property tax commissioner, and former top legislative adviser to Rocky Adkins. He got his start in state government under the Wilkinson administration after serving as Washington County tax assessor. When Wilkinson, long since out of office, began to have financial troubles, Haydon ordered his agency to remove his biography from its website's list of prominent officials. He didn't want the association with Wilkinson to become anymore widespread public knowledge than it already was, so as not to hurt his political aspirations. But when you've made your career knifing your superiors in the back and then taking over, why worry about having come up under the "You Can't Do That, Governor!" governor?