Tagged: Governor Beshear

A Lexus luxury brand vehicle will soon be built in the Bluegrass State. Toyota officials made the formal announcement Friday morning at the auto maker’s Georgetown, Kentucky, plant, where production of the Lexus ES 350 will begin in 2015.

Governor Beshear told Toyota leaders in attendance that he appreciates their decision to invest further in Kentucky.

“We realize the care and the pride that you take in that vehicle and that it requires the utmost in a skilled workforce, not to mention top quality components,” said Beshear. “Your confidence in the quality of Kentucky’s workers, especially our team here in Georgetown is appreciated and well placed.”

Kentucky Toyota workers will produce about 50,000 of the new Lexus vehicles annually once production begins in two years. The expansion will add an estimated 750 new jobs to a facility that already employs 6,600 workers.

Governor Steve Beshear is criticizing the secret recording of a campaign meeting of U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell  that was leaked.

Two members of Progress Kentucky, Shawn Reilly and Curt Morrison, have been implicated by a Jefferson County Democratic official as being behind who secretly recorded the McConnell meeting.

Kentucky Democratic leaders have been largely silent on the situation since the news broke last week. But after being asked Wednesday about the recording, Beshear said he found the whole situation—both the secret taping and McConnell's remarks — to be awful.

"I think it's deplorable, just in general, about taping conversations and that kind of thing. I find it about as deplorable as I do Senator McConnell's political tactics that he was talking about," Beshear says.

Gov. Steve Beshear has until Saturday to sign or veto a bill that would open the door to industrial hemp farming in Kentucky. So far, he hasn't said what he'll do.

The General Assembly passed the bill last Tuesday in the final minutes of this year's legislative session, giving the governor 10 days excluding Sundays to veto it, according to the Legislative Research Commission.

The bill would allow Kentucky farmers to grow hemp if the federal government lifts its decades-long ban on the plant. Hemp can be used to make products ranging from paper to cosmetics.

It thrived as a crop in Kentucky for generations before it was classified as a controlled substance related to marijuana. Although hemp is similar to marijuana, it has a negligible amount of THC, the psychoactive compound that gives marijuana users a high.