Kenny Colston

As the Environmental Protection Agency begins its public forums on coal mining permits in Kentucky, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell is rallying for coal to be a bigger part of the nation's energy portfolio.

The decade-old Secular Coalition for America lobbies for the separation of church and state on the federal level, and officials now want to bring those efforts to statehouses across the country. The SCA already has two chapters in other states and it plans to create 10 more soon.

A busy schedule won’t keep Kentucky Auditor Adam Edelen from digging into school board funding. Edelen is currently planning audits into special taxing districts and Medicaid managed care. His office is also required to do hundreds of audits of local and state government agencies. But Edelen says he’ll keep his campaign pledge to look at school funding. And that could include a review of the state’s public universities, too.

A national progressive organization that's pressuring Democrats to drop their memberships in a conservative nonprofit is now operating in Kentucky. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has spearheaded several national campaigns, like the push to recall Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker and with Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren’s U.S. Senate bid.

Governor Steve Beshear has created a program lawmakers could not. The governor has released $4 million to be given as scholarships to Eastern Kentucky college students. Lawmakers wrestled with several scholarship proposals during the last legislative session, but an agreement was never passed.